by Hari Kunzru
She fought back a sob, swallowed it with a slug of vodka soda. I was bold enough to put my arms around her for a moment, a friend to Leonie Wallace, a confidant. She plucked distractedly at the collar of my shirt and looked up at me with genuine warmth, her eye makeup running in black streaks down her cheeks. For a brief instant we were lit up by romance, like a couple in an old movie.
—Let’s go in to his room, she said, a husky note in her voice. We sat down in our usual places on the bed and she told me the news. None of it was good. Low scores on the Glasgow Coma Scale. Elevated intracranial pressure. I held her again. Her head lay on my chest, her breath moistening the shirt fabric over my collarbone. I could not grasp what was happening. I was holding Leonie with such tenderness. Carter was in a coma.
—I think he’s going to die, she said.
She sat up. I tried to compose myself. Then we made more drinks and listened to Carter’s records and made more drinks again until she swung her legs down off the bed and sat slumped forward for a moment, her hair falling over her knees like a damp towel on the head of a defeated boxer. The covers were a mess of cracker crumbs and spilled tequila. I checked the records in case there was something I’d forgotten to re-sleeve or return to the box.
—Gotta piss.
She left the door open. I could hear her urine hitting the toilet bowl. It’s cliché—the idealistic suitor who can’t believe his lady love is a human with a body—but I can’t pretend I wasn’t shocked. Again I felt the mixture of insult and arousal that came from her physical unselfconsciousness in my presence. I pulled myself off Carter’s bed, then took my own turn in the bathroom, with the door shut. When I came out, she was on the phone. I had the feeling that I sometimes had with Carter, a sort of giddy wonder at being around her in conditions of such intimacy.
—I’ve decided I want to look at it, she said. You’re coming with me.
—Coming where?
—Where they attacked him. Hunts Point.
—Why do we need to do that? There’s nothing there. If you want to see it I can show it to you on StreetView.
—Are you his friend?
—Of course I’m his friend.
—Then you should want to face it. To look at it, where it happened.
I didn’t really grasp her logic, but she seemed determined and I was too drunk to argue. A pattern was emerging in our communication, a kind of premature ease. I was falling into being for her what I had been for Carter, the sister a substitute for the brother. I could tell she was feeling it too, an unearned intimacy. I would follow where she led, that was already understood. Her phone rang.
—Car’s downstairs.
We got into the elevator, slumping against the walls as it lurched down.
The driver did not like the idea of going to Hunts Point.
—Why you want? Is no good there.
We gave him a dummy address to put into his GPS, a taquería near the intersection where Carter had been attacked.
—You get food somewhere else, plenty other places.
Leonie leaned into the gap between the front seats and flashed him a smile.
—Come on, man. We aren’t going to rob you.
The driver looked angry.
—Maybe you get out my car.
—I got a deal for you. You go off the clock. Just say you rejected the fare. I’ll give you two hundred cash to take us up there and just drive around. Two hundred dollars.
—I’m a working man, you know.
—We aren’t going to give you any trouble. Look at us.
—I not say anything, but—
He made an “alcohol” sign, putting a thumb up to his mouth and drinking.
—It’s cool. We’re cool. I know what you’re thinking. I see how your mind is working. We won’t throw up in your car. Look, I’ll pay a hundred up front. OK, I see now I don’t actually have cash, but we can stop at an ATM.
—A hundred now.
—Just drive us to an ATM. Then another hundred after. All we want you to do is take us up there, drive us around and take us back again.
—Sure. OK, miss. Sure.
Once the money was in his pocket, we traveled at speed up the FDR, past the UN and the stacked lights of the projects on Roosevelt Island, then slalomed through a tangle of bridges which ejected us into the Bronx, where I had never once been during my years in New York. Manhattan, cross-river patches of Brooklyn and Queens: I had the same reduced geography as all my friends. Hunts Point was entirely off our map. It was as if Carter had chosen it deliberately for its remoteness from our white world, a way to force a confrontation. There is always more to New York. More than you’ve seen or care to see.
—Sir, is it OK to smoke in your car?
—No.
—Sure. I respect that. That’s fine.
Leonie dropped her cigarettes back into her bag.
—I feel like puking anyway. Ask you a question, Seth? Carter had been good lately, right?
—Yeah.
—You know what I mean, don’t you? You see him every day.
—Good?
—Chill. Not too hyper.
—He’s been kind of preoccupied.
—About what?
—About a song. I don’t know if you remember, but he played it to you in the car on the way to Corny’s party.
She looked blank.
—He had it on repeat and you switched it off?
—What kind of a song?
—Something we made. A blues. It probably sounded real, but it wasn’t.
—What do you mean, it sounded real?
—It honestly doesn’t matter. Carter wanted to make something that sounded authentic. That sounded genuinely old.
—I have no idea what you’re talking about.
—I think he wanted to show—I don’t know any more. It was something that got hold of him. I couldn’t understand it.
We came down off the expressway into a bleak streetscape of yards and lockups. Auto parts, tires, scrap metal. Graffiti throwups on gates and shutters.
