We Are Here (15 page)

To go in there and never come back out.

David stepped off the train at the exact time he and Dawn had arrived the previous Friday. He’d climbed on the first available service from Libertyville—the nearest town to home with a train station—and hadn’t even realized it was the same one until he saw the clock at Penn Station. This made him feel very guilty, even guiltier than he’d felt throughout the journey and in the shower and ever since the idea had first dropped into his head as the two of them sat eating cereal together.

But that was dumb, right? He was a grown-up. He was allowed to leave the house, and the town.

He set off for the escalator—still feeling guilty, and confused, and more than a little scared.

He’d waited until Dawn had left for school and then written a note explaining that the novel idea he’d been nurturing had given unexpected birth in the night, presenting him with a litter of sub-ideas and plotlings that he needed to bottle feed with fact. One of these story-lines was going to unfold in New York. He needed to check out some locations, and sure, he could fire up Google Maps and get Street View on it, but he thought it might be cool to go check in person, soaking up the atmosphere and letting the city do some of the work. He hoped that was okay.

This last sentence, seeking permission, disappeared in the second draft. He didn’t need her to say it was okay. This was the kind of thing writers did.

It went back for the third draft. It made him feel better. As he stood in the kitchen giving the note a final read, marveling at the unusual neatness of his handwriting, he was relieved to see the contents came across as credible and plausible and not-at-all-crazy.

Even if they weren’t. He wasn’t going to New York to research. He was going because … He didn’t know why he was going. He was just going. And if he was going then he might as well go, instead of standing in the kitchen dicking around redrafting an excuse that wouldn’t be found until after he was gone, or perhaps even back home.

He left the note in the center of the kitchen table—the one that, long ago, had graced the big kitchen in Grandpa’s house, one of the handful of possessions he’d shipped to Rockbridge when he’d moved. It was a big, sturdy piece of furniture and (propped against a bowl full of wholesome red apples, and with a smiley at the bottom) the note looked like the most reasonable thing in the world.

He was careful not to look under the table, however.

It was colder than the last time. Overcast and windy, too, far more like he remembered it from his period living in the city, a time that included the tail end of winter and during which he’d been colder than ever before or since. The weather—and being by himself—made the streets feel more familiar, like a stranger in the street turning to resolve into an old acquaintance. New York was a place he associated with being alone.

He went into the first Starbucks he came across. While in line he texted Dawn, deciding to let her know he’d come to the city right away rather than waiting for her to find the note. The text was upbeat.

There was no immediate reply, which didn’t surprise him—she’d be in class, knowing she now carried inside her the genesis of one of the little beings that sat around her. Remembering this gave David the same pang of bewildered hope and fear, and more than anything else he believed this was why he was here. There was something that needed to be put right, even if he was not sure what it was. There was unfinished business.

When he got to the counter, the barista did not know what he wanted before he asked for it and betrayed no obvious sign of caring about his day. David missed Talia for a moment, and realized he was actually looking forward to getting back to reading her book.

For want of any other plan, he walked the coffee up to Bryant Park, where he sat on a bench and stared across toward the library and the terrace where he and Dawn had taken celebratory glasses of wine. He recalled that for the second half of the nineteenth century, this site held the Croton Distributing Reservoir, a block-sized behemoth with fifty-foot walls for storing water transported down from Westchester County by aqueduct in an attempt to stop the citizens dying of cholera and yellow fever quite so enthusiastically. It was now impossible to imagine. But it was hard to remember being twenty, too, to imagine himself in the head and life of that former person, to recall who he’d been when he’d sat in this park then. Do we grow older by dint of additions and remodeling, or through knocking ourselves down to the foundations and rebuilding from the ground up? David supposed it was meant to be the former, but the latter had more of a ring of truth.

He left the park and headed east along 42nd. Two minutes later a text came in, Dawn bubbling with enthusiasm and telling him to take his time and she’d look forward to hearing about his adventures when he got home.

