by Jeff Gelb
He stood motionless to see if he could hear any oncoming traffic. Other than the faint tink of his car’s hazard lights, all he could hear was the blowing of the wind and the faint drone of jet engines off in the distance.
He decided that now was as good a time as any.
He ran out onto the highway, knelt down on one knee, placed a hand on the spare, and turned around …
Just in time to see the airliner emerge from the falling snow. Flaps down, landing gear locked.
He wanted to get out of the way, but couldn’t.
Seconds suddenly stretched into minutes as he stood frozen in absolute terror watching the airplane’s front wheels touch down on the highway and start skidding toward him.
And when he felt something hot and wet trickle down the inside of his thigh, he couldn’t help but think how much safer it would have been to fly.
Avenue X
Nancy A. Collins
June 6th, 199–
I can’t wait until I leave town! It’s nothing but a swamp of dead-end jobs, burn-outs, and half-assed wannabes. The economy sucks so bad you might as well be living in the Caribbean! Everything’s aimed at tourists—no jobs available for anyone over the age of twenty-five, unless you want to go to your grave doing nothing but flipping burgers and changing hotel bed linen. None for me, thanks.
I picked up my bus pass to New York City today. All my friends keep asking me if I’m doing the right thing, chucking it all down here in favor of moving to the Big Apple without a job prospect or an apartment. Maybe I’m being foolish, but I know that if I stay around here another year my brain’s going to turn into guacamole paste. Still, my old college roomie, Cynthia Brinkes, lives up there. She says I can crash on her sofa until I can find my own space. What’s life about, if not taking chances?
June 13th, 199–
Tomorrow’s the big day! I’m so excited I can’t sleep! At 7:05 a.m. I’ll get on the bus for New York and my new life! A couple of friends threw me a going-away party the other night, and one of them even tried to talk me out of it. Even if I was having second doubts, there’s no way I’d turn back now. I’m already committed. I’ve turned in my keys to my landlord and put my furniture and books in storage until I can send for them. New York, here I come!
June 18th, 199–
Sneaking a few paragraphs while I can. Boy, the bus sure is crowded! And smelly! And there are some real weirdos riding it, too! I had to change my seat because of some weird Pakistani guy trying to proposition me. He sat down and started talking to me after the bus left Nashville. He looked kind of harmless, at first, but after a few minutes he pointed at his lap and said “My balls are so full! Please help me!” That’s when I moved. Looking forward to seeing Cynthia again, after all this time. She told me she’d be waiting for me at the bus station when I get there.
June 20th, 199–
I’m finally in New York. It took me three days to get here on the bus. When I got off the bus at Port Authority I was so tired it took me a couple of minutes to realize just how scummy it really was. It was three in the morning when my bus pulled into the station and the only thing open was this cheesy fast-food joint in the lower level that sold over-priced hot dogs that looked like they’d spent a few weeks riding the weenie carousel. I looked around, hoping to spot Cynthia, but all I saw were either other people waiting to get on the buses or street people types who’d snuck past the cops guarding the doors to the main entrance by entering the lower level through the bus ports.
I thought maybe Cynthia was on her way, so I sat down at the fast-food place with my bags to wait for her. After a half hour I got tired of waiting and went to find a pay phone. The phone rang several times before Cynthia picked up. She sounded like I’d woken her up. I told her I was at the bus station, waiting for her. She mumbled she was sorry and that she was on her way to pick me up. When I got back to where I’d left my bags, they were gone! All my clean clothes and extra shoes and things like my make-up and toothbrush and spare tampons—gone! All I had was the clothes on my back and my purse. Luckily, I still had all my money on me.
I asked the black girl behind the counter if she’d seen someone take my suitcases. She looked at me like I was stupid and said; “Don’t you know better than to walk off and leave your stuff by itself?”
Welcome to the Big Apple.
