Over the last several years, Richard Bowes has staked out an area of urban fantasy all his own. In a shadowy New York City, characters who are part myth, part reality wander the streets. In "Streetcar Dreams," he mingles his New York with current Jungian play therapy to come up with the last -- and perhaps the best -- Kevin Grierson story.
Our eyes finally met on this August morning, you a creature of light and I a middle-aged man in a rumpled suit. When I saw you my eyes filled with tears. I had only just figured out who you are. You have been aware of me for our whole lives. In the last few days, I've thought a lot about my past. Now is the time to tell what I remember.
My name is Kevin Grierson. Last night two things happened: an old lover died and I talked with my Shadow, my Double. It's the first time we've met in over twenty years. Besides looking a lot like me, he now looks just like Death. But I am a New Yorker and try to take these things in stride.
Three days ago, Sunday night at dinner, old friends reminisced. They are all slightly brittle careerists my age who had come to New York for school or their first jobs, and never left. As they talked about their early days, I sat silently and remembered my own first, desperate attempt on the city.
It began on a raw night in 1960 with my Shadow and myself under the elevated train platform at Field's Comer in Boston. Our plan was simple, stupid, speed fueled. My parents were dead and I felt it was better to die than go back to school. Across the street, under the neon Malloy's Bar and Grill sign, was my Uncle Jim's place. I held him responsible for at least half my troubles. In my overcoat pocket was a loaded .38. Jim was going to finance our trip to New York.
My Shadow said, "I'll check the place out." I stood behind one of the iron El pillars and watched a skinny sixteen-year-old dodge traffic.
Then a voice in my ear said, "Rest easy." Uncle Mike the cop patted me down, took the piece out of my pocket. "In the car, Kevy boy. Your friend keeps his distance if he knows what's good for you." We sat in the front seat of his Chevy. "You running away? I'm not going to stop you." Mike broke open the .38. It was loaded. "Coming back here to shoot Jim?"
"Just scare him." I saw my Shadow start to cross the street toward us and signaled him to stay back.
Mike seemed amused. "You with a gun is scary. But the sight of your playmate there is what'd do him in. Jim takes things hard. He's the eldest. Our old man had the first double I ever saw. What is it Aunt Tay calls them? Faileas? Shadows? Your mother had one too. Jim loved his little sister even so. And now you. It kills him. It kills me too. I look at my kids, I think about if that happened, what would I do? Shoot them? Shoot myself?"
He let that sink in. Then he said, "You're leaving you need money. It's not a great bet. But I'll put some dough on you not coming back. Jim will too. How much do you want?
"Two hundred," I said. I saw my Shadow beside a pillar shake his head. "No. Make it two fifty." That seemed like big money. I was a stupid kid. My double was too.
He had big ideas about sugar daddies and lovely ladies in Gotham. What we found was a lot of people smarter and tougher than both of us put together. After a few days, speed and money gone, we sat on the stairs at Grand Central Station. Messed over body and soul, I turned to the dirty, strained face that was also mine and said, "This was your idea. What are we going to dot" All I got back was a duplicate of my own baffled expression. "Get lost," I said. "Get lost!"
As he faded, my bad side, my Shadow, whispered with real surprise. "Guess we can't live on my brains and your ass."
Without him, I lost virginity I hadn't known existed. One night I wandered around Hell's Kitchen west of Time's Square, and a guy smiled in passing. He seemed okay. I wanted someone to talk to and to take care of me and a place to be warm.
Down an alley we went and through a door. In a cellar room, he put his hands on my shoulders, ran me up against a wall. The side of his face he'd kept away from me was so creased by a thick scar that it looked like it had been crumpled. "Don't be scared, little boy," he said. "I'll make sure this NEVER happens to you. Now let's see what you got."
A week later, out on the Deuce in a thin jacket and jeans, I cried on the skinny shoulder of Veronica, a young Spanish drag, in the lobby of a SRO hotel. She said, "Honey, Scar Face is the lowest." Fishing a dime out of her bra, she asked, "Anyone you can call?"
There was. Lots of my family were not anxious to see me again. But my Grand-Aunt Tay begged me to come back, wired the money. Many kids in my situation do not get that grace.
That was the memory I ran like a tape at Addle and Lauren's place in Kip's Bay Sunday night. Dinner was on the lamp-lit patio, good food, half a dozen old friends. I let the conversation pass me by. As has happened for more than twenty years, the wine and grass did too.
Always when this happens, I pictured Leo Dunn, the man who brought me off booze and drugs. He sits in a big chair in his upper East Side apartment, his head framed by winter light from a window. "Your addiction is a Silent Partner who will lie and cheat, who will steal everything and leave you broke and holding the bag." When he had said that I started calling my Shadow the Silent Partner. Mr. Dunn has been gone for twenty years now; his image is like a talisman rubbed smooth with use.
No doubt my dinner companions attributed my being present and unaccounted for to George Halle's having just been taken off life support. A wondrous soul, George had set me up in the world and now I was helping him out of it.
They were his friends as well as mine. But in this time of awful attrition, I was the one closest to him. Spouse, lover, relative, business partner, are all ephemeral ties, easily broken. In the age of AIDS only primary caregiver continues until death does us part.
At some point the other guests said good-night, patted my hand, told me when they'd visit the hospice. Finally Lauren and I sat in the ground floor consulting room as Addie listened to her answering machine. Lauren massaged my neck. "Think about Christmas in Santa Fe," she murmured, including me in their plans. When her lover hung up, she said, "Talk to you during the week, Kevin."
Addie told her, "I'll be up in a little while." Then we two sat with the lights dim and the windows open on the back yard and midnight. Here in the center of a block of five-story town houses; street noise was muted. A couple argued at an open window, a hundred air conditioners hummed, but Manhattan in August is just quiet enough for us to hear a tug hoot on the East River, the rumble of a long freight train on the Queen's shore.
For a few minutes of harmony, we listened to each other breathe. Long ago, before she met Lauren, after I left George, there was Addle and me. One summer and fall, we went everywhere: plays, leather bars, Hoboken, bed. In my relations with humans, that species whose shadows don't speak to them, I specialize in six weeks of frenzy and a lifetime of exchanging casserole recipes.
Middle age helps reduce all our faces to professional expressions. Addle, for instance, radiates calm and compassion, a handsome priestess. I have the antique toy dealer's look of quizzical appraisal. But we knew each other before we had fully developed our masks.
"Let me show you what I found." Addie rose and I followed her into the blue room. She flicked a switch and a light came on over the sand table. Four feet square, three feet high, it stood in the middle of the floor. A construction was still intact.
Addie started taking it apart. I saw a hill molded in the fine, white sand, the sides embossed with sea shells. Turrets and walls ringed the top. At its foot were a two-inch tall bear dressed in a clown suit, a trio of jolly, fat Chinese men, a smiling lady rider on her circus horse.
My first take was that it was a happy scene. On second glance, I saw that the hill was armored: a closed, empty castle. And the figures all faced away from a small pit in the sand where the figurine of a little girl lay face down. "The poor kid who built that," I said.
Addie nodded. "We made progress yesterday. I left this up so Laurie could photograph it." Addle is an analyst. Children are her specialty, Play Therapy one of her tools. On white shelves, built at child's eye level around the walls, sat miniature pagodas and stands of trees, African-American wedding parties and elephant-headed gods, pirates and nurses, three-masted junks, Madonnas, yellow dump trucks, lambs, chariots, anything kids might need to recreate their interior landscapes on the sand table.
I'd helped her find a lot of these items. It's what had brought us together. We had both found jobs that let us play with toys. "See what's new?" she asked. I heard a collector's pride in her voice.
The streetcar stood, green and boxy, trolley up, between St. Francis with birds on his shoulders and a family of giraffes. The color was wrong and the shape, but it made me jump. "You're uncanny! It's so long ago that I told you about the Streetcar Dreams. And I had one last night for the first time in years." She gave a smug smile as if this was an elementary trick of her trade.
I turned to the shelves, saying, "It opened the way they always have. I walked into Union Square subway station. Lots of people and noise. I went up stairs that exist only in these dreams to a platform with tracks at ground level, not down in a pit like subway trains.
