Colson Whitehead - The Colossus of New York

TICKETS, EVERYONE. Hey, Conductor, can you say a little prayer, something pilgrim-oriented. They settle into pews. As luck would have it the kind of person who says, He’s a good person to know, sits next to the kind of person who says, I’ll set something up. What do they hide in their satchels and bags that they guard so carefully. Voodoo dolls lounge atop last week’s earnings reports. Dread the ride home because this might be the day your children discovered the true face of the world and how to explain that to them. What are skinned knees compared to what is in store. What waits for them across thresholds: marriages, mattresses, mortgages of all kinds. The commute is just enough time to get into character and remember lines. That awkward moment this afternoon when she forgot her daughter’s name. You have paid to sit, so pray. As if these daily humiliations and sacrifices mean something, are tallied by the ones who keep the books. Tomorrow we pick up where we left off. Sleep tight. Sleep deep. Sleep the sleep of the successful because somehow you made it through the day without anyone finding out that you are a complete fraud.

JUMPING ROPE, punching the air and shadowboxing especially. The prizefighters warm up for the big bout. So much on the line. The mirror in the corner counsels, Keep your fists up and your head down. Then the bell rings and it’s out of apartments, out of workplace personas, into streets, into nighttime guises. Twilight is a mask factory.

HAPPY HOUR descends, this low fog. It’s ladies’ night or discounted jello shots or two for one. The bar-tender supervises distribution of watered-down stash, picks up bits of conversation. Other people empty her drop by drop. Solitary drinkers share cautionary tales through posture. He collects coasters from all over the world. This one he’s got in spades. This is the beer to have when you’re having more than one. Sitting at the bar waiting to be picked up like in the movies. Or merely saved. Eyes slide from stool to stool, fingers running across rows of books. Browse this library shelf, linger over spines even as you are browsed in turn, examined, checked out. Certainly there are a few volumes yet unread. Pull the next personality out of your back pocket. Maybe this one will work. He overhears his words coming out of someone else’s mouth and wishes his complaints were not so common. Pace yourself. Things are just getting started.

THEY TUMBLE down museum steps after taking in this season’s big exhibit. She feels so much more comfortable parroting critics with a bona fide ticket stub in her pocket. When they went into the art house movie it was light out. Reckoning the surcharges on matinees. What do you feel like doing. Dunno. Everybody else knows where the hot new restaurants are. They don’t get out as much as they used to. Haunted by the beady little eyes of the baby-sitter. Depending on what’s going on in the rest of the world, for whole minutes he’s the worst waiter in the whole world. Protocols for dealing with complainers are taped up by the kitchen door. Think saliva. Seething over appetizers, they save it up for home so they don’t fight in the restaurant. It’s nice to have an activity or hobby you can share with your spouse. These two have decided on spite and it has brought them closer together. Unlikely as it is, for once they’re the well-adjusted couple at the table for four. Eyes roll when he orders off the menu. That looks good. They eat here once a month but something about this meal makes them realize things haven’t worked out for a while now and they’ll never return. Countdown to symptoms of food poisoning. Would you like dessert. We have a wide assortment of bitters.

THIS MUST BE the place. It’s not. This particular street address does not exist. In another city perhaps but not this one or maybe in the future but not now. Then defectors open the door and it begins. He swears he’s been here before. Doesn’t know a single soul. Lost in the cocktail party. Who to talk to. Anyone. Drain the melted ice again. Go to the bar, hit the bathroom: by the time you return the party will have aligned in your favor. No such luck. Planting this rumor is harder than it first looked. Gardeners advise patience, things take root or don’t. Given the choice between two parties that guy over there will always make the wrong decision. Case in point. No prying a certain type from the hors d’oeuvres table. For the last half hour she has been trying to gain converts to grudges but no luck. What does she see in him. He’s so transparent. Old enough to be his daughter. For half a minute they inhabit the dream city that lured them from their hometowns but then discover nothing solid beneath their feet and down they go. Quicksand occurs most frequently in movies, then come parties. Mark my words: when they finally teach coffee-table books to walk and talk, the market will fall out of the trophy wife and boy toy business.

HIPSTERS SEEK refuge in church, Our Lady of Perpetual Subculture. There is some discussion as to whether or not they are still cool but then they are calmed by the obscure location and the arrival of their kind. Keep the address to yourself, let the rabble find it for themselves. Wow, this crappy performance art is really making me feel not so terrible about my various emotional issues. He has to duck out early to get back to his bad art. Three cheers for your rich interior life, may it serve you well come rent day. Beer before liquor never sicker. This one’s on me. Somehow he ends up buying every round. Hour by hour the customers change, grow humps horns scales. The little noises they make: her boyfriend’s out of town, his college roommate is in town, my friend’s band is playing downtown. He made too many plans with too many people and things will not turn out okay. She’s a little worried because at midnight the new legislation goes into effect and the draconian Save the Drama for Your Mama laws are really going to cramp her style. Hit the town. It hits back.

THE NEWSPAPER write-up contains bad directions to the hot new spot. Suddenly they’re on empty streets in unreckoned neighborhoods and must go deeper into darkness before safety. Corners and alleys out of metropolitan fable, bricked-up doorways, newspapers stuntdoubling for tumbleweeds. Streetlights gallow. Footsteps of roving thugs. They ask, Can you hear me. They ask, Is that you beside me or is this the end of it all. Then music enters deep tissues, they see the lights and the mob, but that was real fear and what if word gets out that they’re still capable of fear after all these years. Count on one thing, count on this: night keeps its mouth shut. Nightclub doors are shut. This is Rent-A-Bouncer’s most popular model. They never blink. New satanic advances make it possible for them to actually appraise the souls of aspiring clubgoers. Seen a certain way, the velvet rope kinda smiles. A delegation of corpses staggers by on structurally unsound heels. She read an article where it said formaldehyde is in this season. Simple economics: if they only admit the beautiful people, who will pay the cover charge.

AND THEY SAID his shirt was loud. Pantomime desires. One by one the gang goes off on adventures. On waking next afternoon they’ll compare notes. Design flaws of the rich and famous. Knock politely on the bathroom door. People are up to no good in there. It’s very suspicious. Watch out: it is the nightly running of the anorexic assistants. They squeeze by easily. Everybody’s looking so good, everybody’s so well put together, I just want to say, Keep up the good work, troops. The DJ has scrutinized evolution and knows the back door into reptilian brain-stem. The beat cries mutiny, recruits limbs and hips, strips this vessel of volition. Apparently this song is very popular. Lewd dances trigger responses. Still the wallflower after all these years. To be able to just dance up to somebody and start doing that, whatever that’s called. Akimbo things banish drinks to the floor. Elbows heels hands and heads. Beware the lumbering man-child at ten o’clock — they tend to wave their arms when they dance. She looks down at her hips. Not half bad.