“That was not here….” Heather raised her hands to her face, then did a double-take. “The chair’s vinyl again.”
“Yeahhhh….” Tommy raised his eyebrows. “Super vinyl. There’s never been anything so vinyl…” He looked around at the rusting detritus of the ancient clinic, the peeling paint on the windowsills, which had sunk and settled at nauseating angles. All at once, an inexplicable, inarticulate feeling stole over him like a fog. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something looming.
Tommy looked at Heather. “Do you see that guy?”
*************
“The only theory I can come up with,” the epidemiologist said, “Is that something in the building itself, something in its very structure, was contagious. Mold in the walls, maybe.”
“It would be the first I’ve ever heard of the disease being transmitted through an inanimate object.”
“And until a decade ago we never imagined the human immune system could attack itself. We’re learning new things all the time.”
“What about the man they all reported seeing?”
“The one they saw while they were all on drugs?” The epidemiologist scoffed. “Like I said, a collective hallucination. It has no bearing…”
“Logically, no.”
The epidemiologist frowned at that. “In any case, we’ve obviously got them under quarantine and we’ll be sending out word to the Department of Public Health. Hopefully we can at least curb their urge to throw these illegal parties in unsanitary spaces.”
“Nothing you can do to stop that. They’re kids; they want to have their fun.”
“Well, maybe next time they’ll do it somewhere a little more wholesome.”
Dr. Tayborn laughed. “I don’t think wholesome is on the agenda these days.” He buzzed the nurse to show the epidemiologist out, and wished them both good night. Dr. Tayborn sat there in his office, the sky darkening outside his windows, and marveled at the whole thing. From his office he could see the East River, wending silently from the Sound to the harbor, thick with pollution, a black smear in the gloaming. He had a perfect view of Roosevelt Island, where the infected patients were resting now. Coughing up blood in the tuberculosis ward, like nineteenth century waifs. Such an old-fashioned disease for such modern young things.
It reminded him a bit of a story he’d read once. It was about a party, in a large palace, with different colors in each room, and the last room was red.
He shook his head. These were fanciful thoughts, and he was late to meet the wife for dinner. She’d be interested, he thought as he put on his coat, to hear about the TB outbreak among the so-called club kids.
The phone rang. “Dr. Tayborn?”
“Yes.”
“I’m calling from Roosevelt Hospital. We have you down as the attending for the six TB patients?”
“What is it?”
“They’re not responding to treatment. All six of them hemorrhaging blood —we need to know what course you suggest at this point.”
“I’ll be right over.”
The elevator whisked Dr. Tayborn downstairs. He nodded to the doorman as he walked out the door. The doorman smiled sadly and politely averted his dark eyes. His black suit was impeccably pressed and brushed. He was a paragon of silent subservient grace. Dr. Tayborn wouldn’t have noticed him at all if he hadn’t let out the faintest cough.
*************
“Holy shit, you’re a mess.” Heather and Tommy looked at Eric and laughed.
“What?” Eric looked down. The front of his shirt was spotted with vivid red. The three of them laughed.
“I don’t know how I got there.”
They laughed again, harder.
“Now that you’re here, stay.” Tommy clasped Eric’s hands in his.
Robin whirled past them madly. She was dancing with the candy nurse, dancing without stopping. They were exquisitely agile, and they danced as one.
Eric nodded. “Well done, Heather. Excellent party.”
“Thanks.” Heather’s feet began to move.
“You know, I was starting to think this place was creepy—”
“Me too,” grinned Heather. Her jaw clicked.
“But now I don’t want to leave.”
“Me neither.”
“Same.” Tommy nodded extravagantly. “I never want to leave.”
“Look,” said Eric, “It’s that guy.” A familiar form walked into the room.
The DJ had changed and the music was faster now, hysterically fast; Eric began to sway with Tommy, and Robin and the candy nurse were just a blur in a rising, swelling maelstrom of motion. The somberly clad figure in the corner of the room watched them with approval.
“Come on,” Heather said, grinning wider. “Let’s dance.”
