The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye

by Jonathan Lethem

  My brother was two years younger than me. I was just back from dropping out of my junior year of college, at Santa Cruz, and was living, quite unhappily, at my parents’ tiny new house in Plainview, Long Island.

  Our parents, Jimmy and Marilla, had kicked Don out for the final time while I was away at school. They hadn’t heard from him for almost a year. I went and hung out at Washington Square and found him within a few hours.

  “Okay,” I said. “Right. Nice gun.”

  “Don’t get freaked.”

  “I’m not freaked, Don.” I paused.

  “Then let’s go, right?”

  “Let’s go, Don,” I said, and I swear I almost added: This is good, we’re brothers, we still do things together. I almost said: See, Don.

  Our parents named my brother Donovan because all their friends had already named their kids Dylan, I guess. It wasn’t important to Don. His only chance of ever hearing Donovan was if MC Death sampled “Season of the Witch” or “Hurdy Gurdy Man” in a rap.

  Myself being a bit older, I knew those songs in their original versions, not from the radio, of course, but from the days when our parents still played their records.

  I followed my brother downstairs. It was night. We walked the short distance to Washington Square Park but stopped half a block away. I stopped.

  “What?” said Don.

  “Nothing. Should we call the airport? Find out—”

  “Like you said, there’s always gonna be a plane, Paul.”

  We went into the park, through the evening throngs, the chessplayers and skatebladers, and I stood on the pathway waiting, shrugging off offers of nickel bags, while Don found his two friends, the ones who were supposed to kill him for stealing drugs.

  “—gotta talk to you.”

  “Randall sick of yo shit, Light.”

  “Can we go up to your apartment, Kaz? Please?”

  Don walked them towards me. A fat black man with a gigantic knitted hat: Kaz. Another black man, smaller in every way, with a little beard, and wearing a weirdly glossy, puffed-out gold coat: Drey.

  Nobody my brother knew had a regular name. And they all called him “Light,” for his being white, I suppose.

  “The fuck is this?” said Drey, looking at me.

  “Paul,” Don mumbled.

  “Looks like yo fuckin’ brother, man.”

  “All us white dudes look like brothers to you, nigger.”

  Drey grinned, then tightened his mouth, as though remembering that he was supposed to be angry at Don.

  We walked out of the park, east on Third Street. All the way Kaz mumbled at Don: “Can’t believe you, man; you fuckin’ come around here; you took Randall; can’t believe you, man; fuck you think you doin’; look at you stupid face; you think you talk you way out of this; I should be doin’ you; fuckin’ crackhead; can’t believe you man.” Et cetera.

  And Don just kept saying, every thirty seconds or so: “Shut up, Kaz, man.” Or: “Gimme a minute, man.”

  We went into a door beside a storefront on First Avenue, and up a flight of stairs. Don and I ahead of Kaz and Drey, through the dark.

  Kaz stepped around and let us in, and I looked down and saw Don take the gun out of his coat. Don wanted to pull it coming in; he’d said he knew that Kaz kept guns in the house. But not on his person. That was crucial.

  We all got inside and Kaz closed the door, and Don turned around. “You’re dead,” said the fat black man the minute he saw the gun.

  The place was just about empty: crumbling walls, a bed. And a cheap safe, nailed instead of bolted to the floor, price tag still showing. A safe house, literally. Crash and stash, as Don would say.

  Don waved the gun between Kaz and Drey. “You’re dead,” said Kaz again. Drey said: “Shit.”

  “Shut up. Paul, take their shit. Clean Drey up, then Kaz. Find the keys on Kaz.”

  I stepped up to play my part. Keys on Kaz. I put my hand on Drey, who hissed: “Motherfucker.” It turned out the weird shiny gold coat was on inside out; the gold was the lining of a rabbit-fur fake leopard. Strange. I ran my hands through the fur, searching out Drey’s pockets.

  I found a wad, singles on the outside, which I pocketed. Then an Exacto knife, which I tossed on the floor behind me, at Don’s feet. He kicked it to the wall.

  When I turned to Kaz he slapped my hands away, a strangely girlish move.

