“Got to, man. No other way. It’s got to look right. Can’t you see? If they suspect …” He focused blankly on the middle distance, rubbing his beard. Henderson sensed his terror, like a gas; blood turned to soda in his veins.
“What have those two guys got on you?” Henderson asked.
“I owe them, man,” Freeborn said in a small voice. “Owe. You know? I owe them all kinds of shit. From way back, for a long time.” His face slumped. “It would’ve been all right. ’Cept you came along.” He paused, then his voice became a harsh whisper. “They got me by the balls. One in each hand.” He held his hands out in illustration. He came over. “Play along with me, Henderson. We’ll get out of this. But don’t say nothing about that fuckwit Duane. That’s all.”
Henderson smelled his antiseptic breath.
“Yeah, and where’s Shanda?” Freeborn asked. “She’s with you, right?”
“At my apartment. Look, she asked. I didn’t—”
“Hey, that’s cool. No sweat. Done me a favor there, boy.” He raised his eyebrows. “Sorry. But I gotta do this.”
Freeborn punched Henderson in the nose, quite hard. Henderson heard a noise in his head like a walnut being crushed and everything went white and calm for a moment. When he opened his eyes it was as though he were swimming underwater. He was on his knees. Blood surged steadily from his nose, splashing over his chest and belly.
“Sorry, Henderson. Had to do it. Wow, it looks bad.”
Henderson spat gouts of salty blood out of his mouth.
“Ben! Peter!” Freeborn called.
“Clodes,” Henderson said, a knuckle up each oozing nostril.
“Sorry.” Freeborn went out, returned with Henderson’s shoes. “Best I can do.”
Sereno and Gint came in.
“What you do?” Sereno said, wrinkling his nose at the blood-boltered sight.
“Says they’re in a garage in Luxora. I’ll check it out.”
“We’ll check it out,” Sereno said.
Gint still had the pliers in his hand. “Shit. I was going to tear his nipples off. Always works.”
Henderson, who was getting up, slumped back at this. His nipples throbbed spontaneously.
“Let him sweat it out,” Freeborn said. “Case he ain’t telling the truth.”
“I’ll be back,” Gint said, clicking his pliers.
They left. Henderson heard the bolt being slid to.
He sat on the chair while the last drops of blood plopped from his nose. Judging from the puddle on the floor and his incarnadined torso he must have lost a couple of pints. He stretched his legs out, let his head hang over the back of the chair. Gently, he touched his nose. It had sounded as if every bone and cartilage had been pulverized. He sat up and put on his shoes, his old black oxfords, with shiny toe caps. He looked around the room. There was nothing he could use to cover his nudity. It was completely empty. He crossed his legs. His hands were covered in blood and left palm prints all over his body. The blood on his chest and belly was beginning to dry, matting the hairs. He wondered what he looked like: some pallid aborigine involved in an unspeakable rite or ritual? Except the black shoes rather spoiled the image.
He thought about Freeborn, his newfound friend. The man had even called him Henderson. As he had suspected, Gage’s paintings had been mortgaged to provide his son with funds and favors. And Sereno and Gint were the brokers finally coming to collect, pick up the markers. Duane’s obedient act of destruction was likely to have further fatal side effects. He wondered what Freeborn would do. Stall them? Go back to Luxora, “check out” the garage, find it empty and return to New York to extract the truth from an anipplate Henderson … ? The more he thought, the more perilous his position seemed, the more temporary his release. The time bought by his complicity allowed Freeborn the chance to extricate himself in some way or other—and he wouldn’t be overconcerned about Henderson’s fate.
He prowled around the room. Its sole window was a small casement, with four lights, about three feet by two. There was no catch. It appeared to be nailed shut. From it he could look down into a sodden litter-strewn alleyway that ran between his building and the blank brick rear of the one opposite. Craning his neck he could see gray mat clouds above but nothing else. The rain came down remorselessly. He still had his watch on, he realized. It was four o’clock, and prematurely dark. He felt hungry and thirsty, and his bladder was achingly distended. He had to escape, that was all there was to it.
