William Boyd - Stars and bars

By now it was completely dark in his cell. His captors had left no lights on and he was reliant on the window for such faint illumination it provided. Peering out he could see nothing but darkness.

He picked up the chair and used its legs to smash through the glass panes in the window. The shards tinkled faintly in the alley below. A gust of cool air blew in, bringing with it the din of rainfall and overflowing gutters. He looked out. Nothing had changed, no-one had heard. The night was cool but not unbearably so.

For two or three minutes he bellowed “HELP!” out of the window but there was no response. He smashed the chair against the wall and with a fragment of wood knocked out the remaining slivers of glass from the window surround. That achieved, it was an easy matter to batter away the cruciform muntin. As he did this the rain dampened the dried blood on his chest and it began to run again.

He thrust his head and shoulders out of the window. He was about twenty feet up from the ground, he calculated. Some way to his left was a fire escape. To his right was a thick drainpipe, just within reach.

Diligently, he searched the frame edges for any stray glass fragments that might prove an unpleasant snag during his exit. Then he took off his shoes and tied the laces together, slinging them round his neck, before easing himself backwards out of the window, face towards the sky.

With great caution and some ricked muscles he managed to buttock-shuffle, haul and claw himself into a shaky position whereby he was standing outside on the window ledge, his upper body pressed flat against the uneven wall, his fingers jammed in the courses between the bricks. Slowly he edged in the direction of the drainpipe, an old, strong-looking cast iron thing, as thick as a thigh. He reached out and grasped it with his left hand, and, searching blindly with his left foot found a collar or moulding that gave him a toe-hold. There he stood: one foot on the window ledge the other on the drainpipe; one hand circling the pipe, the other wedged in a corner of the window embrasure. The rain pattered heavily on his bare shoulders, a breeze gusted between his spread legs cooling his dangling genitals.

He gripped and swung, hugging the drainpipe passionately to him and gasping a little at the shock of the cold cast iron on his chest and the inside of his clinging thighs. Tentatively, limpet-like, he began to inch his way down, helped by the numerous bifurcations, knobs and bead-ings on the pipe. Then his probing foot touched the ground and he sank with a sob of relief.

He put on his shoes and cautiously explored the alley. He felt wholly odd and alien in his nakedness, a soft vulnerable creature entirely unsuited for this world of hard objects. The alley, he found, was no more than five feet wide and no kind of thoroughfare, judging from the amount of rubbish and litter it contained. He discovered an up-ended wooden crate which provided some sort of shelter and slipped inside, out of the rain. He sat down cautiously, feeling for nails, the coarse wood prickling his buttocks. It was all very well being free, but freedom was drastically confined if you were naked. He looked at his watch. Eleven o’clock. He could wait a’while before he went in search of help.

He sat in his box and watched the rivulets of water on the alley floor turn into gushing rills as the rain lanced down. As he sat there he felt at once incredulous and full of self-pity. Here he was, Ph. D., author, ‘Impressionist man’, reduced to the status of latter-day troglodyte, sheltering in abandoned boxes, nude, smeared with his own blood, in the middle of New York City…He looked at his bare knees, his bald shins and damp black shoes. He held out his hands, as if offering his nails for inspection, and watched the raindrops bounce off them. It was true; it was real.

He got up and ventured palely out into the alleyway again to search for some sort of garb. There were plenty of scraps of paper, tins and plastic containers, polystyrene packing and cardboard boxes but nearly everything was soaked and useless from the rain. Eventually he found a cardboard box beneath a pile of damp wood shavings. On the side it said in large black letters:

2000 MARY MOUNTS STA-TITE MAXI-PAD SANITARY NAPKINS

Complete protection and comfort Super Thin! Super Absorbent!

He nodded. Yes, this was what he was coming to expect. But in his present state he couldn’t afford to be choosy. A little further down the alley he found great tangles of discarded plastic belting of the sort used to secure parcels. He tore his Maxi-Pad box into a long thin rectangle and wrapped it around his middle. He then wound yards of plastic belting around the box, knotting it as tightly and as best he could. He ended up with a very short cardboard mini-skirt that preserved his modesty — just — but had an annoying tendency to slip down when he walked. With more plastic belting he constructed crude braces that held the box in approximate place, even though they chafed somewhat on his shoulders.

