by Sean Ferrell
“I think I’ll be okay.”
Behind us the crew filled a hole with a suffering cherry tree. A young woman wandered past and stopped, knelt beneath the new tree, and watched the crew begin work on another spot some ten feet away. She curled onto her side in the fluttering shade and closed her eyes. I tried not to notice how she held her hands across her stomach as Lily had when shot.
Phil said to Emma, “What about my girl? I can’t recall if she’s working tonight.”
Emma removed a pad of paper from a nail on the wall, scanned the scribbles. “She’s off.” Somehow it sounded forced. As if what she said was both truth and lie. “Want me to get her a message?”
“Yes. Send her home with a fifth. Put it on my tab.”
“You know, it’s getting hard to lift your tab.”
Phil reached through the window to touch Emma’s hand. “It’s not the size of the tab, darlin’, it’s what you do with it.”
They both chuckled. Emma’s laugh made her face prettier. “Pervert,” she said. “I know what you want. Want me to rip your tab right off.”
Phil winced. “You do know how to make a man feel like he owes money. I’m good for it—you know I always pay my debts.”
“It’s the only reason I talk to you.” Her bright and happy eyes scanned his face, then rolled, still happy, in my direction. Phil’s teasing must have reminded her how she trusted him and his judgment. “You look like you could use a meal. Go to the information booth inside Grand Central and tell them I sent you. They’ll hook you up. You’ll have to work for it, but you’ll be fed.”
An instinct rose in me, the desire to turn and run, to protect myself somehow from anyone’s help, to own and bury myself in guilt, but on its heels came the need to lose myself in some mindless task. I thanked her for the offer.
Phil thanked Emma, too, and we walked east toward the public library. He said, “I’ve got an appointment to set up, so you go get your food and I’ll see you later. Do yourself a favor. Don’t stay in that hotel. It’s a bad place. You can stay in my building till you find one of your own.”
“There’s room in your place?” I imagined myself sleeping between piles of newspapers and old doorknobs.
He shrugged. “In one of the other floors, yeah.”
It took me a moment to realize he meant that the entire building was his. “You live in that building alone?”
“Not alone. Me and my daughter. It was a good choice. Off the beaten path.” He shook my hand. “I’ll see you later. Just let yourself in. Knock before you come to my rooms.” He turned at the corner of Fifth and headed uptown. He’d disappeared behind wandering pedestrians before he’d gone a block.
I stood at the corner and watched people swarm north and south. Behind me lurked the library, its gray stones covered in a mossy green growth, the steps rotten with books and people, a swarming mass. Wagons teetering with books descended makeshift wooden ramps toward the street. I headed toward Grand Central Station and found myself in a procession of book-laden wagons. Through the station’s nearest entrance, I walked past storefronts without glass in the windows, baked goods and clothing on display. Behind me a clatter. A wagon had overturned, its load of books spilling down the ramp. The red-faced wagoneer swore and scurried to gather the books. Those behind him hurried him on with laughter. I turned and walked off.
The hallways of the terminal were dark, bulbs flickering, burned, or missing. It was less crowded than the streets outside. I followed signs toward the main concourse with its looming ceilings and marble arches. Across the main floor stood pallets of wood, each stacked with books. When the books reached six feet, another pallet was laid on the pile and the stacking began again. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of books were piled in this way. Stepladders on caster wheels rolled between the columns, workers carried armloads of books to the upper tiers, others held the ladders steady as books were placed or pulled. At their tops, three tiers high, just out of reach of a person stretched toward toppling off the ladder, another pallet, and then scaffolding that reached to within an arm’s length of the ceiling. Atop the scaffolds lay men and women with buckets of paint. They lay on their backs, brushes above them, paint dripping down on them. The green ceiling, covered with depictions of the zodiac constellations, was being obliterated, hidden beneath new black paint. Farther along the room, where the black paint was older and already done drying, the teams of painters made marks nearly invisible from the floor. I watched, the light from the massive steel-and-glass walls at either end barely enough for me to make out their work.
