The Stone War

by Madeleine E. Robins

  “Alri’, we make you the—what the word? The mascot. You bugfuck enough to come down here again, the Dogs know. Anyone fuck with you, we know. We take care’a you. Dog’s blood, man.” He held his right palm up to show a sloppily drawn star of scar tissue, looked over his shoulder and nodded to his soldiers. Then he smiled again. “Jus remember: bring the toll, man.” There was a silver whisper behind them as the knife was sheathed.

  Tietjen mouthed his thanks, uncertain what to say. He and the Dogs’ leader walked in silence for a while, looking out at the gravelly moonlit plain of the Hudson. Tietjen missed the moment when the kid slipped back into the shadows again, but gradually became aware that he was watching the changing light on the river alone.

  Looking around him as casually as he could, Tietjen called himself every stupid name he could think of. He’d got off again, still alive again. The lights of the Jersey shore glittered, their reflection in the Hudson glittered. Off the hook again. “Jesus,” he breathed. At the same time, knowing better, “But I did it.” He always came through, his luck was uncanny and always had been. In all his waking years he had never taken worse than a beating, never lost more than a hundred dollars.

  “Expensive fucking hobby,” he told the night air at last. Jersey glittered without response. He looked at the watch the gang had let him keep: going on for two A.M., and he was on West Street above Christopher. For the first time all night his feet hurt. Time to head for home. He turned right, making for the subway at Sheridan Square.

  Dimly Tietjen remembered what this neighborhood had been like when he was growing up half a dozen blocks away: the bars and restaurants, a couple of theaters, cabarets, people on the streets all day and all night. Now it was—he searched for a word. Prim? The streets were empty, the houses and shops closed early. Even the homeless didn’t seem to settle on Christopher Street anymore; what AIDS hadn’t managed to do to the neighborhood, the “quality of life” campaigns of ’02 and ’05 had. The spirit of the neighborhood had been broken; everyone looked over their shoulders. Tietjen found these blocks architecturally satisfying but depressing. Good brick, bad spirit.

  The Sheridan Square subway station was almost empty at this time of night: the attendant in the token booth was talking with the guard stationed inside the booth; another guard prowled up and down the thirty-foot stretch of platform directly opposite to the booth. Two tired-eyed women huddled together near the booth, watching Tietjen as he came down the stairs, clearly expecting the worst. He ran his fare card through the turnstile and walked through onto the platform, then started up toward the northern end of the track.

  “Hey, asshole!” Tietjen turned. The guard patted his automatic absently. “Where the hell you going? This is the guarded area, right here.” He pointed to the length of platform he was pacing.

  “Just stretching my legs,” Tietjen said easily.

  The guard looked at him blankly, trying to figure it out. Finally he shrugged. “Look, asshole, you wanna walk up that way, be my guest. Some psycho comes out of the tunnel and knifes you, I ain’t running my ass off to save some asshole wanted to stretch his legs.”

  Tietjen nodded. “I’ll be careful,” he said. What else was he going to say? The guard shrugged again and turned away. Tietjen turned too and went up the platform, pacing slowly up and back, weaving around the stanchions. He was aware that the guard was watching him, and kept his moves simple and slow. Finally he stopped, leaned against a tiled wall, and listened. In the quiet, little noises bounced off the tile walls of the tunnel: a high-pitched “uh” from one of the women waiting near the entrance; a burst of laughter that leaked from the microphone of the token booth and echoed tinnily; the pat-pat sound of the platform guard’s automatic slapping against his belt as he walked. The air was warm and moist and smelled like steel, and fire far away. Now and then the rails clicked or shuddered, but nothing appeared. Tietjen waited twenty minutes for the uptown local, and when it came he found it was a short train and he had to sprint back to get on board.

  “See, asshole,” the guard yelled as the doors closed.

  Tietjen sat down; the car was empty except for a guard, hanging on to a handstrap, half asleep. All the way up to Seventy-second Street no one else got on their car. Tietjen sat at his end, reading the ads in Spanish and trying to make heads or tails of the Haitian and Polish and Arabic ones; the guard stood holding on to his handstrap, coming alert for a moment at each stop, then dropping back to his doze.

