Shovel Ready (5 page)

That piece of chicken. Tell me you banged her, Luis.

Luis is quiet.

She had blood on her. On her clothes.

I perk up.

We retire to the corner.

Take the two-top vacated by cat’s-eyes and the whiskey connoisseur. They left earlier. Not together. Another missed connection, I guess.

Two rounds later, Luis tells me he drove this girl all the way to Central Park. Young, maybe eighteen, maybe younger. Approached him while he was outside the bar, finishing a cigarette. He says it was dark and he swears he didn’t notice all the blood on her until they were halfway up the FDR. Caught the shine of it in the rearview in the sweep of a streetlamp. At that point, figured it was safer to just keep driving. Left her at the park’s edge. Told her the trip’s on him.

Did she say where she was going? Back to the camps?

That theory doesn’t sit right with me, but why not cross it off first.

Luis shakes his head.

No. Somewhere else. To Bethlehem.

To Bethlehem?

That’s right. That’s what she said. To Bethlehem.

Buy Luis another round. Settle up with old anchor arms.

That’s not what she said. She said Bethesda. But close enough.

Luis is in no mood to take a second trip back into the city but he drops me off at the F and I settle in for a long slow journey on the rattling train.

The park is long since dark.

The angel of Bethesda watches over a barren fountain, the
water finally turned off years ago. One wing stolen, the other half-broken. Her face spray-painted red, as in shame.

A girl in a bundle at the base of the fountain.

I step in.

Hello Persephone.

She looks up. Hooded sweatshirt, frayed denim, Doc Martens. Blond curls matted. Hands balled in pockets. Face tear-damp. Voice steady.

I’ve had a long day, I have a knife, and I’m not looking for trouble.

Pocket moving. Like she’s tightening a grip.

I step closer.

Mind on that blade.

I’m not here to hurt you.

Which is exactly the opposite of true.

Whatever’s going to happen, it’s not happening here.

I coax her up.

She stands. Jeans cut to mid-calf. Docs look like hand-me-downs. Technicolor laces. Like a dreamcoat.

Hands balled in hoodie pockets. Still got that knife somewhere.

Not sure how to make the introduction. Friend of your father doesn’t seem like a promising opener. Friend of your uncle, even less so.

I work with an outreach program for kids.

God, I hardly half-believe this even as I say it.

You look like you could use a hot meal.

There is no part of her that trusts me. But every part of her wants that meal. Every part of her wins. She hoists up a knapsack that maybe used to be pink. Half a rainbow decal with a little pony, peeling.

Motions with her chin, hands still balled.

You lead.

I walk out the west side, her five paces behind me. The park is dark and dead and, on the streets, it’s no different. Not a soul on the sidewalk and it’s not even eleven. Doormen sit behind glass, watch us pass, shotguns propped on their laps like homesteaders. Cop cars sail by, sirens wailing, but we could shoot up a flare and they won’t stop.

Most of the restaurants on Amsterdam shut down in the past few years, once the moneyed types stopped eating out. Now there’s two shuttered businesses for every one still open, big gaps in a rotting smile. But there’s still a coffee counter here and there, in among the army surplus stores. Posters hawking half-price gas masks and Geiger counters, with a voucher for a free donut next door.

I know a place, the American Century, popular with nurses. The lively clatter of steerage. The servant class, between shifts.

We take a booth.

Where you from?

South.

How long you been here?

A few weeks. I came for the camps.

How’d that work out?

Not so good.

So what’s next?

I don’t know. I’m not coming with you though.

Not an option. In any case. Though I do have a room.

Dirty fingers disembowel a white dinner roll. Stuff it in like it’s medicine.

Looks like you could use a manicure at least.

Fuck you. You sleep three weeks in a park, see what it does to your cuticles.

Just an observation.

You’re a beautician too?

I dabble.

Quick smile. Despite herself.

Then I’ll take a mani-pedi both, if you’re offering.

Well, that I can’t promise. But I do have a clean bed. An extra bed, I mean.

Wait, don’t you work for some kind of shelter? For wayward teens?