The famous clock atop the information booth had broken at some point; all its faces showed different times. I stood beneath the nearest clock face, my own slack and stupid, until a woman approached me. She was old, bent to a question mark, gray hair pulled back, face youthful. She said, “Honey, are you okay?”
I’m not sure what I said, and I tried to smile despite my confusion. The woman smiled in return and held my elbow, steered me to the shuttered ticket windows. My head swam with hunger and the smells of gasoline, ozone, and horse manure. “Emma sent me.”
The woman smiled. “Oh, did she? Well, you must be a good worker, then. Follow me.” She led me across the wide room toward the open doors to the track platforms. The smells grew stronger, and I caught the sounds of horses neighing and clicking their shoes on concrete. The platforms hissed with engines hidden in lightless tunnels. She asked me to wait a moment and disappeared into the darkness. When she returned, still smiling, we headed back through the main concourse and up the stairs at one end, metronome footsteps leading me. Above us massive windows filtered yellow light.
“Get something to eat and then come back downstairs. Tell them I sent you. I’m Emily.”
I thanked Emily and walked into Cipriani Dolci, a restaurant overlooking the main room.
The restaurant was half full. Low, whispered conversations rolled from the dark tables. Exhaustion and hunger weighed on me like chains. I saw everything through a tunnel, a cloudy circle at the end swung spotlightlike over white plates, partially eaten meals, and dining customers.
Someone took my arm and guided me to a table. I braced myself against the chair back, looked up at an unsmiling face topped with red hair. “Who sent you?” He had an Irish brogue.
“Emily.”
“All right. What’ll you have?”
I didn’t know what to say. I had no menu. I had no money, if they even used money these days. The floor tilted beneath me.
He said, “How about a ham sandwich?”
I must have agreed, for several minutes later one materialized before me, a pickle and a glass of water as well. I ate without tasting, finished the water and three glasses that followed. My eyes focused on the wine bottles lining the back wall. My flask was with Phil, possibly for good. I was tempted to ask for a drink, then dismissed the idea. The waiter returned to clear my table and asked, “Feel better?”
I did and told him so. He waved me away when I said I didn’t know how to pay. “Emily knows.”
I stood, thanked him, and headed for the steps, exhausted but no longer near collapse. I had to find Emily. The light from windows cast halos over the patrons I passed. I saw now that their faces were speckled with dirt and paint. Some were gaunt enough to mistake for shadows. Several glanced up at me, nodded in camaraderie I didn’t share.
I found my way back down to the concourse. Emily strolled across the marble floor to me, leisurely with age.
“Now that you’re fed, feel like working?”
I was glad for something to keep me moving. Anything other than thinking about what had happened to Lily, what lay ahead for me and her, if I found her in time. I saw no way out of my debt.
I nodded, and she led me to a group of three men. All three turned toward her, respectful. She spoke quietly to one, and he gestured for me to follow. Emily waved good-bye, and I trailed after the man in silence. Outside, the day had grown hot. Crowds of people, many with cameras and video equipmen
t, jostled one another down the street. We dove into the current, my guide showing no patience as he used an elbow to create a gap between pedestrians. Each step was a battle. We fought our way to the middle of Forty-second Street, where the crowds thinned for wagons and the occasional car or bus.
My guide shouted over his shoulder, “Fucking tourists,” as a bus nearly crushed us. At his outburst bus passengers swung toward us to take his picture. He raised a fist, and up shot his middle finger. When they’d rolled away, he called, “Come on,” and broke into a trot. He rounded onto Fifth and walked a block. At an uninteresting glass-fronted building, he hammered on a window. The door swung open, and a blue-uniformed man leaned out. He smiled at my guide. “Hey, Jonah.”
My guide, Jonah, said, “Got another mule.”
The thought of doing nothing more than physical labor was enticing. I didn’t want to think or feel.