Five hours later one of his problems had been steamily resolved in a dark corner, and he had narrowed down his escape options to one: the casement window. The door, the walls, the interior window had not yielded to the battering he had visited on them. He had grazed his knuckles vainly plucking at the wire grille over the window and had bruised his shoulder and hip hurling himself at the door. In films these things gave way with laughable ease, but he felt he had been charging at a concrete wall. This necessary reduction in escape routes was further disheartening: not only did safety lie beyond the door but so did his clothes. If he was somehow going to effect an exit via the casement window he was going to have to do it buck naked.… Maybe he should just wait it out—tell Sereno and Gint the truth. But he had a suspicion that might not save his life, let alone his nipples. No, he concluded, it had to be escape, naked or not.
By now it was completely dark in his cell. His captors had left no lights on and he was reliant on the window for such faint illumination as it provided. Peering out he could see nothing but darkness.
He picked up the chair and used its legs to smash through the glass panes in the window. The shards tinkled faintly in the alley below. A gust of cool air blew in, bringing with it the din of rainfall and overflowing gutters. He looked out. Nothing had changed; no one had heard. The night was cool but not unbearably so.
For two or three minutes he bellowed “Help!” out of the window but there was no response. He smashed the chair against the wall and with a fragment of wood knocked out the remaining slivers of glass from the window surround. That achieved it was an easy matter to batter away the cruciform muntin. As he did this the rain dampened the dried blood on his chest and it began to run again.
He thrust his head and shoulders out of the window. He was about twenty feet up from the ground, he calculated. Some way to his left was a fire escape. To his right was a thick drainpipe, just within reach.
Diligently, he searched the frame edges for any stray glass fragments that might prove an unpleasant snag during his exit. Then he took off his shoes and tied the laces together, slinging them around his neck, before easing himself backward out of the window, face toward the sky.
With great caution and some ricked muscles he managed to buttock-shuffle, haul and claw himself into a shaky position whereby he was standing outside on the window ledge, his upper body pressed flat against the uneven wall, his fingers jammed in the courses between the bricks. Slowly he edged in the direction of the drainpipe, an old, strong-looking cast-iron thing, as thick as a thigh. He reached out and grasped it with his left hand, and, searching blindly with his left foot, found a collar or molding that gave him a toehold. There he stood: one foot on the window ledge the other on the drainpipe; one hand circling the pipe, the other wedged in a corner of the window embrasure. The rain pattered heavily on his back shoulders; a breeze gusted between his spread legs cooling his dangling genitals.
He gripped and swung, hugging the drainpipe passionately to him and gasping a little at the shock of the cold cast iron on his chest and the inside of his clinging thighs. Tentatively, limpetlike, he began to inch his way down, helped by the numerous bifurcations, knobs and beadings on the pipe. Then his probing foot touched the ground and he sank with a sob of relief.
He put on his shoes and cautiously explored the alley. He felt wholly odd and alien in his nakedness, a soft vulnerable creature entirely unsuited for this world of hard objects. The alley, he found, was no more than five feet wide and no kind of thoroughfare, judging from the
amount of rubbish and litter it contained. He discovered an upended wooden crate that provided some sort of shelter, and slipped inside out of the rain. He sat down cautiously, feeling for nails, the coarse wood prickling his buttocks. It was all very well being free, but freedom was drastically confined if you were naked. He looked at his watch. Eleven o’clock. He could wait a while before he went in search of help.
He sat in his box and watched the rivulets of water on the alley floor turn into gushing rills as the rain lanced down. As he sat there he felt at once incredulous and full of self-pity. Here he was, Ph. D., author, “Impressionist man,” reduced to the status of latter-day troglodyte, sheltering in abandoned boxes, nude, smeared with his own blood, in the middle of New York City … He looked at his bare knees, bald shins and damp black shoes. He held out his hands, as if offering his nails for inspection, and watched the raindrops bounce off them. It was true; it was real.