  At Seventy-second Street he had to step carefully over homeless sleeping on the island between Broadway and Amsterdam. Once he felt himself come down heavily on the hand of a sleeping woman, but she barely shrugged in her sleep. That didn’t make him feel any better. He walked up Seventy-second street, doing the same delicate tap dance around the sleeping homeless who spilled out of doorways, and the wakeful ones who watched his passage.

  Two of the streetlamps were out on his block. Time to complain to the DPW again, he thought. And they’d come and put in the high-intensity halogens that kept everyone—homeless and apartment dwellers alike—awake at night, and then there would be a fight about getting the bulbs changed, and eventually he’d wear them down and get the low-glo bulbs used on closed streets, but the fight would be a pain in the ass. The lamp nearest his own door worked, and cast a white moonish glow on the brownstone stoop and the steel grille set over the upstairs door. The basement tenant had had a steel plate welded over her outside door and used the inside stairway to go in and out of her apartment. In the front garden he could make out Maia sleeping, curled under a blanket in the shadow of the stoop; the street light glinted off the silver of her hair. “Hi, honey, I’m home,” he murmured.

  “About damned time,” her voice, a sweet whisper, came back at him. “I waited up,” she said. “I was just about to get worried about you.” She pulled the blanket down from her face with one finger and peered up at him. “How’re them boys?”

  Tietjen smiled. “They’re just what you called ’em, Maia. Little lambs.”

  She laughed in a whisper. “Those lambs kept you up till this hour? Or you just been walking out again?”

  “Taking the air.”

  “Well, air is free, I guess. Must be, I get enough. You get some sleep now, John.” Her finger curled around a corner of the blanket to pull it back over her face.

  Tietjen said, “You’re an angel, Maia.”

  She laughed again. “I know.”

  He didn’t turn on the light when he entered the apartment, just pulled off his jacket and tossed it in the direction of the sofa, locked the door behind him by the light of the streetlamp through his window, undressed and brushed his teeth by Braille in the bathroom, and found his way to his bed. The sheets were cool against his back, and he closed his eyes and let himself sink heavily into the mattress. A scent like a thousand things, like the day just gone, clung to him: the dusty, metallic tang of the subway; the warm smell of sun on trees; the perfume of women passing by; sun on brick and sun on asphalt; the river smell of the Hudson, and rain not far off. Air that tasted like everything, forever.

  As he fell asleep he thought, It will always be just like this, and I will live forever, just like this.

  2

  IN September Tietjen helped Maia rebuild her lean-to in the front stairwell. Under city law squatters could build against, but their structures could not attach to, private property. It was a peculiar design challenge, constructing a weathertight shack in the six-by-six area without totally obstructing the downstairs tenant’s window, out of found material Maia had scavenged. He enjoyed the chance to use his architectural training almost as much as the chance to help his downstairs squatter. She wouldn’t take wood or shingles from Tietjen; nails, the loan of tools, and his expertise and the skill in his two whole hands were all she would accept.

  During a break they sat together on the stoop drinking lemonade Tietjen had brought downstairs. Food, Maia took without question.

  “You build houses like these?”
Maia asked. She waved her clawed hands to include the brownstone and brick buildings that lined the street.

  He shook his head. “Nobody does houses like these anymore, Mai.”

  “Skyscratchers, then,” she said. “Like that big glass building with the gold net on top.”

  He knew the building she meant, one of the office towers built over Lincoln Center, its security grilles glittering like gold lace in the sunset. “I don’t do that either. This is about as much design as I’ve done in the last ten years.”

  “But you’re an architect? Why they wasting you?” Her tone was suspicious, a little protective.

  Tietjen shrugged. “I’m not a very good designer, actually. I’m better at getting them built than I am at designing them, so that’s what I do.”

  Maia looked at him shrewdly. “That okay with you?”

  Tietjen shrugged again and cracked his knuckles.