  “You a chump, Light,” he said, ignoring me. “Randall shoulda killed your ass already. He gonna now.”

  “We’re all Randall’s chumps, Kaz, man. Now I’m taking and you can tell Randall what you want.”

  “I ain’t no chump, man, Light. You the chump. Randall tried to treat you right. You fuckin’ smokehead. You could be playing with the cash like me, like Randall says. ’Staid you usin’.” He hurled the word like it was the only real insult he knew.

  It was true. Don had used the drugs he was supposed to deal for Randall.

  “Playing with the cash now, Kaz.”

  I reached for Kaz’s pockets again, and again he slapped me away. “You dead, brother.”

  Don stepped up and clapped Kaz’s temple with the side of the gun.

  “Ain’t no cash, Light, man,” Kaz whimpered. He looked down. “Ain’t sold it yet, you stupid fuck.”

  “Open the safe.”

  “What did you mean ‘You dead, brother,’?” I asked. “Don told you I’m not his brother. Or are you just using that as an expression?”

  Kaz just shook his head and got out the key to the safe. Drey said: “Fuckin’ idiot.”

  Inside the safe was all bottles. Crack. Nothing else. Two big plastic bags full of ten- and five-dollar bottles. I’d never seen that much in one place. Don had, of course; specifically, when Kaz and Randall brought him up here to entrust him with a load of bottles to sell.

  That time there had also been a large supply of cash, which was what we were here supposedly to steal.

  “Fuck you expected?” said Drey.

  “You dead,” said Kaz.

  Don didn’t hesitate. He took the two bags of bottles and quickly felt behind them, but there was nothing else in the safe. He slammed the door shut and pushed the gun up at Kaz’s face again. “Your roll, Kaz.”

  “You a fuckin’ chump.” Kaz got out his money, another fat wad with ones on the outside. Don took it and stuffed it in his pocket. Then he shook the two bags of bottles into the two big side pockets of his parka, tossing the plastic bags aside when they were empty.

  “Fuck you gonna do?” said Drey. “Sell the shit? Randall gun you down.”

  “Gimme the keys,” said Don to Kaz. “Sit down. Both of you.”

  “Shit.”

  Don waved the gun some more, and Kaz and Drey sat down on the floor. Don pushed me back out into the hallway ahead of him, then shut the door and locked it from the outside with Kaz’s key.

  That was when we saw the Sufferer. It was sitting on the landing of the stairway above us, looking down. On its haunches in the dark it looked just like a giant panther, eyes shining.

  I assumed it was waiting for someone else. I’d only seen the aliens twice before, each time trailing after somebody in trouble. That was what they liked to do.

  Don didn’t even glance at it. I guess leading his lifestyle, he passed them pretty often. He put the gun in his belt and ran downstairs, and I followed him. The Sufferer padded down after us.

  Don hailed a cab on First Avenue. “La Guardia,” he said, leaning in the window.

  “Manhattan only,” said the cabbie. Don pulled out Kaz’s money and began peeling off ones. I looked behind us, thinking of Kaz and Drey and the unlocated guns in the apartment. Had Don really locked them in? Even if he had, they could shoot us from the front windows, or off the fire escape, while we haggled with the cabbie.

  I saw the Sufferer push out of the door and settle on the sidewalk to watch us.

  “Fifteen dollars before the fare,” said Don. “C’mon.”

  The driver popped the locks, and
Don and I scooted into the back, Don’s coat-load of bottles clinking against the door.

  “La Guardia,” said Don again.

  “Take the Manhattan Bridge,” I said. “Canal Street.”

  “He knows where the Manhattan Bridge is, Paul.”

  “He said Manhattan only.”

  “You picking somebody up?” said the driver. “Domestic departures,” I said.

  “What airline?”

  “Uh, Pan Am.”

  “There is no more Pan Am,” said the driver.

  “Wow. Okay, uh, Delta?”

  “Does it matter?” said Don.

  “He has to take us somewhere,” I explained patiently. Sometimes it seemed like Don and I grew up in separate universes. “The airport is big. Delta should have a lot of flights to California. We can start there, anyway.”

