Synopsis :
Book by ATWOOD Russell
Extrait:
I'd been out of town, upstate in Syracuse, nine days snatching whatever sun and country atmosphere I could between court appearances in a child-custody case, presenting surveillance evidence against the natural mother. After the case finally settled late Thursday afternoon, I dropped off the rental and caught an evening bus back to the city. Slept most of the way, dozing off listening to a tape of Joe Mantegna reading Farewell, My Lovely till the batteries ran down:
"I was a swell guy. I en-joyyed...be-inng...mmmmmm--"
The Peter Pan bus downshifted and swerved, slowing to approach the Lincoln Tunnel. Out my darkly tinted window, the etched-black skyline of Manhattan stood imposing and beautiful against a moonless May night. At first glimpse, my heart surged (almost alive again, not quite) like the last time I saw her--Clair, my sweet Air--fresh and lovely as I always remembered.
From that distance, the city stays the city of your imagination: a scintillating island of promises, of hope, of love renewed. Not until you get closer is the sobering truth revealed: you're happier to see her than she is you. Not angry, not resentful. Worse. Uninterested, dispassionate, preoccupied; her reticence inspires myth.
But eventually you get over it, they say, because reality (whatever that happens to be) sets in, and you take her for what she is: not yours--never your city--but just a city of her own.
I got into my office/apartment overlooking Twelfth Street and Second Avenue at half-past one in the morning with a week's worth of mail in my hand. While I was gone, no one had broken in. I counted the answering machine's flashes--nine--and decided I needed to eat something first, which meant going right back out again. The fridge naturally was empty, nothing but a single ice cube in the ice tray and an open box of baking soda.
I was overdressed for the East Village after midnight, still in my dark blue suit, narrow maroon tie, and shiny black shoes from my final court appearance. But I didn't change into street clothes because I was only going down to the Chungs' all-night deli, and I thought they'd get a kick out of seeing me looking so respectable. I was going to kid Mrs. Chung that the outfit was one of my disguises. Then she'd rattle off some English I couldn't follow one word of, but I'd laugh when she laughed.
Except when I got to the deli, the rusted accordian gates barred the doors and a big for rent sign hung behind the plate glass in the darkened window. I peered in. The aisles and shelves were bare. One solitary fluorescent light fixture blinked on and off, spasmodically.
Couldn't digest it at first--I'd only been gone nine days. I still owed them for a pack of cigarettes. Why would they...?
I'd have to ask around in the morning. The more immediate problem was, where to shop now? Less than a block away, another convenience store on Second, but they overcharged (probably why they were still in business), so instead I turned west on East Twelfth, toward an indelectable deli on Third Avenue. The cashier who rang up my cigarettes, gallon of milk, and box of Cheerios wasn't the least bit impressed by my suit.
Rather than walk back the way I'd come, I went home on Eleventh. For no other reason, I suppose, than that I have an inclination to complete circles.
At the Third Avenue corner was the wide stone-block entrance to an NYU dorm, lit up stark orange by sodium-vapor floodlamps. Farther down Eleventh, the sidewalks narrowed and the lighting grew softer. Every five feet a thin, budding tree cast a spidery shadow--like cataracts--across a brick-face wall, the walls mostly belonging to prewar townhouses undergoing reconstruction. No lights on in any windows.
It was a minor through street, at that hour no traffic at all. Quaint and peaceful.
For a moment I even forgot where I was, imagining myself back in Syracuse, strolling down a country lane. The impression was furthered by the last stretch of block, taken up by St. Mark's-in-the-Bowery, a late Georgian church of rough-hewn stone and brick, and its adjoining churchyard housing the burial vaults of some of colonial New York's founding families, all surrounded by a spiked, Italianate cast-iron fence. I looked up; the high steeple clock read a quarter to two. Out of habit, I checked it against my wristwatch. And as quickly, let my coat sleeve drop back down.
I still had on my gold Rolex. My $3,500, perpetual-motion, date-day-chronometer, gold Rolex. I'd been out of the city too long. The watch was the most expensive piece--the only piece--of jewelry that I owned. Upstate, I'd worn it every day, walking through town without inhibition, my shirtsleeves rolled up, the Rolex glinting in the sun.
Something was wrong with my sleeve. I looked down; my coat cuff was snagged on the watchband's crown clasp. I wanted to fix it, but first had to switch hands carrying the cereal and jug of milk; before I could, I heard a zipper zip up ahead.