He got up and ventured palely out into the alleyway again to search for some sort of garb. There were plenty of scraps of paper, tins and plastic containers, polystyrene packing and cardboard boxes, but nearly everything was soaked and useless from the rain. Eventually he found a cardboard box beneath a pile of damp wood shavings. On the side it said in large black letters:
2,000 MARYMOUNT NO-SLAK SANITARY NAPKINS
Complete protection and comfort
Superthin! Superabsorbent!
He nodded. Yes, this was what he was coming to expect. But in his present state he couldn’t afford to be choosy. A little further down the alley he found great tangles of discarded plastic belting of the sort used to secure parcels. He tore his Marymount box into a long thin rectangle and wrapped it around his middle. He then wound yards of plastic belting around the box, knotting it as tightly and as best he could. He ended up with a very short cardboard miniskirt that preserved his modesty—just—but had an annoying tendency to slip down when he walked. With more plastic belting he constructed crude braces that held the box in approximate place, even though they chafed somewhat on his shoulders.
It was amazing the difference it made to his confidence to be clothed at last, even if only a Marymount No-Slak box. He felt profound understanding of Adam and Eve’s urge to make themselves aprons of fig leaves after the Fall. Postlapsarian man lived on in him too.
Hesitantly, he advanced to the mouth of the alley. It was nearly midnight. He peered around the corner of the wall. The street was badly lit, deserted and under two inches of water. A car went by throwing up wings of spray from its front wheels. Automatically, he ducked back into the darkness of the alleyway. Why hadn’t he stepped out and flagged it down? he asked himself. Remember where you are, was his reply. No one is going to come to the aid of a half-naked, bloodstained, cardboard-box-wearing man after midnight in this city.… He saw that the torrential rain was going to be as much his ally as his enemy—driving everyone off the streets, forcing everyone and everything into dry corners, leaving the empty rain-lashed avenues to him.
He worked out a plan. It was too risky, he thought, to head for his own apartment. He had a feeling that Freeborn and the others would be paying it a visit at some juncture. Freeborn might go looking for Shanda; or Gint might be there, with his pliers. He needed friends. He would head north up Manhattan to his only friend: Irene. Go to Irene.
chapter three
AT half past two in the morning, Henderson set out. Sereno had said his “gallery” was on the Lower East Side, “in back of Canal.” Henderson paused at the alley’s entrance. This must be Canal Street. The rain still fell; everything was quiet. He slipped out of the alley and loped in a half crouch along the street, hugging the walls.
At Canal and Forsyth he paused and took shelter in a doorway. He was out of breath, not from exertion but from excitement. Across Forsyth was a thin tree-lined park. He scampered over to it. SARA D. ROOSEVELT PARK a sign read. He climbed over the railings and hid behind a tree. A couple beneath an umbrella hurried past, heads down. He followed the park north, sprinting across the streets that bisected it—Grand and Delancey—until he reached East Houston Street.
Hiding behind a bush he looked at the Second Avenue subway station. Wraiths of steam drifted from manhole covers. Two cars went by and a yellow cab. Should he seek help in the subway? It looked like a gate to hell. He climbed over the park railings and walked over to the entrance. He had no money, he realized, and no identification. He stood on the sidewalk, indecisive, his chest heaving. A man came out of the subway, glanced angrily at him and went on his way, muttering and shaking his head. Of course, Henderson suddenly realized with tender elation, they think I’m mad. Just another fucking weirdo. It was a moment of true liberation. A revelation. He felt all the restraints of his culture and upbringing fall from him like a cloak slid from shoulders. He felt, in the Eugene Teagarden sense, spontaneously, unusually pure.
He saw a yellow cab drive by, its “for hire” light on. Emboldened, indifferent, careless, he stepped out into the street and hailed it. The taxi driver looked disgustedly at him, swore and drove on. Henderson shrugged, smiled, turned and jogged up Second Avenue. He still kept close to the walls and paused in dark doorways from time to time, but he was beginning to reassess and revalue his presence in the city.… Even given the lateness of the hour New York was astonishingly quiet. He had the rain to thank for that; judging from the amount of water flowing through the streets New Yorkers would probably wake up tomorrow to find their city declared a disaster zone. Only an occasional car or empty bus interrupted the solitude. Henderson ran steadily on, his Marymount box surprisingly unimpeding and comfortable. He ran past St. Mark’s Church, and paused in a doorway at Fourteenth Street. Over to his left was Union Square, but he didn’t have the nerve to go anywhere near it, even in tonight’s exceptionally inclement weather. The serious people in Union Square wouldn’t be deterred by a little rain. He would go north a few blocks and then cut over to Park Avenue South, which, he knew, had a central island running the length of it, planted with bushes and shrubs and up which he could make his way, undisturbed by the rare pedestrian and with plenty of cover should the police come by.