"Streetcars stopped running in this city before I moved here. But one swept out of the dark. Orange, cigar-shaped, like they had in Boston when I was a kid. I boarded by the side door, sat at a window. The car started, lights and signals flowed past. We burst out of the tunnel and it was all black and white, New York in a 1940's photo."
As I spoke, I put the toy streetcar down on the sand and ran it back and forth to make tracks. I took buildings from the shelves, sets of European row houses, a gas station, a fire barn and crowded them right next to each other on one side of the tracks. On the other side of the tracks, I placed battle ships, an ocean liner, sailboats.
"The streetcar seemed to run down the West Side waterfront, city blocks on the left, piers on the right. It was wartime." I placed marching khaki soldiers and navy blue sailors in the landscape.
"Then I spotted a figure I seemed to recognize walking by. Not a child. Not an adult either." Searching Addie's shelves which held everything from Mongols to angels, I found nothing that looked right. "Whoever, whatever it was started to turn toward me. And I woke up before I saw the face."
"Was it your Doppelganger?" I had told Addle about my Shadow long ago. She had taken it well, though in psychiatry a belief in a double is the kind of thing that turns up in schizoids facing death.
"No. But my Shadow was on my mind. He hasn't been around for years. Then a couple of weeks ago, a boy I'd just met was convinced he already knew me. A few days later, our old friend Gina Raille asked if I had an evil twin. And today, after the dream, our paths crossed. I think he wants to talk. It looks like he's very sick."
"Oh, Kevin!" Addle hugged me. "You know this is probably a way of dealing with all that's happened to George."
She's smarter than anyone I've known since Leo Dunn. But she thought I was hallucinating. Besides, I'm her friend, not a client. I was imposing. "You're right," I said rising. "It's late. Sorry."
"Not at all," she said as best friends do. When we kissed on her front stairs, huge apartment towers across the way made me feel like we were miniatures on her sand table.
It had been a long day. I took a cab instead of walking the twenty blocks down Second Avenue. Stuyvesant Park was empty, its gates locked for the night. The trees stood motionless by lamp light.
The park shows up in a lot of movies. Odd since with iron fences, the Friends' Meeting House, the statue of One-Legged Peter Stuyvesant, the flowers planted by the Episcopal Church ladies, it looks like something from a more quaint and quiet town. My apartment faces the north side of the park. I'm on the third floor. It's a quiet building. Everyone else in the co-op is middle-aged too.
On my answering machine were messages from Edwin Sandler, a remarkably rich antique toy collector, and Oscar Klackman, a minor skell and forger. I had business with both of them. The Dolbier collection, a million dollars worth of antique toy soldiers, was going to auction the next day.
Listening, I got into some pull-ons. The last message was a voice hesitant and lost. "Kevin," a long pause. "Maybe I can see you later." Matt Daniels was the young stranger who had thought he knew me the first time we met.
The Police Academy is in my neighborhood. I looked out the window and saw the streets full of cadets in overseas caps, cop shoes, paramilitary uniforms. A group of gay kids in sneakers, button-front boxer shorts and crew cuts passed by. The rival tribes eyed each other warily. Senior year of high school I got forced into both those styles.
Not everyone was happy when Grand-Aunt Tay brought me back from New York. The family house was being sold. My future got decided that Christmas as I lay in bed too sick and numb to care. Even Tay seemed angry. When I was a kid, she had taught me songs, told me stories about elves and changelings and people with Shadows like mine. "Don't you be mad at me, Tay, please, I couldn't stand that."
And she said, "I'm not mad at you, Kevin. I'm afraid for you." She recited a poem. Only now do I understand. At the time it passed right by me. The first verse went:
Just we three go sailing
Me, Myself and I
Over walls and fences
Through the night we fly
At that time in Irish Catholic Boston, a young man in trouble with God and law was treated to a dose of military discipline. My share of the sale of the house sent me to Saint Sebastian, Soldier and Martyr in New Hampshire. That winter, I marched, went to morning mass, studied, exercised, prayed, got penitential hair cuts and took cold showers. For all but the last activity I was in some variation of a uniform much like the police cadets wear.
At St. Sebastian S&M, no one knew anything about me, which was good. Beer, let alone drugs, was unobtainable and the brothers of the Sacred Cross made sure even sex with yourself wasn't easy to arrange. One of my roommates prepped for West Point, another prayed in his sleep.
My grades were bad. I couldn't focus. The face in the mirror seemed to be a huge distance away. I thought of ways of dying, hid razor blades, tested pipes to see if they could hold my weight.
That's when the dreams began. In them, I woke up in apartments I'd never seen before, talked to people I didn't recognize. Once, I snapped open something like a switchblade. When someone made a heavy pass, I heard my voice whisper, "I'm not real good at close body work." My Shadow woke as I slept.
Around then I turned from thoughts of offing myself to Science Fiction, Childhood's End, Twilight World, Citizen of the Galaxy. Alternate worlds, mutant teens, alien conquerors are an easy fit when you've just done fifty push-ups because your brass wasn't shined, a Doppelganger cruises your dreams and a man in a dress lectures you about chastity.
The brothers always had the final word. The last day of spring term, I sat at the back of the class reading A Canticle for Liebowitz, trying not to notice the graduating seniors saying good-bye. I wasn't among them. "Mr. Grierson will be with us this summer," said the teacher and the seniors snickered. Summer term was the black hole, punishment detail. The uniform featured khaki shorts.
In 1961, being a guy was defined by jeans, black chinos, pegged slacks. The only males between six and forty who wore shorts in public were dorks, fairies, social cripples.
Two weeks later Uncle Bob deposited me at the Park Square bus station. "This is your last chance, Kevin. Blow it and you have no place to go." He seemed as amused as a lawyer ever gets to be by my public depantsing. I stared at my bare knees feeling like all I needed was Mickey Mouse cars and, maybe, polka-dot boxers to make my ensemble complete.
Uncle Bob drove off and a car full of kids came by. They honked and when I looked their way, they gave me the finger. In my boy scout outfit and last-all-summer crew cut, I was a scary and disgusting sight, a tamed teen with no control over his life. These guys were going to the beach, to see their girl friends, to parties. My life was going to be barracks mental hospitals, prisons.
Just then, I caught a glimpse of a familiar figure walking up to the Staler Hotel across the street. My Shadow's hair and clothes were cool. He wore a great pair of shades. When I looked again, he was gone.
But I took that eye flash as a kind of promise of what could be. Summer term was kind of loose. I cheated, I flirted, I lied. I even studied. My SAT's and College Board scores were impressive. I'd forgotten I wasn't stupid. The brothers took credit for turning me around. I knew better.
Aunt Tay arranged my late admission to huge, anonymous Mass. Arts and Science. College was good to me. I majored in English but hung around the drama department. I looked young. The parts I got were cadets, little brothers, sons. But the important thing was that amid the general dislocation and chaos of school, I finally learned to play the role of a human well enough to pass.
I'd had plenty of time to edit and shape my adventures. "It was speed and booze," I told my dorm mates in the hard-ass version. "This lady stepped on my heart so I stole a gun, held up my uncle and took off for New York..." Certain details got omitted. My Shadow especially.
More poured out with Sarah, a girl I'd met. "Chicken hawks jump-started me before I knew what was going on. After my mother died, that scene became a big school and family scandal. The only thing I could think to do was run. New York was bad. Since then, I've been afraid to let anyone touch me."
Self-serving no doubt. But getting to take the lead for the first time in my life with someone I cared for soothed me in a lot of ways. As we lay tangled together in the borrowed apartment, though, I saw my Shadow looking on. He had been left out of this account too.
The campus was connected to Boston by a streetcar line. Ever since I was a little kid, I had loved the cars, the old square orange ones, the new cigar-shaped model, liked seeing them lined up in the yards, loved the trolley sparks on wires in the dark, the rattle of the change box, the sway of the ride, the clatter of the wheels.
One October afternoon, broke and hung-over, I headed into town. The car rolled through the wooded suburban landscape, past a big house I recognized. In the months before New York, I'd known the daughter of the place. In rosy memory that time had been full of drugs, sex and ready cash.
At that moment, a voice whispered in my ear, "Found your life lacks a certain zest?" I said nothing. I had played this scene out in my imagination many times. My Shadow said, "I want to make up for what happened." When I didn't reply he said, "Without you, I don't even half exist."
