Keith flares, forgetting me for an instant. “They’re all the guy,” Keith says. “You been listening to all the same shit as me, man. Every cracker in five boroughs is calling up the mayor, telling him to give the keys to the city to this Charles Bronson subway-shooting motherfucker. We got to take our streets back.”
“Yeah, but these ain’t our streets, man,” the nervous one says. “We in Midtown now.”
Keith has already launched into the next component of his diatribe before I begin to grasp what he’s saying. “Wait a minute,” I interrupt. “Wait just a minute. Are you boys out here looking for the Subway Vigilante?”
He’s back in my face now, leaning in. “What we’re looking for,” he says, “is five dollars. That’s all you need to concern yourself with.”
I catch my breath, let it out slowly. “For your information,” I say, “not every white person in the city approves of what that man did.” Keith objects, but I raise my voice, cutting him off. “That man wasn’t defending himself,” I say. “He was a racist thug looking for trouble. What he did was disgusting, and I hope he goes to jail for it.”
This just makes Keith angrier; I need to start backing down. Before he can say anything else, I slide my purse from my shoulder and put it in his hands. “Here,” I say. “Take a look. Go ahead. It won’t help you. After you see there’s nothing of value, I’d appreciate it if you’d give it back.”
He passes it to his short friend, who begins to rifle through it, dropping items to the pavement as he goes: my little can of Mace, my penlight, my Swiss Army Knife. “Nothing here,” he says, letting the purse fall, showing the wallet to Keith.
“You’re too late,” I say. “I gave all my cash to a guy at a Filipino bodega in the Village. I spent all I had on some snacks and a pot of dirt.”
Keith is giving me a withering glare, outraged and unsatisfied. The short one’s movements evince an injured heartlessness, a desire to do harm. Even the prudence of the third is being shoved aside by plain fear. If they kill me, I just hope that someone comes to my apartment and finds Phoebe quickly. Cats can live for a while without food, but I don’t want her to suffer because of my recklessness.
“Okay,” Keith says, pointing at my mink. “You got no cash, you can give us that coat.”
“Man, what are we doing all this talking for?” says the shorter one. “Let’s grab the coat and get the fuck out.”
“I don’t want no part of this, Darrell,” the third one says. He’s even farther away now. More a spectator than a participant. The chorus in a Greek tragedy. I think back to the Christian Women’s Hotel, our bedsheet-costumed performance of Antigone. How little we understood then of the lines we spoke. No man is so foolish that he is enamored of death.
Tall Keith and short Darrell are squaring off, looking at me, then at each other, then back to me. Darrell tosses my wallet over his shoulder. It hits the ground with a slap. A decision is about to be made.
“Let’s think for a second,” I say, “about where to go from here. Your friend”—I nod to the distant third, the shortsighted chorister—“wants to let me go. Darrell here wants to pursue the assault-and-battery route and take my coat by force. But these are not our only two options. Let’s keep this conversation going.”
“We don’t need this hassle,” says the nervous one. “Let’s just go. That coat ain’t even real.”
“I beg your pardon,” I say. “It most certainly is real. I paid four thousand dollars for it in 1942.”
“What’s it worth today?” says Keith.
“I honestly couldn’t tell you,” I say. “I’ve never thought about selling it. Look, I’ll give you the coat. But it’s cold out here, and I’m old, and I still need to walk to R.H. Macy’s tonight before I go home. I can’t do that without a coat.”
“That ain’t our problem,” says Darrell.
“I think we ought to swap,” I continue. “You get my mink, and I make it home without freezing to death. That’s the offer on the table.”
Darrell is still ready to rush me—legs wide, knees bent, shoulders low—but Keith softens, rocks back on his heels. His flood of anger has drained away, showing what’s underneath, which looks like sadness. “Okay,” says Keith. “We’ll swap.”
“Keith, are you fucking serious?”
“Shut up, Darrell,” says Keith. “Give her your jacket.”
“What?” says Darrell. “She ain’t getting nothing from me, fool. What you giving away my coat for?”
“Because it’s the shittiest one we got,” says Keith.
“Hold your horses,” I say. “No offense to your coat, Darrell—which actually looks both elegant and comfortable—but that deal doesn’t work for me. This is a fur coat. In addition to being very expensive, it’s extremely warm. As you’ve noticed, it’s gotten cold tonight. Based on the fact that Darrell, who is in the prime of his life, is visibly shivering, I must conclude that a track jacket is not warm enough for an elderly person like myself. Plus the arms are too short. I want the flight jacket.”