I stare at the broken air-conditioning unit in my tiny walk-up—a room that’s really just a broom cupboard with a refrigerator and a mattress—and sigh inwardly. It’s easily ninety degrees outside, and it’s only eight-fifteen in the morning. New York City is excruciating on days like this, days and weeks that melt into each other, a constant barrage of humidity and steam and loose wisps of hair that stick to the back of your neck. It’s hotter than hell in this damn city, and all I want to do is get out. The problem is, to get out you kind of need somewhere to go.
The air conditioner hasn’t worked since I’ve had the place—seven months now, seven months since I’ve been ousted from L.A. Seven months. How is that even possible? It feels like it happened yesterday, the image of his little tricycle rolling backwards behind the car the same thing that haunts me in my nightmares. Seven months since I took a plea deal, a suspended sentence. Which means it’s been—I have to stop and count back. Nine? Yeah. Nine months since the night when I completely ruined my fucking life and ended someone else’s.
As I slam my door and take the nine flights of stairs down to the lobby, I realize roughly halfway down that I didn’t even try the elevator to see if it’s working yet. For three weeks, I’ve been hauling my ass up and down these stairs, because the building super refuses to do anything about it. And it’s not like I’m about to knock on his door and ask again after the way he creeped me the fuck out last week, standing in his doorway and not letting me out of his apartment for almost an hour. Jimmy. You know what? I’ve never met a Jimmy who wasn’t a dick, now that I think about it. This one is a total creeper, though. The guy is a date rape waiting to happen.
Thick, muggy air hits me square in the face as I leave my building, sucking the air out of my lungs as my feet hit the sidewalk. I’m still not used to this damp, oppressive kind of heat after growing up on the west coast, still forget to ready myself for the onslaught every time I go outside in this goddamn city since summer has begun.
I cross the street, threading my way through the cabs and town cars that choke the city at this hour. As I pass over a subway grate, a thick billow of steam blasts up into the street. It’s forceful enough that I cough on the acrid air as it forces into my lungs and coats my face with a filmy residue.
Motherfucker! My makeup is probably ruined, and I’m already running late. I don’t have time to run back up nine flights and reapply, so I keep walking. It doesn’t matter what I look like anymore, so why do I care?
I don’t look at anyone as I walk to the diner. I keep my face down, my eyes skimming the sidewalk and the crowd just ahead, only enough to make sure I don’t collide with anyone. They don’t like that here. In New York, you walk in a straight fucking line and you stay out of everyone’s way. I’m maybe three blocks from my work when I hear it: a high-pitched scream from a child, a car braking so hard its tires squeal in protest. I can’t help it. My knees turn to liquid and I’m in serious danger of passing the fuck out and being trampled to death.
It’s bizarre, the way sounds affect me these days. The way most things affect me. The inconsequential things that other people don’t even register are the same things that set terror alight in my heart. You know, the way dogs howl at sirens and cower, terrified, when they hear thunder. That’s me with everything.
I just need to get to work. I’ll get to work, swallow one of my little white pills, and I’ll be golden. Three blocks. Three blocks. Three blocks.
I don’t want to turn my eyes toward the scream but I can’t help it; it’s like my mind revels in my frightened state, my awkward inability to block out the simplest of things. I might be a person nobody knows, a girl with my face turned down to the pavement so nobody sees me, but I see them. I see all of them. I hear them.
And it hurts.
My eyes scan the ever-moving sea of people in front of me, everybody with their own purpose. Me, I feel like I’m just floating along from one day to the next, eating and working and sleeping and trying to stop the weight of my sins from pulling me under. People say drowning is a peaceful way to die. But I’ve been drowning for nine months, and I can tell you, there’s nothing peaceful about clawing at the air in front of you every time you wake up in the morning, unable to breathe, trying to stay afloat.
I finally find the source of the screaming: a boy with a mop of blond hair, thick and shaggy, but cut blunt all around the bottom. I imagine his mother placing a bowl on his head as he wriggles on a stool, taking great pains to cut the hair that hangs in his eyes without accidentally cutting her antsy child.
I can only see him in profile, but he’s turning toward me, and I know if he does I’ll see the color of his eyes. Don’t be blue. My own eyes don’t work quickly enough, can’t swivel to the side before he’s facing me, still screaming, blood on his knee. They’re fucking blue.
He fell over on the sidewalk and scraped his knee. Of course. He didn’t get hit by a car. He didn’t go underneath the tires with a sickening thud. He needs a Band-Aid, and I need to chill the fuck out. The relief that floods my limbs almost dizzies me. He’s not going to die. He’s not going to die.
My cell phone beeps loudly, making me jump. I reach into my handbag, seeing a text from my cousin Elliot. I swipe the screen and read his message.