It was amazing the difference it made to his confidence to be clothed at last, even if only in a Mary Mount Maxi-Pad box. He felt profound understanding of Adam and Eve’s urge to make themselves aprons of fig leaves after the Fall. Postlapsarian man lived on in him too.

Hesitantly, he advanced to the mouth of the alley. It was nearly midnight. He peered round the corner of the wall. The street was badly lit, deserted and under two inches of water. A car went by throwing up wings of spray from its front wheels. Automatically, he ducked back into the darkness of the alleyway. Why hadn’t he stepped out and flagged it down, he asked himself? Remember where you are, was his reply. No-one is going to come to the aid of a half-naked, bloodstained, card-board-box-wearing man after midnight in this city…He saw that the torrential rain was going to be as much his ally as his enemy — driving everyone off the streets, forcing everyone and everything into dry corners, leaving the empty rain-lashed avenues to him.

He worked out a plan. It was too risky, he thought, to head for his own apartment. He had a feeling that Freeborn and the others would be paying it a visit at some juncture. Freeborn might go looking for Shanda; or Gint might be there, with his pliers. He needed friends. He would head north up Manhattan to his only friend: Irene. Go to Irene.

At half past two in the morning, Henderson set out. Sereno had said his ‘gallery’ was on the lower east side, ‘in back of Canal’. Henderson paused at the alley’s entrance. This must be Canal Street. The rain still fell, everything was quiet. He slipped out of the alley and loped in a half crouch along the street, hugging the walls.

At Canal and Forsyth he paused and took shelter in a doorway. He was out of breath, not from exertion but from excitement. Across Forsyth was a thin tree-lined park. He scampered over to it. ‘Sara D. Roosevelt Park’, a sign read. He climbed over the railings and hid behind a tree. A couple beneath an umbrella hurried past, heads down. He followed the park north, sprinting across the streets that bisected it — Grand and Delancy — until he reached East Houston Street.

Hiding behind a bush he looked at the Second Avenue subway station. Wraiths of steam drifted from manhole covers. Two cars went by and a yellow cab. Should he seek help in the subway? It looked like a gate to hell. He climbed over the park railings and walked over to the entrance. He had no money, he realized, and no identification. He stood on the sidewalk, indecisive, his chest heaving. A man came out of the subway, glanced angrily at him and went on his way, muttering and shaking his head. Of course, Henderson suddenly realized with tender elation, they think I’m mad . Just another fucking weirdo. It was a moment of true liberation. A revelation. He felt all the restraints of his culture and upbringing fall from him like a cloak slid from shoulders. He felt, in the Eugene Teagarden sense, spontaneously, unusually pure. He saw a yellow cab drive by, its ‘for hire’ light on. Emboldened, indifferent, careless, he stepped out into the street and hailed it. The taxi driver looked disgustedly at him, swore and drove on. Henderson shrugged, smiled, turned and jogged up Second Avenue. He still kept close to the walls and paused in dark doorways from time to time, but he was beginning to reassess and revalue his presence in the city…Even given the lateness of the hour New York was astonishingly quiet. He had the rain to thank for that; judging from the amount of water flowing through the streets New Yorkers would probably wake up tomorrow to find their city declared a disaster zone. Only an occasional car or empty bus interrupted the solitude. Henderson ran steadily on, his Maxi-Pad box surprisingly unimpeding and comfortable. He ran past St Mark’s Church, and paused in a doorway at Fourteenth Street. Over to his left was Union Square, but he didn’t have the nerve to go anywhere near it, even in tonight’s exceptionally inclement weather. The serious people in Union Square wouldn’t be deterred by a little rain. He would go north a few blocks and then cut over to Park Avenue South which, he knew, had a central island running the length of it, planted with bushes and shrubs and up which he could make his way, undisturbed by the rare pedestrian and with plenty of cover should the police come by.