Relics

by Jon Ray

The day had begun badly. As Marion scraped the crust of sleep from his bloodshot eyes, his feet floating over the filthy concrete stairs, he tried to shake the feeling that everything was off-kilter, out of sync. He felt trapped inside the faceless crowd as it pushed insistently onto New York Avenue; a melee of impatient elbows, messenger bags and bag lunches.

  To make matters worse, the sun was still shorting out, for the second week in a row — fluttering above the skyline like a failing neon tube. The washed-out morning sky pulsed along with it, bathing the city in a faint, steady strobe. Overhead, the police walk was nearly empty, with just a single cop lounging over the corner of West Fourth, methodically munching on a cruller. He surveyed the crowd with bored indifference, the fingers of his left hand hooked lazily through the wire mesh. Above him, the Aerial wound up Sixth Avenue, as usual, its sleek shadow rippling over the morning crowds. Marion noticed that it was one of the new cars, crisp racing stripes and rounded windows gleaming above the plodding herd. They had recently tweaked the mag-tech, as well, so that the cars were now suspended much farther below the guidetracks, making the illusion that they were floating in mid-air even more disconcertingly pronounced.

  Marion watched warily as the train passed in front of the pale sun. It was snaking slowly uptown, heading for the forest of glass and metal along Broadway; from Washington to Union Square, the Garden, Rock Center, Columbus and Lincoln, then a scenic swipe over Central Park before weaving back down Lex toward the Brooklyn Bridge.

  Marion had ridden the Aerial, once, a long time back. After the expansion, almost ten years ago, there had been a day of open transportation, and people had waited in line all morning for the short ride above the city. Marion had snuck out of the Center and hiked up to Central Park, fighting the crowds, arriving just in time to witness the ribbon cutting. He’d spent a few excited hours in Columbus Circle, jostling toward the turnstiles, watching the suspended trains sliding in and out of the station above his head.

  He still distinctly remembered that first queasy feeling, tugging angrily at his stomach as he shot up the fifteen stories toward the platform. He was crammed into the elevator, sandwiched between the operator’s stiff blue uniform and a rotund woman’s synthetic skirt, a fleshy prison that reeked of stale lavender and fresh sweat. The woman was staring down at him, shifting her massive hips beneath the warm floral print.

  “Whassa matter, honey? Never been up this high, huh? You all alone?”

  Marion twitched his head, a slight nod, and then backed into the elevator operator, who grunted and smacked him away.

  “S’all right, baby. Gonna be a fine ride.” She smiled indulgently, pressing Marion’s head deep into her belly, where he could hear the faint gurgling of her bowels. “S’gonna be just beautiful.”

  Beautiful or not, Marion had been terrified. From the moment the train doors hissed closed behind him, his legs threatened to collapse beneath the slight weight of his body. The fat woman insisted on holding him up to the tinted window, his nose pressed painfully against cold glass.

  The Tram had shot quietly out over the distant Columbus monument, the rough concrete of the station rolling back to reveal the highest reaches of the Upper West Side. Beneath them, the park seemed no bigger than a putting green, artists and pedestrians clogging its footpaths like a thicket of ants in search of a picnic. Marion had instantly recoiled, his stomach churning, only to be pushed back roughly against the glass, smearing the view with his spittle.

  “Lookit that,” the fat lady exclaimed. “You can see alla way to Times Square!”

  But Marion couldn’t see anything except the dizzying space between him and the streams of people moving below. He struggled against his pulsing blood, twisting his rigid body between the woman’s clammy hands.

  “Hey, you kin see yourself. Say hello, junior! Wave!” The fat lady was shaking his body like a party favor, dotting the window with grease spots from his forehead. The Tram was easing its way toward Lincoln Center, and the passengers were crowding the windows to see their faces reflected in the cracked, gunmetal-blue façade of the condemned Trump Tower. Marion caught only a brief glimpse of his own face, shock-white and terrified, before pulling away. Far below, Broadway swirled and eddied with weekend traffic; an intricate carpet of hats, scarves, and sculpted hair packed the street from edge to edge, filling the building-buffered gorge like heavy syrup. The bright green fibregrass was visible in thin strips through the shifting mass, emerald flashes inside a dark and drifting cloud.

  At that point Marion had fainted, his limp body beating a dull staccato against the glass as the fat lady continued to make him wave.

  Even here, from his relatively safe perspective on Sixth, the Aerial still made Marion shudder. As it turned sharply toward Washington Square and slipped from view, he swore he could see his own face pressed against the rear window, eyes rolling, small feet kicking in vain against flowered cotton.

  What had brought that back? Marion glanced around him, barely feeling the flesh and fabric that crowded him on all sides. He was still moving downtown, past the basketball courts, his feet shuffling forward on autopilot. He swiveled his head, eyes jumping from student to secretary to street vendor, trying to get everything to match up as it should, but the image refused to gel. It remained a quiet blur — hundreds of faces marching down Sixth Avenue, pale skin flickering beneath the weak morning light, eyes staring rigidly forward, bored and blank as an army of Barbie dolls.

  A small pocket of bohemian loudmouths jostled the crowd to Marion’s left, starting to peel away toward West Third. Marion caught a glimpse of NYU violet, a baggy sweatshirt and a backpack sporting a “SOHO≠chinatown” bumper sticker receding like a colorful beacon across that thick human sea. He jumped after it, knowing that it was his only hope. The pack was almost out of reach, but Marion made a concerted effort, fighting the flow of traffic as it angrily broke around him. He pivoted back and to the left, bouncing off a briefcase-toting lawyer and dodging a messenger bag as the commuters behind him muttered and cursed.

  “Hey, brat! Watch my valise!” Marion dipped back and down, ducking beneath a dog leash, resurfacing amid the twenty or so students pushing their way through the crowd. Someone passed a joint across his face, humming loudly — a combination of sounds and smells that helped Marion relax for the first time that day.

  “Yo, people!” someone yelled. “Clear the way! America’s future coming through!”

  The scrawny Korean guy with the joint guffawed, blowing smoke into the crowd. “Work’s canceled!” he added, waving lazily. “Everybody go home!”

  Marion stuck with the group until they had forged a few blocks along West Third and turned onto Thompson, plowing through the morning rush like a bulldozer. When everyone finally veered into the student center, Marion left them behind, heading toward the park. The Korean kid slapped his shoulder cheerfully as he left.

  “Hey man! We leave for lunch at twelve thirty — don’t be late.” A couple of kids laughed, still passing the joint around, a sweet cloud of smoke dissipating into the crowd.

  “Work’s canceled! Free day! Clear the streets!”

  Marion smiled, edging across the street toward the sidewalk. The mob was thinner here, off the thoroughfare, but not by much. Marion turned off of Thompson, tightening his jacket around his waist, scuffing his sneakers through the dense synthetic grass carpeting the intersection. Now that had been popular for a while, during the election: the Central Park expansion, the replanting… city beautification and all that. At this point, people no longer seemed to notice. The crowd trudged across the fibregrass-filled streets just like they had trudged across black asphalt, flattening the industrial foliage into the ground, totally ignoring the synthetic beauty sprouting beneath their feet.

  And then, just as Marion was studying the oily green blades, the sun winked out overhead like a blown bulb, sending him stumbling forward in the sudden darkness, smack into the hunched, suit-jacketed back in front of him.

  “L
earn to walk, moron!” The man looked around angrily, his outburst echoed by much of the crowd as they bumped and lurched along in the unexpected night.

  “Jesus! Watch your hands or I’m going to cut them off, sleazebag.” Marion swerved away from the angry girl, not wanting to be mistaken for the perv who’d just copped a complimentary feel. He inched carefully ahead, trying to adjust to the darkness. The three-quarters moon helped a bit, swathing the street in a soft white glow, allowing the rush to continue on at a slackened pace. The pile-up gradually unwound, pushing forward amid jostling and muttered obscenities. Marion moved with the crowd, his body shoved forward by an unseen hand, his right foot pressed painfully beneath a spike heel.

