Strangely, the limited oxygen, the occasional blasts of carbonized caramel methane-monoxide gases, makes Julie feel healthier – maybe whatever organism inhabiting her is dying. She has to admit now, she has not been this well since Sue Ellen was around, if only because the ghost’s mildewed wetness made the exploding cells within her, fat drops in a frying pan, burst less frequently.
In the city they find the nearest subway. Julie thinks she remembers the way, get off at 42nd Street, Times Square. Neither had realized they would wait so long for the uptown train to arrive.
A full day passes, waiting on the platform. This is how people in India used to live! The garbled announcements coming from overhead, “For your safety, let the people off the train! We are sorry for the unavoidable delay!” Mostly recordings, the occasional real voice saying, “Due to a police investigation…” or, an hour later, “Because of a fire earlier this morning –”
When the train does arrive the car they get onto is strangely empty. The odor is peculiar, perhaps that is why others have chosen, mostly, not to be on this car; the smell is familiar, Julie can’t place it, until she realizes… it reminds her of her daddy. And the smell to her is curiously comforting.
Cliffort removes his chewing gum, his last piece of Terrific Exploding Cyclone Shock Strawberry Trouble Whammy Bubble Gum (a non-edible chewing product from Condé-Bertlesman!).
He has been chewing it for days, he sticks it under the seat, there is already a huge lump there, bumpy and hard. He sticks his piece on top; for some reason this strikes him as amusing. Gum on top of gum. Eventually the whole train will be a sticky rubber tomb.
“Watch the closing doors! If you see a suspicious object, report it! The next stop is…” There is a hissing noise, it sounds like it’s coming from somewhere on their car.
Between stations, a woman in their car jumps up and yells. “No, no, no!” Then she runs to the doors between the cars and bolts. This is unusual, but only a little bit. The passengers shake their heads; another New York nut.
The train stops. The lights flicker, then go out. The pre-recorded announcement, “We apologize for the unavoidable delay,” is followed by that of the conductor saying, “Folks, we have a sick passenger on the train –” The hissing becomes a shrill whine, similar to the sounds once made by cicadas, only nobody now knows that. The conductor speaks again. “Due to an ongoing police investigation –”
“So irritating!” Julie mutters.
Cliffort thinks it is coming from underneath the seat. He reaches down. No, it is only the big wad of gum, topped with that of his own. Strange, though, that the sound is so close. Still the train does not move, then, slowly the lights flicker on, they seem to be making progress. It lurches forward again.
Beneath the seat, the time bomb makes a sound like a heavily breathing man. Then a series of musical notes, the chord of D and then of G. The train is again moving! And in that time bomb is time, all the time in the world, all the time lost and wasted and the time that has been used. The time of a hot summer afternoon in 1898 in the Midwest when the green leaves snore on the tender branches and in a nearby office a young man looks out the window wishing he was at Lake Will O’ The Woods. The children’s laughter floats from the cool water, higher and higher into the atmosphere until it disappears but it is not gone. It is only somewhere else in time.
Time spins out of the canister in loopy curls, baked flat, a sheet cake topped with butter cream frosting and edible violets for Betty Smiekowski’s twelfth birthday party in 1947. That takes forty minutes of time. 1969, three hours it takes two guys to walk two miles down the highway to Max Yasgur’s farm; they had to leave the Karmen Gia behind when the road closed, bumper-to-bumper traffic, it’s a slow walk, smoking a joint, talking to so many groovy chicks, digging the scene.
And the subway car fills with time, hanging in ropey coils, the time spent while four men in poplin raincoats and gray hats wait for the bus to Paddington Station in 1956. The time it takes in 1914 for the smell of orange blossoms to reach the nostrils of the last wild Carolina parakeet.
My gosh! Julie remembers Greg. She has been carrying him around all this time in that vintage matchbox. She slides open the top to give him a crumb and clean the place.
Greg’s legs are sticking up. She touches him and he is a dry husk. Oh, no! “Greg? Greg?” She turns him over, he is dead, maybe it’s not Greg? But there’s that garnet chip of red on his back, as if someone has embedded a little chunk of apple. Is it that she forgot to feed and water him or was it simply the end of his natural life? She will never know.
It is time they are out of but time comes out in a ribbon of chalk. It takes time.
The length of time a bubble of air takes to be trapped in a cube of water turning to ice. And – aw, just look – the passengers smile, here is Ralph Waldo Emerson, standing at his cherry writing desk, so proud, a heron on one leg holding a quill pen. What a time we are having! We’re all together now and the pollarded lime trees blossom at Yasnaya Polyana, while – oh, oh! – here is the Minotaur sobbing and grunting in the back of his sour cave. It is the time it took – though no one knew who it is, or why it needs to take time. They are absorbed in time and then it is quiet.