~~END~~
Broken Glass
by Jordan Mapes
My train is late. I stand at the platform, scuffing my shoes into the cement, running my raw tongue over my teeth. A woman next to me holds her daughter’s hand, looks down the tunnel for lights. The girl stares at me. She wipes her nose. I kick at imaginary pebbles on the platform. My commute is only 30 minutes, but it feels like an eternity. I open my Swiss army knife inside my pocket and run my thumb over the dull blade. I press deep and it makes a hard indention.
The horn sounds as a train on the other side of the tracks pulls up. Hordes of men and women in black pea coats exit while new commuters fight to get on. I check my watch, exhale, count the minutes. I really don’t know why I haven’t started smoking, I think to myself. Maybe that’s something to look into. I pull out my phone and click into the notepad —“BUY CIGARETTES.”
I place my phone in my pocket, continue scuffing the cement with my shoes. The little girl begins mimicking me, kicking pretend pebbles. I look at her. She stops. I go back to swinging my feet and she follows. Her mother notices, pulling her arm sharply. The girl lets out a yelp and stops.
I glance down the tunnel, searching for lights of an oncoming train. Nothing. More commuters descend the subway steps. Men in suits. Women in heels. Kids with backpacks and iPods. A group of three girls in belly shirts and jingling bracelets set up a loud boombox and an empty coffee can next to a bench. They begin doing backflips and pelvic thrusts. No one cares.
I dig the knife into my thumb harder. I curse myself for forgetting the glass. I’ll never leave it at home again. The day had been endless. I had counted down the minutes at work while I twisted and dug the ridges of the loose screw under my desk into my callused fingertips. The nut that held the screw in place was long gone from months ago when I had eaten it in a moment of panic.
Three teenage boys run down the stairs of the subway, laughing and pushing. They run into some commuters. People scold them. The boys’ pupils are large. Sweat glistens from their peach fuzz mustaches. I squint, focus on their clothes —oversized jackets, holey T-shirts, short pants, expensive shoes. The fluorescent light above them flickers.
I shut my eyes, listen to the sound of a low rumbling approaching in the tunnel. It’s coming from the wrong direction. Another train going the other way. I sigh, turn my back from the platform, keep my eyes shut. It’s okay, I think to myself. Calm down. The girl next to me whispers to her mom, “Is he okay?”
I open my eyes, walk over to the wall. I keep my eyes on the ground, look for anything sharp. A needle, a knife, a screw.
“Hey, Phil!”
I turn around to see Josh jogging toward me, pulling up his pants from the front as he runs. He smiles, the bottom of his glasses digging into his cheeks.
“Hey! I didn’t think I’d see you. You left work so fast.”
“Yeah . . . I need to get home. The train’s late.”
“I heard someone jumped in front of it at Canal Street.”
“Fuck,” I say. “Of course.” I kick an imaginary pebble, adjust my shoulder bag.
“I’m going to find a bus,” I tell Josh. “See you around.”
“Wait, I’ll come with you,” Josh says.<
br />
I head for the stairs. People look down the tunnel, fight to see who spots the train first. I try not to draw attention to our leaving.
I climb the stairs and click my teeth with each step. Chik-chik-chik. Step. Chik-chik-chik. Step. Chik-chik-chik. Step. I count the stairs. Twenty-seven stairs. There are 15 rubber ridges in each stair. I do the quick math in my head —15 times 27 is . . . 405. There are 405 rubber ridges in this staircase. If each stop on the 1 line has 27 steps and 405 ridges, and there are 38 stops on the 1 . . .
I hear a crash behind me. I jerk my head over my shoulder. Everyone else in the station has done the same —they’re looking to see what’s happened.
I see the broken glass.
Two of the teenage boys laugh manically. One is bent over. One of the laughing boys holds the end of a broken fluorescent bulb. Twinkling glass covers the boy’s hunched back.
People click their tongues, direct small children away from the teenagers. I head down the stairs to the boys.
“Phil, leave them alone. They’re just kids; they’re fooling around,” Josh says.