This time I would be in control and use my Shadow. I dictated terms. "You stay away from school and my family. Weekends, I'll come in town and we'll get together." He kept his side of the deal for a long while. Going into Boston, I'd take the streetcar and he'd appear as the suburban landscape rattled past.
In town, I slipped into the life he'd established. My face gave me a juicy role: Angel With A Blade. "Bad little boy!" giggled a fat john, slapping my butt. I flicked open my Shadow's gravity knife and put myself firmly back on top.
Booze and drugs made it possible for me not to wonder why I was doing this. It was the age of Speed. Segments of MAS ran on it. In them I was a hero. Junior year, I stood in a pad in Cambridge as a fat lady in an orange muumuu counted out two hundred black beauties for me and my customers. Meanwhile, a skinny, shirtless guy with wild eyes and a machete stuck in his belt tried to focus on my Shadow, who lounged in the doorway. "He's not her double," my Doppelganger murmured later, "But he's something damn close."
Time ran fast and I turned twenty-one in the spring semester of senior year. After graduation I planned to move to New York. All the kids in the drama department were doing the same, so there would be safety in numbers. I hadn't told my Shadow. Gotham was where you gave your past the slip.
Early one morning, the phone in the hall of the residence house cut through my hangover. On the other bed, my roommate snored in counterpoint to the ringing. It was right outside our door and nobody was getting up. Fumbling in vain for my robe, dancing on the cold floor, I went out to the hall. The phone stopped in mid-ring.
And there he was, wearing my bathrobe and my face, speaking in my voice. "Oh my God! Thanks, Uncle Bob. I don't know what to say. I'll be over there as fast as I can."
As he hung up, I whispered. "We had a deal. What are you doing here?"
His eyes, when he turned to me, were unreadable. "Aunt Tay died." I doubled up like I'd been hit in the stomach. He put the robe over my shoulders. "You'll need something to get you through this," he murmured. "There's a half pint of whiskey in the pocket and some dexies. Do you really think you could survive here or in New York without me?" he asked.
"Fuck you," I said. But I didn't tell him to get lost. With Aunt Tay gone, we two were alone. I showered and dressed in what Tay and I called my confirmation outfit: blue blazer, gray slacks and a rep tie. I stuck sun glasses and the bottle in my pockets.
At that hour nobody much was around the campus. The streetcar, though, was full of commuters. We passed the big old house. Over the years, it got more deserted-looking each time.
I put on my shades, got off at the next stop and walked up there. Through the windows, I saw furniture covered with cloths. I went around to the back, found a porch and sat on the stairs. The garden was overgrown, but flowers had started to bloom. Birds sang. A car door slammed a few houses down.
I took out the bottle and drank, a sip at first, then a swallow. "Let me find you some more," said my Shadow. Alone, I thought of Grand-Aunt Tay. The last time I saw her, she talked about the poem she'd told me when I came back from New York. "What was it again?" I asked and she said:
Just we three go sailing
Me, Myself and I
Over walls and fences
Through the night we fly
People half awaken
Hear us pass and pray
Out of fearing for our souls,
Won't we rest and stay
And I said, "Gee, I thought I had problems and there are only two of me." Tay smiled then and so did I. That was the memory of her that I wanted to save.
My door buzzer yanked me back to the present. I stumbled off of the couch, went to the intercom and said, "Wha?"
"Kevin?" The voice was slurred, uncertain. "Can I come up ? Please?" It sounded like Matt. But after ringing him in, I stood ready to slam the door on the off chance I found my own mug coming at me.
Street fashion in clothes and hair were a flash of Saint Sebastian's Summer of 1961. But the face belonged to Matt Daniels, stoned, good-looking and twenty-three. Our first meeting, with him convinced he knew me, should have made me wary. Instead, I had let myself grow fond of this stranger. My Shadow is clever that way.
"Key!" His body vibrated slightly as he leaned against me. He smelled of smoke and booze, Obsession and sweat, the scent of the clubs. His dark hair was short and slick as an otter's. "Sorry I woke you," he said. "Andre's gone crazy. I can't stay there. I need to lie down." He shrugged. The rest was up to me. Doubtless I was not his resting place of first resort. But his vulnerability chilled me.
In the bedroom he sprawled in nothing but his tan and the tattooed wings over his left nipple, the winding snake on his right thigh. Neither of us was real excited. He smiled, puzzled, as I tucked him in, turned out the light and went into the living room.
Leo Dunn once told me, "We have to perform a delicate balancing act: to remember our addiction, to be aware of it, without ever letting those memories engulf us." Mr. Dunn had identified my Shadow as the manifestation of addiction and depravity. I dozed off wondering why, if the Shadow was evil, I was not all that good.
The next thing I knew, I was sitting at the rear of a moving streetcar. The neighborhood through which we rolled was not unlike the one where I grew up. For the first time, I noticed the driver. He looked straight ahead but I knew he had spotted me in the mirror. I counted a dozen passengers. Even from the back they all seemed familiar.
Then I realized they were all people I loved who had died. I was about to get up and go to them when I saw someone in the distance waiting for the car. It was the figure from my last dream, the one I had tried to describe to Addie.
Before we got close enough for me to see the face, a telephone rang and I opened my eyes. The sun shone at a late morning angle. My voice message clicked on behind my head. I lay on my living room couch. After the beep, a familiar voice asked, "Grierson, where the hell are you?"
"Ah. Mr. Sandler," I babbled, trying to figure out what day it was. "How are things in California?" Edwin Sandler is the fat kid who owns all the toys. Malcolm Forbes probably had more. But Forbes is dead while Sandler walks among us still. You may have seen him on the news when he bought an old Southern Pacific roundhouse to accommodate his vintage electric trains. George and I have acted as his New York agents for almost twenty years.
"Did you look at the Dolbier Collection? You were supposed to call. Is lot 98 authentic?"
It came back to me. We were talking toy soldiers, 54 millimeters tall, hollow cast, old. Intensely desirable, at least to Sandler and a limited number of other people. "I had someone look at the lot," I lied. "He says yes. But I'm on my way up to Masby's for the pre-auction viewing."
"Well, if it's authentic, I want it. Don't let that little fart Jonesy get it. He's beaten us out a couple of times recently. You have the list of other lots I'm interested in. But 98 is the important one. And I don't want to pay more than the estimate." Then with no change of tone, he said, "I hear George isn't doing so well."
Some days I was able to spend twenty minutes or half an hour before getting wrenched by a reminder of George. "That's right," I managed to say.
"It's a shame. You and he are young men." All things are relative. Sandler is in his seventies. He hasn't come near either of us since George's illness became general knowledge. I thanked him for his concern and said good-bye, very tired of Sandler and this whole business.
It was well after ten o'clock. My mind was a blank as I sat up and looked at the catalog again. On the cover, under the title, The August Dolbier Collection, Antique Toy Soldiers 1885-1920, I had written, "Ozzie Klackman. Masby's. 11 A.M."
I put a kettle on the stove. In the bedroom, Matt lay, arms and legs akimbo, like he had been knocked flat. When I touched his chest, he stirred. I showered, shaved, had tea and granola. I changed into blazer, slacks and rep tie. I believe that outfit inspires trust. It also reminds me of Tay. "Do I have time for a shower?" Matt stood, hesitant, rubbing his eyes, one foot on top of the other.
This was an act I too once played called, "Pity the poor urchin." But waking up with no clear idea of where you've been and where you're going next is a hard way to start a morning. I wanted to tell him that. I even thought of telling him he could stay.
But if the advantages of commodity sex are neatness and anonymity, those are also its drawbacks. I didn't know where to begin. So I just said, "Sure," and turned to answer the ringing phone.
"Hey, Grierson, you said be at Masby's at eleven sharp, Monday morning. I'm here with my meter running. Where are you?"
"At home, Ozzie, otherwise you wouldn't be speaking to me." Every trade has its skullduggers, resurrectionists, procurers. Antique toys is no exception. Ozzie Klackman is all those things and more.
"Sharp, sharp. Everyone's always saying 'Old Kevin G. is going soft.' But I tell them. 'No. No. He's still got all his marbles and he's selling them at twenty bucks a pop in that swank little Greenwich Village boutique of his.'"