Cynthia finally showed up around six o’clock. I didn’t recognize her at first. She was wearing too much makeup that she looked like she’d been sleeping in. She was also wearing a really tight mini-skirt and a blouse you could see right through. Her hair was frizzed out from a perm that didn’t take and looked like it’d been dyed badly two or three times. She didn’t look a thing like the young co-ed who’d planned on being a poet and an artist.
When I told her what had happened to my bags she shook her head and looked at me the same way the black girl had. “Jeannie, don’t you know any better than to walk off and leave your stuff by itself? You’re in New York now!”
I started to get mad, but made myself swallow it. Things were already bad, and I didn’t want to make things worse by getting on the wrong side of Cynthia. After all, she was letting me crash at her place and had offered to help find me a job.
We left Port Authority and Cynthia waved down a cab. After a seven-dollar cab ride—which I paid for—we reached her place on the Lower East Side. When she first told me she lived in “the Village,” I thought she meant Greenwich Village. You know, where the beatniks and hippies used to hang. But this is someplace called the East Village. Whatever that means.
Cynthia’s apartment is in a big brick building on East Third Street, between Avenue A and Avenue B. Her place is on the ground floor. She calls it a “studio,” but it’s really an efficiency. The kitchen, bedroom, and living room are all the same room. There’s a tiny bathroom with just enough space for a sink, a shower stall, and toilet. Cynthia sleeps on a loft platform that’s four feet off the ground.
The apartment is dark and smells of old grease and dirty clothes. There are roaches everywhere, because of the pile of dishes in the sink and stacked on the kitchen table. I’m writing this while sitting on Cynthia’s couch. At least there’s that much. Cynthia took off her clothes and crawled back into bed the moment we came in the door. This was hardly what I was expecting.
Still, Cynthia assures me I shouldn’t have any trouble landing a job. She’s even promised to set me up with an interview. Better get some rest. It’s been a long day (and night) and I need to look my best if I’m going to go job hunting.
June 22nd, 199–
Wow! Talk about easy! I’m not in New York forty-eight hours and I’ve already got a job! And one that pays! Cynthia took me to this place over on Lexington Avenue. They’re hiring women to answer the phones for twelve dollars an hour! Turns out it’s an escort agency. Cynthia introduced me to the woman who runs the business—Maddy—and she hired me right on the spot! All I have to do is answer the phone six to ten hours a day, check credit card numbers on the computer terminal, and relay messages for the girls who work out of the agency. At this rate I’ll have enough money saved up to move into my own place within a month! I can hardly wait! Even though Cynthia’s hardly ever home—and when she does come in, she’s so wasted all she does is go right to sleep—this apartment is so damn depressing! You can’t even look out the windows! Not that the neighborhood’s anything to look at, mind you.
Building next door to this one is abandoned, the windows covered with sheets of plywood. Coke dealers sit on the steps leading to the sealed front door and sell little plastic zip-lock pouches to people in broad daylight. Most of the ones buying are middle-aged Hispanic guys, although I’ve seen a few young white guys and a couple of black women go up to the steps, too. Some of them are walking dogs or pushing baby strollers.
I still can’t get over how blatant the drug dealing is around here. I mean, I’m not stupid or naive. I’ve used drugs before—but stuff like pot, acid, occasionally speed. Everyone here see
ms to be into the hard stuff—coke, crack, smack. There’s no room for simple buzzes. These people would mainline rocket fuel, if it was at all possible.
July 6th, 199–
There sure are a lot of dogs in this area. Most of them big, brutish attack animals like Rottweilers, pit bulls, and Dobermans. There’s also a lot of dog shit on the streets. At least I assume it’s dog shit. Saw a homeless woman taking a crap between a couple of parked cars late last night. Apparently there’s a law about curbing dogs, but when it comes to humans … Needless to say, what with all the dogs, homeless, and discarded syringes, I always look where I’m walking. Definitely not a place to walk around barefoot in.
August lst, 199–
I’m finally out of Cynthia’s reeking hell-hole of an apartment. Not that where I am is any better, really. But at least it’s my own place. After working overtime answering the phone at the escort service for nearly six solid weeks, I finally had enough money to look for my own apartment.