  A minute passed, and then another, before the sun finally snapped back on. It flashed awake with an audible pop, dousing the city in buttery light, shimmering slightly and even weaker than before. Marion looked around at the line of startled, blinking faces caught beneath the sudden glow, all vertigo and confusion. I see this every day, he thought, his pace quickening with the crowd. Why does it suddenly seem so alien? An old man with a hunchback crept up beside him, angling toward Washington Square.

  “Look, crap or get off the pot, okay?” Marion stepped back, watching the man spit roughly into the grass as he sliced his way through the crowd. The flow of people moved with him, streaming down West Fourth, back toward Sixth Avenue.

  Christ, Marion thought, I’m going in a giant circle. He considered jumping the barrier into the park, but decided against it. It would be easier to sneak back into the subway at Sixth, maybe hide out in the old newsstand until the morning rush had subsided. To be honest, Marion preferred to lounge underground, if he could — he enjoyed the ancient nooks and narrow spaces, the relative solitude of a world most folks tended to ignore. As the crowd heaved forward, Marion found himself pushed roughly against the giant support post that anchored the southwest corner of the park. He jerked his arm away from the gritty concrete, brushing sharp points of sand from his knobby elbow. Ahead of him, the crowd whirlpooled gracefully around the obstruction, extending in a smooth arc along the sidewalk, pushing out and back as they followed the contour of the post. Marion fell back into step, his shoulder grazing the rough, graffiti-covered surface of the pillar, his right elbow smarting. Against his better judgment, Marion gazed up at the massive structure, a 25-meter-round behemoth that shot straight up into the flickering sky, its top obscured by the stringy wisps of fake clouds that enshrouded the city. He felt a wave of dizziness and nausea, the mere contemplation of such heights roiling his stomach.

  “I hear the mayor wants to refinish them in some sort of Roman design,” a plump, shiny man exclaimed, moving alongside Marion as they skirted the post. “That’d be some kind of atrocity, eh? Huge Doric columns dotting the city, shooting up into the atmosphere… it makes one shudder just to think.”

  Marion looked over at the man, who was wearing a pastor’s black shirt and clerical collar, the sagging white strip stained slightly yellow beneath his double chin.

  “Lord knows, he’ll probably want Caryatids,” the minister continued, smiling placidly at Marion as he talked. “Humongous, big-breasted marble women holding up the sky… can you imagine?”

  Marion tried, but failed.

  “Now if someone were to ask me…” the paunchy pastor gazed up at the sweeping width of the column, still lost in contemplation. Marion grabbed the chance to veer off, pushing into the crowd, dodging a coffee vendor who was leaning crookedly against his cart.

  “Hey hey hey! You slow down, hear?” Marion glanced back, waving apologetically. The minister was, thankfully, nowhere to be seen. Marion wasn’t a big fan of human interaction, and this morning had already contained more than he could reasonably bear.

  He took one last look up at the column, its crushing, solid weight towering over the morning chaos. Above the jostling heads of the crowd someone had scrawled a dripping WASHINGTON POST in bright red letters. Whoever the comedian was, he had obviously used a ladder — it was the last human mark before the enormous concrete pillar soared up into the washed-out sky and became a faint dark line, its infinite height mocking the stunted buildings below.

  “Whoa! Don’t scuff the shoes, kid.” Marion whipped around yet again, pulling nose-to-nose with a shaggy bum holding a bouquet of wilted yellow roses. “Pay attention, why don’cha? You gonna pay for these?” Marion glanced down, confused, finding the man’s feet wrapped tightly in layers of newspaper and twine.

  “Yeah! Those cost money, ya know.” They had been joined by a filthy old woman, her face haphazardly painted with what looked like finger paint, her skeletal figure draped in a torn nightdress. The passing commuters instinctively avoided the scene like rapids fanning around a rock. Marion followed their lead, backing away from the couple, merging deftly with the crowd as they continued crosstown. As he pulled free, Marion saw the bum smiling shyly at the old woman.

  “I brought you some flowers.”

  The shaking voice faded, disappearing beneath the long shadow of the column. Why he was so drawn to that damn support today, Marion couldn’t say. After all, he passed at least one of those ugly posts every day; even slept next to one, sunk deep against the Union Square station. But today the sight of the Washington Square column had struck him as misplaced and frightening, somehow — it seemed especially broad and ominous, while the thousands of souls scurrying beneath its bulk seemed impossibly oblivious to the dark weight looming overhead.

  Marion pulled angrily off to one side, squeezing through the ranks of the working wounded, seeking some sort of refuge. What the hell was wrong? It was like looking at a word you’ve written all your life and finding a foreign language. The letters were all there, but it simply was not right. Marion finally wrested himself free of the crowd just past the Methodist church, scurrying down into a little alcove he’d never really seen before, turning to watch the solid wall of commuters as they rushed obliviously by.

  He had overslept — that’s where it had all began. He’d been dreaming that stupid dream, woken up late, and almost been crushed beneath the subway mob. He rarely overslept, and certainly never got caught in the morning rush, not like this. It had started there, and the day had simply progressed from bad to worse. Marion checked the stream of pedestrians, watching for an opening in the blur of cloth and swinging hands, resolving to sneak back underground as quickly as possible. All it would take was a quick, brutal walk to the subway, and then he could return to his life of quiet subterranean safety.

  At least he was next to a church, Marion noted hopefully — maybe someone would be charitable and let him through. He glanced over his shoulder and quickly took in the door behind him, a wrought iron affair covering milky glass. Hung haphazardly at eye level, a weathered plastic sign proclaimed Religious Books and Novelties. Marion felt a sudden sinking panic tighten his stomach.

  “Well look, there you are! I thought perhaps I had lost you.” The porcine pastor popped out of the passing crowd like a cork, wiping oil and sweat from his sizable neck with a tiny handkerchief. He stepped carefully down the small staircase, brandishing a huge brass keychain in his right hand. “I do hate this morning bustle, let me tell you.”

  Marion looked around nervously, caught between the door’s cold ironwork and the minister’s impressive belly. He tensed his legs to rush forward, wanting no part of this weirdo’s religious routine. Morally, he had no qualms about spilling the good father on his fat keister, if need be.

  “There’s definitely something different about today,” the minister remarked cheerfully, his matter-of-fact tone freezing Marion mid-pounce. “Have you noticed?”

  After a brief pause, filled only with the stomp and shuffle of the busy street, Marion finally gave a wary shake of his head, still struggling with his fight or flight instinct. The minister shrugged, his keyring jangling loudly as it scraped against the lock.

  “Something oddly out of place this morning, mark my word.” He pushed the door open
with one doughy hand, winking at Marion as he stepped inside. “Could be the apocalypse. Would you like to come in?”

  Marion hesitated, throwing one last look at the crowd behind him. The thick parade of people flowed steadily toward New York Ave., and Marion could see the deluge from the subway still pouring out across the grassy avenue.

  “Didn’t like that blackout one bit, either,” the minister continued, shambling toward the back of his shop. “Bad omen, that.”

  Marion ran his fingers through stringy hair, knowing that he should listen to his suspicious brain and quickly effect an escape. And yet, even though he was completely convinced it was a huge mistake, he found himself inexplicably turning his back on the crowded street and wedging his body through the half-open door.

  Allison swore softly into her headset, repeatedly stabbing at the gummed-up autodial as the dead line buzzed annoyingly into her ear. Her console had been acting up all morning, undoubtedly courtesy of her alcoholic counterpart on the night shift, who had a habit of spilling her vodka-and-cranberries all over the console. Whatever the reason, she was getting more than a little sick of fighting with the sticky buttons.

  “Sst! Allie!” Allison looked up gratefully, happy to see Joanne winding her way through the center, holding a couple of coffees above her bandanna-clad head. “Hey, could you move?” Joanne scowled at one of the new temps, kicking his knee out of the aisle as she squeezed between desks. The lounger, as usual, didn’t even glance up from his monitor.

  “Need help?” Allison swiveled in her chair, finally silencing her bleating phone by yanking the headset plug from the base.

  “No, I’m okay.” Joanne paused, scanning the crowded room for passage. “Just pull me out if I sink beneath the facelift floodline, okay?” Allison laughed, watching several tight and unsmiling faces turn in glaring disapproval.

  “So, what’s up?” Allison carefully cradled her coffee, twisting her mouthpiece out of the way to drink. Joanne pressed her way into the tiny cubicle and squatted, leaning against the next station.