—Slow down, Leonie said to the driver.
Here and there we saw people standing on street corners, young men, a woman in a mesh dress that showed her underwear, another woman wearing high boots and leggings, who walked backwards a few paces as we passed, did a little shimmy. Near the intersection where Carter had been attacked, someone had parked a flatbed with dozens of portable toilets strapped to the back.
—We’ll get out here, just up ahead.
The driver wasn’t sure.
—You want get out?
—Just for a moment.
A deathly quiet. Loading bays, a yard with a chain link fence, a shuttered cash-and-carry.
—Here.
—Remember, there’s another hundred for taking us back.
—OK, but I don’t want wait here very long. This is not a good place.
We got out. A truck crawled down the street past us, the driver eyeing Leonie. There was a clunk as our driver locked his doors. I followed Leonie to the middle of the intersection, into the gathering silence.
—There’s nothing here.
Without warning, Leonie lay down, stretching out in the middle of the intersection.
—Don’t do that. Please get up.
She didn’t reply, just lay there with her eyes closed and her arms by her sides. I knew exactly what she was doing. Being Carter, trying to feel what he felt, putting herself in his place.
I looked and listened for traffic. Then I saw a glint of light. On the corner, tucked in by a fencepost, was a candle in a dish, sitting on the sidewalk next to a bag of rotting fruit. I left Leonie and knelt down in front of it. It was one of those religious candles sold in bodegas and botánicas, with a picture of some saint on the side. The place could not have been more desolate, yet someone had lit it, kept it alight. Did they do that for Carter? Perhaps shrines just spring up after any act of violence, anywhere there is some energy that people want to harness or ward off. For month
s, a cluster of candles and empty liquor bottles had marked a patch of wall in our neighborhood where a teenage boy got shot. Perhaps the candle had nothing to do with Carter. Perhaps it was none of my business.
Leonie got up and brushed herself down. The driver hesitated before he let us back in to his car. We drove downtown in silence. I couldn’t shake the memory of the eerie shrine at the crossroads. I wanted to talk about something, anything. I wanted to hear Leonie talk.
—You told me Carter’s not trusted with money.
She nodded. She was fiddling with her phone. I pushed.
—I didn’t know. I mean, I don’t know the background to that.
—You never noticed? Come on. The highs and lows? The bursts of manic energy?
—I know that he had some kind of diagnosis. When he was a kid. That your parents sent him to a doctor.
—That’s what he told you? Seth, your friend Carter has episodes. He finds it hard to keep his shit together, particularly when he’s under stress. Though apparently it’s been fine lately, since you seem to have no clue that he’s even sick.
—Not everyone has the same definition of normal.
—Give me a break. There’s a woman he phones, a counselor.
—Is she called Betty?
—I don’t know. Maybe.
—I thought she was his PA.
—Well, she is. But she’s also a licensed psychotherapist. She authorizes his expenses, keeps him on track. There’s some kind of trust. Your apartment’s probably owned by that. I know the building where you have your studio belongs to Corny. He owns that whole block. Carter had to beg him for it, for, like, two years.
I’d always thought of Carter as the most independent person I knew. Someone who was truly autonomous, free to follow his desires. As I heard her talk, something bleak and dark began to draw a grid over the sky. The flickering candle, the bag of rotten fruit, the new picture of my fragile, watched-over friend.
I assumed Leonie would direct the car to drop her off home in TriBeCa, but instead she came back with me, shoving some bills at the driver and half-tumbling out onto the sidewalk. Once again we sat on the big iron bed, facing the mirror. We played records. I heard little hisses and clicks as she smoked. Little intakes of breath.
Make me a pallet on your floor
Make me a pallet on your floor
I make sure your husband never know
Again she slept in her brother’s bed. My door was open all night.
THE FOLLOWING EVENING I was preparing for her to come round. The loft was clean and tidy. I’d chosen some records I particularly wanted Leonie to hear. I’d been to a fancy deli in Williamsburg and bought cold cuts, olives, some Italian cheese.
—Buzz me in.
I unlocked the door and set about opening a bottle of white wine that I had chilling in the freezer.
—Page Six? You asshole.
I turned round, confused. She was standing in the doorway, staring at me in disgust.
—You piece of shit.
She looked at the table setting, the neatly arranged dishes of appetizers.
—What the fuck is this?
—I knew you were coming over.
—You have to be joking. What, you think this is some kind of date?
She said I was no friend to her brother. She called me a series of vile and hurtful names. She wouldn’t believe that I didn’t understand what she was talking about, but she waited while I got my laptop and went online. To my horror, beneath items on a diet guru’s divorce and a domestic violence charge involving two RnB stars was a post headed Coma heir “cruising for sex.” What was a young music producer with a glittering career doing at 3am in the industrial wasteland of Hunts Point? It was clearly at least partly based on the conversation I’d had the day before. His roommate claimed…according to his producing partner…It was picture-bylined Lewis Carolle, who seemed to be a preppy young black guy in tortoiseshell glasses and a bow tie.