He kept walking east for a further few blocks and then turned to head downtown. The sky grew gray as he trudged, the wind more persistent. He tried—for whose benefit he wasn’t sure—to maintain the pretence that he was here for research, peering meaningfully at the buildings and people he passed.

He walked for hours, crisscrossing back and forth as if searching for something he couldn’t recall. Until eventually he arrived at the top of Union Square—and found himself slowing down.

Union Square runs from 17th down to 14th between Park and Broadway—the only major street that ignores the grid and carves on the diagonal, turning the park into a wedge. It’s a block wide, the top four-fifths arranged in areas of grass and trees with a kids’ playground way at the top right, half hidden behind high bushes. Tree-shaded paths paved with hexagonal bricks wander through all this, the grassy areas easily accessible on the other side of low metal fences. The bottom of the square is a major downtown pedestrian thoroughfare.

David wandered down the central path. It was almost three o’clock by then. People perched on benches, talking on the phone, meditatively working through late sandwiches. He remembered the park well. He must have crossed it a hundred times on the way to the Strand Book Store, where he’d picked up most of his secondhand reading when he’d lived there, selling the books frugally back again afterward. This afternoon something about the place felt off. Had they changed it? Altered the layout? He wasn’t sure. It
looked
the same, but his memory had started to feel like a jigsaw where he had all the pieces around the outside and nothing in the middle at all.

Traffic coursed noisily back and forth across 14th. A pair of Japanese women wandered by, cheerfully consulting a city guide. A handful of business types strode past, deep in conversation, pant legs flapping in the wind.

David slowly got the feeling he was being watched, or at least observed. He turned to see a man standing in the center of the area. He looked about forty, with ginger hair, wearing the upper and lower halves of two quite different gray suits. The shades did not match and neither did the styles. The pants were too loose, the jacket too tight. He was watching David with an odd expression. Part cautious. Part curious.

David looked away, and then back. The man was still watching him. Everybody else was in transit, a mutating, rotating backdrop of water-color hues. They were the only two people who were motionless.

Finally the man strolled over to David.

“What’s your name, then?”

He spoke in a low tone. His accent was distinctive, with a strong hint of London Cockney. Too surprised to come up with an evasive response, David told him.

“Nice.” The man nodded. “David. Good name. A
proper
name.” He winked. “But then it would be, wouldn’t it?”

“What … what do you mean?”

“I know what you are, David.”

The back of David’s neck felt hot. “You do?”

“I do. And … welcome,
welcome
. You want to be back up there in the trees though, really.”

“Why?”

“Well, who are you here for?”

“Here … for?”

“His
name
, David. I’m assuming it’s a ‘he,’ anyway. Usually is with guys. Not always, though.
Could
be a ‘she.’ Could be a kangaroo, for all I know, right?”

David stared at him.

“So.
Is
it a he?” The man had an unusual odor, like the memory of cotton candy on a fall afternoon. He was leaning forward expectantly, conspiratorially, eager to help. David felt as if he’d wandered into some dark club and been greeted as a regular by a doorman he’d never seen before.

“I … don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The man winked. “Fair enough, mate. Understood. I’ll bugger off and leave you to it. Good luck, eh?”

He held up both hands, fingers crossed, and walked away, glancing around as if already on some other mission entirely. He curved around a group of Europeans wearing bright anoraks and seemed to fail to come back out the other side—presumably having crossed the road.

David felt scared now. Plain, downright scared, deep in his guts, seized with the certainty that whatever impulse had brought him to this place was faulty, and this wasn’t somewhere that he should be. It was as if he’d come to a park and found himself standing up to his neck in a reservoir of dark water instead.

It was only then that he realized that the park, if seen from above, probably looked rather like a shape he had seen etched out in the gravel of the parking lot of Kendricks. That realization made being there feel wronger still. As if he had followed instructions that he hadn’t even realized he’d been given.