  The cab went down first to Canal and entered the funnel of traffic leading onto the bridge. I always mention the Manhattan Bridge because a lot of people just reflexively take the Brooklyn, though it isn’t really faster or more convenient. People prefer the Brooklyn Bridge, I guess because it’s prettier, but I like the way you can be driving alongside a subway train on the Manhattan Bridge.

  So I looked out the window, and what I saw was the Sufferer, running alongside the cab, keeping time even when the traffic smoothed out and we accelerated across the empty middle of the bridge. It loped along right beside us, almost under my window. Our cabbie was going faster than the other cars, and when we passed one the Sufferer would drop back, trailing us, until the space beside my door was clear again.

  Don was in his own world, leafing through the roll he’d stolen and counting the bottles in his pockets by feel. I didn’t draw his attention to the Sufferer. The cabbie hadn’t noticed either.

  “You can’t take the gun on the plane,” I said to Don, quietly.

  “Big news,” said Don sarcastically.

  “It’s okay,” I said, responding to his annoyance as some kind of plea for reassurance, as I always had. “We won’t need it in Cali.”

  “Yeah,” he said dreamily.

  “We’re really going,” I said. “Things’ll be different there.” I felt it slipping away, the hold my proposal had had on him an hour ago.

  “What,” he snorted. “Nobody has guns in California?”

  “You’re going to live different, there.” I looked up to see if the cabbie was listening. “So why don’t you leave the gun here in the cab, okay, Don? Just push it under the seat. Because it’s crazy going into the airport with it. Crazy enough just carrying all the drugs.”

  “I’ll put it in a locker. Just in case.”

  “What? In case of what?”

  We pulled off onto the BQE and headed for the airport. I checked the window. There was the Sufferer, rushing along with us, leaping potholes.

  “What?” said Don, noticing.

  “One of those aliens.”

  “The one from Kaz’s?”

  I shrugged—a lie, since I knew. “How much money did you get from Kaz?” I said, trying to change the subject.

  “Four hundred. Chump change from a chump. Fuck is it doing out there?” He leaned over me to look out the window.

  “Hey,” said the cabbie. “You got a Sufferer.”

  “Just drive,” said Don.

  “I don’t want trouble. Why’s it following you?”

  “It’s not following anyone,” I said. “Anyway, they don’t cause trouble. They prevent it. They keep people out of trouble.”

  “Right. So if they follow you, you must be trouble.”

  Don took the gun out of his belt, but kept it below the level of the Plexiglas barrier above the seat. I tried to scowl at him, but he ignored me.

  “You don’t like it, why don’t you try to kill it with the car?” he said to the driver in a low, insinuating voice.

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Right. So just take us to the airport and shut up.” He looked at me. “How much you get?”

  “Two hundred and fifty dollars. Sidekick change from a sidekick.” The joke was out before I thought to wonder: but who’s the sidekick here? It was possibly a very important question.

  Don snorted. “Barely afford the tickets.” He put the gun back into his belt.

  The Sufferer accompanied us through the maze of exits and into the roundabout of the airport. We pulled up in front of Delta. Don paid the cabfare and rolled off twenty extra, then paused, and rolled off another twenty. “Pull up there and wait ten minutes,” he said.

  “Don, we’re getting on a plane. Besides, even if we weren’t, it isn’t hard to catch a cab at the airport.”

  “Just in case. Me and this dude got an understanding. Right, man?” He cocked his head at the driver.

  The cabbie shrugged, then smiled. “Sure. I’ll wait.”

  I sighed. Don was always turning passersby into accomplices. Even when it didn’t mean anything. It was a kind of compulsive seduction, like Women Who Love Too Much.

  “You’re getting me worried, Don. We’re flying out of here, right?”

  “Relax. We’re at the airport, right? Just wait a minute.” He put his mouth at the driver’s little money window. “Pull up over there, man. We’ll walk back, we don’t have bags or anything. Just get out of the light, okay?”

  We pulled past the terminal entrance, into a dead zone of baggage carts. The Sufferer trotted alongside, on the pedestrian ramp, weaving around the businessmen and tourists leaking out of the terminal.

  Don rolled his window down a couple of inches, then got out a glass pipe and shook out the contents of a five-dollar vial into the bowl.