I thought you might be tired of sleeping in open spaces with a bunch of people you don’t know. I have a guest room at my place. Door locks too.

And where are you?

Hoboken. I’m a Jersey boy. Like Sinatra.

On her second roll, eating quickly.

Who’s Sinatra?

I don’t usually do it this way, just so you know. I don’t track people down and then take them out to dinner. I prefer if it works the same way on both ends of the job. The less interaction, the better.

But whatever you think of me, which by now may not be much, I’m not going to cut a woman open in Bethesda Fountain. Or a diner bathroom. I prefer when I find them dreaming in their beds.

And yes, I’m sorry to bring that up, but that is what I’m here to do. It’s a real conversation stopper, I know. You may say, how can you do it? That’s not a question I usually entertain. But remember what I said.

I don’t know these people.

I’m just a bullet.

Rolls, soup, cheeseburger, cake. Tears through it like she’s eating for two.

Two bills to the waitress.

We’re about ready to head out.

I want to ask her how old she is. Though I haven’t had much luck with that question today. Truth is, I realize there’s a small chance she’s too young. Too hard to tell anymore.
Every fourteen-year-old a supermodel, every forty-year-old still trying to pass for a teen. My Little Pony backpacks used to be a reliable indicator. Same with heels and belly piercings. No more.

Maybe the voice on the phone lied. And if she’s not eighteen, that means I take her home, set her up with a hot shower, maybe bus fare, let her sleep eight hours for the first time in weeks.

If she is eighteen, same thing, except no shower or bus fare, and she’ll sleep a lot longer than that.

Waitress brings my change.

It’s silly, I know. This fixation on birthdays. But tell that to a kid with a learner’s permit. Or a kid signing up for the draft.

And as much as I’m starting to maybe hope it’s not the case, if she is eighteen, she’s an adult. And deserves to be treated as such.

So I spill it.

How old are you anyway?

Why? Are we going to vote?

Hostel regulations. Overnight guests. Children-adults. You can stay either way. It’s just for bookkeeping purposes. Head counts. That kind of thing.

She shifts in the booth. Like she’s wondering which way to play this.

Swipes back a dirty curl.

Proudly age of majority. Just had my eighteenth a few weeks back. That’s partly why I headed to New York.

Happy birthday.

Figured it was time to blow out my candles, New York–style.

Greatest city on Earth. Once upon a time.

She squirms a little in the booth.

I think I might take you up on that extra room after all. If the offer’s still open.

Of course.

I watch her dirty face. I’ll let her have the hot shower, at least.

And the door locks, you said?

Of course.

Well, then so should we get going?

You’re not lying to me are you?

She smiles. A glimmer of trust.

No, I’m not. I’m eighteen. Freshly minted grown-up.

I leave a fat tip on the tabletop. Some kind of penance, I guess.

She shifts again, restless.

Damn, I just can’t get comfortable. And it’s so hot in here. Are you hot?

She slides out of the booth. I sit still.

She stands. Empties out her hoodie pockets. Lays an underfed coin purse on the table, looking skinny. Next to that, a five-inch bowie knife in a stained leather sheath.

Parting gift from my father. Don’t worry. I know how to use it. But I won’t.

I sit still.

Girl alone in the big city. You understand.

She slips the knife in her boot. Unzips her hoodie. Flaps it back like a cape.

God, that’s better. Sorry, I get these flashes.

Hands on hips. Leans back.

Baby bump.

The way it happened was, it started as business software. Some kind of fancy teleconferencing gimmick. Clunky helmets, silly goggles, but once you plug in, it was pretty amazing. 3D around a table. Avatars that look surprisingly like you. Pick a tie, any color. Your choice. Dreams really do come true.

That was maybe ten years back.

And if we’ve learned anything in this once-proud world, it’s that once someone figures out how to do something as miraculous as that, it’s only a matter of time before someone else soups it up so you can use it to suck a horse’s cock. In pretend land.

Or run a brothel. Or be a holy Roman emperor.

In pretend land.

Soon people were running around, half-centaur, or space-alien furry, or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, or what have you. Fucking Chewbacca.