  “Sun’s out.”

  Allison grimaced. “I should’ve known — it’s been that kind of day. How long?”

  Joanne held up two fingers in a shaky peace sign, sipping her coffee. “Couple of minutes, maybe. Might be back on by now.”

  Allison blew angrily into her hot drink, brandishing her middle finger. “To the god of Con Ed.”

  “Amen, sister.”

  They caffeinated themselves in silence for a moment, the hushed murmur of a hundred cold calls stirring the stale air around them.

  “So,” Joanne finally said, tucking one stringy brown bang back into her head scarf, “are you coming tonight?”

  “Coming? Where?”

  “You know, to the thing.”

  “Oh.” Allison picked at her phone pad, scrapping a mysterious black crust off the speaker grill. “What is it again? Dyckman House?”

  “No, not Dyckman House.” Joanne sighed, exasperated. “Dyckman House is gone, Allie. They leveled it last month.”

  “What? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I did,” Joanne said, obviously trying to keep her annoyance in check. “You missed the rally because your neighbor’s cat was sick.”

  “Oh, crap.” Allison glanced around guiltily. “They really knocked it down?”

  “Yes, they did. Manhattan’s last farmhouse is now New York’s largest tanning parlor.”

  “God, Joanne, I’m so sorry.”

  Joanne shrugged, nibbling the edge of her paper cup. “Don’t be. It’s not your fault.”

  “But Dyckman House. I mean, Christ, is nothing sacred?”

  “Apparently not. So are you coming tonight?”

  Allison squinted, tapping her foam-covered mouthpiece against her forehead. “So what is it again?”

  “It’s a direct action and speaker series at the Center.”

  “The Medical Center?”

  Joanne groaned, rubbing her neck. “Yes, deary. The very scary New York Science Advisory and Medical Research Center. I only gave you the flyer like a week ago.”

  “Well, yeah, I know.” Allison fidgeted, tipping back in her chair, knocking against the padded cubicle wall. “But I’m just not sure if I…”

  “What?” Joanne snapped. “Care enough to go?”

  Allison sighed. “C’mon, Joanne, don’t lecture me.”

  “Look, I’m sorry. But you know what they do.”

  “Well, they do a lot of things, okay?” Allison thumped her chair back to earth. “I mean, low income preventive care, for one. Exams, physical therapy, reproductive health services…”

  “Allie, they pay women for fetal tissue. They buy flesh.” Joanne couldn’t quite suppress one of her infuriating smirks. “Or were you getting to that?”

  “I know, Joanne, all right?” Allison went back to fiddling with her phone, tracing the codes with a gnawed-on fingernail. “But, you know, it’s not like they’re out there handing fistfuls of cash to pregnant women on the street. They just subsidize the procedure, right? And then only a tiny fraction of the cells are ever used, so you don’t even know if you’re ever going to get a reimbursement check. Besides, if someone really needs an abortion…”

  “Allie, the government is putting a price on fertility,” Joanne pleaded, looking hurt. “That’s wrong, and you know it. Just come and listen, okay?”

  Allison finally gave up, knowing that this was one she simply wasn’t going to win. “Okay, Joanne, fine. But I am not going to carry a sign, or chant some ridiculous slogan, or, you know, chain myself to a nurse.”

  Joanne grinned. “How about a doctor?”

  “Joanne…”

  “How about a really cute doctor?”

  Before Allison could aim a good kick at Joanne’s shin, she spotted Saul, the floor manager, working his way across the office, navigating the dense network of operators with his swollen stomach.

  “Something wrong, ladies?”

  Joanne jumped up innocently, waving him over. “Just trying to help Allie here with her station — the pad’s all screwed up, as usual. You really need to figure out what the hell goes on during the night shift, you know?”

  Allison glared at her, pulling her foam mouthpiece back into place. “Thanks a lot.”

  “My pleasure,” she whispered, slipping toward her cube. “Now remember, you promised.”

  “Cross my heart. Are you gonna take the subway?”

  “Are you kidding? During rush hour? Let’s try to grab a cab — or maybe even walk. You know, get some cardio in.”

  “Walk to a march?” Allison raised her eyebrows in mock surprise. “What a novel idea.”

  “What seems to be the problem?” Saul approached Allison’s desk at half-speed, his eyes busy monitoring Cindy Truman’s cleavage.

  “My autodial’s screwed — it’s been stuck all day. Also, I keep getting Chicago, even though I’m supposed to be working Queens today.” Saul leaned over, sniffing at the monitor.

  “That’s funny,” he said, prodding the gummy buttons. “We’re not supposed to be doing Chicago until Monday.”

  “Well, tell that to the system, okay? My preface sets are completely screwed up.” Allison pushed back from her desk, carefully avoiding Saul’s bulging belly. “I’m taking an early break.” Saul frowned at the mediascreen, lowering himself into Allison’s chair as she threaded her way out of the workroom.

  Outside, the hallway was still packed. Allison grimly surrendered herself to the mob, maneuvering in behind a doc carrier rolling his cart in the general direction of the employee cafeteria.

  “New York City,” she grumbled, pushing her way across the hall and into the snack machine line. “What a pit.”

  Unsurprisingly, no one bothered to acknowledge her comment. Even on break, the members of the suit-and-tie brigade tended to ignore everything except their newspapers as they waited patiently for a sugar fix. As Allison settled into the donut queue, she promised herself for the millionth t
ime that she would get the hell out of the public sector before it killed her.

  By the time she had inched her way to the front of the line, Allison’s coffee had mutated into a cold tan sludge, severely diminishing its dunking potential. She considered nuking it, but decided that she might as well get a hot latte to go with her plastic-wrapped pastry. As she tossed her half-full cup into the trash, Allison guiltily noticed a petition protesting the use of disposable cups taped crookedly over the waxy coffee-dispensing mural. Of course, there was only one signature scrawled across the top, and it was Joanne’s. Typical, Allison thought, prying her latte from the machine’s metal jaws. Joanne Murphy, lone defender of justice and ecological purity.

  As she turned, the line surged forward, making Allison spill some of her coffee onto the carpet. She quickly sipped at the overflow, brushing her wet hand along her slacks, trying to maneuver toward the break room. Someone else knocked her elbow, sending more coffee cascading down her arm and onto the carpet.

  “Is this inter-borough rudeness week? Is that it?” Allison scowled, holding her coffee aloft like an Olympic torch, ready to permanently scar the next body that smacked into her.

  “Hot beverage coming through. Move or die.” The crowd pushed hard against her, completely unintimidated.

  The break room was packed to overflowing, and Allison had to feign drunkenness to get people out of her way. By the time she finally staggered into a window seat, her coffee cup was half-empty and her cruller mostly crumbs. The vinyl cover on her chair was badly split and, when she collapsed into it, one of the chair legs wobbled ominously.

  “Christ,” Allison muttered, “why do I even bother?” The half-obscured view of the East River was even worse than usual, the clear, toilet-blue water almost entirely obscured by the morning haze. The sun was back on, for the moment, but Allison didn’t give it long. Its pale outline, reflected on the oily glass facade of the U.N. building, was shaking badly, barely throwing enough light to read by. Allison took another gulp of her tepid latte, turning her attention to the human tide flowing along Lexington instead.

  I talk to these people, she mused, pressing her forehead against the tinted window glass. I talk to these people every day. She tried to focus on the crowd below, feeling her skin stick and pull along the cool glass as she rolled her head back and forth. She played the little game she sometimes played, attempting to discern individual faces, different walks, different modes of dress. From twelve stories up, though, it was next to impossible; the crowd was little more than a faint charcoal blur, two mottled worms crawling past each other at the river’s edge.

  The simple force of the observation seemed surprising, though. This is where the voices come from. Allison had been working for Paradigmatic Solutions for almost two years now, but she didn’t actually think about her job all that much. It was just a four-day-a-week stopgap — an easy paycheck that carried government benefits and left her plenty of time to paint. But somehow, something about that particular moment — the brown-sugar sun, the plodding anonymous mob, her mouthful of tepid coffee and crumbling cruller — made Allison stop and consider the thousands of people she had harassed over the last few years. Where are those people now? Allison couldn’t help but wonder. What are they doing? Ten hours a day on the phone, and they all seemed like a single person.

