by Dan Chaon
“Don’t come to this house,” she said.
“I won’t,” O’Neil said. “If you’ll just do this for me. You’ll never hear from me again.” And then he startled himself, the coldness that crept into his own voice. “But if you won’t,” he whispered, “I’ll have to come to you.”
She was silent. Dead air.
“Will you do that,” O’Neil said. “Mother?”
That word felt poisonous as it left his mouth. There was something ugly about the way he said it, he thought, though he had once practiced whispering it, the exact right inflections, the exact right moment. It seemed to stun her.
“All right,” she said. She was frightened now, O’Neil thought, and he felt her doubt in the space between words.
“All right,” she said, and hung up.
He didn’t know whether to trust her, but for her sake, as well as his own, he waited. He told himself that if she didn’t come, he’d go straight to her house, he’d bang on the door. He’d force her to call the police. The thought surprised him a little. He hadn’t realized how close he was to the bottom of his life.
Still, he couldn’t believe that she really wouldn’t come. She had to be curious, deep down, even if he was a “mistake.” O’Neil thought of her, at twenty, at thirty, the years passing. Childless, watching toddlers in the park, the bright parkas the color of balloons, looking away as the mothers caught her staring. He pictured her, alone for years now, listening to the creak and groan of an empty house, mumbling to herself. Or flipping through an old photo album, a picture of herself as a child, her round face gazing solemnly at the photographer. She must think of that child she gave up. It would only be natural.
It stopped snowing, and the temperature began to drop. O’Neil went inside again and took a seat near the window. The waitress came up at last.
“Help you?” she said sternly.
He looked up at her. Sometimes it seemed so attractive, that phrase—May I help you?—and he wondered what people would do if someone took them seriously, if someone really needed help. “Coffee, please,” O’Neil said, and she wrote it glumly on her pad.
“That be all?”
“Yes.” She reached down to turn over the cup on his table, and her hand brushed his. It gave him a funny feeling: sometimes it was easy to forget that there are other people thinking thoughts, maybe off in some daydream like you. All those minds, talking in people’s heads. And when you feel their skin on yours, you realize it. That was what O’Neil thought.
He waited. After a while, the waitress stopped filling his cup, and still he just sat there, his hands shaky, his mind whirring like a fan. There weren’t very many people at the café by that time, and whenever someone approached, his body tensed. He waited for a sign as they rounded the corner, each one a possibility at first, not even the most unlikely could be easily discarded. He stared as an old lady in a scarf hurried past; stretched forward when a red-haired girl in a cowboy hat came sidling along, on the arm of a wiry, squinting man. O’Neil watched them take a booth at the back of the café. The girl leaned over the table to whisper things to her companion. No—too old, too young, not right in some way. In the end, O’Neil knew that when she passed, he’d be certain.
Almost two hours had gone by when he finally saw her. He was staring impatiently at the face of his watch. Outside, the red taillights of cars were tiny points.
Then he caught sight of the woman. She came around the side of the building and entered the lighted area outside the café, hesitantly, in a bright blue ski coat and a red stocking cap. He saw the cap first, bright and forlorn against the white-and-black landscape, melting out of the darkness. The figure appeared on the edge of the circle of light, stopping once, looking back, as if she’d forgotten something.
He sat up straight. As he watched, she walked toward the café, toward the window he was staring from, flirtatiously slow, as if coming into a spotlight.
When at last O’Neil could see her face, she stopped. She looked around, scanning the area, her breath coming from her mouth like smoke in the cold night air. She turned her head, gazing in one direction and then another. As if hypnotized, she lifted her hand. It was long and pale in the fluorescent light. She pulled off her cap as if drawing back a veil, and the dark hair spilled out, falling over her shoulders, black hair like O’Neil’s, that shiny jet color he’d always felt conscious of, adopted into a family of blonds. Perhaps she looked like him, too, though in the bright light her features were cold and white as bone, a gaunt face, her lips tight and expressionless. She stared at the place where he was sitting, her eyes both tired and critical. Care-worn was the word that came to him, a word his adoptive mother might have used. But that wasn’t right, exactly—they were the kind of eyes that might stare back at you in the mirror, if you could judge yourself truly enough.