"Hang on. I'm on my way."
It had taken Klackman to remind me about my own store. I dialed Half Remembered Things. After many rings Lakeisha answered, sounding out of breath. "You just got a UPS delivery," she said. "From Maryland someplace. Gettysburg?"
"Gaithesburg?" Vaguely I recalled purchasing a load of 1950's tin wind-up cars. "I'm not going to be in until late this afternoon." Remembering myself at seventeen, I had qualms about leaving her in charge. "Will you be okay?"
"There is no doubt in my mind." She was offended that I would question this. It was reassuring. Parts of my life still ran in an orderly way.
By the time I was at the door, Matt was set. "Hopefully, Andre won't be home when I get there. I'm supposed to start at a restaurant part time..." I put a few tens in his T-shirt pocket. There's a cosmic daisy chain in which I get to pay back everything I earned in trade plus interest and inflation adjustment.
As we walked down the stairs, I said, "The first time we met, you mixed me up with another guy. Have you seen him since?" Caught, he paused before he shook his head. Matt is incapable of lying. That is, like then, he can't hide it when he's not telling the truth.
We were on the sunlit sidewalk. Over in the park, the fountain played, a day-care center's worth of tiny kids ran and screamed. A young Latino lady in silk drawers rode by on a bike and looked Matt's way. I said, "The one you met is my Shadow." How to explain? "A slightly less than imaginary friend."
Matt looked puzzled. "He was real, Kevin." I thought he was going to add, "As real as you." Instead he said, "Sorry to bust in on you last night."
"I was happy for the company." We had walked over to Third Avenue. He touched my shoulder as I hailed a cab. "See you tonight?" I asked and he nodded. Driving away, I looked back and saw him at a pay phone. I wondered if he was on his way to my Shadow. Heading uptown to Masby's Auctioneers, I thought of how there was no way to warn the young about pain.
In the Autumn of 1969, a couple of years older and even dumber than Matt, I stood in a kitchen in Cambridge Mass. The woman in the muumuu watched me zip up my fatigue jacket. I was so thin that there was room in my clothes for me and several pounds of methadrine. She stopped mumbling chemical formulae long enough to tell the skinny guy, "Okay, okay. This one is full."
The skinny guy still wore no shirt but now had a Colt automatic stuck in the waistband of his bellbottoms. He had grown a big mustache and his skin was so taut that every rib looked ready to burst out. He pushed open the back door and said, "All clear," in a crazed chipmunk voice.
Outside the kitchen, an alley ran between wooden houses. Where it opened onto the street, my Shadow stood in a jacket and tie. It made the pair inside too jumpy when they saw both of us together.
"Walk easy," he said. "The heat is only interested in the Commie commune." As we headed for the Central Square subway, Sisters' School kids, home for lunch, ran past us, past a three-story house with red trim and pictures of Che Guevera in all the windows, past the detectives in their car.
Two hours later, I walked through Logan Airport, dressed in the jacket and tie, my flight bag stuffed with crystal meth. The idea was to look like a student, or like the bright young copywriter I had been a year or two before. Then I caught sight of myself in a mirror, minus an overcoat on a chilly day, wearing the shades it was best never to take off, hair down to my shoulders because barbers gave me the same feeling as dentists. I looked like nothing so much as a speed courier.
Guys in uniform moved toward me, blocked the exits, called to each other. I bit my tongue hard, got ready to bolt. The voice in my ear said, "Off-duty pilots, chauffeurs. Nothing to do with us. Take a deep breath."
Northeast Airline's three P.M. New York shuttle was full enough to give me cover but not so crowded that my Shadow couldn't have the seat next to me. Salesmen bent over reports. A silver wing shone outside the window. I had just snorted junk in the bathroom and was serene.
Then I glanced up and saw two stewardesses staring at me.
"Buy your ticket," my invisible friend told me. I drew out the crisp tens I'd put aside and realized too late that one was still rolled up from my bon voyage blast.
The last leg down from Cambridge was by cab. "We split with the crank," my Shadow told me. "Burn everyone before they burn us. Leave no forwarding address."
Ahead of us, the setting sun balanced on the towers of Manhattan. Behind us rose a sickle moon. "Where would we go?" I asked.
"Anywhere. We are about to earn fifteen hundred for delivering sixty-five grand worth of crank. We can go anywhere." I shook my head. The Spanish cabby paid us no mind. We got out in the fragment of a neighborhood where the Queens Midtown Tunnel opens onto Manhattan.
Angie's loft was upstairs in a two-story building on a truncated block. No one else lived on the street of garages and small factories. Behind us, rush-hour traffic flowed out of the city like a river. I rang and waited where Angie could see me from his window.
"No wonder they call drug couriers mules," my Shadow whispered. But when I shivered uncontrollably and had trouble stopping, he shut up. Sometimes I scared us both.
Finally, the buzzer sounded. Inside was a flight of stairs. At the top was a door with a peephole. Again I waited as they looked me over. "Run!" my Shadow suddenly cried. And I almost did.
The door flew open. A guy put an automatic at my forehead and gestured me inside. His eyes were dead, cold pins, his mouth a slit. But on his throat was a long curved scar like a smile. Other hands grabbed the bag and hauled me into the room.
Angie and Lars, his partner, lay face down on the Persian carpet in a pool of blood. I got shoved onto the floor near them. My Shadow started talking. "We know the connections, man."
Outside Masby's on Park Avenue I paid the cabby and sized up the crowd. Despite the auction being in the off-season, most major collectors or their agents had gathered. I was willing to bet that none had my exact business background. Masby's staff assigned me paddle #163.
Stepping into the showroom, I nodded to the big white-mustached guy who's a retired colonel, to the Trasks, a husband-and-wife team of gnomes, and to Maxwell Jones, a shiny-faced child of sixty-five. Klackman, my hired accomplice, lounged against a display case. We pretended not to see each other.
Recorded marches played. Tiny conveyer belts drew handpainted guardsmen in red coats, hussars on plunging horses, through display dioramas of castles and battlefields. American Indians in wild, impossible costumes galloped forever around a wagon train. The figures were eighty, ninety, a hundred years old. The kids for whom they had been bought were aged or dead. But here perpetually was the bright, savage world of childhood.
Everyone knew I represented Sandler. Eyes followed me as I approached lot #98, Rare, maybe unique, it stood in a display case by itself: French army medical figures, horse-drawn ambulances, supply wagons, hospital tents, stretchers, patients, nurses, doctors. It was attributed to William Britain Ltd., the famous English toy company, made in its Paris office circa 1910. The estimate was $20,000-$24,000 dollars. Sandler always gave a bonus when I bought an item for the estimate or under. It would take some doing in this instance.
Madge Brierly, the decayed gentlewoman whom Masby's has employed ever since I can remember, asked if I wanted the case opened. I nodded and asked, "Are you working the phones?"
"But of course."
Examining a two-inch-tall hand-painted doctor, I tried to remember all that George had taught me. The uniform, once brilliant red and blue, the bright cheeks and black mustache, had in age acquired a nice patina. It showed no signs of retouching or repair. The crucible for toys is their passage through the hands of their young owners. Unworthy, at first, of adult attention, few survive intact. "Much pre-bidding?" I kept my voice low. Such information is confidential.
Her shrug indicated that pre-auction bids were less than the estimate. "It seems August Dolbier's reputation wasn't the best."
Right on cue, a voice called, "Grierson!" Heads turned. Madge stepped away as if to avoid contamination. Shabby, grinning, in need of a shave and doubtless a drink, Ozzie Klackman approached. In a loud, hoarse whisper I hoped everyone caught, he told me. "Anybody can have old antiques. But how many can have brand new ones?"
Value in an antique depends on rarity and integrity. Repairs, repainting, diminish the worth. Fraud and forgery are not uncommon. Those are Klackman's specialties. Everyone knew Klackman had worked for Dolbier and that Dolbier had been untrustworthy. "So what do you think?" Ozzie asked proudly as if it was his work.
The figure looked authentic to me. I replaced it in the case and went on to view other lots. Then the crowd began to buzz. The auction was ready to start. Usually, I stayed at the back of the hall. Today, I was up front in plain sight with Ozzie right beside me.