  While the hot weather lasted, and if he was home before midnight, he always wound up downstairs. Sometimes it was talking with Maia. Sometimes Mrs. Harabi on the second floor would hear his footsteps as he went by and come out to the landing to ask something. Often one of the block squatters would stop him as he was coming home, asking a question or making a complaint. Some apologized for taking up his time; others approached aggressively, poised for abrupt dismissal. Tietjen knew most of the squatters on the block by name. He had to stop and listen.

  He took walks when he could, but none as epic as the long walk from Irene’s that night in June. There was never time. In the evenings when he got home late he climbed the stairs to his apartment, zapped something from the noodle shop on Columbus, and leafed through the mail as he pushed the food idly around his plate. If he was still wakeful he’d settle in the armchair by the window and listen for a while to the voices on the street; sometimes he turned off the lights. The light from the streetlamp outside his window squeezed through the slats of his blinds and cast long, bright patterns on the wall. In his sagging leather chair Tietjen would sink lower and lower, head tilted to one side so he could listen, pick out individual voices; gradually the exhaustion of the day would weigh him down so that he could not move. He fell asleep in the chair often, waking at two or three in the morning, just long enough to shuffle into the bedroom, take off his clothes, and fall onto the bed.

  When Chris and Davy went back to school their weekends began to fill with homework and play-dates. Each Saturday the boys were cautiously glad to see him, had stories to tell—and by four o’clock were wondering whether this kid or that one had called about the game or the model or the new homework. Tietjen tried inviting the boys’ friends along, but rather than bringing him further into their lives, the friends seemed to pull the boys further away from him. Each Saturday he brought the boys home to Irene and went back to his apartment to work or read or talk with a neighbor or, as likely, settle into the leather armchair and listen.

  In October his firm got a new commission, a corporate headquarters and manufacturing facility in southeastern Massachusetts. There was the usual infighting among the firm’s designers, all jockeying to lead the design team. The competition for construction architect was less bitter, but plainly most of his coworkers regarded the assignment as a plum. Weeks, months more likely, spent outside the city at the relatively clean, relatively rural site. A big project with the rewards in status and preferment that usually came with big projects.

  “So what’s wrong with it?” Irene asked when he mentioned it to her.

  “For one thing, I wouldn’t be around much on weekends. I wouldn’t see the boys.”

  “They could visit,” she said it as if it were the right thing to say.

  “They’d probably like it.”

  He thought of half a dozen objections—what would kids find to do in Whittendale, Massachusetts, stuck in his hotel room watching satellite TV when he was called back to the site, as he always was on weekends? They’d hate him for it; he wouldn’t be able to do his job properly worrying about the kids. Where would he find someone to stay with them when he wasn’t there?

  Irene was saying something. “ … time you have a job out of town you go through this, John. You know, there are places with flush toilets and electricity all over the country, it’s not like you’d be going to the Kalahari or something.” She stopped and began again. “This project would count for something with the partners, wouldn’t it?”

  He nodded.

  “Then go for it. How else are they going to realize you’re their best project guy?”

  Tietjen smiled at her. It was the closest he’d felt to her in a long time. Still, “But what about the boys?”

  “They have their own lives, John. They’ll be okay. God, these days they hardly know I’m around—”

  Tietjen heard the subtle emphasis on I, stressing his less-favored status. The warmth he’d felt a moment before flushed out of him and he was left only with Irene’s common sense. It was a good project, a plum, regardless of the site, which wasn’t Siberia. And it wouldn’t be forever, wherever it was.

  In late November he took the first of several trips to Whittendale. Construction wouldn’t start until late spring, but there were always reasons why he was needed in Massachusetts. RaiCo’s CFO liked him, said he was a “no-bullshit kinda guy,” which meant Tietjen was sometimes sent where the design team might otherwise have gone. He got to know the route—rail to Providence to copter to Whittendale field to car to the site—and the inside of the Red Lantern Motor Inn, the nearest motel to the construction site, and the inside of RaiCo’s conference rooms and company cafeteria. The trees and mechanically perfect landscaping around the old plant made no impression on him, except he noted that winter was setting in. The people were pleasant, hospitable even, inviting Tietjen to Thanksgiving parties and, on the next trip, New Year’s brunches. Tietjen made the right responses, went out for beer at the end of the day, put in his time at planning sessions that went on too late into the night. He enjoyed the work. The people were friendly. He just wanted to be home again.