  “Yes sir, and how did you vote in the last election?” Allison could hear her own voice, but she couldn’t hear the reply. Where did all of those generic voices end up? Where did all of the answers and opinions finally meet? Allison imagined a massive political survey cesspool, a tangle of wires and speakers swimming in conductive jelly. All of greater New York, along with Houston, D.C., San Francisco — every opinion and complaint in indoor America, siphoned from the minds and homes of all those protected cities, fed into a giant holding pen, let loose to argue eternally in a vast secret lab.

  Allison tried to recall some of the voices; the wheezing fry cook from Flushing who had called the mayor a “slant-eyed gook.” The Seattle programming nerd mumbling about “debugging the Biosystem.” All those housewives, wage slaves, and closet radicals venting their frustration over the phone, trying to explain exactly what was wrong with this life.

  Too little money. Too much work. Not enough time. Too many people.

  And to what end? Allison really could not guess. For all of the questions she had asked, all of the opinions she’d collected, it remained a mystery that simply couldn’t be solved. Could that power be harnessed? Was the heat of that anger being channeled back into the city itself, lighting the skyline and keeping the disgruntled inhabitants warm at night? For once Allison, who had none of Joanne’s political fervor, really wanted to know. As she watched that multitude of people spread out below, people she talked to every day, she truly wondered where the hell their voices were going.

  Even later, buried in the survey room, Allison couldn’t shake her odd curiosity. The pressing closeness of the operators, the dull glow of the strip lights, the mechanical sound of her own voice all swirled together into an unsettling blur.

  “I think Mayor Matsumoto is a cheat and a liar, is what I think,” a throaty woman was complaining. “He should go back to China!”

  “Actually,” Allison said, try to keep her voice level, “I believe he was born and raised in Hoboken, with a naturalized Japanese father and a Scotch-Irish mother.”

  “Who cares? He should be impeached.”

  Allison stared at her question screen, trying to remember exactly where she was. “So your approval rating would be…”

  “Nothing, I told you! A big fat zero.” Allison tried to picture the woman, conjuring up a thick pair of cracked lips pulling heavily on a menthol cigarette.

  “Okay, thank you. Um, now to move on to national politics…” Allison floundered, the phone line snapping like hot grease in her ear.

  “President Knox? Is that what you’re asking? The man is a saint, I’ll tell you that right now.” Allison felt those lips pressing against the receiver, spitting smoke and saliva. She adjusted her headphones, trying to concentrate.

  “Do you feel that the president’s current position on the energy-sharing initiative…”

  “What do you want? I give him high marks, okay?” The woman coughed roughly, covering the faint sound of children crying. “I give Bobby a ten, and god help him visit New York again, all right?”

  “Yes ma’am,” Allison prompted, “but specifically…” The line clicked flat, and her mediascreen went dead. Allison sighed, massaging her shoulders, looking at the callers around her. Old woman and students, mostly, each with a headset clamped securely to their skulls, each reading the same questions off of the same screens, pulling information from every bored and available citizen of the wired world.

  “Where does it all go?” Allison tapped her phone again, hitting the auto-dial with the end of a pencil. She listened to the faint ringing, somewhere deep inside Cambria Heights, and prayed silently for the day to end.

  The shop, Marion soon realized, was incredibly tacky. As the minister rattled about the floor, unlocking the register and wiping the counters, Marion glanced around at the various display cases and bookshelves. The store was stuffed with trinkets and cheap souvenirs: incense burners in all shapes and sizes, multiple shelves full of round-bellied Buddhas and myriad Hindu gods, unpainted plaster statues of the Virgin Mary, and all sizes of gilt-edged Torahs, Qurans and Bibles. Hanging on the rear wall, behind the counter, was a 3-D rendition of Jesus emerging from his tomb. The man’s vaguely zombie-looking visage turned slowly as Marion crossed the room, his right eye winking creepily in the dim light.

  “Nice, isn’t it?” the minister asked, straightening some postcards above the register. “Though I do wish he’d blink both eyes. I’m not sure he’d be quite so cheeky upon his return, eh?” Marion smiled indulgently, trying to appear interested. The minister, oblivious, began rummaging behind the counter, his broad rump flashing in and out of sight above the polished surface. M
arion picked up a garishly painted porcelain statue of Ganesha, the elephant-headed Hindu god, trying to fathom why he’d entered this kitschy cave in the first place.

  “Should be busy today. Tomorrow being Good Friday, you know.”

  Actually, Marion didn’t know. Was it Easter already? It seemed as though winter had never ended.

  “I’ve seen you before, you know,” the minister called out, stepping out from behind the counter. “In the subway, if I’m not mistaken.”

  Marion put the Ganesha back down, watching warily as the minister adjusted his soiled collar. “I don’t forget many people, you know. I’m good that way.” He leaned in conspiratorially. “You fix things, don’t you? Next to the shoeshine station at fourteenth.” Marion nodded, amazed that anyone would remember him.

  “The reason I know is because you did some work for me.” He dug quickly into his vest pocket, his pudgy hand showering the floor with peanut shells and gum wrappers as it re-emerged. “On my timepiece, late last month.” The minister held out his dented pocket watch, a silver moon swinging lazily on the end of a paper-clip chain. Marion could see that it was an ancient Bulova, badly tarnished and missing its snapcover.

  “On a Sunday, I think. Remember that?” Marion couldn’t say that he did, but then, he fixed a ton of watches. “Well, no mind.” The minister shrugged, tucking the watch back into his inside pocket. “You did a fine job, regardless. Do you live in the subway?” The question caught Marion by surprise, making him fear that he’d been lured into some sort of social services center or homeless shelter. The minister, however, didn’t seem all that concerned about Marion’s living arrangements, or lack thereof.

  “Don’t see how anyone could sleep on those benches, I’ll tell you that. I can’t even sit on them.” The minister shuffled back to the counter, laughing. “Though Lord knows, it’s probably better than living aboveground. Cleaner, anyway.” He dipped behind the counter again, his reedy voice muffled behind wood. “I prefer the Aerial myself, to be honest. Lovely view, air conditioning, all that.”

  Marion eyed the minister as he bounced around behind the counter like a black-clad beach ball, oddly mesmerized. When he finally popped back up, he was holding a tall, rattling display tree full of key chains and jewelry.

  “I really shouldn’t be selling all of these secular items,” he admitted, pulling out a stack of bumper stickers. “But they do so well, you know. Much better than the religious items, I’m afraid.” Marion moved one cautious step closer, poking at the pile of stickers. “Like those. Very popular, although only god knows where people put them.” The minister smiled, straightening the stack with the side of his hand. “But they do sell well, you know, bumpers or no. Must be nostalgia.”

  Marion nodded, browsing the rack of key chains with his fingertips.

  “Would you like something?” The minister spread his arms magnanimously, indicating the tchotchke forest littering his counter. “You should take something — I don’t mind. After all, you did fix my watch.” Marion glanced up, wondering if there was some sort of catch.

  “Really, what would you like?” The minister twirled the key chains, making them clatter and shake. “Just grab one. It’s certainly no great loss for me.”

  Marion looked back at the chains, watching them spin above the polished wood. They were small cast-iron tourist bait, mostly buildings and monuments, nothing very interesting. There were miniature Chrysler buildings, Empire States, a tiny Brooklyn Bridge — nothing really worth taking. In fact, Marion was just about to shrug the gift off when the statue caught his eye.

  “See something?” the minister asked, delighted. His stubby fingers stopped twirling, jerking the display rack to a halt. “What do you want?”

  Marion reached out, fingering the small sculpture. It was the new one, the Liberty Flame, clipped to the end of a cheap aluminum chain. It looked even uglier in miniature, Marion thought. The minister seemed skeptical.

  “You want that?” Marion lowered his head, distracted, pushing the angular Flame out of the way. Behind it was another; identically shiny, gold and misshapen. Marion dug farther back, shoving past the third and fourth chains, biting his lower lip. The minister seemed confused.