A gossip columnist. I’d been so stupid. He had seemed to know everything anyway. Like an idiot, I’d confirmed what must only have been a rumor. I’d given him his whole story. Leonie didn’t want to hear my explanation.
—You sleazy bastard.
—I swear I didn’t know he was a journalist.
—Yeah right. Did you still not know when you told him where to send the check?
—Come on, Leonie. I wouldn’t do that.
—Oh really? You cheap little fuck. How much did you sell my brother out for? I bet it wasn’t even a thousand bucks.
—That’s not fair.
—If anything changes with Carter, someone will call you. But don’t call me. I don’t want your number coming up on my screen. You took advantage of my brother, riding around on his coattails. I won’t let you do the same to me. So stay the fuck away.
I’m sorry. I never. I didn’t. I wasn’t.
Leonie, I didn’t know.
She walked out and slammed the door, leaving me with my small plates, my bottle of wine, the fresh linen I had put on Carter’s bed.
In the days after Leonie cut off contact, I underwent a sort of collapse, like a tower caving in on its foundations. The loft seemed hollow, cavernous. The pressed tin panels on the high ceilings, the great round stained glass window that flooded the space with spiritual light, these features had once seemed magical to me, signs of my charmed New York life. Now they just looked expensive. Without Carter, the light was merely an amenity, one that did not belong to me. I drank and looked at porn. I felt raw and frightened, my slug underbelly exposed.
The white rapper’s record label was leaving messages. They were sorry about Carter, but they were on a schedule. Did we have anything for them to hear, or should they look elsewhere? No, there was nothing for them to hear. There would never be anything for them to hear. I knew that. I was hopelessly lost, stunned into immobility. I spent most of my time in Carter’s room, putting 78’s on the turntable, sitting on the bed in front of the speakers.
Can’t tell the future, can’t forget the past
Lord it seems like every minute going to be my last
See see rider see what you done done
You made me love you now you trying to put me down
Why had Leonie treated me like that? She was being unfair. I’d never wanted much, I’d meant no harm. It was worse, somehow, that she’d let me get so close before pushing me away. I conducted conversations with her, arguments. I pleaded my case. Sometimes it was almost as if she were there in my head. Yes, Seth. I understand. I see what you mean.
Don’t get mad at me woman if I kicks in my sleep
I may dream things cause your heart to weep
I DID NOTHING, or next to nothing. I couldn’t work. I didn’t answer the phone or go online. I cut myself off from the world. Carter could have been alive or dead, I had no way of knowing, but I felt we were the same, each in his own coma, dislocated, floating free. One afternoon I was asleep in his bed, wrapped up in his antique patchwork quilt. By the time I heard the thumps and voices, the movers must have been working for at least an hour.
In that apartment, we put bills and bank statements and anything else official in the jaws of a stuffed coyote that sat in a corner by the door. When there were too many envelopes to fit in the coyote’s mouth, Carter stuffed them into a FedEx box and sent it to Betty. I never handled anything administrative. In terms of paperwork I was almost invisible. Perhaps there had been a letter. The state I was in, even if one had been addressed to me, I probably wouldn’t have opened it.
I came out to find all the furniture gone from the living area. The contents of my room were being boxed up by a crew of surly Russians or Ukrainians, big pale men with unempathic eyes. I couldn’t get any sense out of them. They shrugged at my questions, shook negating fingers. No English. They pointed out the boss, who showed me a work order. He had keys. His instructions were to empty the place and put everything in storage. I told him he had to stop and put it all back. I told him to get his gu
ys and leave. It escalated from there. I don’t remember getting Carter’s bat. I just found it in my hands. The boss said if I touched him, he’d call the cops. Go ahead, I said, swinging the bat. Call them. Then I locked myself in Carter’s room and tried to get Cornelius on the phone. His assistant said he was unavailable.
The police turned up and shouted at me to open the door. I was expecting to get arrested, but they didn’t want to get involved. One actually told me that I had more rights than I thought. My landlord needed a court order to get me out. He told me to phone a lawyer. The cops and the movers talked for a while. The movers agreed to leave.
Finally, I was alone again. Almost everything was gone from the apartment. Furniture, kitchen equipment. I now occupied an empty brick box, with dusty boot prints all over the hardwood floor. A well-proportioned bunker. My room had been mostly emptied. Cardboard boxes were piled in a corner which seemed to contain books and not much else. My bed was gone, so were most of my clothes. Only Carter’s room was untouched. I made his bed and generally straightened things up. His treasure chest of 78’s was still sitting in its place by the record deck. I phoned a locksmith and gave him Carter’s credit card number. While he worked, I looked at the small things that had been left behind on the floor. Restaurant flyers, paperclips, pennies. It would be hard to reconstruct our life from such fragments, to know what had been said and done in that space. I kept trying to reach Cornelius. After the third time, the assistant told me not to call again. She would be in touch if and when Mr. Wallace was available to speak to me. She suggested I send an email detailing “my concerns” and “sit tight” to await a response.
