Shovel Ready (16 page)

Then he spreads out his thin fingers, covered in silver skull rings. One skull per finger, thumbs too. Sterling graveyard. Then he lays it out. In laymen’s terms.

Despite what my beautiful life partner says, piggybacking is just a fucking stunt. Look, I’m a cocky asshole gizmo daredevil and even I don’t do it anymore.

Sure. But what is it?

You slide someone in on someone else’s dream, someone who’s been invited into the construct. Basically slip them in before the door closes. But it’s a very dumb thing to do.

Why’s that?

You ever see kids on skateboards hitch rides on the back of buses? It’s kind of like that, except with your consciousness. You fuck it up, you will skin your knee. Badly.

How badly?

Come by my place, I’ll show you the room where I keep those people. They don’t mix too well with the general populace anymore.

Tugs at a skull ring. Twists it. Continues.

Besides, definitely no one’s going to invite either of you two into their heavenly clubhouse, so it’s a nonstarter, since there’s no one to piggyback in on—

Persephone speaks up.

I can do that.

What?

They’ll invite me in. If I ask to meet my father—

I interject.

Absolutely not.

Mark looks at me.

It’s not a terrible idea.

Let’s set the bar for ideas a little higher than not terrible.

Mark persists.

Look, she can’t get hurt in there. Not really—

There are a lot of things they can do to her. Even in there.

—but I’ll go in with her, to protect her. I’ll be the one to piggyback in. Rick—I mean, you can do that, right?

Rick thinks. Twists a silver skull. Then nods.

Mark turns back to me.

You’ve seen me in there. You know I can handle myself. Better than you can, in there. And she’s the only one of us who can possibly convince Harrow to tap in for a meeting. And if the goal is to tap everyone out, people in there will trust her a lot more readily than they’ll trust me. Harrow’s daughter? They’ll follow her out. Familiar face and all—

Sure. Familiar face of a disgraced runaway—

Spademan, think about it. She lures Harrow in for a meeting. I follow her in and we take care of everyone in there. You
find Harrow in his bed and take care of him out here. It’s the only way this works—

No, Mark. I said absolutely—

Persephone cuts me off. Fiercely.

Look, I am very grateful for all that you’ve done for me, but I’m not your fucking daughter. I’ll do what I want. And I’m doing this. I need to.

There is a long silence. During which we all listen to the stillness of Chinatown.

Broken finally by Mina’s best Axl Rose falsetto.

Mop becomes a mike stand.

Knock knock knocking on heaven’s door
.

I figure it’s time to call the meeting to a close.

So. New plan.

We break into heaven, set everyone free, lure in Harrow himself by dangling his runaway daughter, secretly slip Mark in behind her somehow, using some technique that Rick, the cockiest gizmo in Chinatown, isn’t even sure is possible, they give Harrow a good talking-to, make him see the error of his wicked ways, perhaps offer up an apology to the daughter he fucked and maybe probably knocked up, all while I’m out here tracking down his flesh-and-bone body in the nuts and bolts, somehow sidestepping Simon and the rest of his security so I can get close enough to dispatch the holy man to actual heaven, where he’ll be free to compare his ginned-up version to the real thing.

Seems simple enough.

I have no doubt he’ll end up there either. His heavenly reward, I mean. I long ago stopped believing that we’re sorted into groups for our eternal retribution, or that there’s any
door, or pearly gate, that you can’t pry open, given enough gold.

I may have once had some thin faith in something like cosmic justice, but now I believe in box-cutters.

Everything else I left buried in a tunnel along with the number 2 train.

We’ll also need a nurse so I contact Margo.

Margo was my mother’s roommate in nursing school, best friend for life after that. When I was a kid she used to sit at our kitchen table, blowing smoke out her nostrils like an angry bull. Nicest woman in the world though. A laugh that could swallow a room. I haven’t seen her since my mother passed. My mother didn’t last much longer after that incident with the tardy ambulance.

I catch a bus out to the Jersey suburbs, an hour ride to Hackensack. As the city peels away, it feels much saner. Suburban. Almost like life as it was. From the bus you can see into people’s lit-up living rooms. The houses out here aren’t full of tappers in their silver torpedoes, just people on flowered sofas, planted in front of TVs.

Yes, they still make TV shows somewhere. The rest of the country is still pretty shiny, from what I hear. Apparently the West Coast is more or less the same. Sunshine. Palm trees. Beautiful women in drop-top convertibles. Singing surfers. Moral rot. The whole enchilada, in the shape of California.

I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been. At one time I thought of relocating, right after Times Square. Figured they’ve got to have garbage out there too.

Very same thought made me stay in the end. A country buried in trash from coast to coast.

As for the rest of it, the in-between part, I hear it’s relatively clean and still open for business, like a plucky dollar
store. No longer the land of milk and honey, maybe, but at least you can still get high-grade pharmaceuticals on every street corner on the cheap. Most places, they call it the Toothless Tap-In. A dream you huff out of a paper bag.

Really, it’s just New York that got nuked, cordoned off, shut down, shunned. Capital of the world, cut loose to drift into the sea.

The country’s soul, on a funeral pyre.