Literally fucking Chewbacca.

Then they got rid of the helmets and goggles and made the whole thing about a thousand times more convincing and all you had to do was get in a bed. But beds are expensive. From basic model to deluxe silver bullet. The basic ones are just tricked-out cots, but the top end are like shiny half-coffins, personal escape pods, with a bunch of touch screens to guide you into the dream, sensors to put you under. Full immersive experience.

As real as real.

That’s the pitch.

As for the specs, I can’t tell you. I’m not an IT type. And I’ve only been in a bed a few times.

Not the deluxe kind either.

Anyway, they figure out that this is clearly where the money is. But the bandwidth required is huge. So they build another network, call it the limnosphere, everything shifts, and they leave the boring old Internet for the rest of us. Internet goes to seed, of course, but the rich don’t care, because the rich are now lost in the limnosphere. It’s like the Internet but better, much better, because it’s an Internet you can live inside. Or the rich can. The costs are astronomical, of course, but then again, that’s why they call them the rich.

After that, the math is pretty easy. Thirteen hours in first class from New York to Tokyo, or slip into a bed and hold your meeting in minutes, with you at the head of the board table, glowing like a gladiator pumped up on steroids and Cialis. Drop twenty thousand on diminishing returns at the plastic surgeon, mending the same old curtains, or spend it on a month-pass to the limnosphere, sashaying down Park Avenue like Marilyn Monroe’s prettier sister. With a leopard’s tail.

In pretend land.

Still, it was just part of life for the first while. An addictive, maddening, seductive, destructive part of life, but part of life. They called it limning, or tapping in, or going off-body, or whatever, and most people dipped in and out. For the first while.

But after the second attacks and the dirty bomb? Then the rich just up and disappeared. White flight, except they didn’t go anywhere. They just drew the curtains and retired to their beds full-time. Hire a nurse to check your vitals, sign up for the weekly feed-bags, station armed guards to watch
the gates, and goodnight moon. Goodnight stars. Goodnight world.

That was maybe five years ago.

My point being, usually how this works is I get a name, find an address, let myself in quietly, and introduce myself politely to an old man’s atrophied body in a coffin that’s already half-assembled. Even if the old man is only thirty. Feed-bags will keep you alive, but they won’t help you keep your youthful glow. Or your hair. When you start limning full-time and go on permanent bed-rest, you pretty much leave your body behind.

So you lie there, half-mummified and lightly drooling. And unfortunately for you, someone back here in the nuts-and-bolts world has decided they can’t let that grudge slide after all. And they found my number. And I found you.

Quick slit with the box-cutter and it’s all over.

Except maybe not. Not in the dream.

There is a theory, unprovable I guess, that when you die, there’s a last little burst of neural activity. The brain’s last helpless, hopeless little sigh. Normally, this would be your blown kiss to a cruel world as you exit, stage left.

Yes, I did a play in high school. Mitch in
Streetcar
, if you must know. Would have made a better Stanley.

But if you’re in the limnosphere, in the dream, at that last moment, this little burst of brain activity loops. Your final seconds skip forever like a record. Even after they unplug the mummy and cart it to the furnaces. You remain as a data burp, hiccupping, some tiny line of code still in the dream.

And you don’t know this. That’s the theory. You’re just stuck in that last moment, an eternal
right fucking now
, endlessly repeating for however long the batteries of this planet hold their juice.

No one knows if it’s true, of course, because how would you test it? They say they have programmers combing the code for these little hiccups, but most of their resources are on other things. Like developing newer, better, more tactilely realistic horse cocks.

But it’s true enough that some people try to game it. After awhile they’re not happy enough with just the dream. They pick a program, their ultimate fantasy. Movie star. Fuck your neighbor. Crowd roar when you take the podium on Inauguration Day. Or sight the podium in your rifle-scope. I don’t know. That one fantasy you can never say out loud to anyone. The one moment you would happily live in forever.

They time it out to the second. Hire someone to stand by. Lean in. Make sure the lids are fluttering. Clock hits zero. Put you down.

Sounds weird, I know. But then again, people used to hang themselves while jerking off.