Hillary Westall, chief auctioneer, bright and stiff as a toy soldier himself, stepped to the podium. Madge Brierly stood at his left, receiver to ear, ready for phone bids. All attention focused on Westall as he said in clipped tones, "Lot #1, Britain's set #6. Boer Cavalry. Original box. Circa 1902. Bidding will start at $1,000. It is with the room."
Klackman said nothing. I raised my paddle to establish my presence. "$1,000. Do we have $1,250?" Madge signaled that someone on the phone had topped my bid. The phones were my problem and my opportunity. Madge listened with her gaze fixed on the front window.
Westall looked my way on each lot. I raised my paddle regularly. Klackman said, "Hey, you got that one!" a few times.
"Lot #71. Lucotte Napoleonic General Staff. Thirty pieces. Circa 1890. Bids start at $1,200," said Westall.
A moment later Klackman whispered, "That asshole Jonesy got it for twice the estimate and the only part of it that's authentic is the tail on Napoleon's horse!" I made like I was very annoyed at having lost.
A few minutes later, timing it carefully, I rose and walked up the aisle followed by a grinning Klackman as Westall said, "Lot #98, Britain's depose. Medical ..." Jonesy glanced at us sharply and immediately turned his attention back to the podium.
More than face or paddle number, location is identity. An auctioneer looks to the place where she or he last saw the bidder. Giving up the place I'd established signaled to the room that I had no interest in bidding on lot #98.
"We start at $17,500." Immediately, a phone bid came in and Madge relayed it to Westall. Only those in the room had witnessed Ozzie Klackman's fouling the authenticity of this lot. A phone bidder might still be willing to shoot for the moon.
Phone bids came in for $18,000 and $18,500. But those on the scene congratulated themselves on their first-hand knowledge.
As I reached the front window, Westall said, "We stand at $19,000 for a unique artifact. Going once..." I stood behind all the other bidders directly in Madge Brierly's line of sight. She gazed off, thinking, perhaps, of better times. I smiled and lifted my paddle. She listened to a phone bid and looked right through me as she relayed it to Westall.
"$19,500. The bid is with the room. Do we have $20,000. Going once, twice ..."
I waved my paddle frantically. Madge squinted, perhaps her eyesight was bad. Then she nodded imperceptibly and signaled Westall. "$20,000. Thank you," he said and everyone present assumed it was a phone bid.
Then people actually on the phone raised it to $20,500 and $21,000. Again I waved my paddle. Again Madge looked my way but couldn't find me. "Going once, twice ..." I handed the paddle to Klackman who waved it back and forth like he was guiding a dirigible in for a landing. She nodded and spoke to Westall. "$21,500. Going Once. Twice. Sold to paddle #163 who has chosen to migrate."
Jonesy turned around amazed and Ozzie Klackman said, "Hey, my meter is running!" In the foyer, I passed him three hundred dollars in tens and twenties and he said, "Very slick, Mr. G. Especially the part where you became the Invisible Man." His voice in my ear that afternoon had reminded me of my Shadow.
After I'd arranged payment and shipping on Sandler's lots, Madge Briefly and I slipped off to a little place around the corner. There I had iced tea and chicken salad while she polished off a surprising number of vodka and tonics and dished the auction world establishment.
I mentioned having been afraid that she wasn't going to recognize my bid and Madge said, "It was odd. I could see that oaf Klackman all too clearly. But you, somehow, kept getting lost against the sunlight in the windows."
Before we parted, I surprised myself by saying, "A good-sized collection is about to come onto the market. Toys of all kinds." The collection I had in mind was the inventory of George's and my store. Until that moment, I hadn't known I was about to sell.
When I was thirteen, I gave away my toys because I thought I was grown up. Actually all that had happened was that someone had sex with me. I thought of that as I paid the cabby on the corner of Bleeker across from HALF REMEMBERED THINGS.
The store exists among Italian bakeries and restaurants. Our front window is set up as a ten-year-old boy's bedroom, circa 1954. The cowboy and rocket ship decor was George's last project.
Inside, framed by Howdy-Doody drinking glasses, a mint Fun On The Farm Game, Sergeant Preston of the Yukon lunch boxes, Lakeisha was on the phone. She buzzed me in without hanging up. Lakeisha is the daughter of one of George's nurses. Just out of high school, she is, like it or not, on her way to St. Regis College in Rhode Island this fall. George wanted very much for her to go to school outside the city.
She might have done something with her hair since Saturday. But I wasn't sure, so I said, "You look wonderful," which is always safe and true. The curves of her chin, the lines of her cheek are flawless in the way black faces can be. I looked at the register and saw that we had done seventy-four dollars and ninety-five cents business that day. That wouldn't pay the rent.
"That German man from Saturday came back and bought the doll house chair," Lakeisha said after hanging up. "Some people left messages." She looked past me out the window.
Turning, I saw her confidante, Claudia of the three-inch green nails with smiley faces painted on them and Claudia's boyfriend James, a chubby, good-natured kid. Standing behind them on the corner was Lakeisha's latest, Lionel, a wiry little snake. Lakeisha is unlucky in love. "You want to go?" I asked. And as the words left my mouth, Lakeisha said goodnight and that she'd see me tomorrow.
My shop-keeper neighbors don't like seeing African-American kids around. I watched Lionel, almost lost in his baggy clothes, put his arms about Lakeisha. They seemed so young and vulnerable. In the two years I've known her, a couple of Lakeisha's friends have been killed. Claudia's arm was slashed on the subway. Even Lionel I recognized as a fellow changeling trying in all the wrong ways to be mistaken for a human child.
The first couple of phone messages were routine business. A lady asked if we sold sex toys. Some guy wondered if we had Mr. Potato Head WITH his pipe. Then I heard Gina Raille ask, "Kevin, can I talk to you?" Even before returning that call, I knew it was about my Shadow.
Gina and I go all the way back to college. Of all the bunch from the drama department, she's the one who's still acting. This summer, she stepped into a feature role in the musical Gumshoe!
A few weeks before, we had run into each other one evening on Broadway and Tenth by Grace Churchyard. She looked at me with curiosity and concern and asked, "Key, do you have an evil twin you never told anyone about? There's this guy around the theater district. He's raddled, wild. Maybe it's my imagination running away, but he seems to recognize me. I mean, seeing you so fine and sleek, it's kind of stupid but ..." Gina shook her head. She had known me in my really bad years.
When I got her answering machine, I asked, "Hi, Gina, did my double show up again?"
She picked up. "Yes! And he's uncanny. He's not you. But he's close. He got into the theater today. We were rehearsing with new cast. He's done it before. This time he got backstage. I actually spoke to him. He knows a lot about all of us. He wants to see you. Wants you to meet him at the theater. Gumshoe! is dark tonight. But tomorrow, would you come? Please!"
She was afraid. "I'll be there." We made arrangements. "Gina, I'm sorry this happened."
"Hey, why the hell couldn't he go up the street and haunt Phantom of the Opera?"
Only when I hung up did it sink in that I was going to meet my Shadow next evening. I looked around at the French puppet theater, at the red American Flyer wagon filled with ABC blocks and made a note to begin an inventory.
Then, for a moment, I was aware of an unfamiliar room as pale as a ghost moon. On its floor was a mattress with my Shadow lying on it. His skin was tight over bones, his eyes hollow. My death mask. I thought of the time I lay on the bloody carpet while my Shadow cut a deal for both our lives.
As I locked up HALF REMEMBERED THINGS, I thought of the years that followed the bargain. They were like Tay's stories of time spent in the World Under the Hill. Only glimmers remained. I walked across town piecing fragments together.
One night that I remember, I sat dealing in the Eatery, nicknamed the Speedery, across from the Fillmore East. At my table, a hip, stylishly androgynous neighborhood kid grinned as a voice which could have been mine murmured, "You need a gimmick that will keep a john's attention ..."
Outside the window, a black Charger pulled up and beeped its horn. My Shadow nudged me, whispered, "Smiley-Smile." I got up, walked past boys thin and brittle as wine glasses, past twitching, toothless old crank heads and the girl in a witch's hat who revolved slowly outside the door. The guy with the slit mouth and dead eyes sat in the front seat of the car. I found it easier to look at the smile on his throat as we exchanged drugs and money then parted.