  “They’re all the same, I can assure you.” Marion squinted, grabbing the second to last key chain, smiling with pleasure and surprise. He pulled it out with a snap, scattering half a dozen Liberty Flames across the hardwood floor.

  “Oh!” the minister exclaimed, more at the statue than the mess. “I didn’t know we had any of those left.” Marion held the statue tightly, unclipping the keychain from the tip of her crown.

  “No keys, eh?” The minister laughed, pulling the display around. He bent over, peering through the forest of tiny buildings. “Well, you got the last one. You’re a lucky boy.”

  He straightened up with a broad smile, looking for Marion, but all he caught was the tail end of a blue windbreaker disappearing into the street.

  Joanne returned from her afternoon break just minutes before five — late even for her. She seemed slightly frantic as she fought her way toward the work station, her thin lips cramped into a frown that settled a bit too easily into her face.

  “Yo, Allie, you are not going to believe this!” She waved her hands over the shift-change turmoil of the phone room, impatiently pushing the other operators out of her way.

  “Joanne, you’ve been gone for half an hour. Saul put somebody else on your station.”

  Joanne rolled her eyes. “Look, forget the weasel, okay? Work’s over.” She began to shake her head violently, spraying water across Allison’s console. “Look at this.”

  “Joanne.” Allison pulled her purse away, shaking the beaded water onto the floor. “Why do you do these things?”

  Joanne grinned, fluffing her dark, wet hair between her fingers. “What does that look like to you?”

  “I don’t know, Joanne. I’ll take a chance and say water.”

  “Touch it.”

  “Jo…”

  “No, c’mon Allie, touch it.” Joanne reached out, pushing Allison with her damp fingers. Allison laughed, pulling away.

  “Okay, it’s cold water.”

  “Close,” Joanne said, grinning. “It’s snow.”

  “What?” The gnarled old lady sitting across from Allison peered over her magazine. A woman with a Macy’s bag stuffed full of knitting paused on her way out.

  “That’s right, girls.” Joanne straightened up, staring them down. “You heard me. It’s snowing.”

  “Snowing? But Joanne…” Allison gathered up her belongings, craning to see out the far windows. Joanne’s voice jacked up a notch.

  “Here it is the ass-end of April, it’s snowing all across New York, and our beloved Mayor Matsumoto is onscreen right now, telling us to bear up under this minor inconvenience.” Somebody groaned, kicking off a grumbling static of insurrection. Allison grabbed Joanne’s shoulder.

  “Come on, let’s go.”

  “Listen!” Joanne raised her voice, then her fist, causing Allison to wince and back away. “There’s a demonstration tonight, at the Medical Complex, if you really want to do some good.” People mostly ignored her, impatiently knocking their way toward the exit. “Show up and tell this city what you think! We’ll march on City Hall!”

  The disgusted chorus of grunts and curses rose steadily, gradually smothering Joanne’s fervent, nasal whine. Although she felt guilty as hell for doing it, Allison surreptitiously joined the general stampede toward the elevators, dragging her purse behind her, knowing that it would be far easier to escape now and wait for Joanne in the lobby.

  Outside, the streets were a complete disaster zone, filled with an angry, jostling mob. People pressed in from all sides, a cold, snow-slicked tide oozing toward Grand Central, the Bryant Park pavilion, the library — anywhere to avoid the frozen slush currently soaking the city.

  “Why’d you leave me there? I was getting results.”

  Allison was too busy
fighting the crush to feign remorse. “Right. You’re lucky you didn’t get killed.”

  At least the snowfall was still fairly light, melting in gray streaks against still-warm concrete facades. But the steadily plummeting mercury, along with the random sting of snowflakes against her skin, was making Allison desperately dream of their three-room hovel. She glanced back over the lowered heads of the crowd, past the misty, crouched outlines of the Public Library lions, trying to remember if she had foolishly left her beater rain boots tucked into the closet at work.

  “Look, Jo, can we stop by the apartment?” Allison tugged her cardigan sleeves down lower, trying to cover her hands. “I’m really gonna get soaked.”

  “Allie, we don’t have time. I promised I’d help set up, and it’s supposed to kick off at six.” Joanne was pushing steadily forward, trying to speed up the trudging traffic. “This is really gonna be big, I think. I mean, look at this — snow on Easter weekend. Everybody’s pissed.”

  Allison dropped her head in defeat, tucking her hands under her crossed arms. The snow seemed suddenly heavier, sheeting white beneath a dull layer of clouds, the greenish sky flashing intermittently bright, as if some giant photographer was taking flash pictures. The incongruity of the scene would have been funny, if it hadn’t been so horribly painful. It was obvious that everyone had busted out their most hopeful Spring-Summer collections this morning, celebrating the seventy-degree forecast. And now look at us, Allison thought bitterly: collars turned up, heads bowed, crawling down Fifth Ave. like the world’s most pathetic Easter parade.

  “What is this?” Joanne demanded, trying to speed up. “Is everyone grazing? Let’s move a little, people!” A young waitress in front of her turned around, her face flushed with cold and anger.

  “We’re doing what we can, all right? It’s not my fault it’s snowing!” Allison stared at the girl’s face, surprised to see an icy tear smeared across one cheek. “It’s so stupid, when they could, they could just make it, like, seventy-five degrees and sunny every stupid day if they wanted. But they don’t, and so it, this happens and it — it just sucks.”

  “We know,” Allison said, giving Joanne a nasty look. “It’s okay, everybody’s a little stressed, is all.”

  “That’s the point,” Joanne said cheerfully, ignoring the crying girl. “This protest is going to be massive, Allie. I mean, if there’s one thing New York loves to do, it’s complain.”

  As usual, Allison found herself torn between disgust at Joanne’s rudeness and awe at her indomitable energy. Beneath their feet, the fibregrass was turning into a slushy soup of melting snow and black, crusting ice. Allison did the best she could to avoid the bigger puddles as Joanne cut over toward New York Ave., heading for the Times Square pedicab station.

  Against all odds, Joanne managed to muscle her way to the front of the bikeway line and flag down a bright yellow two-seater peddled by a surly-looking Sikh with an umbrella attached to his turban. Allison quickly followed her, squeezing though the station’s concrete entrance and hopping on board, trying to ignore the angry stares of everyone waiting in the line they had just jumped.

  It wasn’t until they had left that seething mob a few miles behind, and were cruising safely through Chinatown on the elevated lanes, that Allison suddenly recalled her weird afternoon reverie. Against her better judgment, she decided to ask Joanne about it.

  “Hey, Jo?”

  “Hey what?”

  “What do you think they do with the survey results?”

  Her friend peered over through wet bangs, looking amused. “What, at work?”

  “Yes,” Allison said, somewhat defensively. “Why the hell do they need all that stuff?”

  Joanne shook her head, stray strands of hair sticking to her bone-white cheeks. “They need it so that our fearful leader Mayor Matsumoto and pretty-boy President Knox will know what to say, my dear.” She leaned out of the covered cab and lifted her face to the falling snow, one hand sweeping out in a grand gesture.

  “We ask the people what they want,” she shouted gaily, “and the government delivers! Perfect system, end of story.”

  Unsatisfied, Allison pursued the question. “But they record all of the calls, right?”

  “Yeah they do, those bastards. Not that you’d know unless you read the fine print in that goddamn usurious work contract. In fact, I only found out because, after our first week? Saul like buttonholes me during lunch…”

  Allison cut her off, having suffered through this story a dozen times before. “Do you think they keep the voices?”

  “What? Sorry, I’m starving.” Joanne leaned toward their driver, obviously annoyed by the interruption. “You know what? This is great. You can let us off on the far side of Canal.”

  After paying the cabby and jogging down the exit ramp, Joanne steered them purposefully toward a street cart at the corner of Lafayette and Leonard. Allison knew that she should just drop it, but she was genuinely curious, and thought that if anyone knew the truth, it would be Joanne.

  “I just wonder what they do with all the voices. After they capture them, I mean.”

  Joanne pulled up short under the cart’s brightly colored umbrella, turning to stare at Allison. “The voices?” She frowned, giving a dismissive shrug. “Who cares? They want opinions, not noise. They need to know what people think, so that they can think it themselves. That’s what politics is all about.” Joanne squeezed Allison’s arm indulgently, as if humoring a dimwitted child. “You really are too much, Al. Want a knish?”