“Hey,” I say to the one with the tube. He ignores me, continues to laugh.
“Hey,” I say again.
The boy looks at me, keeps laughing. He wipes his eyes and stands up. “What?” the boy says.
“Can I have that?”
The boy looks around. “What?” he asks.
“Can I have that?”
The boy looks at the bulb, laughs. “What?” Sweat drips down the side of the kid’s hairline.
“Can I have that light bulb? The broken one.” I say.
He looks at the broken bulb, stretches his arm out to me. I reach for it, my fingers almost to the splinters, when Josh steps between us and swipes the tube out of the boy’s hand to the floor.
“Phil, what are you doing?” Josh says.
I bite my tongue hard, taste blood. The teenagers laugh. I stare at Josh. I turn away and run up the stairs, clicking my teeth, counting.
Fifteen ridges, 30 ridges, 45 ridges, 60 ridges . . . Josh bounds up the stairs behind me. I continue counting. Seventy-five ridges, 90 ridges, 105 ridges, 120 ridges . . .
“What were you thinking? If the cops came down there and found you with a broken light bulb, they’d blame that whole mess on you,” Josh says.
I don’t say anything. I count.
“You can’t be superman. Kids are going to do stupid things,” he says.
180 ridges, 195 ridges, 210 ridges, 225 ridges . . . more teenagers flood the stairs. They are loud, laughing, bantering. Heavy book bags, designer scarves and high-top Nike shoes run past in a blur of neon colors.
. . . 360 ridges, 375 ridges, 390 ridges. I exhale, watch the frozen breath rise to the dark sky.
“What makes you think I was going to take the blame for it?”
“What else would you do with a light bulb?”
I panic, look both directions down Seventh Avenue. “I don’t know. Let’s just find a bus.”
I reach into my pocket, open my knife again. I fit the dull blade into my thumb’s crease and press hard. I feel the indention deep into the pad of my finger, feel the pressure back from the bone. I wish I had grabbed the bulb faster, I think to myself. That glass would already be ground up and on my tongue. I push the knife deeper into my thumb. I want it to bleed, but I know that it won’t.
“What are you doing for the holidays?” Josh asks me.
“No real plans.”
“Not going to see family or anything?” he says.
“No.”
“You don’t see your family on the holidays?”
I flip the blade over in my hand and push down on the pad of my index finger.
“No. I don’t.”
“Okay, sorry. Well, my wife is going to make a big turkey and stuff. You’re more than welcome to come over,” he says.
“I’ll probably just stay home,” I say.
Josh shuffles his feet, kicks a frozen chunk of black snow between his shoes.
“The offer stands if you change your mind.”
I kick the oily snow out from between his feet and into the street. A passing car hits it and the dark mush splashes up onto the curb.
“Look, Phil,” Josh says. “If you don’t like me, you can just say it. We sit by each other for 40 hours a week and I know nothing about you. But if you want that, I’ll leave you alone.”
The bus pulls up. The people sitting at the stop hobble to the doors. I follow behind with Josh.
An older woman climbing into the bus drops a floral umbrella into the black snow. She steps off the bus as people push past her. She brushes the umbrella off, makes a sad scowl before placing the handle around her wrist. She travels to the end of the bus line. I make a motion for her to get in front of me. Her eyes light up and she climbs into the bus once again.
There’s only one bench open in the very back of the bus. I sit near the window. I shake my head and offer it to Josh. He shrugs his shoulders and climbs in. I follow.
I scrape the ridges of my finger over the blade of my knife.
“I just want to be friends. I don’t see the problem with that,” he says.
The woman with the ruined umbrella sits two rows in front of us. She tries to brush the black stains from the white fabric. It smears, creates grease spots over the bright blue and pink roses.
“I’m sorry Josh. I just keep to myself.”
“You don’t want to try and meet some new people?”
I close my knife. I take my hands out of my pockets and look at my fingers. They’re red and raw.
“What’s wrong with your hands?”
I put them back in my pocket and look across the aisle, out the window. We pass mirrored buildings, crowds of tourists, pop-up hot dog stands.