  Each time he got back to the city it was as if he could breathe again. He never said that to anyone except Maia, who drank the coffee he brought her and nodded as if what he was saying made all the sense in the world. At work, the partners smiled on him: the reports from RaiCo were good. When a new meeting was scheduled in Massachusetts, there was some edged humor in the office about how tough John had it, going off for another long weekend in the country.

  Each time he merely smiled and shrugged and went home to pack a bag.

  But on the fourth trip, something felt wrong. He sat, staring out the window of a MetroRail club car, drinking gin and flat tonic, watching rooftops as featureless as cobblestones ripple past. They’d sent a man named Westley with him this time, a nervous, talkative, good-humored guy from Systems. There was nothing wrong with that, Tietjen thought. Nothing wrong with anything, only he had felt a vague sense of risk or threat all day, something that gnawed at him unassignably. What was threatened? What was endangered? He washed the taste of anxiety away with gin. Below, the city ebbed and receded into the dusk.

  “Goddamn hellhole. Doesn’t look so bad from up here, does it?” Westley began. Tietjen cut him off. He hated conversational gambits that depended on New York’s bad character. He sipped his drink absently and stared out across the complicated pattern of park and highway, the elegant silhouettes of the skyscrapers. A ragged strip of sunset above the Hudson caught fire in the mirrored spire of an East Side tower. Four days, Tietjen thought. A week at most. There is nothing to worry about. He took another sip of his drink, watching out the MetroRail window until distance and dusk closed off his last view. Then he closed his eyes.

  He dreamed and woke with a start, sweating and shaking. Passengers in the seats around him eyed him with a detached curiosity but kept a safe distance. At the end of the club car the steward, his arms akimbo and one hand resting lightly on the handle of a billy-club, was watching Tietjen. After a moment the steward relaxed. Tie
tjen rose to his feet feeling frail and off-balance; his stomach still churned, his heart was still pounding as he staggered toward the bar. What in God’s name had he been dreaming of? Disaster. The end of the world.

  He ordered another gin and tonic and found his seat again. There, grasping the glass as if it could hold him up, he peered into the car window at his own reflection. Westley said nothing, watching Tietjen curiously. Tietjen did not permit himself to drift into sleep again.

  They were met late that night at the MetroRail station in Providence and coptered out to RaiCo’s plant in Whittendale. Rooms had been booked for them at the Red Lantern. Westley wanted a drink and went off with the man who had met them. Tietjen found his room, tossed down his bag, and prepared to sleep.

  Instead, he lay awake for hours, afraid that the dreams would return. He knew that in the morning he’d need to concentrate; he wanted to sleep, but could not. In the end he lay on top of the blankets, staring at the ceiling of the room which was without even the charm of cracks or blemishes.

  All meetings were held in a conference room at RaiCo’s assembly plant, around an oval composition table fashioned to look like wood. The chairs were uncomfortable and the acoustics so bad that words spoken across the table were a jumble of vowels by the time Tietjen heard them. From time to time he was aware of faces turned toward him expectantly, and he looked down at the paper before him and forced the words written there into focus. He had shaded cityscapes in the margins.

  “I’m sorry, what?” he asked in response to a question.

  “Are you hungry? Lunch?” the man next to him repeated. Tietjen nodded thankfully, but when the group rose to leave the conference room he realized that he was not hungry. Instead he returned to his motel. For the first time in the thirty-six hours since he left New York, he was able to sleep for an hour; when he got back to the plant he felt much better, queasy but alert. The managers and designers he had been meeting with were clustered together by the door of the room. He greeted them, raising a hand to wave at Westley, hoping he looked refreshed and ready to get to work.