Slowly it spreads, so slowly, so quickly, from the first subway car to the next, squeezing through a crack in a door or sliding through the molecules of the glass, and drifts across the platform, first one and then the next fall silent, and in time it floats up the stairs leading to the street, sometimes with an odor of mustard gas in the trenches, Ardennes, 1916, sometimes of fresh crushed rosemary in a garden in 1643 near Stratford-Upon-Avon. Or it might be the color one minute after the sun sets, when the sky changes from violet to bitter blue.
Breakfast sits pensively, alone now, at the edge of the fire, the flicking blades of light. “Pee-pul,” says the dog in a mournful voice, “peepul, stay away from the brown acid. Stay away from the brown acid.”
And the people on the subway car are still except for the occasional sigh or shuffle of shoes. One or two may have coughed; one says, in a small voice, “Mama?” but that is all.
The world is the same as always, only a little worse. Life as we know it is not the same, although it is pretty darn similar! Besides, who really knows how it was before? Nobody alive can remember.
Acknowledgements
With much gratitude, thanks and acknowledgement to:
Phyllis Janowitz for scraping my crumbs back together more often than is humanly possible; Tom Bell; Paige Powell; Ellen Salpeter; Susan (Miss Dingo Dog Girl Supreme) Ward; Dr. David Janowitz, you rule; Julian Janowitz; Dr. Laurie Goldstein; Dr. Larry Rosenthal xoxo; Dr. Fred Brandt, The Best Dermatologist in the World; Tim Hunt, my wonderful husband; Willow Hunt; David Meitus and Angela Westwater; Anthony and Anne d’Offay; Yuri Avvakumov and Alyona Kirtsova; Christian Wenawesser; Steven Greenberg for that swell party! Vivienne Tam with admiration; Diane Blell for her enthusiasm and kindness; Rob Wynn and Charles Ruas; Jane Kaplowitz Rosenblum; David Frank; Eames (ya hunk o’ burnin’ love) Yates; Nicole Miller; Luc and Marianne Coorevits; Betsy Lerner; Richard Weisman; Nic and Christa Iljine; Cristina Zilkha; Carlos Picon and Andrew Kepler; Susan Hunt; Rob Clark; Amy Snowdon; my wonderful Anne Sharkey and Philip Sharkey; thanks to Heather Smith; also thanks to Eric Newell and Glen Albin; Xian Yun; High Voltage; Dr. Steve Wexner; John Deyab; Paul Steele; John Reinholt; Brady Oman
And in Memory Of:
Ahmet Ertegun; Baird Jones; Muriel Guccione; Camilla McGrath; Ismail Merchant; Robert Rosenblum; Stephen Sprouse; Gregory Hines; Glyn Boyd-Harte; Dave Sharkey; Wallis Hunt; Ira Wexner;
And to all the one million who rejected me and this book but most of all with endless infinite gratitude to Nick Fox, Fay Weldon and Scott Pack. You magnificent genius thing, you.
The Author and Publisher are extremely grateful for the kind permission to reproduce the following images:
Image 1 © Angelo Cavalli/ Getty Images
Image 2 © C Squared Studios/ Getty
Images
Image 3 © Thomas Northcut/ Getty Images
Image 4 © Shoji Yoshida/ Getty Images
Image 5 and Image 6 © Joel Sartore/ Getty Images
Image 7 © Tom Brakefield/ Getty Images
Image 8 © John Foxx/ Getty Images
Image 9 (left) © Diamond Sky Images/ Getty Images
Image 9 (right) © John Foxx/ Getty Images
Image 10 © Nicholas Eveleigh/ Getty Images
Image 11 © Jonathan Kitchen/ Getty Images
Image 12 © C. Sherburne/PhotoLink/ Getty Images
Image 13 © Livio Sinibaldi/ Getty Images
Image 14 © Dorling Kindersley/ Getty Images
Image 15 © The Tennis Court Oath, 20th June 1789, 1791 (oil on canvas)
After Jacques Louis David/ Getty Images
Image 16 © PHOTOGRAPH BY RORY DELL, CAMERA PRESS LONDON
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Other Books By
Also by Tama Janowitz:
Area Code 212 (non-fiction)
Peyton Amberg
A Certain Age
Hear That? (for children; illustrated by Tracy Dockray)
By the Shores of Gitchee Gumee
The Male Cross-dresser Support Group
A Cannibal in Manhattan
Slaves of New York
American Dad
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They Is Us Page 31