And then he realized. She saw her own reflection in the window he was staring from. She posed, unself-consciously, brushed her hair with her fingers. It was her: he could feel a coldness rippling over him when she cocked her head and tried on a brief smile.
Then she turned away from him, spun on her heel and began walking, trailing that electricity behind her, into the dark.
Without thinking, O’Neil ran after her. He left his coat in the booth, ignoring the waitress who yelled after him: “Hey! You haven’t paid your tab!” O’Neil brushed past her as she tried to block his exit, digging a five from his pocket and pressing it into her hand. “Thanks a lot,” she said, but he pushed on. He hit the door and the cold air came rushing over him like a premonition. She was already yards ahead.
“Hey!” he called, but she did not turn. “Hey!” He began to run toward her. She whirled, as if frightened, and for a moment their eyes met. She was looking at him, though there was no telling what was registering, really—his clothes? His expression? Did she see him as he appeared to himself in the mirror? Who did she see?
She took a step backward. “Are you talking to me?” she said. Her voice was careful, uninterested.
“I love you,” O’Neil said. He started to shiver, his arms cringing from the cold. “I wanted you to know that I love you.” His breath came out in foggy gasps, curling out into the night air.
She seemed taken aback—her eyes slanted, and her mouth hardened as she appraised him. It was the face of a bureaucrat, he thought, someone whose job was to turn people away for eight hours a day, the kind of person he’d dealt with all the time when he was searching for her. That was what was in her face. She looked him up and down, and then abruptly gave a sort of sighing laugh, as if dismissing him.
“Oh, get lost,” she said. “What are you, crazy? Get lost.”
“I love you,” O’Neil said again, but the words felt wrong, too small in his throat. She was backing away from him, and he put out his hand. His fingers brushed the slick material of her coat. She screamed.
The cry filled up the empty parking lot, ringing, echoing off the side of the building like a shot. She jerked away, but O’Neil’s fingers held on to her coat. They swayed: for a second it seemed to O’Neil as if they could have been dancing, held there in stasis. Her eyes widened, and he could sense how thin her body was beneath the heavy coat, sinew, muscle twisting. Her arms flailed, and she screamed again: “Let go! Let go!” The dark hair whipped from side to side. The streams of their breath twined together. He tried to catch at her hands as they flew.
“Hey!” he heard a man’s voice shout. O’Neil turned in time to see a short wiry man striding toward him, cowboy boots crunching on the frozen gravel. O’Neil recognized him as the man he’d watched coming into the café. The man’s girlfriend, the one in the cowboy hat, was standing off by the door.
“This man bothering you, miss?” the man said loudly. He put his hand on O’Neil’s shoulder, clenching, and she pulled free.
But she didn’t answer him. She just nodded her head vaguely, still backing away. O’Neil didn’t know what was in her expression, but she didn’t blink as she looked at him,
and he imagined a softness wavering there for a moment, pity or a kind of apology. He knew from the way she took him in that she wanted to remember his face.
“Son,” the man said. “I think you’d better move on your way.” He spoke firmly, and his hand tightened on O’Neil’s shoulder. “Tell the lady you’re sorry,” he said. He gave O’Neil a little shake.
“I’m sorry,” O’Neil said, but his voice was hoarse and barely audible. He looked down at his feet, trying to keep himself from shivering, and when he lifted his head, she was already moving away, she had turned and was walking fast, faster, almost running. And then she was gone, vanished into the darkened parking lot. He heard the slam of a car door, the grinding of a key in the ignition. Wheels turned in the slush and gravel.
The man released his grip on O’Neil’s shoulder, but O’Neil didn’t move. The cowboy observed him, squinting at his face, then shook his head. “You’re going to catch cold, son,” he said. “You better go on back inside, and don’t bother people no more.”