  Far ahead, through the weaving crowd, Allison heard a faint cheer and an air horn.

  “Crap, it’s started already. No, no mustard.” Joanne threw her money at the vendor, chomping on her potato pastry as she fought her way through the eternal ocean of commuters and family court flotsam clogging the street, struggling toward Federal Plaza. “God, it’s early. People must really be riled up.” Allison trailed close behind, shivering, watching windblown flecks of snow fly out of the slate-gray sky like shooting stars.

  “Hey Allison,” Joanne shouted back, waving Allison’s gaze back to earth, “remember, if you should get arrested…”

  “What?” Allison balked. “Joanne, you said no trouble.”

  “Don’t be paranoid, Al, it’ll be fine. I’m just trying to help out here.”

  “Thanks,” Allison shot back sarcastically. “I never could get arrested on my own.”

  “Look, just in case, okay? Just a piece of advice.”

  Allison sighed. “Okay.”

  “Sign the DCI work form, if it’s an option.”

  “Joanne.” Allison stopped in her tracks, ignoring people as they pushed chaotically around her. “DCI? You mean go to prison? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “C’mon, Allie.” Joanne tugged her forward, almost bowling over a pregnant woman in the process. “DCI is not prison, all right? There’s, like, a huge thick wall between them. I know a ton of people who’ve done it, and it’s really the best option. A week or two of community service is all — cleaning, trash pickup, that kind of stuff. Sometimes you even get to do some landscaping in the Garden. And, best of all, no permanent record.”

  “Joanne, I don’t want to lose two weeks of my life, and give up my rights, for some stupid protest…”

  Joanne glared at Allison, looking genuinely hurt and angry. “What rights, Al? If you’re not willing to go to this protest, than soon you won’t have any rights, okay? I mean, there’s no way you’re going to be arrested, but even if you were, I’d think it’d be worth it.”

  “Of course it’s worth it,” Allison replied weakly, wiping snow from her eyes, knowing that she couldn’t win. “But prison, Joanne…”

  “Well, look, you don’t have to sign.” Joanne grinned mischievously. “If you want to spend all of your money and who knows how many months in court, defending some civil disobedience charge, that’s fine with me.”

  “You’re right, Jo. You’re always right. I’ll just sign the form whe
n I don’t get arrested and go to jail and live with felons, just like my mama always wanted.”

  “Don’t be silly, Al. It’s just a protest march, okay? It’ll be fun.” Joanne began to maneuver deftly through the crowd, making a beeline for the Medical Center, as the dense afternoon rush thickened around them into an almost impenetrable mob. Overhead, Allison glimpsed some bright banners through the snowfall, held aloft by waving arms, here and there a few sodden placards wilting on the end of long poles.

  As she found herself dragged deeper and deeper into the melee, Allison couldn’t help but gaze wistfully at the distant shelter of the towering, Greco-Roman courts complex. As she slowly surrendered herself to the raging protest, Allison noticed the uplifting motto that ran across the Civil Courts building — a giant chiseled adage that had somehow failed to register until now. In this context, it seemed dangerously ironic, a snide taunt to the swarming, enraged citizenry below: The true administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good government.

  Yeah, right, she thought bitterly, following Joanne’s quickly receding upraised fist. Somewhere ahead, the faint sound of a woman yelling through a megaphone drifted through the storm, echoing across the lawn from the besieged Medical Center.

  Marion felt the first stray flakes of snow around four — just a few stinging drops against his skin, seconds before the deluge. Then, before he could figure out exactly what was happening, there had been a sudden pressure drop, a cold burst of static charging the warm air. Marion’s ears had popped, forcing him to yawn them back to equilibrium, and the temperature had plummeted violently as a freezing breeze swept across Washington Square Park.

  He had wasted most of his day here, shadowing the makeshift chess tables, watching the regulars as they frantically slapped the time clocks, fingers flashing, pieces disappearing into swift hands. At two o’clock, a church group had come to plan out an egg hunt for Easter, mapping out the best hiding places, laughing cheerfully and chatting with the mounted police.

  Marion had managed to rustle up a couple of small jobs: fixing the crown on an old Patek Philippe around noon, swapping out the blown woofer on a subway dance troupe’s stereo during the afternoon. Luckily, his tools remained mostly functional — except for the magnetic screwdriver, which had been bent badly in the morning fall — but Marion found himself impatient with the intricate work. He was nervous and tense without knowing why, full of pent-up energy, unable to focus on the maze of contacts and wires in front of him. He’d repeatedly discovered his hand squeezing the small statue tight inside his pocket, printing the crown and tablet in red across his palm.

  He’d finally taken a break to go wolf down a couple of dogs at Gray’s Papaya, and was just returning to his post when the storm rushed in, chilling the park as if some unseen giant had suddenly opened his freezer door. The first hazy flakes were met with disbelief, a general mutter of discontent and the rustle of clothing. As the temperature continued to plunge and the snow increased, a general panic took hold. Books and half-eaten lunches were grabbed and hidden under thin shirts, children snatched from the playground next to the post. An emaciated, long-bearded guy on skates sideswiped one of the rickety chess tables, knocking it over and scattering chess pieces across the square. Marion jumped out of the way, struggling into his windbreaker as people began to empty out of the park.

  The streets were even worse. Marion decided to fight his way toward Broadway, not wanting to brave the subway stairs until the initial crush had abated. Unfortunately, the usual order of traffic had broken down into a wild free-for-all, and Marion once again found himself fighting for balance, ducking bodies as they wove angrily against the flow, people pushing chaotically back and forth across West Fourth.

  This is it, Marion thought, wincing as his slight frame was battered from corner to curb. Whatever the day had in store for him, he decided, it was starting now. He thought of the dream, for the second time that day, grasping the cold statue hard inside his fist. Maybe the fat minister was right, after all — you can only ignore the omens for so long.

  “Please proceed carefully!”

  A mounted officer was bullhorning instructions from on high, peering down from the fenced-in police walk, maneuvering his horse calmly over the panicked rush. He was soon joined by two others, and one of the horses sent some droppings through the steel mesh floor onto the crowd below.

  “The situation will be corrected as soon as possible!” Marion looked up at the cops, caged and distant, their stiff blue collars pinched tight below red faces. He glanced back at the crowd, seeing bare arms and necks slick with snow, flesh fish-belly white and dimpled with cold.

  “Do not block the streets! If at all possible, return to your home!” A faint siren sounded, followed by a sizzling thread of lightning, a jagged line flashing toward the top of the Empire State Building. Marion began to move a little faster, following orders. To his own surprise, and for the first time in years, he began to work his way back home.

  Allison found herself caught deep inside the protest, trying desperately to keep clear of the swaying signs and fists. Joanne had long since disappeared into the swelling crowd, leaving Allison alone and miserable in the middle of a riot.

  The cramped cage of Foley Square was overflowing with bodies, the fibregrass lawn packed solid from the towering court steps all the way to the Medical Center. Allison was squeezed tight between the Chambers Street subway entrance and a raised speaking platform. Above her, a middle-aged woman in a ski parka was yelling frenetically into a microphone, attempting to incite the crowd to action. Allison could see dozens of speakers and would-be prophets spread throughout the park, shouting into megaphones, gesturing wildly over the drifting snow.

  “What rights do we have?” The yelling woman was small and pale, her ragged voice far louder than seemed physically possible. “Who owns our bodies?”

  “I’m willing to rent!” someone yelled, provoking shouts and laughter. Allison twisted her head, trying to see behind her, wondering where the hell Joanne had gone.

  “What is a poor woman going to do?” The speaker screamed, clenching the front of her shirt with one free hand. “What is a welfare mother going to do when the city offers her money for her unborn child?” Allison stared up at the woman, wondering who, exactly, she represented. A Voices of the Unborn station loomed nearby, but the stage was draped in a makeshift banner that read “My Body, My Choice.” The contrast was disconcerting, making Allison wonder, once again, how anyone could possibly take these protests seriously.

