I saw two men on 408. One of them ran and jumped toward 406. I saw his body and his head disappear before reaching the ledge. I heard a truncated scream. DeLeon was the other man. He turned around and ran back.
We went inside 402. We went downstairs. We got undressed. There was blood on us. All over us. Everything except the money went into a third bag. I saw the music. We went to the basement.
“I have to get my mask,” I said. “From that alley.”
“Tomorrow,” Dane said. “It’s too hot right now.”
“Too late then,” I said. “There’s going to be cops all over here in a few.”
“Fuck,” Dane said. “Let me think.”
“My acid’s all over that mask,” I said.
“I know,” Dane said.
“Bring the money to the car and wait for me there,” I said. “These transmitters still working?” We checked and they were. “I’ll tell you where to pick me up or whether to split or whatever,” I said. “I have to go get it right now.”
“Let’s go together,” Dane said. “There’ll be guys there.”
“No get the car ready,” I said.
“What about the girl you crazy fuck?” Dane said.
“She got away,” I said.
We went out the back of 402. Dane went to the car. I went through the backyards to the alley between 408 and 406.
The man who had jumped was there. I moved slowly. He didn’t move. I saw that it was Jeckle. He was on a car fender. The fender’s end had gone deeply into his back. His eyes were open.
I didn’t see the mask. I looked for it. I heard screaming. A woman. I saw my mask hanging from a pole on the side of 408. I couldn’t reach it. I found a stick. I used it to knock the mask off and I caught it. I stuck it in my pocket. The woman screamed again.
I went to the street and stuck my head out. I looked toward the scream. I saw four people down the street by 402. Escalera had a gun in his hand. The Whale was next to him. DeLeon was in front of them talking. In Escalera’s other hand was hair. A woman’s hair. The beautiful woman was being pulled by the hair. She was screaming. She was pregnant.
DeLeon spoke to Escalera. Escalera nodded. Escalera raised his gun and squeezed a round into DeLeon’s face. Ramon fell to the street, a copper mist where his head had been. The woman swallowed her voice. Escalera spun her around towards me. I pulled my head back in. The streets were quiet. I put my mask back on.
I looked at Jeckle in the alley again. His radio stuck out of his pocket. I went over and took it. It looked fine. I stuck my head back out. They hadn’t moved. Escalera still had the beautiful hair in his hands. The Whale was looking around in a circle. I put the radio to my mouth.
“That’s no way to get your money back,” I said.
“Who the fuck is that?” Escalera screamed. He pulled his radio out. “Who is it?” he said and I heard The Whale say “that’s him.”
“He’s right it’s me,” I said. “Let the girl go and we can discuss how you go about getting your money back.”
“There’s that. Or I can shoot her in the neck if I don’t see your face in the next five seconds,” Escalera said.
“Well I’m two blocks away so that’s not going to happen,” I said. “Meaning you can’t see me but I can certainly see you you worthless fuck and if you so much as leave a bruise on her from here on out you’ll never hear from me or your money again. Well I shouldn’t say never. Just that the next time you do see me will be the day I kill you.”
I saw Escalera put down the radio. He looked around. The Whale paced.
“What do you want?” he said.
“I want the girl,” I said.
“Come get her,” he said. “Bring the money and I’ll turn her over to you you thief.”
“No let’s do it my way I think,” I said.
“What way is that?” he said.
“Let her go and I’ll tell you where to go to get your money,” I said.
“Fuck you,” he said.
“Okay goodbye,” I said.
“No wait,” he said.
“Let her go right now,” I said.
“How do I know you’ll give me the money?” he said.
“I guess you don’t,” I said. “But you know exactly what will happen if you don’t let her go don’t you?”
“Her blood will be on your hands if you don’t bring that money here immediately my friend,” he said.
“I’m not your friend,” I said. “As for blood, I’m already covered in it and I’m going to let all yours next if you hurt her.”
“You fucking threatening me?” he said. “Do you have any idea who I am? Who this person standing next to me is? All your friends who came running in are dead do you understand that? Do you want to join them because that was just the beginning? Do you think there won’t be retribution for some of the people back there? Angel Colon is dead do you understand that? That’s a heavy fuck. You think that shit’s going to go unanswered?”
“You have a choice,” I said. “Make it. I don’t want your money anymore. You can let her go and take it. Or you can hurt her, never see the money again and die tonight or soon thereafter. It seems an easy choice. Make it.”
“Answer my question you fuck!” he said. “Do you know who we are?”
“Yeah I know who your friend is because he was lying unconscious at my feet twenty minutes ago,” I said. “I allowed him to live. And I know who you are and we both know you’re nothing close to your big friend there. No, you’re the coward who threatens women and shoots an unarmed friend in the face. So I will not extend you the same courtesy I did your humpback friend, decide now.”
Escalera pushed the woman away by the head. She ran away down First Avenue. I called to Dane on the transmitter.
“Where are you?” I said.
“Sitting in the car,” Dane said.