The guard nodded, one hand on a hip-holstered pistol, and pulled the door closed again. He returned with a child’s red wagon loaded with books. Jonah turned to me. “Go on. Take it.”
I grasped the handle and thanked the guard. He said, “When you come back, just knock, but knock hard.” His tired eyes tried to smile at me.
I turned to follow Jonah back to Grand Central. Tourists swarmed, filling the opposite sidewalk and a good portion of Fifth Avenue, camera-flashing and street-map-fluttering. They spoke languages I’d never heard, some I could have sworn were dead or at least close to dying, their skin covering the spectrum from blue-black to albino white. Their eyes squinted up at the decayed buildings, the tattered ads, the failing scaffolds. Above them windows yawned, taunted with curtains blowing in unfelt breezes, figures of somewhat human aspect drifting behind. Double-decker buses stopped in the middle of the street, hissed hydraulic fluid at the intersection, and more people spilled out. They took pictures of themselves riding the library lions. Laughter erupted from children as they chased one another and put their hands on the lions’ chins, as if one might actually roar and snap.
Jonah walked without looking back. I tried to keep up but kept losing books and had to retreat to gather them. A short woman with a street map clutched tight in her fist took pity and chased after me with two I’d missed. I thanked her, but she spoke no English, only smiled and nodded. Nearly back at the station, I spotted my guide bobbing forward a block ahead. He stopped to wait for me at the station entrance, where he held the door open. “That’s what you have to deal with. That shit.”
I thought of the woman who’d helped me. “It’s not so bad.”
“Tell me that in half an hour.” He laughed mirthlessly and followed my wagon down the ramp.
Emily saw me right away and waved me over. She looked at the wagon of books and said, “Didn’t lose any, did you?” I told her I hadn’t. “Good. Now, bring them over here.” She walked toward one of the four massive piles of books. “Look for spaces that need to be filled in,” she said. She pulled a book from my wagon and slid it into place, already searching for another spot. The next book she grabbed was squat and thick. She had to move a few books, filling smaller spaces to open one wide enough. “It’s okay to move books. The most important thing is that you not leave a gap unfilled for too long.”
I noticed men and women among the stacks with long lists written by hand on pads of yellow paper. Pencils tucked behind ears, shopping bags hung from wrists, they wandered, eyes rolling over the great piles until they spotted a volume, pulled it free, and placed it in one of many shopping bags too heavy with books, then crossed the item from their list and moved on. When they could carry no more, they hauled them to the terminals’ dark doorways, where train engine hisses rose and fell, seasoned with the neighing of horses.
I watched the people take books away. “What is this?”
Emily picked another two books from the wagon. “We’re the book exchange.”
I stared at her, not understanding.
She said, “We get search requests and send the books on to those who need them. We used to run it from the main library, but it was simpler to do it from here. Could you hurry up and place some books? We don’t want this stack to topple.”
I looked up at the scaffolds, the painters working on top. “What are they doing?”
She followed my gaze. “Painting the new zodiac. Much more accurate.”
I didn’t ask how the zodiac had changed. The scaffold above me swayed, and I grabbed two books and found spaces to sandwich them in. When my wagon was nearly empty, I said to Emily, “If we place the books randomly, how are they ever found again?”
She smiled. “The books just seem to know to go where they’ll be found.”
Despite having eaten, I couldn’t focus enough to understand the system, and in light of what I had done and what lay ahead, I found the confusion of the room, the tasks, the ease with which everyone accepted me, refreshing. If I’d stopped to think about the strangeness of this, I might have fallen into old habits, old needs to piece together the puzzle. I decided that here was a puzzle that simply didn’t matter to me. Here was something I didn’t understand, a mystery I would leave behind me unsolved. There were bigger problems to worry me.
When my wagon was finished, Emily brushed her hands on her skirt. “Okay, now you know what’s going on. Go back to the library and get another wagon. We’ll be doing this until the sun gets low. You’ll have to move quickly.”
As I pulled the wagon back toward the entrance, I walked by the clock again. Some of the hands had moved, but as I watched, I could see that some moved too fast.