Back inside, I found my Shadow whispering to the kid, "...Russian roulette. You must know about that. Your folks being Ukrainian." The kid listened with such fierce devotion that I felt sick.
Another night, we walked, my Shadow and I, through the cavernous, deserted Newark train station. In a far corner, lights shone in one ticket window and above the single active gate. It seemed neither of us had any idea how we had gotten there. Then I saw a figure who seemed all silvery and flickering like a silent film. I felt my Shadow beside me suddenly snap to attention.
On a later night, in a junk haze, I rode through wintry streets in the back seat of a big car. My coat and shoes were gone. The heads of the driver and the man with him in the front seat flickered. Smiley-Smile shivered in a T-shirt between my Shadow and me. This time, his eyes weren't dead, they were wide and scared. When I looked, he screamed at me, "What the fuck are you staring at?"
The Silent Movie figure beside the driver half turned to face us. That let me see the butt of the automatic in his jacket. I didn't know the make and didn't want to find out. "Shut up now," he said and nothing more. It seemed that the guy beside me was in awful trouble and that if I thought about it, I'd discover I was too. So I left everything up to my Shadow.
My next memory is of a white room and a guy around my age in a white tunic asking me my name. I tried to answer but found my mouth hurt too much. Besides, I didn't remember. Then he asked, "You know where you are?" I shook my head and he said, "Roosevelt Hospital. In Hell's Kitchen. In New York. Does any of that mean anything to you?" It didn't.
"You were found with damaged nose cartilage, a couple of broken teeth and a three-inch gash above your left eye. Your skull was exposed. We practically had to close you up with bailing wire. It won't be pretty. You have a concussion. And amnesia. You know what that is?" I wasn't even curious.
Afterward, a gray-haired man in a baggy suit read from notes. "We found you two days ago in the basement of the Atlantic Shipping And Transfer Building on Twelfth Avenue. You know where that is?" I shook my head.
"Someone called the police to say there was trouble. The first officers on the scene found you face down in the elevator. The door was opening and closing on your head. You had no wallet, no I.D., no coat, no shoes. You had opiates, amphetamine and alcohol in your system. Any idea how any of this happened?"
Faces flickered in my memory. "Silent movie people," I told the detective. He waited. But when I added nothing more, he closed his notebook.
A little later, someone said, "Kevin!" Friends had found me. They brought back a lot. Relatives called and more memory returned. But everything. Out of the hospital, I crashed on peoples' couches, stayed with Sarah, my girlfriend from college.
My nose was only a little bent, my teeth got fixed at a clinic. But the scar was an angry red gash. The street had reached out and marked me. I thought of Scar Face my first time in the city, of old Smiley-Smile. What I saw in the mirror was a mug that would not look out of place in a gutter.
Life was flat except for a tantalizing sense that part of me was missing. One night on an East Village block lighted by a silvery city glow, a figure in a doorway said "Hello, Kevin." And I remembered my Shadow.
"What happened in that cellar?" I kept my distance.
"The Silent Film boys. Real nasty what they did to old Smiley. You were going to be next. I scared them off." He stepped closer and I saw a scar just like mine. I knew he was lying about scaring anyone off. We had both come close to buying it. But when he held up a sheaf of glassine envelopes and said, "I got works." I asked no more questions. My Shadow stole those years with my collaboration.
I reminded myself of that as I arrived at the Cabrini Hospice, a few blocks north of my apartment. It was there that I practiced my part time job as an angel of death.
George's sister Corrie was just leaving. She said, "A small seizure last night. I cut his nails." We nodded, dry-eyed this close to the end. Corrie is his older sister. She and her husband are going to retire to the Yucatan. Their plans are on hold.
In the course of twelve years, I saw George through clinics and wards, support groups and marches. His will to live was a wonder. Now, finally, emaciated, small as a monkey, he lay on his left side with his eyes closed. Single, wirelike hairs still grew out of his head. Treatment for fungal growth made it seem his face had been scoured by fire.
I took his hands and rubbed them. It is felt that patients in coma, with only tubes connecting them to the world, retain the sensation of touch. He had been shaved. A tiny fleck of blood had dried on his chin.
Beside the next bed, an Italian woman in her sixties murmured over her dying son. Maybe she was saying the rosary, maybe she was talking to him, saying things she couldn't while he was conscious. It's what happened with me. All that evening, I sat with George, remembering, speaking softly.
"My life got saved by my bad heart and your good one," I said. In the early eighties. I was the sick one. A couple of my valves gave out, delayed payment for the booze and drugs I'd done years before. The illness and bypass operation took me out of circulation for a few years.
"You dragged me back to life when all I wanted was to die. You smuggled in tiny bites of forbidden desserts, took me to see Sundays in the Park. A very serious evening. Lots of times we were the only two laughing." George brought me back healthy to a world where he and everyone else had started to die.
It was late. The Italian woman had left. Rising to go, I leaned over George. "Back when we first met, I wasn't sure it would last long. I feel it again, that this was just a stop on the way. But you are the very best. I hope I've felt for you what humankind calls love."
Two guys knelt on a mattress on the floor of a second-story room. The light was neon shining through the open windows. But I saw the tattoos. Matt Daniels, his body made liquid by junk, arched his back, leaned into the one behind him.
My Silent Partner wore only a sweatshirt and that hung off him. His legs were like sticks. I saw lesions. He stroked his partner's back and got ready. Then he sat down and drew Matt to him.
It wasn't the clang of the bell or the rattle of the wheels on the tracks that brought my Shadow's eyes back into focus. It was the burst of sparks from the trolley wire right outside the window. In that brief flash I saw his look of surprise, even of alarm.
At that I awoke. Lying in bed, with The Weather Channel on the screen. I remembered coming home from the hospice, getting a call from Eugene Sandler, eating supper, watching TV. I flicked it off and went into the living room.
Four in the morning is the Devil's Matinee. It's when human confidence is weakest and he whispers all our deepest doubts and fears. "Now, you know where Matt was last night," said the voice which was also mine. "You and I were together a long time, Kevin boy. Everyone else is dead or dying. I'm the only one who wants you."
Always at such bad moments, I wanted to call Leo Dunn. My memory of him in his sun-filled living room was a relic worn smooth by years of use. "Despite what Dunn may have told you, we're not that different," the voice whispered.
Out my window, in the park, leaves shimmered slightly, street lights gleamed off the back of Peter Stuyvesant's statue. A figure sat absolutely still on a bench, For a moment, I thought it was a kid of maybe thirteen. On second glance I saw an adult, though maybe not male or human. This was the figure I had seen in the streetcar dreams. When I looked more closely it was gone. I kept watch but it didn't return.
With the dawn came a telephone call. "You awake, Kevin?" It was Addle. "Come on up and have breakfast." Within the hour, I sat in the back yard with my feet up, telling her and Lauren a lot of what had gone on. Lauren, who hadn't heard about the Streetcar Dreams, asked. "When was the first time you had one?"
"That I remember? Way back. Maybe the Fall of '73. I was in my late twenties and really strung out, living in this flea-bag hotel, the Victoria, up on the Square, pulling stupid, dangerous, penny-ante stuff. If I hadn't been white, I'd have been in jail. My Shadow ran my life. With my permission. I was like a zombie.
"Then, one night, I found myself in the Seventh Avenue IRT Station which was an arm pit even back then. I got on a streetcar, not questioning how that was possible. It burst out of the subway onto these World War Two era New York streets. Guys in uniform, women in hats, Buy Bonds posters.
"My father got killed in the South Pacific. He sailed from New York. Maybe that's the connection. The next thing I knew, we had rolled into what looked like my old neighborhood in Boston. Compared to Hell's Kitchen, it seemed open and hilly with lots of trees. I wondered why, since it was so easy to get to, I didn't just live here and commute to the Square?
"Then I saw this kid, thirteen or fourteen, walking down the street. Suddenly, I knew if he turned, he'd be me just before my Shadow poked into my life. That jolted me awake.
"But I wanted to go back. My Shadow was bothered, asked me what was wrong. The dream was something I knew about and he didn't. There wasn't much of that, so I kept it a secret."