From behind a scaly elm tree, eight feet away, a lean figure in black leather jacket and baggy camouflage fatigues stepped out and onto the sidewalk, briefly glanced my way, turned, and started walking in the other direction.
Some guy pissing against a car, I thought, and thought nothing of it, just continued walking. Strolling really, at the leisured pace I'd adopted while away. Nothing close to my usual urban-locomotion. Even so, I began to shorten the gap separating us, catching up without trying and certainly without wanting to.
I got a sudden uncomfortable feeling that the sharp slap of my footsteps was being listened to, concentrated on, measured.
Welcome home, Payton.
But I kept walking--had to--I couldn't cross the street just there because the cars parked at the curb were packed too closely. And I couldn't stop suddenly because it might've set him off. And I couldn't run the other way either, because... well, this was where I lived and worked, and I had to be able to walk around my own block. Right?
So, I kept walking. Walking. And getting closer. Closer.
I couldn't tell how either--whether he was taking baby steps or moonwalking--and as I approached, I wasn't even so sure it was a guy anymore. The black hair, cut in a spiky, androgynous crew, came to a lean point on the nape of the neck, pointing to a tattoo of a flaming blue star in a jagged blue circle. Silver rings in both small pinched ears--but what did that mean nowadays? Height: five-five. Build: concealed by the baggy clothes. Hands: out of view, held in front. Holding what?
Blind larvae hatched in my belly.
As my footsteps got closer, the head didn't stir an inch--weird in itself. The neck muscles just tensed and the skin on either side stood like dorsal fins.
I had to pass on either the right or the left. I chose the right; in a pinch, I could've dived over the hood of a parked car.
As we came side by side, I kept my eyes straight ahead on Second Avenue half a block away: cabs, buses, a darkened Mister Softee truck rolling by still playing its happy jingle. At the corner was a lighted pay phone, the receiver off the hook, swaying by its silver cord.
I was keyed up to spring at the slightest movement or sound. From the corner of my eye, I saw a pale face: dark eyebrows, low cheekbones, snub nose, and a cleft chin like flexed knuckles. I heard the high, uneven whistle of nose-breathing, and smelled a heavy, dusky sweetness: patchouli oil, stifling and repellent.
Then I was out in front, upwind, walking away, my back wide open to attack.
Now my ears were the ones carefully listening to footsteps behind, this time the slow clomp of loose-laced boots, trying to calculate their distance... gauge their intent.
And nothing happened.
Maybe after all it was just an ordinary case of pedestrian leapfrog, that nervous game we New Yorkers play daily--the ones who leave their apartments. But just in case I was wrong, I continued to listen, to focus my attention behind me. All of it.
Which is how I missed them--crouched low in the recessed entryway of a semibasement--until I was right alongside, and one softly snorted.
I flinched but kept facing forward, my vision going wide to horse-glimpse.
There were three of them, three stooges--all Curly--bald-headed behemoths with bull necks and beefy arms dressed in flak jackets and blue jeans.
Every advantage in the world--theirs--to have grabbed me as I went by, dragged me down, and gone to work on me in peace.
But they didn't. They weren't interested in me. I walked on by, took three more steps, and didn't turn when I heard a shrill yelp, followed by the scuffle of boots, and then--silence. Relative silence: car horns blaring in the distance, a flatbed truck clobbering a pothole, somewhere, some man's faint angry rant against the government going ignored. When I came to a street-level doorway, I turned and stepped in.
Peeking from the doorway, I saw only empty sidewalk and a head poking out from a stairwell. One of the Curlys acting as lookout, anxiously stealing glances back and descending another step for a better look at what was going on below.
I was curious, too.
Twenty feet to my left, the hustle and not so much the bustle of Second Avenue. Only seconds to reach the pay phone there and dial the local precinct (always quicker than 911). But response time being what it is--anywhere from five to thirty minutes--the whole thing might've been over and everyone on their way before a unit was even dispatched.
But so what? For all I knew they had a legitimate beef--just cause--for ganging up three against one. I couldn't imagine what that could be, but that still didn't make it any of my business. Between instinct and action, always a membrane of reason.
The lookout's head pricked up, as if he'd been summoned, and he left his post, going below to join the others.
So I stepped from the doorway and started back, walking on the balls of my feet over to the four steep, crumbling concrete steps ...
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