Adrian McKinty - Dead I Well May Be

She stepped out of the dry cleaner’s with a plastic bag over a dress. Small, one of hers, spangly. An event dress, a we’ll-fuck-tonight dress. She was heading back the way she’d come. Walking brisk. Swinging her hips. Excited. I eased out of her field of view and slipped down the basement steps of the apartment building on the corner. She’d stay on my side of the street and go past above me about six feet away. I’d see her face, but she wouldn’t see mine down here in the shadow. I backed against the wall and waited. All the time there was the possibility that when she went by I’d say something. I’d call her name. Bridget, down here, ssshhhh , don’t be afraid, Mouse, it’s me, my Mouse girl, it’s me, I’m alive, don’t cry out, pretend you’ve dropped something.

She’d be astonished, maybe she’d faint, yell, she’d start to cry: They told me you were dead, I thought you were dead. Oh, my God. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Sweet Jesus.

I’d whisper instructions to her, we’d meet that night in the park, she’d tell her ma she needed a walk after dinner. That wasn’t so unusual; sometimes she went for a walk before starting her shift in the bar. We’d meet in the park and I’d tell her everything. Christ, Bridget, you’re not going to believe it. Take a breath. I’ve been through the mangle a bit, but I am alive. We’ll have to be quick. Smart. It isn’t safe for me here. If Sunshine found out, if Darkey found out, they’d have to kill me, they’d have to. No choice. They know me. No, no, don’t call him, it’ll all be lies. Lies. Didn’t they say that I was dead? No, Sunshine, too, he’s worse, if anything. I promise you it’s all true. Don’t cry, be tough. They’ll notice if you’ve been crying. Listen, I’ve it all worked out. We’ll go away; you’ll book tickets for both of us for this weekend. I can rustle up some documents by then. It’ll cost me, but I can do it. I’ll get the cash somehow. Don’t pack or fucking look at atlases or anything like that. Don’t get your hair cut. Change nothing. Saturday morning get up. Say you’re going shopping in midtown. Take the train. No extra bags. We’ll meet at the 181st Street stop and take the A train to JFK and then fly to: where? anywhere? Australia, there’s a second cousin of mine in Queensland. England, I know a couple of people in London, Coventry. Ireland, dozens who could hide us out. A cottage in Donegal. Oh, Bridget, it’s so beautiful there: the Blue Mountains, the hills, the loughs, the Atlantic thundering up on empty beaches. You’d love it. I’d get a job in Derry, maybe you, too, we’d raise kids, get a wee fishing boat, a wee rower, teach them to fish, there’s surfing there now too, it’s not behind the times. We’d use aliases, they’d never find us, never. I know Darkey can pull strings and Mr. Duffy has connections, but we’d be clever. Clever, Bridget, and happy, so happy…

I hear her steps on the sidewalk. It’s a sharp day. She has a purposeful walk. She gets close.

It was you, Bridget. Please believe me when I tell you that you’re the one that kept me going. I thought of you. I was half-mad out there. Christ, the things that happened to us. Only I made it. It wasn’t luck, it was all you, Bridget, can’t you see that? I’m sure of it. Yeah, I know, I know, I’m a pochle, a liar, there are other girls. I know, you don’t have to tell me, but that’s behind me. I don’t remember them. All that time it was you. I swear it. You.

She’s even closer, ten paces till she reaches the corner. She’s humming along. Happy. Her boots squeal and she turns the corner. I see her face. Lightly powdered. Radiant. Her hair is darker than I’ve seen it, tied back. The music on her Walkman is U2, she’s singing with it, one of the upbeat ones. She’s smiling as she sings. Aye, the dress under the plastic is a fancy cocktail outfit; Darkey must be taking her to some do. Something special, no trip to the pictures this night, it’s the Met, or some fund-raiser, or a restaurant in Tribeca or on Central Park South. She’s parallel with me for a moment, frozen there, and then she’s past. I hear her steps recede down the sidewalk. Fainter and fainter. She turns at the corner. I’m about to come up the steps when, lo and behold, old Boris Karloff appears behind her. Practically skipping now, rushing to keep up, not sure if the whole trip to the dry cleaner’s was a blind or not. Well, well, so this is as far as Darkey’s trust goes. Even now. God help some boy she meets by accident, what’ll happen to him? Maybe he’ll win a trip to Cancún through the mail, or is that track too beaten for Sunshine now? Maybe it’ll just be a wee hiding behind the bike sheds, a fist punctuating every word: Stay-the-fuck-away-from-her.

Boris turns the corner and I come up the steps. I wait there for a while. In the movie version of the story, I’d pull out a cigarette and smoke it and stand there looking dazed and insensible. But I’ve given up, I need the extra lung capacity to compensate for other physical concerns. There is no point following her back to the Four Provinces, but it might be interesting to see where Boris goes. I walk to the corner and am just in time to see him get into a blue Ford. I get a read on the number plate and try to compare it with the blue Ford that was on 123rd Street eons ago, but my memory has erased that number and put in its place a series of horrible events. I stare for a while and then pull my hat low and take a long and deserted way back to the subway stop.

I was fucking broke, freezing, living on cold baked beans. The place on Lenox had no gas or heat and, like the people I’d once mocked, I considered burning wood on the bare floor. I’d tried to befriend the Jamaican guy on the second floor, but he was having none of it. I wasn’t that welcome at Ratko’s place, but sometimes I had to go over to get a square meal.

I wasn’t disheartened, though. Quite the reverse. I knew what I was doing. I wasn’t just sitting there faffing about. I was mentally steeling myself for what was to come.

One night, to confirm everything, I spent some time in contemplation on the roof of my building. I’d never been able to do the lotus position before, but when you can take your foot off it becomes a bit easier. It was the middle of October and the crisp air was disturbed only by the odd gypsy cab on 125th and a howling crank addict at the subway stop and then, later, gunshots up in the 130s. But you zone it out. My brain was ticking and working fine. It told me things. Patience. Things were going well, but I shouldn’t jump just yet. I needed time. I had to be fit. I had to be able to run on a foot I could barely limp upon. I had to be strong and brilliant.

Apollo came up earlier in connection with the future and, you know, a wise thing Apollo urged at Delphi was to Know Yourself, and that’s what I had done. Looked within. I wasn’t impatient about my plans. However long it took, it would take that long. You’re the lucky man whose aim becomes true. Once you are resolved, all other anxieties melt away into nothingness.

The first thing was that I needed money, and I was never much in the thieving line so, obviously, I had to get a job. How? I sat for a while and I considered various options, put my foot on, and went back down into the apartment again.

The next morning I walked to a bar called the Blue Moon near the Metro North stop on 125th. Once a glamorous place, now fallen on hard times, with a large staging area at the back where bands had played and people had danced in the thirties. Like the rest of 125th Street it had seen many changes since then, most for the bad. It didn’t have many customers but the ones it did have were older guys and no trouble. Crack cocaine was the vice du jour around here and alcohol a benign and peaceful influence on character in comparison. I’d worked here for one week, nine months ago. It had been called Carl’s then. In that period, which is exactly the gestation cycle of a human being, I too had been born again into a different, harder, more venerable person. Carl’s also had transformed. It had undergone a change of name and a change of ownership. The Blue Moon had been what it was called about five years ago and was what it had been in its heyday. The record emporium next door to it had become a lottery store. The African craft store had closed. Everything in Harlem is always in a state of flux, but the early 1990s was perhaps the low point in the great neighborhood’s fall from grace.