Both Addie and I watched Lauren for her reaction. Checking her cameras and equipment, she asked, "Did having the dream change anything?"
"My memories of those years are not real coherent," I said, "But, yeah, I had the dream a few times. The next event in my life that I'm sure of is that I gave my Shadow the slip and found Mr. Dunn."
"So, it's a lucky dream," Lauren said and hefted her bags. "My Italian grandmother used to play the numbers. She had these Dream Books."
"My Irish grandmother did too!" I said. "I'd forgotten Dream Books. Each dream had a three digit number. You had the dream..."
"You looked up the number and played it." She kissed Addie and me. "Streetcar Dream. Play it is my advice." We were all laughing. "See you, Kevin."
Addie saw Lauren off. When she came back, I was in the blue room looking at the toy trolley car, thinking about my Shadow. "Some of her hunches verge on the uncanny," Addie said. Then she asked, "Do you want me to come with you to the theater tonight, Key?"
"No. But thank you both so much for listening. I've begun to understand something. And thanks also, Addie, for being unprofessional and not trying to have me locked up."
"Not that the idea hasn't crossed my mind. Laurie and I will be on call for George tonight so you won't have that to worry about. I'll notify Cabrini. And I want to hear from you tonight after you do whatever you think you have to do."
On the way out, I passed her first client of the day, a Latin kid, maybe ten, accompanied by a nanny. He looked straight ahead, walked like an automaton.
At the store, I updated the inventory lists. Tourists, a couple of young guys from Baden, drifted through. Later that morning, I got a call from Meg Briefly up at Masby's. "You mentioned a collection for auction, Kevin."
As we discussed that, Lakeisha came in with her headphones on, gave me a chill, dead-eyed look and went in back. A Haydn Quartet played on the radio. When I hung up, I heard a rhythm like a pump under the minuet.
Lakeisha was in the stock room, face on her arms, sobbing in great regular gasps. This would have to do with Lionel. I took out one of the earphones and said, "Men are pigs, honey."
When she looked up, her eyes were awash. "Lionel said he saw you last night uptown following us." I shook my head but felt a chill. "You closing this place?" she asked with a hiccup.
"Probably." I shrugged. "You'll be going away to school."
"What makes you think I'm going?"
"Because if we have to, your mother and I will stuff you in the trunk of a car and haul you up to Rhode Island." I wondered if this was any different than my getting sent to Saint Sebastian's. But Lakeisha stopped crying and seemed thoughtful.
Then a customer buzzed at the door. It was a woman in her late forties. "My husband is in love with the Hopalong Cassidy blanket in the window," she told me, baffled. "His birthday is coming up."
I nodded, discreet and worldly, a guy who would not come between a middle-aged man and his cowboy blanket. "The price is three hundred." Her eyes widened. The past is always just a bit more expensive than we thought possible. We settled for two sixty-five.
As we boxed the woman's purchase and saw her out of the store, I felt my Shadow very close. "How about lunch?" I asked. Given a choice of anything from French Provincial to Shezuan Chinese within a two block radius, Lakeisha wanted McDonald's. Over on Sixth Avenue, I had a salad, but I stole a couple of her fries. They were delicious.
"Kevin, you feeling okay?" she asked.
"I've got the life habit pretty bad," I told her.
"Major commitment!" she said. After lunch, I gave her the rest of the day off. I didn't want my Shadow anywhere near her.
The air turned silvery and a thunderstorm moved across Greenwich Village, settling the dust and driving some tourists into the store. They looked around wide-eyed and left as soon as the rain stopped. All the while, I was aware of my Shadow's dry heaves and throbbing spine, not pain but its evocation.
Then it was time to put on my jacket and tie, lock up the shop, hail a cab and go to meet the old Silent Partner. On the way, another thunderstorm, intense but tiny, moved uptown like it was part of the traffic.
It outran us as we passed Forty-Second Street. The evening sun slanted through Hell's Kitchen and into Times Square. Theater marquees, the headlights of cabs and limos reflected off the wet, steaming pavement.
Cops, uniformed and plainclothes, were out on foot, in cars, and on horseback. The city is twisting the Square, garish, dangerous, sordid, into a Disney theme park. But between the cracks, I spotted trade and dealers, all races, all young, emerging from doorways as the rain passed. For those on the old and the new Deuce the theater crowd has always been like the nightly passage of a magic ship, lighted, loaded with riches, quick to vanish.
Gumshoe! plays the Savoy, a nicely faded old house. This isn't the show about the fall of Saigon, or the singing alley cats who go to heaven on a manhole cover. It's the one written by French people about the private eye in New York in the '30's, the one where the blimp crashes on stage.
At the box office, I gave my name and almost immediately a voice at my elbow said, "This way, Mr. Grierson." I turned to find a guy with the slightly puffy face of a retired cop giving me a slit-eyed stare. With my Shadow around, I'd have to get used to that.
We went through a bronze door and down a few steps. Above us hung an old Manhattan skyline painted loud and flat. Spots dimmed and brightened and from the dressing rooms, a tenor ran the scales. The property manager and her assistant readied a bouquet of roses, a vast spangled bra and bright silver revolver. The security man opened a fire door and I followed him into an alley where Gina, all henna-wigged and kimonoed, stood among the company smokers.
"Tobacco Road!" she said when she spotted me. We embraced carefully because she was made up and stepped away from the others. "He was in my dressing room. He knew everything. What went on at MAS. That time we found you in the hospital. Things we all said and did. It was so scary. He wouldn't let me leave until I promised to get you up here. Then he was just gone."
She ground a butt under the toe of a purple sling-back. For just a moment I caught a glimpse of a twenty-year-old ingenue. "He won't bother you again," I told her and knew I had to make sure that was the case.
"Kevin, you're wonderful!" Maybe she too glimpsed that other country where we were still kids.
Then someone said, "Ten minutes, please," and security led me to a seat in the orchestra.
"When my friend shows up, we'll leave by ourselves," I said. The cop nodded but didn't smile. The seat next to mine was empty. The house lights dimmed and the conductor brought down his baton.
The third year of a show is when the awards are won, the original stars are gone, the audience is tourists from Iowa and Okinawa. That evening, Gins, as the owner of a Times Square nightclub, gave it her considerable best. The dancers still strutted their stuff and everything was bright and loud. The plot involved a private eye, a taxi dancer and reincarnation. Once or twice I forgot why I was there.
My Doppelganger still hadn't shown in the second act, when Gina and a Nazi spy had a nifty tango number. Then the blimp smashed into the Empire State Building. It was terrific. In the moment of silence before the reincarnated taxi dancer stepped out of the rubble into the arms of the detective, my Shadow said, "I made you sit through this as punishment." He was back and I didn't tell him to disappear.
The main theme played for the dozenth time. "Let's take a walk west." We went up the aisle during curtain calls. Gina got a great hand. We hit the sidewalk and mingled with a phalanx of a theater party from Sunset Boulevard headed for Eighth Avenue.
"Like old times, huh, Key?" A linen jacket that could have been one I'd had ten or twelve years before hung stained and flapping around his bones. His hair was long, disordered. His eyes burned maliciously in a pale face. "It used to be I knew the things you were about to find out. Now I remember the things you forget."
On Eighth, a remnant of the strip still jumps: porn shops, live action theaters, bang-and-walks for the love that just won't wait, tourist hotels for the discriminating out of town Suit John. "They want to call it Clinton, but it's still Hell's Kitchen and the Kitchen starts right here," said my Shadow as we crossed Eighth and headed down a side street.
"Okay, you dragged me back here," I said. "Any particular reason?"
"I thought we'd walk around the old neighborhood, savor some memories." A couple of bars lighted the block. He looked back to see if we were followed, then slowed. "Your life without me was as stupid as that musical," he said.
Ninth Avenue has become quite gentrified, all renovated walk-ups and ethnic restaurants, while retaining convenient clusters of drug dealers on every block. As we crossed Ninth and turned north, a bunch of Spanish guys in a doorway discreetly noted my Shadow's passing. They didn't see me at all.