The rents in the town—even the shittiest part of it—are unbelievable! I looked at places for rent in five different neighborhoods, all of them progressively scarier, until I found this place. It’s on Avenue D between Sixth and Seventh. There are stripped and gutted cars decorating the curbs and the fire hydrant seems to always be open to full flood, and there are never less than three dozen half-naked Latino kids running around screaming at any given time of the day.
At night the streets are loud, since the drug-dealers cruise by extra-slow in their cars so they can serenade the neighborhood with the rap and Latino music pumping out of the suitcase-sized speakers in the trunks. Instead of crickets, if I listen late at night I can hear automatic gunfire and the sounds of people screaming and arguing in the near distance.
My building is very old. It was probably originally built in the 1890s. The apartments have been divided and redivided over the years, according to what the building inspectors would allow. My whole apartment is little over three hundred square feet. There is a tiny two-burner gas stove wedged in between a sink and a midget refrigerator in one corner that’s supposed to be my kitchen. There is a rickety loft-bed with a mildewing double mattress atop it left over from the previous tenant. What I first thought was the first of two closets turned out to be the toilet. The bath-tub is a huge antique metal creature with lion’s feet and a curved back lip. It’s in plain sight in the kitchen area. Which is also the living area and the dining area and the sleeping area.
Since I don’t have any furniture yet, the place looks kind of empty, although all I have to do is buy a Salvation Army couch and a table and a chair to make things crowded around here. Despite everything wrong with the building—the elevator’s perpetually out of order, the mail-boxes get broken into every other night, and the halls reek of piss—it’s rent-controlled at $450 a month. The horrible thing is, most people living in the city would envy me my rent! Funny how your priorities and standards change once you’re in New York.
The big bummer, though, is the fact that while I’ve been living in the city for nearly two months, I still haven’t found the time to check out the museums or even take in a film down at the Angelika. And, outside of Cynthia and Maddy, I don’t really even know anybody. I’ve spent all my time working trying to get the money to set myself up to take the time to go hang out at a bar and check out the scene. Hopefully that’ll change pretty soon. After all, what’s the point of living in Manhattan if you don’t avail yourself of the culture?
August 16th, 199–
Things went really bad today. So bad my brain’s still not able to handle everything that went down.
I went into work today just like usual. During my lunch break, Maddy—the woman who runs the escort agency I answer the phone for—Lady Day & Night—came up to me and asked me if I liked my job. I said sure. Then Maddy asks me if I’d like to make more money. I said of course. Then she tells me that if I want to keep my job, I’ve got to start going on out-calls at least twice a week. I told her I had to think about it. She said I could think until tomorrow.
Man, what am I gonna do? They’re telling me if I want to keep my job, I’ve got to be a hooker. I know they call it being an “escort,” but it’s still prostitution. Besides, most of the Johns are Shriners and opticians from out of town, in the city for conventions. Men like my dad. Ick. I can’t do that kind of stuff. Not for money. Not with strangers—certainly not the kind of strangers who’d use an escort service. Just thinking about it is enough to make me puke.
But what about my rent? And utilities? And the phone bill? Not to mention little things like eating and keeping shoes on my feet. Where’s the money going to come from? I’m going to have a hard time finding a job that paid as good as that one. Still, I’ve got to stand strong. I can’t buckle just because I got thrown a curve ball on this.
If I give in, I’ll end up like Cynthia, turning tricks and blowing everything she makes on smack so she can live with what’s she’s become. It’s really sad talking to her. It’s like communing with a ghost. Every now and then I catch a glimmer of the girl who was going to take Manhattan’s art circle by storm with her painting and her poetry, but most of the time she’s either strung out or needing a fix. Maddy fired her from the escort service a month ago because of the tracks on her arms.
Cynthia wears long sleeves buttoned down to her wrists all the time now, no matter how hot it is. Last I heard, she was trolling for johns over on Allen Street, where the skankiest of the crack-whores hang out. I refuse to let the city get to me like that. I absolutely refuse.