“I’ve got problems.”
“Everyone’s got problems.”
I let out a low laugh and raise my gaze to the ceiling of the bus. An advertisement above us reads “My Smile Has Never Been Better. Call 1-800-DENTURE.” It makes me laugh again. Everything is funny. Josh looks at me through the corner of his eye while I laugh. I haven’t laughed in years it seems —and it feels good. I cover my mouth with my hand and try to stifle the animal sounds coming from my throat.
“Are you okay?”
I laugh again, loud and hard. The woman with the soiled umbrella turns around and looks at me.
The bus slows to its first stop. We both grab ahold of the seat in front of us. No one gets off, but four people with grey hair and tired eyes get on. The bus starts moving again.
“Alright . . . whatever,” Josh says. “We don’t have to talk if you don’t feel like it.”
We continue slowly stopping and starting as the bus drops off people and picks up others. I flick open my knife in my coat, rub my fingers on its edge. Josh plays with his phone, tries to look deeply involved in his inbox filled with Viagra ads and sale notifications.
I wonder what Josh would say if I told him that I ate crushed glass. That I’d forgotten to bring my glass to work that day and wanted to take the light bulb from that kid in the subway because I didn’t think I was going to make it all the way home. What would Josh think if he knew I’d been doing this since I was 14? That I’d nearly died from it. That my esophagus was shot, my tongue torn up, my mouth always bleeding. How do you tell someone something like that?
The bus stops in the middle of an intersection. The lights go out, many of the people screamed. We look outside and see passing lights. The driver curses loudly, plays with the switches on the console.
The side of the bus bends in like an accordion as another moving chunk of metal slams into it. The woman with the umbrella disappears into the mesh of metal. The people standing in the aisles fall, fold to the ground. We cling to our seats while children scream and the other side of the bus falls open. My knife lodges itself into my palm.
The metal stops moving. I hear screaming, crying. I pull my hand from my pocket, take the knife out o
f my palm. I close it and place it into my pocket. I place my head into my hands and listen to the sounds.
Josh screams, tears at the seat in front of him. The urge to laugh rises in my belly. I tackle it and try to think about glass, cutting, nuts, bolts, cigarettes. I count the screams of the passengers, the benches that I can see, the drips of water that gather on the windows from the breathing inside.
Laughter enters my throat. I let it escape. I laugh. I laugh. I laugh. The corners of my mouth split open, bleeding. I cover my eyes with my bleeding hand.
Ambulances line up around the bus, ready to take us as we escape the metal death trap. Josh needs bandages on his hands. I need stitches from my knife. Heavy blankets and cups of broth warm us while we watch firefighters pull carnage from the bus.
Josh looks at his hands, doesn’t say anything. I hold tissue to my bleeding lips, look at the sky. I miss seeing stars. All I know of night is purple hued clouds hovering between buildings.
A medic helps another passenger, leaves us sitting at the back of the ambulance with our paper cups.
“When I was 14, I was in a car crash,” I tell Josh. “A drunk driver hit us head on.”
“We were going to see my grandparents. My mom was singing to keep herself awake, so I put on my headphones. I couldn’t even hear her scream,” I say.
I play with the bandage on my hand, pulling at the thick adhesive. The bandage is dark in the center where the blood has soaked into the underlying cotton. I lay my thumb on the dark spot and press hard.
“The windshield shattered,” I said. “The pieces got in my mouth.”
Josh grabs my bandaged hand and pulls it away from the pressure of my other thumb. I let him.
“I coughed up blood for so long after that crash. Pieces of glass had been lodged in my esophagus. The pieces were small enough that the doctors said they would work themselves out and it wouldn’t cause any serious damage.”
I pause as a stretcher is pulled from the bus with a crumpled body beneath a sheet. The medics carefully maneuver the stretcher. The ruined umbrella falls from the opening of the bus and rolls underneath it. The medics wheel the body in front of us and carefully load it into an ambulance. The medics get in the front of the car and start the ignition. The sirens stay silent as they drive her away.
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