Margo’s in a low-rise. Lots of buildings out here are basically just dorms for support staff, the servant class, who ride in daily to the city to fidget with breathing tubes, feed tubes, shit tubes, piss tubes. Tubes that run in and out like highways for all the rush-hour traffic of the human body. Then all the Margos of the world ride the bus back home to catch the day’s events on the TV. Or escape the day’s events.

Thing about Margo, she’s the unhealthiest nurse ever. Chain smokes, obese, has to stop to catch her breath while she’s catching her breath.

Then again, as she likes to say, what does health have to do with being a nurse anymore?

She opens a beer for her, then one for me, puts them on the coffee table between us like we’re playing chess with only two pieces. I notice there’s already several empties standing at attention in the sink. Don’t imagine she’s had a dinner party lately either.

She follows my eyes to the empties.

So my recycling box is full. What brings you out to Hackensack?

Just wanted to check in on you.

That’s a funny sentiment to suddenly swell up after eight years.

I’m sorry. I got busy. You know the city.

Really? What are you busy with?

Just the city. It keeps me busy enough.

Well, it’s good to see you.

Margo, you ever think of moving closer? Plenty of room in Hoboken. Or Park Avenue, for that matter.

She looks at me like I just asked her if she’s ever thought of giving up plumbing and moving right into the sewer.

So I skip to the next question.

How are you keeping? I’m sorry I haven’t been out sooner to see you.

Well, if you had come out, I could have told you, I was very sorry to hear ab out your wife.

Thank you.

We clink longnecks.

She was a beautiful girl. Such a shame. What they did.

I appreciate it.

Shame what happened to this country.

With Margo, you’re never far from a tirade. She’s not quite the happy snorting bull I remember from my kitchen-table days. She’s bigger than ever, but seems deflated. I always figured that one day she’d work her way through every last person in the world to be angry at, and that would leave only her, and then that would be it.

I listen to her for a bit, let her wind down. Then I explain I need to hire a nurse for a job, and she cuts me off.

Does it involve changing a rich man’s diapers while he dreams?

No.

She swigs.

Okay then. I’m in.

Margo offers me the couch but I tell her I’ve got business to get back to in the city. I say goodnight, catch the late-night bus, bound for Port Authority.

Then, a few stops later, hop off.

Plot a detour.

Hoping to clear my head.

So the Crusade is coming in less than a week. It’s set to kick off on Sunday night. The mayor has sworn they’ll have the camps swept clean by then. Proudly points to news footage of skinny stragglers stumbling out of Central Park, begging for scraps, getting pelted by onlookers, then cuffed and carted away. No one’s sure what they’re charged with or where they end up. Some rumors say upstate. Some rumors say Fresh Kills. Some rumors say it’s best not to listen to rumors, unless you want to find out firsthand.

Second bus unloads me in Hoboken.

Certain times, times like these, I have a few rituals.

Reminders, really.

Of things I need to be reminded of. From time to time.

Not meant for anyone else. Just for me.

Unlock my apartment. Leave the lights out.

Head to the kitchen. Open the icebox.

Stand and stare into the freezer. Where I keep my parceled souvenir.

Actually, reminder’s not the right word.

Relic’s better.

Freezer’s cold curls out, licks my face.

He was a lawyer.

He wasn’t the first one.

He was the third.

The first one was an accident. Maybe.

That’s what I told myself at the time, anyway.

The first one:

An old trash-duty buddy heard I was in a bad place, bouncing from bed to bar to bed.

This was in the first few months after Times Square.

City still reeling. My apartment still empty. My Stella’s clothes still hanging undisturbed in the closet. Waiting in vain to be worn again.

So this old trash-duty buddy tracked me down to this bar I liked on the boardwalk of Coney Island, where the front side opened out to the ocean and the seagulls loitered and chattered like barflies. I’d make the long trip out because I liked to smell the sea.

Smelled sour. Like garbage.

I found that comforting.

He tracked me down and instead of offering condolences, he offered me cash. A dispute had turned ugly and he wanted me to talk to the guy. Just talk. I guess he asked me because I’d recently developed a local reputation as someone who was long past issues of personal concern.

He’d had some argument over money or property or something.

To be honest, I don’t remember the details.

I don’t even think I knew them back then.

But I was alone and out of work and bed-hopping and burning through what little cash I had left. Rick had cut me a deal and set me up on a discount trip, where I didn’t tap into any dream, I just tapped into nothing.

Just a void.

Until my hour was up.

So my old trash buddy sidled up on a barstool and asked me to do him a solid.

Which I did.

Caught the guy outside his apartment one night. Startled him while he searched for his keys.

Big guy. Cocky.

Conversation moved to an alleyway.

He threw the first punch. I’m sure of that.

Or pretty sure.

In any case, it got ugly.

And I still carried my box-cutter.

The one I’d used to slice open that garbage bag.

My reluctant surgeon’s tool.

I wasn’t nearly so careful on him.

Hands were steadier, though.

So. Problem disappeared. So did the guy.

When you work in garbage, you have access to incineration.

And instead of calling the cops, my friend paid me a bonus. Then lost my phone number for good.

But not before passing it on.

That was number one.

The lawyer was number three.

His jilted wife had hired me.