Whitley Streiber - Warday

“Have a big time,” Jenny says. “We’ll catch up with you at the TC by—let’s see, it’s ten now—say two o’clock. You wait for us there.”

Then she and I step onto the platform. The train grinds its gears and roars off down the tunnel.

“There’s an awful lot of foliage in this area,” Jenny says as we near the stairs. “And dogs, like Moore said. You stay close to me. And I mean close. No more than three feet away.”

“The dogs are that dangerous?”

“This is their city, Mr. Strieber. They’re the kings here. Our best defense is to stay the hell away from them. But since you want to see the Village—”

We emerge into the light and fresher air of Lafayette and Bleecker. There have been more aggressive fires around here.

East toward the Bowery most of the buildings are caved in, their rubble spread into the street, covering the inevitable ruined vehicles. “You go down toward the Holland Tunnel, the cars really get thick. And in the tunnel, all the way to where it’s drowned down near the middle.”

My heart is beating harder. Many, many times I emerged from this same station on my way home. In a few minutes we’ll be able to see 515 West Broadway.

Ahead is Broadway, the ruins of the Tower Records store on the ground floor of the Silk Building. I think to myself, the destruction of this city is so vast, so intricate, that it is not possible to grasp it, let alone tell about it.

New York was immensely wealthy, and so it was detailed. It is the ruin of this detail that impresses—the thousands of cars, the sheer weight of salvage, the numberless little things that together once defined the place: ballpoint pens, mag wheels, plastic raincoats, videotapes, canned goods, masonry and glass and asphalt, an endless list of objects destroyed.

It is a fine morning, though, and the light spreading down has the familiar sinister sharpness peculiar to New York skies. We begin moving along the center of Bleecker, between Washington Square Village and Silver Towers. The trees are much taller than one would expect after five years, and the grass has extended on a bed of creepers right to the middle of the street. Bleecker seems like a country lane set amid exotic, crumbling colossi.

To the right, the Grand Union grocery where we used to shop is completely destroyed, burned to a few stacks of seared brick, and covered by vines and grasses.

Then I see 515. I am absurdly grateful. I could kiss this taciturn girl for bringing me here. The building does not look well. The slate facade has fallen off almost completely and lies shattered on the sidewalk. I can see broken windows with rotting curtains blowing out of them. Up close, the quiet of desolation is hard to bear. I took Andrew in and out of this building in a stroller. He learned to ride a bike on this sidewalk. Behind those walls my love for Anne matured and became permanent.

It is not until Jenny Bell puts an arm around my shoulder that I realize I’ve begun to cry.

“I want to go in.”

“These old buildings are dangerous.”

“Still—”

She sighs. “You’re crazy. But I suppose you know that. I’m crazy too. I work in New York, for God’s sake.”

“The doors are busted. We could go right in.”

“A place like this never got cleaned. There might be particles.”

“I want to see my apartment. If you’ll let me, I’d like to go. Alone, if you prefer.”

“You aren’t going anywhere alone. What floor is it on?”

“Six.”

“Of course. Naturally. You wouldn’t live on one or two, not you. A seven-story building and you live on six. So come on.”

As we enter the building I see a couple of dogs asleep on the sidewalk about half a block away. Two dogs, not very big.

The lobby is badly deteriorated. The walls were carpeted, and the carpet now hangs to the floor. When I push some of it aside to open the door into the stairwell, at least two hundred roaches scuttie away. “They like the glue,” Jenny says.

The place has a sweet, rancid odor, something like stagnant water. I suppose the basement must be permanently flooded. “If the water table’s risen, why couldn’t people simply dig wells? We’d be able to repopulate Manhattan.”

“Toxins. The water’s poisonous. Godawful. When dogs drink out of the basements, their lips get eaten away.”

“How do they live?”

“Rainwater, rats, and squirrels. And people.”

“You’re not serious.”

“All the damn time. We find new kills every few days. Drifters figure that with so many buildings the city must be a squatter’s paradise. Wrong. Those who don’t get dogged die of waste poisoning from coming across Jersey. You can’t walk from Newark to the Hudson and live. It just ain’t possible.”

I think of the sins of the past. Then, it was so easy. Now I realize that I, like everybody else, was directly and personally responsible. The land was not despoiled by chemical companies, nor the war caused by countries. It was us, each one. We are all accountable for our era.

A sharp tang enters my mouth, something I wish I could spit out.

The stairs are dark in a way that the subway was not. This is absolute blackness, not the presence of dark but something more profound, the absence of light. I remember that these stairs were like this during the great blackout of ’85. We set candles along the banisters then, and shared the hot night and songs, and survival stories. We were New Yorkers. We were getting through.

I am a little sick to be passing Joseph and Sally Boyce’s bikes, the two beautiful Raleighs they got in June of ’87. There is a bag beside them. Jenny’s flashlight reveals a sweatshirt wadded up in it, so rotten that it turns to dust at a touch. I know that shirt; we gave it to Joseph for his birthday in ’87. If it could have been opened out, it would have read WHIPPETS on the front and LAKE WOBEGON, MINN. on the back.

At the sixth floor I hesitate before the fire door. We peer through the glass. Jenny’s flashlight reveals that the foyer on the other side is in perfect condition. It looks as if it has been preserved in a museum. The door creaks as Jenny opens it. Even the picture we and our next door neighbors put on the wall of the foyer is still there. “Deux,” it’s called. Photographs of two old men, one bright and smiling, the other in shadow. My neighbor was the bright one. The other represents me. There are just two apartments per floor in our building, and both doors seem securely locked. I put my hand on my old doorknob and rattle it. I wonder if we can even get in.

“Just a second,” Jenny says. She gives me the flashlight and produces a small hooked bar from a sling in her belt. “We have to do this fifty times a day.” She inserts the tool into my supposedly burglar-proof lock and in an instant the door swings open.

Sunlight floods the living room. It was always a bright apartment. After a moment my eyes get used to the light. The first thing I see is the bulging, rotted ruin of our L-shaped couch, maroon with tan padding and foam jutting out. The ceiling above it slopes far down into the room.

But it’s our apartment, very definitely. It hasn’t been looted.

The rosewood dining table still has a note stuck in the crack in the center. I take the brittle brown paper. Jam at the school, says Anne’s hasty scrawl. My first impulse is to take the note. But then I find myself putting it back, as if our whole past might collapse if this last, critical rivet were pulled out.

I want to see the rest of the apartment. But when I start for the back, where the bedrooms and my office are, Jenny stops me.

“Hold it.” She nods toward the floor. “Spoor.”

“Spoor?”

“Animals have been in here.” She nods toward the fire escape. “Window.” She touches a brown bit of the dung with her toe. “Dry. Wish I knew what the hell dropped it.”