  “We don’t need their research! We don’t need their therapies, borne from the blood of the disenfranchised!” The woman was positively shaking now, holding the microphone like a loaded gun. “There are better ways. We must not give up our tissue, no matter what they offer!”

  Allison started to struggle away, seeking a passage into the open air. The snow had begun slicing heavily across the crowd, stinging that sea of upturned faces. Allison’s thin sweater was soaked through, frozen and wet against her skin. She decided her best bet was to forget Joanne, abandon ship and head for the subway.

  She forced her way toward the concrete island, but was stopped short by another mob, blocking all movement. A small balding man was pacing back and forth on a smaller stage, shrieking. Allison tried to ignore him, working her way around the crowd.

  “They have turned New York into a giant indoor shopping mall!” the man ranted, running his fingers through his thinning streaks of hair. An angry cheer echoed across the crowd. “The Franco-Sino-Japanese cabal has got us right where they want us, like rats in a cage.”

  A squat, shirtless man with a hairy back smacked into Allison, shouting and rubbing snow into his chest. She backed away in horror.

  “You think the Chinese have our best interests at heart? You think that the ferocious frogs of Francia want us to grow and prosper? These people are not our friends!” The snow was everywhere now, pouring out of the sky in a dense white swirl, covering the protesters a
nd buildings in a dusting of melting dandruff. Allison lowered her head and plowed resolutely forward, the screaming man’s voice mercifully fading behind her.

  “Hell, our own goddamn government ain’t even our friend! New York is a vicious beast, you hear me? It eats its citizens alive! It has a mouth for the poor. It has a mouth for the rich. And, believe me, It has a mouth for you!” The line raised another loud cheer, angry voices swelling into the low clouds. Allison glanced back through the haze, searching one last time for Joanne. Unfortunately, the flurries were too thick, and the crowd too dense, for Allison to see anything except a swamp of faces and limbs frozen beneath a glaze of ice.

  And then, without warning, there was a deep rumble, a low rush of energy that plowed through the center of the mob. Whether it was a concussion grenade, a burst of thunder or just an approaching 6 train, Allison couldn’t begin to guess. Hoping for the latter, she turned back to the subway and steamrolled steadily toward the entrance, no longer worried about being rude. All around her, she watched the writhing mass of the crowd collapse and rush forward, swarming across the square, arms and painted signs and broken boards swinging wildly through the spiraling snow.

  Allison jumped out of the way of a thrown bottle, hearing the faint splinter of glass against concrete. She pivoted into the subway entrance, blinded by snow, sprinting for the stairs. And it was at that exact moment, just as Allison was sure she was home free, that she ran full force into a skinny young boy wearing a blue windbreaker.

  Not exactly the homecoming I was hoping for, Marion mused, taking the subway steps two at a time as he bounded toward Foley Square, the police line only seconds behind him.

  It was amazing how little things had changed, he marveled, his worn sneakers slapping those familiar concrete stairs. In fact, everything about the station seemed frozen in time — the long, dank hallway to Chambers, the chipped Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall tile mosaic, flecked with mildew-blackened grout, the steep stairs scarred and crumbling in the same places. As Marion raced upward, the steel balustrade cool and greasy beneath his fingers, the memories came flooding back: riding the train for the first time, walking hand in hand with Poppy, begging for a cherry cone from the shaved ice cart on the corner.

  As he veered around an oblivious pair of lovebirds kissing on the stairs — two young men sprawled in a lusty embrace, one gnawing hungrily on the other’s neck — Marion once again tried to recall why, exactly, he was here. He had avoided this place like the plague for five years — why this sudden, irresistible impulse to pay a return visit now?

  For a while, he wasn’t even sure he had the fortitude to complete the journey. But then he reached Little Italy, and the decision was rudely forced upon him. His meandering trip downtown had been going well enough until he hit Mulberry Street — that sad strip of Italian flag-bedecked nostalgia carved out of Chinatown — at which point all hell broke loose.

  He should’ve known as soon as he saw the flapping LIRA banner raised over the crowded street. The Little Italy Restoration Association was notorious for their aggressive, drunken defense of this four-block sliver of red-white-and-green pizza parlors that remained the last bastion of Manhattan real estate they could reasonably call their own. Why they cared so much Marion couldn’t really say — they did, after all, control most of New Jersey — but the turf wars over this stretch of Mulberry were so legendary that street cops now openly referred to the association as Lookout, Imminent Riot Ahead.

  Still, considering that it was snowing, and most of the merchants and restaurateurs had shuttered their storefronts against the cold, Marion had been hopeful that he could make it through unscathed. But the moment he’d seen the greased pig, he knew that things were, if anything, worse than usual.

  The poor little piglet was obviously frightened out of his porcine mind, skidding crazily across Spring Street as people jumped wildly out of the way. In hot pursuit came a trio of shirtless, hard-muscled teenagers, screaming obscenities and careening wildly into as many Chinese bystanders as reasonably possible.

  Marion had stood, flabbergasted, until he noticed that a larger crowd of LIRA youth were gathering steam halfway down the block. He’d immediately made a dash for the Spring Street station, both amazed and disturbed by what he’d seen. He’d known that rediscovering traditions from the old country was all the rage these days, but really — a greased pig? Where in the world did they find such a thing?

  Predictably, the subway hadn’t been much better — it was absolutely stuffed with angry commuters, hundreds of pissed-off city dwellers shaking snow from their sodden hair and glaring angrily at the crush.

  Even worse, once Marion had jumped the turnstile and snuck onto the platform, he’d found it filled with police, a blue-clad army tapping nightsticks rhythmically against their legs. Marion avoided them on principle, lounging behind a concrete column until the train arrived. As he pushed his way into the already packed 6 local, he couldn’t help but notice them filing into the cars behind him.

  As the train rattled into the darkness, Marion zipped up his jacket all the way to his neck, feeling apprehensive and unsure. He had no idea what he was expecting to find at the Center — or even why he had decided that now, of all times, was the right moment to return — but it seemed, at this point, like he simply couldn’t stop himself.

  What he’d found, most unexpectedly, was a tall, frantic redhead who unceremoniously knocked him flat against the pavement, spilling his tools for the second time that day. As Marion once again stumbled back and landed on his bony backside — causing the gay couple to pause just long enough to shoot him a bemused look — the startled woman immediately began sputtering apologies, trying to help him grab the handfuls of equipment scattered around them.

  “Oh god, I’m really sorry. I wasn’t looking.” Allison offered him his battered tool case — which, miraculously, had managed to survive yet another violent spill — and reached out to help him to his feet. “It’s just, you know, it’s getting pretty ugly out there and I, I just wasn’t looking.”

  Marion heard a hoarse cheer erupt from Foley Square, and glanced over the woman’s shoulder to find a group of policemen tramping through the snow toward the court steps. He took a hesitant step forward and looked across the lawn, finding it filled by a seething ocean of angry faces and open, screaming mouths. He pushed himself up on tiptoe and strained to glimpse the Medical Center through the snow, but could only make out a dim light flashing in an upper window, a lonely beacon shining over the tempest below.

  Beneath that distant bulb, Marion was shocked to see people hanging from the police walk, their hands wrapped around the slatted floor and wire mesh, dangling feet swinging viciously back and forth above the melee. Between flurries of snow, he watched the cops in the walk beat savagely on the protesters’ fingers, causing them to drop into the crowd like ripe fruit. A mounted policeman jerked across the walkway, his horse jumping wildly, scraping him against the chain link.

  Then, in a sudden breach that Marion could barely comprehend, the walk split, and the wire tube cracked in half over the heads of the grasping mob. The cops spilled out like party favors from a giant piñata, and their bodies were quickly tossed and thrown throughout the crowd. The hapless horse slid out sideways, pitching its rider out over the mob, its legs kicking and thrashing desperately as it plunged into the rioting mass.

  As Marion gaped, a plump woman stumbled by, carrying an iron pole like a jousting rod, and a snowball packed with rocks shattered on the wall next to his face, showering him with debris.

  “Is the subway safe?” Allison asked, urgently pulling Marion by his sleeve toward the stairs. Marion had to force his head to nod, unable to tear his eyes away from the apocalyptic scene outside. When he finally looked over at Allison, he caught only a soft wave of rust-colored hair and the tip of a thin nose, spotted pink from the cold. Then, as he swung back toward the mouth of the subway, he realized the full magnitude of his mistake. His heart flew into triple-time, urging hi
m to flee, but his feet remained completely frozen in place.