  “Donnie.”

  “Hey, not in the cab!”

  “Minute, man.” He flicked his lighter and the little rocks flared blue and pink and disappeared. So practiced, so fast.

  The Sufferer leaned close in to my window and watched. When Don noticed he said: “Open your door and whack that fuckin’ thing in the face.”

  “Don’t smoke that crap in my cab,” said the driver.

  “Okay, okay,” said Don, palming the pipe away. He pointed a finger at the cabbie. “You’ll wait, right?”

  “I’ll wait, but don’t do that in my cab.”

  “Let’s go, Don.”

  “Okay.”

  I opened my door and the Sufferer stepped aside to let us pass. We got out onto the walkway. Don stopped and shook his head, straightened his parka, which was burdened with the loaded pockets, and pushed the gun out of sight under his sweatshirt. We walked up to the entrance. The doors were operated by electric eye, and they slid open for us, then stayed open as the Sufferer followed.

  Don and I both instinctively hurried into a mass of people, but no crowd could have been big enough to keep it from being obvious who the alien was with. A baggage guy stood and watched, his eyes going from the Sufferer to us and back again. He could as easily have been airport security—maybe he was.

  “We’ve got a problem here, Don,” I said.

  “Yeah.” He made a mugging face, but didn’t meet my eye.

  “Let’s—here, you’ve gotta find a place for the gun, anyway.” I steered him out of the flow near the ticket agents, to a relatively empty stretch of terminal: newspaper vending machines, hotel phones, and a shoeshine booth. I didn’t see any lockers, though.

  The Sufferer sat and cocked its head at us, waiting.

  “What do your friends do when this happens?”

  “What?” said Don sarcastically. “You mean when some big black animal from space follows them to the airport after an armed robbery?”

  “When these things—when one of these things shows up, Don. I mean, it must happen to people you know.”

  “One dude, Rolando. Thing started trailing him. Rolando fell in love, like him and the thing fucking eloped. Last I saw Rolando. Just that one dude, though.”

  As people passed us they’d stare first at the Sufferer, then follow its gaze to us.

  “Ironic,” I said. “
It wants to help you, right? At least, I assume so. But it doesn’t know that you’re planning to go to California to dry out. It probably doesn’t even understand how airports work, how it’s fucking this up for you. How important it is for you to leave the city.”

  I was babbling. I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to hear him say Yes, I mean to get on a plane and change my life in California, Paul. You had a good idea. Instead of his grunting, distracted assent. It didn’t help that his big last farewell heist had netted pockets full of crack instead of cash.

  And I didn’t for the life of me know what to do with the Sufferer.

  “It doesn’t want to help me,” Don said.

  “Yeah, well, in this case, anyway, it isn’t. We’re already gonna fit a bad profile, buying tickets at the last minute with cash. If there’s a Sufferer trailing around they’ll search us for sure.”

  “They let it on the plane?”

  “I don’t think so. I mean, how could they? So all we have to do is dump the drugs and the gun, then they can search us all they want, doesn’t matter, we’re gone.”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “What?”

  “I’m on parole, Paul. Breaking parole to go. I can’t get checked out.”

  “What? You never told me you were in prison!”

  “Shut up, Paul. Sentenced to parole, one year. Nothing, man.”

  “For what?”

  “Nothing, man. Now shut up. What, you think I wasn’t breaking the law?”

  “Okay, okay, but listen, we just have to get on a plane. We have to try. So stash the stuff—”

  “Nah. This is no good. I got an idea.” He headed back to the terminal exits.

  “Don!”

  The Sufferer and I followed him out. He jogged back to the cab, hands protectively over the flaps of his coat pockets. We got back in and Don said: “Get us out of here.”

  “Back.”

  “Yeah, that direction. But get off the fuckin’ freeway.”

  “Have to be on the freeway—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I mean as soon as you can.”

  I actually thought we’d lost the Sufferer when we exited into a blasted neighborhood of boarded-up and gutted storefronts, but by the time we’d driven, at Don’s request, back under the freeway and into a dark, empty cobblestone lot, the alien came loping up behind us.