O’Neil couldn’t say anything. He just stood there, staring out at the rows of snow-covered cars, the glitter of half-revealed chrome winking like eyes, glinting. His mind blurred. And then he heard footsteps as the man, too, walked away. The tips of O’Neil’s ears and his fingers ached sharply from the cold.
A little after midnight the bus came. O’Neil stood among others in the snow and waited. They were in a group, each of them facing a slightly different direction. They braced against the wind as the bus doors hissed open.
O’Neil left home on a bus, going East for the first time. For hours he could feel the place on his back where his adoptive mother had put her hand when they hugged good-bye. He’d sat there, watching cars and farmhouses pass, wondering whether the people inside them could sense him, O’Neil, out beyond the range of their living rooms and pickups. He was out there, thinking of them, and they would never know the difference.
He stumbled down the aisle of the bus, holding on to the seats for balance. Searching for a seat, O’Neil hovered over the faces of old women, their coats draped like blankets over them, children curled into balls. And for a moment he paused, standing over the form of a sleeping woman. He leaned over her, seeing how her feet were tucked under her, how her hair hung loose over her face. Slowly, he held out his hand. He could feel her breath, and for one second he just stared down at those eyes closed tight, the motionless lips; and he touched her wrist.
RAPID TRANSIT
The night he got mugged, Alan Lowe had stolen his manager Mr. Dugan’s long, hide-colored trench coat, which had been thoughtlessly left on the coat tree outside Dugan’s office. Alan knew he was doomed, it was only a matter of time before Dugan fired him, so he thought, “Why not?” He’d been the last to leave that evening, and he’d taken the coat off the hook as if lost in thought, swinging it casually over his arm. Afterwards, he’d gone to a bar where he was sure he wouldn’t see anyone he knew. He felt impressive and elegant in the coat. But by the time he left the bar, he had begun to worry again. He had to find some way to make Dugan like him. He had to find some way to hide how much he hated working at Pete Preneta & Co. He needed his job. He was thinking all this when he was thrown to the ground.
He didn’t have any money on him. In fact, he’d awakened that morning in a cold terror over it. Apparently, he’d been dreaming of his bills, because they were on a circular track in his head, like an image from a nightmare he’d been startled out of. Even before he’d showered or brushed his teeth, he found himself at his desk with all his bills piled in front of him, calculating. It was the first time in his life that he saw no escape from his own irresponsibility, and he panicked.
There were utility bills and rent that would be due in a few days. There was a government loan from college that was several months past due, but he hadn’t really looked at it carefully. DEMAND FOR PAYMENT, it said. He had three credit cards that had already reached their limit, and a few days before a waitress came slinking back to his table to inform him that Visa had instructed her to retain his card. He saw that even if he sent in the minimum payment each month, the balance wouldn’t change very much. The rate of interest was too high. That morning he’d sworn to do something. But that evening, after he’d stolen the trench coat, he used a credit card to buy some drinks. One last time, he thought.
In the comic version of the story, Alan was a typical, wide-eyed Nebraska boy, and it took him a long time to register what was actually happening. The men grabbed him around the neck and waist, and as he was thrown to the ground he was aware of his arms and legs waving languidly as tentacles. “Wait a minute,” he shouted. “Hold on, I’m slipping.” That was when he struck the pavement and one of his attackers kicked him in the head.
Afterwards, when he described the mugging to his coworkers and to his family back home, he found himself leaving out a good deal of what had really occurred. For example, he kept the part where the muggers found his wallet empty, and began to kick him over and over, shouting “Where’s the money?” But he didn’t mention that, as the men continued to kick him, he’d cried “Momma,” and “Oh, Mom, please help me,” with each blow. The character he played in the story had a certain dry wit, enduring the attack with a startled, dignified innocence. When, in the story, the men shouted, “Where’s the money?” the narrator responded, “I spent it!” He didn’t want anyone to picture him as he often saw himself: squirming through the bits of garbage on the sidewalk, weeping, calling out for his mother. He didn’t want them to imagine him playing dead less than two blocks from his apartment, his cheek pressed into a pool of his own vomit, staring at the things scattered in the patches of scrubby winter grass: a chicken bone, cigarette butts, the neck of a broken ketchup bottle. Every time he thought of himself this way, it made him actually dizzy with humiliation.