I followed my Shadow into a liquor store where he pointed to a bottle behind a bulletproof shield and said, "Daddy, buy me that." He stuck the pint of Wild Turkey in a jacket pocket as we turned west again. Halfway down the block, we stopped in front of a flight of cement stairs. They led to a brick alleyway and a door. "The site of Scar Face's apartment is not exactly a big nostalgia stop for me," I told him.
He faced the dark areaway. I heard a seal snap, saw him lift the bag to his mouth. I tasted old memory, felt a forgotten burning in my throat and chest. "I wanted to remind you of the trouble you get in without me, my boy. I followed you here like I did all those other times you sent me away. To make sure you didn't come to more harm than you could handle."
"That's because you needed to keep me alive. It took a while to figure out. But without me, there is no you." We continued west. On the blacktop of a park at Tenth Avenue, thin forms moved under the lights. I heard shouts, a laugh, the drum of a basketball. "Nice job you're doing on poor Matt," I Said.
"Matt's a cute, talentless suburban kid. Don't get sentimental. These days, tricks have the lifespan of dogs." He led me across Tenth and down a block where teenage girls and their babies sat on tenement steps, past a high rise with a doorman and the old Grand Central Railway cut where far below, in pitch dark, a jungle whispered over rusting tracks.
No one else was on foot as we crossed Eleventh Avenue. I followed my Shadow down a side street lined with parked trucks and shadowy loading docks. At the end of the block beyond Twelfth Avenue lay the Hudson and lighted apartment towers in New Jersey. My Shadow pointed and I looked up at the sign ATLANTIC SHIPPING AND TRANSFER. "This is where the cops found you that time," he said.
"Remember the Silent Film People? They're smugglers. Not of this world. Smiley Smile crossed them somehow. They thought we did too. They had something nasty planned for the three of us. There are passages under these buildings that go God knows where. They dragged Smiley down one. We broke for it and they pistol-whipped you." All of this sounded quite possible.
My Shadow popped a pill, raised the bottle. I gasped as he swallowed. "I stood them off, rang the bell until help came. Instead of running, I saved both our asses." Now he was lying. We had both come close to buying it and he hadn't saved us. The cops who got there in time to scare off the Silent Film People had been called by someone else.
We turned back to Eleventh. It was late. Guys cruised for trade. A car with Jersey plates turned onto a side street. We went that way, past guys waiting in a vestibule.
My Shadow ignored them. "Ever think of how many in the family were, what should we call it? Gifted? I don't mean just the ones with Shadows. Think of Aunt Tay. Remember those poems?"
"Just we three go sailing
Me, Myself and I"
I was aware we were being followed. But he looked toward me for the next lines and I said:
"Over walls and fences
Through the night we fly"
"Second verse!" he said, laid back his head and chanted:
"People half awaken
Hear us pass and pray"
Someone whispered behind us. Instead of turning, I said:
"Out of fearing for our souls
Won't we rest and stay"
And suddenly no one was following us. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw three young Hispanics cut to the other side of the street. "Strong magic," said my Shadow. "You ever ask yourself what the poem is about? Like, if you're me, and I'm myself, then who is I? Tay herself probably didn't know." Our minds had been running along similar lines. I shut up and waited.
We stood outside a renovated building on Tenth. Years ago it had been a flophouse called Mother's. While staying there I'd discovered Mr. Dunn and left my Shadow forever. "Leo Dunn!" my Shadow said. "He took all our sins and put them onto me. But assuming I'm absolute Evil, how come you're not exactly Good personified? You ever wonder about that?"
When I said nothing, he offered me a swig and chuckled when I shied away. After washing down a pain killer, he tossed the empty bottle in a trash can. Along with a contact wooziness, I caught an aching deep in my Shadow's bones. "You need to be in treatment," I said.
"Right. Except the AIDS safety net is pretty frayed and you happen to be using the identity. Try walking into a hospital and saying, 'Hi, I'm dying and I have no prior record of existence.' I'm tired," he said. "I'm always tired. And in pain too, of course. Walk me home."
He headed west and I followed. "Any idea how you got sick?" I asked.
"Mostly my time was one long doze. But you weren't exactly living your life to the full. I existed on your margins. On occasion I woke up and got real solid. People were doing drugs, screwing like it was going out of style. Which it was. Maybe I wasn't real careful. All I know is that as I got sicker, I've had trouble dozing out. Irony! AIDS made me alive."
We walked up a stretch of Eleventh that's all auto dealerships and way-tough topless clubs like an approach road to any American city. Everything was closed for the night. Trucks whizzed by. "Mostly," he said, "I've tried to stay out of your way. But this concerns you. After Mom died, her Shadow disappeared. No one saw Grandad's double once he cooled. And it works the other way too."
It was what I was afraid of. But I just shrugged. "You're sure about that? Substance and Shadow snuff out together?"
"Yeah. I'm sure. But there's a possible escape. One thing I know. You and I aren't exact opposites. Like, say I'm Death and Darkness. Then you should be Immortality and Light instead of just some poor fool scrambling to stay afloat. If we are Me and Myself in the poem, then I is a creature of Life and Goodness."
A tenement stood alone among parking lots. Half its windows were tinned up. We stopped out front. My Shadow gestured to the building. "This is where I live."
"Second floor," I said, remembering my dream of the night before.
That surprised him. But he grabbed my wrist and said, "I need to use the identity while I look for number three. What has to happen is we go upstairs. Change clothes. Change places. You can fade out a little. I'll be a better daddy than you ever were to me, make sure you get drugs and booze, your pick of the runaways. Refuse and I'll fucking wreck your life."
As he spoke, I summoned a memory of being a little kid staring down a subway tunnel for the first glimpse of a streetcar. Then, over my Shadow's shoulder, I saw a single headlight. Above it, behind his window, floated the motorman. I waved and he smiled. My Shadow turned, then jumped away from me like he'd been burned.
The car stopped and its side door opened. Before I got on, I told him, "I know the one you're talking about. Maybe there are answers. I doubt if they'll be ones we'll like. I have a feeling I'll find out very soon. Anyhow, I'll take care of you. Tell Matt what it is you need. We'll use him as a go-between. Other than that, stay away from my friends."
My Shadow stared after me as the car swept away. My heart turned over at the sight of him sick and desperate and so close to being me.
On the car, the first passenger I saw was George. He looked as he had when we met twenty years ago. I knew he had died during the night without me present. I tried to say something and couldn't. I sat down and he took my hand. "Look," he said and pointed outside. In black and white were sailors and women, young and laughing, my parents among them.
Streets ran past and years. I saw myself huddled on a mid-town corner, a scared runaway. Ten years later, scarred and red-eyed, I crossed the street on some bad errand. The car ran out of the night and into the dawn. I saw myself first in my thirties and then gray-haired striding on various missions.
When I looked around the car at everyone I had known and lost, I wanted to go and hold each one. I wondered if I too had died. If so it wasn't so bad. "A Streetcar Named Death," I said. George laughed and touched my face. I realized we had stopped.
The other passengers smiled as if amused at a befuddled friend who had gotten on the wrong car. The driver turned around. He was Leo Dunn. "Kevin, where the hell do you think you're going?" The door opened. "It isn't your time or your place."
Then I found myself on the corner of my block. Fire engines roared. The erratic pulse of the city drummed. The morning air was a sticky melange of exhaust, coffee, piss, burned toast, and garbage.
In front of my building stood Addle and Lauren, looking stricken. They'd been told George was dead and now wondered what had befallen me. Lakeisha was crying. And sitting on the stairs, unknown to the others, was Matt, scared and strung out.
Then, walking toward them, I saw you watching over me like a guardian angel. Looking directly at you for the first time, my eyes teared and I started to draw deep sobbing breaths.
Now it is evening and my friends have departed. Matt will fetch my Shadow as you wish. You sit in my house. Your face I see is not youthful but is rather untouched by time and this world. If Aunt Tay was right we will be off and away. If my Shadow's hopes are realized you will save him. Whatever my own fate, I know I am lucky to have made it this far.
My kind does not often survive in the world of man. And if we do it's usually as drunks with glistening eyes, crazies, hooded figures in doorways in the rain. This morning most strangers who saw me crying in the street looked away and hurried past. But a few souls paused and pitied and wondered why. With your permission, this is for them.
--written in the city of New York
~~~~~~~~
By Richard Bowes
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