“What’s wrong with this clock?” I called to Emily.
She shrugged. “It’s been like that for years. Someone altered it, and no one turned it back. It’s kind of helpful, actually.” She smiled at what must have been a joke shared by the workers. “It always seems to know what time you need it to be.”
A school of tourists, mouths gaping, surrounded the information booth and snapped pictures of themselves standing in front of it smiling. I wondered what time the clock would show in the pictures, or if it would show any time at all.
I worked until it was too dark to see the stacks clearly, and the painters climbed down from their scaffolds. A new collection of workers arrived, swinging brooms and mops among the steady stream of vacant-looking tourists. Emily waved me over to the exit.
“You did a good job today, thank you.” She held a brown bag out to me. “Here’s some supper. If you’re up for it, we could use you tomorrow.”
I said I would be back. I didn’t know why. The work had calmed me a bit, and other than watching Phil’s building for signs of Lily, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I’d been exhausted when I’d arrived, and now I realized I’d also been lonely. The people bringing the wagonloads of books, all as tired and focused on working for their meals as I was, provided a different sort of companionship than I’d had in a long time.
I HEADED WEST. The sun glowered in the low spaces between the buildings. I walked past the new trees of Bryant Park. Thin, sickly branches waved in the breeze dusting Forty-second Street with ash. Voices chattered through the trees and followed me west. I waited for fluttering green and gray wings of parrots fleeing my intrusion, their words close enough that I could make out single words and phrases. I kept turning to look behind me but saw none. “Only hurts a moment,” one said. “Great, great weather,” came the reply. I was tired enough to sleep, but I felt a need to talk, or at least to listen. Phil seemed the type willing to go on at length just for the sound of his own voice.
Music echoed down the stairs of his building. A radio played a quiet song, a woman singing words I couldn’t make out. I remembered the images of the video I’d seen and then accidentally filmed on the stairway, the shadows of Screwdriver, me, carrying Lily’s body up the steps. For a moment I was overcome with guilt and grief in equal measure. They washed up my legs like a rising tide, and I swayed in their current. I felt no better knowing that in this time she was alive.
; The climb was finishing me off. A small slice of light leaked below Phil’s door, and I wondered if he had drunk himself to sleep. I held the rail and steadied myself. When I could breathe again, I walked to the door and knocked gently.
Immediately the singing stopped. The music continued. I had interrupted not a radio but a woman performing, and I regretted being there. I almost turned to go when the woman called out, “Who is it?”
Not knowing what else to say, I answered, “I’m a friend of Phil’s. I can come back.”
Footsteps and the clank of falling junk. She approached the door, turned the locks. “No, it’s okay,” she called through. “He mentioned that someone might stop by.”
The bolts pulled back, the door opened. Lily stood in the doorway. Candles, too many to count, lit her from behind.
“I’m Sara. Phil’s daughter.” She reached her hand out to me, and I took it. She let go of mine again even as I willed her not to. “He mentioned he’d made a friend today. I thought he’d made you up. He sometimes does that.”
“I do not, you lying girl,” Phil’s voice, thick with alcohol, burbled. His arm waved from beyond a junk- and candle-laden table. Lily, now Sara, walked back into the room, the door open to me, her bare feet making no sound on the hardwood floor. Suddenly terrified, I entered. The heat of the candles wrapped around my head, and their perfume watered my eyes. I struggled to see Sara as she moved through the room’s dark corners. I lost her in the shadows and waited for her to reemerge. The sound of her grew faint, and I heard whispered voices again just outside the window.
Phil lifted himself to a sitting position and held a jelly jar half full of amber liquid up to me. “My friends are never imaginary. Only my enemies.” He took a sip and then began to laugh until he had to lie back down. He disappeared behind the table. Sara melted into yellow candlelight, her face lit from beneath, and smiled.
“He’s been enjoying a bottle of whiskey.”
I nodded. “He enjoyed some I had with me earlier today.”