  Directly ahead, spread across the tunnel from wall to wall, the police marched with guns drawn, shining black boots charging into daylight.

  Marion signed the DCI work release without really comprehending what it meant, following the example of everyone else in his group. The protesters had been hogtied with plastic zip-strips at the Medical Center, and then transported in those cool electric NYPD buses to the 5th Precinct station house at Elizabeth. The hulking, linebacker-size guy seated next to Marion had helpfully suggested that he stop struggling against the cuffs, because it only made them tighter. When they finally arrived at the station, the guy had let out a deep sigh, shaking his ham-hock head with a veteran’s disgust.

  “Welcome to the motherlovin’ Fifth.”

  Marion was detained at the station for over three hours, initialing forms and repeatedly waving his right to a trial by jury. Mostly he sat in the back of the criminal processing room, signing what he had to and ignoring the rest. The Correctional Industries representative spent thirty interminable minutes advising the group of their rights and privileges, outlining the rules of their agreement in five-syllable legal terms that were impossible to understand. Soon after, everyone was herded back onto the humming transports and shuttled down to the prison lift at Battery Park.

  The elevated highway ran along the East River, above the old FDR, just high enough to cause Marion’s throat to tighten around his shallow breaths. He sunk low in his seat, staring at the speckled linoleum floor of the bus, trying hard not to think of the slow, eddying river drifting far below them. The other prisoners chatted like they were on some kind of sightseeing tour, murmuring at the distant gleam of the Liberty Flame as it slipped into view, while Marion sweated into the creases of his clenched fists, biting his lower lip in sheer, abject terror.

  At Battery Park they were moved again, parading three abreast through the police walk above the Staten Island Ferry. The floor of the walkway creaked beneath their weight, and Marion buried himself in the center of the crowd, trying not to fixate on the thin wire fence that separated him from the open air. The snow had finally abated, thank god, leaving only random flakes to catch and melt against the prisoners’ cold skin. Marion stared rigidly forward, keeping in lockstep while trying to avoid the patches of melting ice, counting each footstep as if it were his last. Near the Hudson the walkway finally began to descend, leading into the South Station, opening out onto the lift itself.

  The Corrections transport station was a nondescript, putty-colored concrete box with small, tinted windows and a single, north-facing entrance — purposefully set back from the heavily utilized ferry and commercial lift stations that crowded the southernmost tip of Manhattan. Marion had long avoided this particular chunk of the island — the notoriously dense center of vertical transport for the entire city. Even at a distance, watching those small black specs crawl in and out of the glowing blue sky, Marion had lived in terror of ever having to endure that gravity-defying trip.

  But here he was, caught in the middle of the cluster of lift columns that dangled out of the clouds like black spiders’ thread. Marion mentally berated himself for not knowing how, exactly, these stupid elevators functioned. He felt unprepared and off-balance, his queasy stomach and acrophobic brain screaming at him to bail out now, his rational self having absolutely no idea how to do it.

  Eventually, his group of protesters was shoehorned into a cramped, doughnut-shaped room, with strip windows running vertically along the round walls. Marion stuck close to the center, surveying the view with growing apprehension. Outside the northeastern window, Marion could see the sweeping peaks of the Brooklyn Bridge, the crosshatched cables rising up like a delicate latticework tent. The massive stone anchorages were barely visible through the cloudy security glass; Marion could just glimpse the yawning twin portals of the Brooklyn footing, shadowed near-black by the East River support post, a pair of arched cartoon eyes watching the calm blue water below.

  He scanned the crowded space, zeroing in on the guards posted next to the entryway, wondering if they could possibly be bribed. His fellow prisoners wandered restlessly around the room, like they were at some sort of stupid art opening, staring down at the docked ferries below.

  I can’t do it, Marion realized. I’d rather rot in court, rather be sentenced to twenty years of cleaning Times Square with my tongue than take this nightmare trip. He stretched as tall as he possibly could, searching for a guard, a prison official, anyone who could keep him on the ground where he belonged.

  And then, from the tips of his unsteady toes, he felt a sudden jolt, heard a faint voice yelling “stand clear,” watched the group of protesters lurch back in surprise.

  They were fifty meters above the Hudson before Marion realized exactly what was happening. He stood shellshocked, gaping out the window, watching the ground drop out from under them like a trap door. Everybody else in the room crowded around the windows to get a better view. Behind the walled-off center of the room — the circular core that Marion had foolishly assumed contained the lift itself — motors ground madly, pushing the donut-shaped transport swiftly into the atmosphere.

  Marion felt his eyes glaze over, his oxygen-choked brain narrowing his vision to a single, receding point. The tallest buildings in Manhattan were now receding stalks beneath him, half-buried giants reaching their gray-black limbs toward his rising craft. He felt the distance beneath him like a physical weight — a mischievous imp swinging from his lower intestines, pulling him toward the earth even as his body climbed farther and farther from the city below.

  “Never been up this high, huh?”

  Marion jerked like a puppet, half-expecting to see the same horrid woman from his childhood Aerial ride; those same fat hands gripping his waist, his face once again flattened against the cold, unforgiving window glass.

  “It’s not that bad, really.” Allison reached out and put a comforting hand on Marion’s shoulder, feeling him jump beneath her fingers. He turned around slowly, trying to maintain his balance against the swaying floor. “You just have to think of everything as toys.”Marion gazed cautiously back, finally recognizing the ivory-skinned redhead he’d so rudely knocked over at the Chambers Street station. Glad for even the smallest of comforts, he forced himself to follow her gaze, staring out at the methane-blue smudge of water rapidly disappearing beneath them. In the distance he could just make out the Liberty Flame, a golden-hued monolith that looked like a giant gleaming push-pin stuck into the foot of Manhattan.

  “What a joke, huh?” Allison smiled, edging closer. “It looks like some kind of cheesy paperweight.”

  Marion swallowed dryly, willing himself to look — take a good, long look without feeling faint.

  “Hey, you can see the Build!”

  Marion blinked once, fighting his fear, and followed Allison’s pointing finger.

  There, out past the Hudson, sloping in off of the horizon, you could indeed see the rising wall. It curved around the edge of the city, obscured behind racks of drifting clouds. Marion stared in amazement, truly awed for perhaps the first time in his young life. He turned to look out over Manhattan, where the support posts spiked down into the city like endless tent poles, tying the sky into the ground. The ragged surface of the city looked like a waffle iron, the streaked and grimy grid now a thousand meters beneath them.

  Allison finally dropped her hand from Marion’s shoulder, afraid that her relief in finding a sympathetic face was making her act a bit too familiar.

  “Anyway, my name’s Allison. I, um… I knocked you down, at the subway?”

  Marion nodded, secretly relieved to have someone — anyone — to distract him from the dizzying void all around him.

  “You know,” Allison continued, rambling, “I’m really sorry you got arrested. I thought that maybe if I hadn’t run you over. . .”

  Marion looked down and away, then back at the red-headed girl. He knew he should say s
omething — but he just wasn’t used to talking. The first low layer of clouds slipped past the window, spraying the thick plastic with streaks of rain. Marion shrugged, biting his lower lip nervously.

  Allison stared at him for a moment, her head tilted to one side.

  “I’m sorry — are you deaf?”

  Marion managed a weak smile, shaking his head no.

  “Oh.” Allison looked perplexed. “So, uh — are you dumb?”

  Marion grinned for what felt like the first time in ages.

  “I dunno,” he replied, his voice raspy from disuse. “Maybe a little.”

  Allison snorted unexpectedly, drawing the attention of both passengers and guards alike. She covered her mouth with one hand, smothering her laughter.

  The prison lift climbed suddenly out of the cloud bank, leaving the dark layer of snowy sky a wooly carpet beneath them. Water beaded and ran across the windows, and the gray metal ceiling of New York faded into view, larger than the city itself. Marion and Allison stopped short, looking up at the kilometers of creases and rivets spread above them, their laughter lost in the sudden expansive silence.

  Two: Corrections