He wasn’t seriously injured, though he looked terrible the next day, his face covered with bruises and scabs. His ribs and head were sore from being kicked, but he was sure nothing was broken: it would have hurt more if there was, he thought. The policemen who’d come to his apartment later, after he’d managed to run the few yards to his door and call them, had suggested he go to the emergency room, just to be safe. But he refused. He didn’t have any insurance, and he knew how much those things cost.
The truth was, the policemen were somewhat annoyed with him. He wasn’t able to tell them what the men looked like, and he wasn’t even sure in what direction they’d run off. The policemen kept exchanging ironic looks.
“You gay?” one of the men had asked him, and when Alan exclaimed, “Of course not,” the man had shrugged.
“That’s who they tend to go after,” the policeman had said pointedly. “Fags.”
“I have a girlfriend,” Alan told them.
He and Sandy hadn’t dated in almost six months. But he did consider calling her that night. It would have been nice to have someone sleep over. There was a telephone pole outside his window, with rusty metal stakes driven into it so someone could climb up. In the next few days, he began to dream that he woke to find a face peering in his third-floor window, a grimacing man with a knife clenched in his teeth like a pirate. And when he was outside, even in a crowd, he often felt as if the space around him were shimmering, as if at any moment the people nearby might grab him and throw him onto the cement, kicking him with their sharp shoes.
At least it was a good story, one he could tell exceptionally well. The morning after he was attacked, Alan was the center of attention, and the older secretary, the one who always called him honey and sugar, was very concerned about the neighborhood he lived in. When she first saw his face, she’d let out a small cry of shock. Even Dugan had listened to Alan’s story, and Dugan, who was white, was reminded of the time he himself was held up on the el platform by five Puerto Ricans with knives. Dugan pulled up his shirt to show them a pale, leechlike scar above his left nipple. They’d tried to stab him in the heart. “Luckily,” Dugan said, “I don’t have one.”
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br /> As they all listened to Dugan, Alan found himself wondering what Dugan and his coworkers were thinking of him. There were often times when he would feel as if he were lifting out of his body and observing himself from above. He could see himself clearly at this particular moment, standing there in a business suit he’d bought from a secondhand store. Though it was a Brooks Brothers suit, it was ill-fitting, and he was certain that everyone could tell that it was used. They were polished, had gone to fancy schools, had rich parents. They were going to be wealthy and successful, and Alan wasn’t. Though he was twenty-two, he looked younger: big and gangly like a teenager who hadn’t yet grown into his body, with a round freckled face, cheeks that would not grow hair. His smile was broad and simple. He looked, people told him, like he was from Nebraska. A redneck, as someone had once unkindly put it. Standing there, he was aware that each of his coworkers had probably developed an unflattering version of him in their minds.
The coworkers were generally cordial, though, even if they weren’t friendly. They kept their opinions to themselves, unlike Dugan, whose advice to Alan had the jovial, insulting edge of a football coach. “Lowe,” he’d said once. “Get another aftershave. You smell like a teamster. What the hell is that, Old Spice?” It was—a Christmas gift from his father, who was, in fact, a teamster. “Lowe,” Dugan would say. “Do you own an iron?” Or, “From now on, Lowe, don’t bring a brown bag lunch. You want the clients to think you’re Bob Cratchit?”
Dugan was a small burly man in his mid-forties; the backs of his hands and fingers were covered with dark bristly hair, and the day after the mugging, when Dugan leaned the ham of his palm against the top of Alan’s computer, it seemed the hair had a burnished glow, as if he’d moussed it. “Lowe,” he said, in a confidential, fatherly voice. “Look, I don’t want to seem insensitive or anything, but you’ve got to get some more professional-looking bandages, man. We can’t have clients coming in here and seeing you like this. You look like ‘Welcome to My Car Accident.’ ”