“See the woman?” I said.
“Yeah she just ran past,” he said.
“She being followed?” I said.
“No she’s good,” he said. “I hear cops though.”
“Yeah come get me,” I said.
“Did you get the mask?” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “Northwest corner of 122nd and Second Avenue, right now.”
I used the radio to Escalera. “Good,” I said. “Go two blocks east with Ballena. I’ll leave the bag in front of 312. I’m watching you too. If you do anything other than what I just said the bag won’t be there.” They went. I left. I went to the corner and seconds later Dane pulled up. I got in and he drove Westbound.
“Money’s in the trunk,” Dane said. “We good? We’re clean right?”
I looked at Dane.
“Well?” he said. “We good?”
“We’re something.”
“Good.”
“Fucking Dane man.”
“You all right?”
“No,” I said. “I’m all wrong.”
“This is it, what we wanted, we got the money.”
“Fuck. God.”
“Easy.”
“The fuck happened?”
“A true mess is what it was. Take the mask off man. What happened when you went back?”
“You were right. Some fuckers walked in there and started demanding the money. Then just like that they started shooting each other up.”
“It was taking too long they lost their cool and I don’t think Escalera was sure he wanted to part with the money. I could tell it was going to get bad out there. Why’d you go back? I fucking told you not to go back.”
“ . . .”
“What did you do when it exploded?”
“I tried to split. DeLeon saw me. Then The Whale grabbed me.”
“Fucking Whale. You were right, I should have killed it when I had the chance.”
“I never said kill it.”
“You should have.”
“I’m not sure it’s fully vincible anyway.”
“Wait DeLeon saw you? Your face?”
“DeLeon’s dead.”
“What?”
“Escalera just shot him in the face on the street.”
“What?”
“That.”
“You sure?”
“I am.”
“That fuck, he’ll regret that.”
“Colon’s dead too.”
“Really?”
“Jeckle’s dead, he fell trying to jump across.”
“You saw him?”
“Up close.”
“Fuck.”
“What happened with Heckle, Dane?”
“Oh he’s gone.”
“What happened?”
“He died.”
“How?”
“Who lived Casi? Let’s put it that way.”
“Escalera and The Whale, maybe Landro. That’s it.”
“A disaster. Except for the money a perfect disaster. Fucking human endeavors. God damn it. Almost nothing was where it was supposed to be. Stupid fucks, look at them now.”
I gave Dane the radio to put in the bag with the other things to be destroyed. The pain in my neck rose to the top of my head and out to my ears. Dane stopped the car and got out.
“Take the money too,” I said.
“You take the money for now remember?”
“Take it.”
“Why?”
“Just get it out.”
“What’s up?”
“Nothing’s up, I just don’t want that stuff in the car in case I get stopped.”
Dane popped the trunk and took the bags with the money. He carried the three bags to my window where I sat. “Like I said before,” he said. “These bags will soften the blow.” He left.
I drove home. Over the bridge, the streets were empty. Everything was empty. I parked the car and went inside. I heard laughter coming from Angus’s apartment as I approached. I sped up to get away from it. I went inside my place and sat on the floor with my back to the wall.
I had a message. Alana said I should call her back regardless of the time. Marcela had had the baby, a fat boy, and Mary had spoken again. Now no one could shut her up.
For some reason my alarm clock went on then. The radio said I could have the world provided I gave them twenty-two minutes in return. The woman said that a man was shot in the face and killed on 123rd street while horrified witnesses looked on from their windows. Police responding have made the grisly discovery of several more bodies in a nearby apartment as well as in the surrounding area. No word yet on a possible motive for the killing but police are urging anyone with information to call the NYPD’s tips hotline. The woman then added that a car must have its oil changed every three thousand miles in order to operate optimally but that nothing prevented one from doing so more often than that. She then identified what she felt was the best place to go for that purpose.
The radio kept getting louder and louder until it died abruptly. The lights went off. The blinking red light on the answering machine disappeared. The little blue clock on the VCR was gone. I felt my way to my apartment door and opened it. The lights in the hall were extinguished. I went to my front window. The street lights were dead, the traffic signals blank. I looked at the Promenade. Nothing.
Across the river, the city was completely black. There was no bridge anymore, no buildings or structures of any kind. The colors of the rainbow no longer shone there; only monochromatic, primordial black everywhere. The deep blackness of the evening waters surrounding Manhattan had risen, engulfing what they once supported and submerging the newly-benighted island of lights.
I looked up just in time to witness a celestial transfiguration. The new terrestrial darkness allowed the heretofore invisible above to emerge, as the sky, now cleansed of all mortal light, became dotted with astral pinpoints. I went out and wandered the streets; for the first time in that hyperkinetic place, walking beneath the stars.
part three
I cannot believe that God plays dice.
—Albert Einstein
chapter 23
The world of the happy is quite another than the world of the unhappy.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Today’s Citibank temperature is absolute zero. Once again the current Citibank temperature in Central Park is absolute zero. That temperature is bought to you by Citibank. Citibank. If you bank in the city, bank on Citibank to do your city banking. Citibank. You can bank on them. Back to you Dave.
