Colum McCann - This Side of Brightness

* * *

On Broadway in the evening, when the snow has briefly relented, he walks along with a bag full of cans and spies her, sitting under the awning of Symphony Space.

With an outstretched arm she holds a tall stack of perhaps twenty paper coffee cups. The top coffee cup almost bows in supplication to the street. He laughs at the sight and listens as she says to passersby, “Spare some change and I’ll dance at your wedding!”

Even when nobody gives her money and her body slumps to the ground and her arm becomes tired and her feet are splayed and her eyes are glazed and the edges of her mouth are carved into two deep sorrowful furrows, she continued to smile and say, “Spare some change and I’ll dance at your wedding!”

* * *

He listens at the door until he is sure that Elijah is not around: easy to tell, since the radio is not playing and Elijah always insists on noise — even when he’s sleeping.

Treefrog toes his way forward, waits, knocks, and hears her moan.

“Heyyo.”

A long silence and a ruffle of blankets, and he nudges his feet against the door and raps on the wood again. Another moan, but he can tell she’s shifting in the bed.

“Get out.”

“It’s me.”

“Who?”

“Treefrog.”

“Who are you?”

“Just me.”

“Get out.”

“Hey, where’s Elijah? When’s he back?”

“Don’t touch me.”

“I won’t touch you. Got a smoke?”

“No.”

“Is today Wednesday or Thursday?”

“Get out.”

“It’s Friday, ain’t it?”

He enters, and she is flat on a mattress in the fabulous dark; he can’t even make out her shape. Electricity must be out. He flicks the lighter with one hand, then the other, holds it over where he knows the bed to be. She puts her arm across her eyes and says, “Get out!”

He can tell that she’s been crying, her upper lip sucked in against her teeth, her fists clenched, her eyes red.

She looks like a sad sandwich between five sets of blankets.

Shoving the lighter into his pocket, he sits down in the darkness on a wicker chair by the bed, puts his feet on a shattered television set with a fist hole in its glass, and listens to her rummage under the blankets. The chair has two short legs, so he rocks it diagonally.

“What’s your name?”

“Don’t hurt me.”

“I won’t hurt you. What’s your name?”

After a long silence she says, “Angie.”

“There’s a song about that.”

“If Elijah finds someone here he’ll kill me.”

“I just wanted to say hello.”

“You said it. Now get out.”

“You look just like somebody.”

“Get out, I said.”

“I just want a cigarette.”

“I have a knife,” she says. “If you come any closer, I’ll kill you.”

“Saw you this morning,” he says. “And I saw you up there on Broadway, too. With the coffee cups. I like that. A big long line of coffee cups. Never seen that before.”

“Out!”

“You look just like a friend of mine. I thought you were her. Hey. Why you crying?”

“I ain’t crying. Shut up and get out.”

“What’s wrong with the juice?” he asks.

“The what?”

“What happened the electric?”

“Elijah’ll kill you if you don’t get out. He said don’t let nobody in here.”

“You’ll have to get Faraday to fix the electric.”

“He that ugly white motherfucker in the suit?” she asks.

“Yeah. Connects everyone up. From the light poles topside. Runs the cable down. Even goes to the other tunnels. He can pirate it off the third rail. Sometimes he steps the electric down with transformers. He’s a genius with the juice.”

“Elijah’s gonna kill him too. He whistled at me. Say, what’s your name again?”

“Treefrog.”

“That’s the weirdest goddamn name I ever heard in my life.”

“I play the harmonica.”

“That don’t explain nothing.”

“Everyone else calls me that. I don’t call me that. I don’t like it.”

He hears her pull the blankets high around her neck. “Motherfuck,” she says, “it’s cold.” There’s a scuffle in the background and she sits up urgently. “What’s that?”

“A rat.”

“I hate rats.”

“You should get a cat.”

She shivers. “Elijah don’t like cats.”

“You want some more blankets?”

“Yeah.”

“I got some extra,” says Treefrog. “Back in my place. Gimme a smoke first. A smoke for a blanket for the barter man.”

“I don’t got none.”

“I saw you smoking this morning.”

“You promise you’ll give me a blanket?”

“Yeah.”

He feels a cigarette land in his lap and he searches in his overcoat for a lighter, snaps it aflame, pulls the smoke down deep into his lungs, continues rocking the chair diagonally in the darkness.

“Thanks, babe.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Thanks, Angela.”

“It’s Angie.”

“I like Angela better.”

“You’re an asshole,” she says. “Motherfuck, it’s cold. Ain’t it cold? You ain’t cold? I’m cold.”

He rises up from the wicker chair. “Don’t go nowhere,” he says. “I’m gonna get you a blanket.”

He goes to the door and looks across the tunnel to the fading light from the grill. “It’s snowing,” he says, after a moment.

“I know it’s goddamn snowing.”

“I like it when it snows. The way it comes down through the grates. You seen it?”

“Man, you’re crazy. It’s cold. Snow is cold, that’s what it is. It’s cold. That’s all. Cold. This is hell. This is a cold, motherfucking hell.”

“A heaven of hell,” he says.

“What you talking about now, asshole?”

“Nothing.”

He walks down the tunnel, beating his arms around himself to stave off the wind that howls down from the southern end. In his nest, he finds his extra blankets in huge blue plastic bags beside his books and maps.

Angela, he thinks, as he walks back down toward the cubicle, carrying a blanket for her. A nice name. Six letters. Good symmetry. Angela.

* * *

He sees her at the tunnel gate one evening, so stoned that her eyes roll around in their sockets. She tugs him by the sleeve and whispers to him that she used to dance in a club in Dayton, Ohio.

“A little shithole there, outside of town,” she says. “I used to do my face with the nicest makeup. There was two platforms. One girl on each. One night I was onstage and I look up and see my father coming in, you know; he sits himself at a table at the back of the club. My goddamn father! He orders himself a beer and then goes to giving the waitress a hard time ’cause he paid five dollars and only got a plastic glass. Sitting there, just staring up at me while I was dancing. I was scared, Treefy. I thought he was gonna get up there on the stage and hit me like he always done. I wasn’t dancing, hardly, I was so scared. All these men were booing and hissing from a table. And then I look down, and my father, he’s gone changed the angle of his chair; he’s looking at the other platform, at the other girl. Licking his lips. So then I decided. I danced the finest dance I ever done in my life. I swear all heads were turned at me, excepting him. He’s just drinking and staring at the other girl and never once looks at me. And when I go out in the parking lot he’s waiting for me and he’s drunk, and he says, Girl — I’m twenty-two and he’s still calling me Girl — and then he asks the name of the other dancer and I says, Cindy. And he says, Thanks. And then he leaves in his old gray Plymouth and leans out the window and says to me, That Cindy girl sure can dance. That’s what he said to me. That Cindy girl sure is a dancer.”