It was half past three. If he was intending to walk back to the station, he ought to be setting off. Or maybe he should get a cab. But … he thought he should be leaving, either way. Leaving felt like a good plan. Getting on a train. He could be home in time for dinner.

Just …
be home
.

He was halfway back up the central path when he heard an intake of breath and glanced to the right to see a homeless man sitting on a bench. His skin was nicotine brown, thin black hair plastered across a mottled scalp, tatters of an old suit swaddled around a skeletal frame. He was glaring past David into one of the grassy areas. He screwed up his face and flapped his hands spastically, as if to ward something away from his face.

“No, not again. Fuck off, fuck off, fuck
off
.”

David turned to see what he was looking at and realized the park was full of people now.

Many seemed to be on their way somewhere, striding along the paths. They flowed on either side of David, eyes ahead, as though he were a rock in a fast-moving stream.

Others were gathered in knots on the grassy areas, apparently in conference, but even these were not static. Each person within these groups was constantly on the move, walking in small circles, or in slow, weaving patterns among one another that left the basic shape of the groups intact. They were dressed in just about any outfit you could imagine, from a teenage girl in a gray hoodie to a plump woman of about fifty wearing a strapless ball gown in dark blue. There must have been two, maybe three hundred of them. There were animals, too. A few large dogs, a bright orange cat, and … for a bizarre moment, David even thought he saw a bear. Then they weren’t there anymore.

None of them. The park was empty again.

David turned to the man on the bench. He smiled, revealing a mouth with hardly any teeth in it.

“You saw them?”

“I saw
something
,” David whispered, looking around, skin crawling. Everything was as it had been two minutes before. The paths and grassy spaces were empty but for fallen leaves. He spotted the two Japanese women he’d noticed earlier, sitting together on one of the benches now, consulting their guidebook and laughing.

“Where … where
did they all go
?”

“Nowhere,” the man on the bench said. “I don’t ever see them anywhere but here.” He stood, gathering his plastic bags. “But
I’m
leaving. You should too. They don’t like it if you can see them. I got bitten once.”

He walked away up the path.

David stood his ground, knowing now what he’d been feeling ever since he’d first come into the park. There was a disparity between the way it looked and the way it really was. It was … too
full
.

On impulse, he stretched both arms out to the side. The women on the bench looked at him strangely, but that wasn’t the only effect. Something backed off a little, as if he’d become a bigger rock in a hidden stream.

He put his arms back down and hurried up toward the children’s playground. At the heart of this was a castle-like construction with wooden walkways and turquoise turrets, planks and rope bridges connecting the different sections. Only the under-tens were allowed on this, a sign clearly stated, but there were adults on it now. Perhaps thirty of them. In pairs and threes and fours. Most of them dressed in black or rich colors, drapey, goth-style clothing that looked cobbled together from remnants. They were all moving, constantly. Back and forth, around and about. David got glimpses of pale faces in conversation, but most of the time it was as if you could see them only from behind.

If they were here, then …

He turned and trotted back to the center of the park. Yes—they were back here, too.

David ran toward the largest grassy area, off center in the park, sixty feet around with a fountain off to one side. He could barely see it now for the mass of people. There were no children—and only a handful under eighteen—but otherwise every age group was represented. Old, middle-aged, with a big peak in early to mid-twenties. Black, white, Asian. Most in casual clothes, a few in suits. Again, the thing that looked like a bear but surely had to be a man in a costume.

And then—they were gone again.

Except … they weren’t. David couldn’t see them, but he could
feel
them. There were people here in the park, people he couldn’t see. There was no doubting that.

Unless I’m losing my mind.

The two Japanese women had gone back to giggling over what had to be the funniest NYC guidebook ever. A muscular guy walked past with a pair of very tiny dogs. Two men sat on a bench, both on the phone, presumably not to each other. All of these people seemed too far apart, like a scattered handful of books on a shelf.