Dreaming, dead dreaming, of a dark place beneath heavy cold waves where something stirs with a slithery sound and uncoils and turns toward the mouth of the Hudson, where it empties into the sea. Toward me. And I am too weak, too helpless, too immobilized by fear, to do anything but twitch beneath its predatory gaze.
Something comes from far to the south, somehow. (None of this is quite real. Everything rides along the thin tether that connects the city’s reality to that of the world. The effect happens in the world, Paulo has said. The cause centers around me.) It moves between me, wherever I am, and the uncurling thing, wherever it is. An immensity protects me, just this once, just in this place—though from a great distance I feel others hemming and grumbling and raising themselves to readiness. Warning the enemy that it must adhere to the rules of engagement that have always governed this ancient battle. It’s not allowed to come at me too soon.
My protector, in this unreal space of dream, is a sprawling jewel with filth-crusted facets, a thing that stinks of dark coffee and the bruised grass of a futebol pitch and traffic noise and familiar cigarette smoke. Its threat display of saber-shaped girders lasts for only a moment, but that is enough. The uncurling thing flinches back into its cold cave, resentfully. But it will be back. That, too, is tradition.
I wake with sunlight warming half my face. Just a dream? I stumble into the room where Paulo is sleeping. “S?o Paulo,” I whisper, but he does not wake. I wiggle under his covers. When he wakes he doesn’t reach for me, but he doesn’t push me away either. I let him know I’m grateful and give him a reason to let me back in, later. The rest’ll have to wait till I get condoms and he brushes his ashy-ass mouth. After that, I use his shower again, put on the clothes I washed in his sink, and head out while he’s still snoring.
Libraries are safe places. They’re warm, in the winter. Nobody cares if you stay all day as long as you’re not eyeballing the kids’ corner or trying to hit up porn on the computers. The one at Forty-Second— the one with the lions—isn’t that kind of library. It doesn’t lend out books. Still, it has a library’s safety, so I sit in a corner and read everything within reach: municipal tax law, Birds of the Hudson Valley, What to Expect When You’re Expecting a City Baby: NYC Edition. See, Paulo? I told you I was listening.
It gets to be late afternoon and I head outside. People cover the steps, laughing, chatting, mugging with selfie sticks. There’re cops in body armor over by the subway entrance, showing off their guns to the tourists so they’ll feel safe from New York. I get a Polish sausage and eat it at the feet of one of the lions. Fortitude, not Patience. I know my strengths.
I’m full of meat and relaxed and thinking about stuff that ain’t actually important—like how long Paulo will let me stay and whether I can use his address to apply for stuff—so I’m not watching the street. Until cold prickles skitter over my side. I know what it is before I react, but I’m careless again because I turn to look … Stupid, stupid, I fucking know better; cops down in Baltimore broke a man’s spine for making eye contact. But as I spot these two on the corner opposite the library steps—short pale man and tall dark woman both in blue like black—I notice something that actually breaks my fear because it’s so strange.
It’s a bright, clear day, not a cloud in the sky. People walking past the cops leave short, stark afternoon shadows, barely there at all. But around these two, the shadows pool and curl as if they stand beneath their own private, roiling thundercloud. And as I watch, the shorter one begins to … stretch, sort of, his shape warping ever so slightly, until one eye is twice the circumference of the other. His right shoulder slowly develops a bulge that suggests a dislocated joint. His companion doesn’t seem to notice.
Yooooo, nope. I get up and start picking my way through the crowd on the steps. I’m doing that thing I do, trying to shunt off their gaze— but it feels different this time. Sticky, sort of, threads of cheap-shit gum fucking up my mirrors. I feel them start following me, something immense and wrong shifting in my direction.
Even then I’m not sure—a lot of real cops drip and pulse sadism in the same way—but I ain’t taking chances. My city is helpless, unborn as yet, and Paulo ain’t here to protect me. I gotta look out for self, same as always.
I play casual till I reach the corner and book it, or try. Fucking tourists! They idle along the wrong side of the sidewalk, stopping to look at maps and take pictures of shit nobody else gives a fuck about. I’m so busy cussing them out in my head that I forget they can also be dangerous: Somebody yells and grabs my arm as I Heisman past, and I hear a man yell out, “He tried to take her purse!” as I wrench away. Bitch, I ain’t took shit, I think, but it’s too late. I see another tourist reaching for her phone to call 911. Every cop in the area will be gunning for every black male aged whatever now.
I gotta get out of the area.
Grand Central’s right there, sweet subway promise, but I see three cops hanging out in the entrance, so I swerve right to take Forty-First. The crowds thin out past Lex, but where can I go? I sprint across Third despite the traffic; there are enough gaps. But I’m getting tired, ’cause I’m a scrawny dude who doesn’t get enough to eat, not a track star.
I keep going, though, even through the burn in my side. I can feel those cops, the harbingers of the enemy, not far behind me. The ground shakes with their lumpen footfalls.
I hear a siren about a block away, closing. Shit, the UN’s coming up; I don’t need the Secret Service or whatever on me, too. I jag left through an alley and trip over a wooden pallet. Lucky again—a cop car rolls by the alley entrance just as I go down, and they don’t see me. I stay down and try to catch my breath till I hear the car’s engine fading into the distance. Then, when I think it’s safe, I push up. Look back, because the city is squirming around me, the concrete is jittering and heaving, everything from the bedrock to the rooftop bars is trying its damnedest to tell me to go. Go. Go.
Crowding the alley behind me is … is … the shit? I don’t have words for it. Too many arms, too many legs, too many eyes, and all of them fixed on me. Somewhere in the mass I glimpse curls of dark hair and a scalp of pale blond, and I understand suddenly that these are—this is—my two cops. One real monstrosity. The walls of the alley crack as it oozes its way into the narrow space.
“Oh. Fuck. No,” I gasp.