He had thought about telephoning the police, asking them for help, but had eventually dismissed the idea. There was a good chance—given his state of dress—that they might not believe him, and he was doubtful if he could cope with the exposure of a precinct police station and all the attendant embarrassments of proving his identity. Better to forge ahead on his own, lonely and free, he calculated, and in any event he was making reasonable progress.
He moved off again, skirting Stuyvesant Square, cutting down Nineteenth Street to Park Avenue South. Gradually, confidently, he became less furtive. He realized now that he was effectively invisible in this city. With its madmen, its joggers and its twenty-four-hour existence—finally, at last—he fitted in perfectly: perfectly consonant with its unique logic. Why, he was simply another mad jogger, happily patroling the streets in the taxi-torn, rain-tormented small hours. There were, he was convinced, far stranger things going on around him. And, if he moved fast, his Marymount box, now dark brown from the rain, must look like some bizarre new athletic rig-out, setting new trends in absorbent disposable running wear.…
He reached Park Avenue, ran to the central island and crouched down, getting his breath back. A patrol car motored past and he drew himself behind a small bush. He let it go. Above him the stacked lights in the tall buildings quickly grew fuzzy before being enveloped by dark clouds. A few cars hissed by on either side of him but the pavements were deserted. He set off up the central reservation. He wondered what New Yorkers—casually watching the rain fall from their apartment windows—would think if they saw him, a pale ghostly figure slipping from shrub to shrub, darting across streets, incongruous in his heavy black walking shoes.… This was surely, he thought as he ran, the apotheosis of his shame and embarrassment. No basically shy person could experience any ordeal so hellishly demanding and harrowing, so testing as this. After his nak
ed run through Manhattan he could hardly complain about other travails: nothing could be as uncompromisingly harsh as what he was currently undergoing.
And yet, he felt surprisingly good. Untroubled, oddly calm. He ran on—not strongly, but steadily—stumbling occasionally, his feet catching in the ivy that grew along the flower beds of the Park Avenue central reservation, the heavy raindrops striking his face and chest.
He made good progress up Park Avenue until his way was blocked by Grand Central Station and the Pan Am Building. At Forty-second Street he paused by a traffic light, halted by a sudden atypical flow of cars. A wet man stood waiting for the WALK sign. Henderson jogged on the spot beside him, intoxicated with his new freedom.
The man looked around, swaying slightly.
“Y’all right, man?”
“Me?” Henderson panted. “Couldn’t be better.”
“Keepin’ fit, huh?”
“That’s it.”
“Some sorta—what—athlete, huh? Athletics, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Marymount No-Slak,” he read slowly.
“My sponsors.”
“Hey, congratulations.”
The light changed, Henderson jogged on. He had been accepted; the moment had come and gone, but he had joined America at last. He cut up Vanderbilt Avenue on to Forty-fifth and then up Madison. He ran slowly, easily, not exhausting himself, pausing for breath when he got a stitch, enjoying the unfettered luxury of his temporary status as madman, American and jogger. He cut across at Fifty-ninth and loped casually by the Plaza, Central Park’s dark-green mass on his right. Irene was now only a few blocks away. He looked at his watch: half past four.
Outside Irene’s block he paused. He stood in a doorway and checked himself over. The Marymount box was showing signs of wear and tear; bits were disintegrating from the wet and his flanks showed through gaps where the friction of his running had caused the damp cardboard to wear through. His shoulders were red and a little sore from the rubbing of the plastic braces. Making his fingers stiff claws he tried, incongruously, to put a parting in his hair.