August 23rd 199–
Another day of job-hunting. I feel like I’m taking huge chunks of time and tossing them down the toilet. Most of these jobs don’t pay shit, and the ones that do pay shit have fifty other applicants waiting in line by the time I get there—and I’m there before dawn! Maybe I ought to just sit on my butt and collect unemployment and food stamps and spend the day hanging out on the front steps and watching broadcast TV like everyone else in this fucking neighborhood does.
This place is really scary. I mean, it’s always been scary, but back when I was making money and thought it was only a matter of time before I could move into a better neighborhood, I ignored a lot of what goes down around here. But now that it looks like I’m stuck here—I’ve taken to sleeping with a butcher knife under my pillow. I also keep the cheap little black & white portable I bought off one of the street peddlers over on Second Avenue for ten bucks on all night so I can’t hear the people next door fighting and fucking and abusing their children. Don’t those people ever get tired? It’s like living next door to a damn zoo!
August 25th, 199–
I remember how upset I used to get about the people who’d come up and buy drugs from the dealer next door to Cynthia’s crib. At least they went somewhere else to do their shit up. In this neighborhood there’s no such self-restraint. The junkies and crack-heads buy their poison down on the coener, then wander to the middle of the block to shoot up. Hell, they don’t even have the decency to crouch in a doorway or something! It certainly takes the guesswork out of knowing who is or isn’t doing crack. When you see a guy standing on the curb, lighting a Coca-Cola can, there’s only one thing he could possibly be doing.
August 27th, 199–
Cynthia showed up yesterday looking for a place to stay the night. Seems like she’s finally been evicted from her crib. Not surprising, considering she hadn’t paid rent in five months. What could I say? She was my best friend in college. She let me crash at her place until I had my own apartment lined up. I couldn’t just let her sleep on the sidewalk. Turned out to be a big mistake. When I got back from job-hunting today Cynthia was gone—and so was the last of the money I had stashed in the sugar bowl. Three hundred and fifty bucks. Gone. She’s probably already nodding out on some corner over on Allen Street, trying to wave down some homy asshole from Jersey. Hope she gets a Rifkin, the skanky bitch.
August 29th, 199–
I hate this fucking nei
ghborhood and all the stinking spic assholes in it! I hate their fucking stupid music and their fucking lousy food and the lousy bodegas that smell like someone’s peed in them. They’re sleazy, lazy, dirty, stupid, violent people. I was walking back from the subway after registering for food stamps. I left the house at seven in the morning and it was already getting dark by the time I got back to the neighborhood. It took all damn day just to do that! But at least I got a packet of food stamps to tide me over for the next week or two.
I was walking down Avenue D, near Third Street, when I saw this group of PR girls hanging at the corner, sitting on the hood of a parked car. There were four of them, wearing leather jackets and too much make-up and I could tell some of them had tattoos on the wrists. Gang girls.
As I got closer to them, one of them stepped out in front of me.
“Where choo goin’, blondie?”
“I’m going home. That’s all.”
“Then how come we never seen you before?”
“I—I live down around Sixth—”
“This is our neighborhood, blondie. Choo don’t belong here.”
Before I could say anything else, the one in front of me grabbed me by the hair and punched me in the face while one of them circled behind me and made a grab for my purse. I guess it’s a testimony to how much living in New York City has changed me that I not only didn’t let go of my purse, that I also got away from them by ramming the leader in the gut with my head. But I’d be damned if a bunch of sleazy spic whores-in-training were going to take anything of mine.
They chased me for at least a block and a half, screaming “I’m gonna cut choo, blondie! Cut choo good!,” but I was too fast for them. God damn spic bitches. The anger is finally starting to ebb away, and with it the adrenalin. My God, I could have been killed! And for what? A five-and-dime eel-skin shoulderbag and seventy-five dollars in food stamps. Shit. I guess this means I can’t walk down Third Street ever again.
