Adrian McKinty - Dead I Well May Be

You’re a thief, you’re a bully. You hurt people. You’re nothing, a shadow. You’re a fool. A nasty wee piece of work.

Accusations. From the world out there. Go away. Please. Please.

But the world out there. It isn’t quiet. It never is…

My eyes fill, flutter. I wake.

It is impossible to sleep. I generate white noise from a fan which on level three does its best to erase the sirens, the crying, the yelling, the music, the nightmares, and-melodramatic but nevertheless true-the gunshots.

It’s around dawn. I’ve been in bed at most an hour.

The clunk is the arrival of the Times .

Jesus. Bad dreams. Not what you’d think, but bad dreams nonetheless. I throw back the cotton sheet and yawn and go to the front door and bring the paper in. I throw the paper at a roach in the hall. I take a bagel from the freezer and put it in the microwave. Something about microwaves, I remember. Oh yes, Scotchy, last night. Where did he come up with that? Wait a minute. Last night. Suddenly I feel the need to sit down in the middle of the kitchen floor.

I sit.

Exhausted and nauseated.

Alone.

Relax, be calm. Try to breathe. Breathe. I lean on the window and cough so hard my lungs hurt. It goes on for about a minute.

I’m going to stop smoking, I say.

The microwave dings. I get up and eat the bagel. You can get six for a dollar, so this one is sixteen cents. And the paper is free for some reason, like the cable. It just keeps getting delivered.

I tie my dressing gown, make some coffee, and retire to the fire escape. There’s no news. I read the sports section. Things are not going well for the local baseball teams. The leader writer is explaining why the Yankees will never win another championship with George Steinbrenner as the owner.

Sun is coming up. The day banishing the thoughts of yesterday. I stretch and go back inside and decide to shave and shower. I turn on the water for the pipes to get going and look in the mirror. I was in a fight, so it’s worth doing an inspection. Really, is this the face of a monster? My hair is sandier than it’s ever gotten in Ireland and my stubble is blond too. I study myself. No bruises. Ok-looking, green eyes, good jaw, a wee bit more filled out than I used to be, which is good, because I was always too thin, nice eyebrows, reasonably symmetrical face, bit of a broken nose, though, which fucks things up a bit, but still a decent, dependable-looking chap. Probably, but for the green card problem, I could get a real job, in a real company, for real money. I can do better. I’m not thick.

I’m not thick, I say aloud.

I sigh and take out a new safety razor.

Shave. Stop. I cough and spit. I’m bloody famished. A bagel is just not going to cut it this morning. I take the headlines and quickly dress and turn off the water and open the door, go down the steps, and head for Broadway and the McDonald’s on 125th…

It’s definitely early. On the far side of the street there are still homeless men sleeping on filthy mattresses on the sidewalk. I wonder for a moment how they manage to get through a night without being stabbed or beaten. Shit, maybe they have been stabbed and beaten. The homeless camp from here all the way up to Riverside Park and some sleep in the Amtrak tunnel beneath the park. Generally, only the hardiest ones sleep east of here on Amsterdam, and there a few mad souls who make Morningside Park their home.

If it were me and I was cut off from Darkey and the boys and I couldn’t get home and I had to be on the streets (a recurring fantasy/nightmare of mine, incidentally), my plan is to buy a hammock and attach it to a rope and throw it up over a tree limb, hoist myself up, and sleep up there in the canopy. In the summer you could probably get away with it. In the winter you’d freeze to death. North Central Park is where I’d go, big and anonymous and reasonably safe. For some reason, every time I think of this plan it gives me a great sense of comfort. If all else fails, I can live in the trees of Central Park. It’s a bit silly, but that’s the best I can come up with.

Down to 125th.

Past the bodega and the impressively armored Chinky with its steel walls and buzzer to get in and thicker-than-thick Plexiglas counter and vandalproof reinforced iron chairs. When Klaatu and the other aliens finally show up and nuke the world, Mr. Han’s Chinky will, I’m sure, be the only thing left standing amidst the rubble. His food is probably nukeproof too, for it leaves your body about three hours after it enters virtually unchanged by digestive juices. I wave to Simon, who, of course, is up already, but out here in the early light and through that five-inch glass he fails to recognize me.

McDonald’s is just opening, and there’s me and a line of homeless guys. I order the pancake breakfast and a nasty cup of coffee and sit at the window.

My “hotcakes” come and they forget the syrup and there’s a whole ta-do while they find it, and suddenly I’m the pushy white guy making a fuss. I’m not the only one, though. Danny the Drunk is here and he’s already plastered. I don’t know how he does it. The man has dedication. He’s getting a milk shake for breakfast and paying in pennies and nickels. There’s word in the building that there’s more to Danny than meets the eye, but frankly I don’t much care. I don’t believe in the homeless sage who has attained wisdom by years of hard knocks and brutal experience. Danny has nothing to teach me. He’s a hopeless purple-faced alcoholic, of which I’ve seen plenty in Ireland, and I’m really not bothered if he was the president of some company or one of the Apollo astronauts or a bigwig at MIT. He wasn’t, in any case. He worked for the subways in a ticket booth, but that’s a fact getting in the way of the myth and Ratko, in particular, is always ready to emphasize the mysterious nature of his fall.

Since we live in the same building, I suppose he feels a kinship. I can smell him getting closer, and then he comes and sits down opposite, the bastard.

Morning? he says, as if unsure of his bearings.

Aye, I say, head down, shoveling in pancakes with whipped butter and corn syrup.

Cold, he says. Whether this is about the air temperature, his milkshake, or my demeanor, I’m not sure, but I say again:

Aye.

They have the story about the body on 135th?

What?

Your newspaper, do they have that story?

Uhhh, yes, they do, I mumble reluctantly.

It was the story I was reading. They found a body on the campus of City College. Black guy, he’d been shot, and maybe that would have gotten it onto page 23 or something because of the college connection but for the fact that his heart had been removed and straw placed in the cavity where the heart had been. It would grip the city for about a day until the next grisly murder came along, which it would-tomorrow. The police spokesman in the Daily News said that in the Jamaican gangs this is what they did with a stool pigeon. It shows that the man had no heart, no loyalty, that he wasn’t a real man at all. A dummy.

Stuffed him with straw, Danny said and took a bit of his shake. I suppose liquids are the only thing he can stomach now. I suddenly felt a bit more charitable to the poor bastard, there but for the grace of God, et cetera.

I’m surprised they don’t call it the Wizard of Oz killing, you know, because the straw man wanted a heart, I said.

That was the tin man, Danny said.

Oh, I said.

More like the Emperor Valerian, Danny said. Heard of him?

Rings a bell, I said, truthfully.

They stuffed him.

Who?

The Persians.

Why?

To mock Rome.

What?

He was taken prisoner and they used him as a footstool and stuffed him when he died.