Jim I thought the Third Law of Thermodynamics pretty much forbade that temperature from ever being reached.
I have no idea what you’re talking about Dave. I just report the number, I don’t get involved with the legalities of the situation or any of those other extracurricular shenanigans.
Okay, well I wonder, Jim, if there are any special precautions our listeners should take given that the temperature is absolute zero. Absolute zero is rather cold is it not?
Good question Dave and yes absolute zero is indeed cold as in the generally accepted value of minus 273.15 degrees Celsius and I don’t even want to get into what that means on a Fahrenheit or even Kelvin scale.
The precautions Jim.
Right, well in terms of precautions there really are none adequate to the situation. I suppose I would counsel people to stay indoors for one. If you go outdoors you will die. The cold will stop your heart in its very tracks, petrify your flesh, and freeze your blood so that it ceases to circulate. You will die.
What about the homeless Jim?
They’re not listening to this Dave, they’re already dead.
Like my dream in The Orchard where I was scrounging desperately for food, this dream borrowed heavily from present reality because when I woke up the cold in the room made my eyeballs recoil from the lack of eyelid protection. And as cold as it was in that bed, even beneath multiple covers, I didn’t even want to imagine coming out from under them and onto the bare hardwood floors. But there was a definite knocking. And waking up into that cold in that way made me think of being a squirt and awakening in our tiny cold apartment where the only heat was in the very immediate vicinity of the unpainted radiators and how my mother would take the polyester uniforms we would wear to hear nuns yell at us and place them on top of those radiators so that when we were ready to slip them onto our chubby little bodies they would be nice and toasty and in large measure combat the frost of that place. And I looked for the radiator in my current bedroom, so I could put my prospective clothes on it, but couldn’t find it. I heard more knocking on my door. The radiator wasn’t anywhere. I looked in the rest of the apartment. No wonder it was so cold, there wasn’t the slightest hint of a radiator anywhere. How had I ever been warm in that place? I felt reasonably certain that the apartment had contained, at some past point, multiple radiators, but at that moment it was undeniable that no such contraption existed in that forsaken place and also that there was still that persistent knocking on my door that would need attending.
When I said wait to the knocking door I saw my breath escape taking most of my valuable inner warmth with it. I walked to the door with my comforter wrapped all over me and three separate times almost fell on my face. It was Alyona.
“Hi Casi, sorry, it’s almost eleven-thirty I didn’t think you’d still be sleeping.”
“Me either.”
“Anyway, I’m sure you’ve noticed there’s no heat.”
“Noticed.”
“Well, I’m sure you know about the blackout.”
“ . . .”
“The whole damn city practically, no electricity. Seven hours and counting too and since we’re among the unfortunate few around here to use electric baseboard for heat I guess we’re shit out of luck. I told my uncle to leave those damn radiators alone but he was adamant that it would save money. Can you believe the timing? Wait, it occurs to me you’ve been sleeping, do you even know there’s been a blackout?”
“The radiators?”
“I know, they’re gone.”
“But when?”
“While you were in Anchor
age remember? Ridiculous timing too. So you knew about the blackout?”
“Yeah but you’re saying they still haven’t gotten power back?”
“Exactly, all of Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn have no power whatsoever.”
“Are like major riots and shit going on?”
“Good instincts but no. Everyone thinks the combination of the late hour of the blackout, which meant it was fairly quickly followed by the emergence of the sun, along with the ridiculous cold, is keeping people from flouting the law, against their base instincts of course. Nonetheless, there’s a great deal of worry about what will happen in about six hours if power isn’t restored given that people will have had time to digest and plan.”
“Oh.”
“Bottom line is this is a time we’ll probably never forget. You should see the Promenade. Anyway I just came up to tell you the deal with the heat and to offer you my cousin’s apartment in Staten Island where we will be sleeping tonight if the heat’s not restored.”
“Thanks, nice of you, but I’d probably just go to my mom’s or something.”
“Right, didn’t think of that. You get used to dealing with these guys like Angus and Louie who have no family for miles and you forget you know?”
“What do they say about it?” I said pointing at the paper in Alyona’s hand.
“Who Angus and Louie?”
“No, The Post.”
“Oh they got screwed big time. You know they’re the only paper actually printed in Manhattan so they lost all their power too and had to go with what they already had. So while everybody else has some cool variation on Darkness Falls or some such nonsense, they’re stuck with this. See for yourself.”
I looked at the front of the paper where it said MASSACRE! above a split picture of the sidewalk of 123rd Street and the inside of 410. I gave the paper back.
“You believe it?” Alyona said.
“Yeah.”
“So where were you last night? Angus was trying to introduce you to someone.”
“I was here.”
“No cause we thought we heard you like really late but then when we knocked no answer.”
A Naked Singularity: A Novel Page 65
