Pete Hamill - Tabloid City

— A fire? Jesus Christ… I’m on the Manhattan Bridge. Be there in ten, twelve minutes.

He clicks off. Tries the operations channel again. A fire. On Patchin Place. Oh, my Mary Lou, he thinks. Please be gone. Oh, please be safe. Please be waiting for me outside, so I can drive you back home, so we can climb into bed, so we can be warm on this cold night. Please, Mary Lou. Please.

Then in the rearview Ali sees lights coming closer, real fast. Hey, pal: I’m in the left lane. You got lots of room. No: he’s playing games. Tailgating. On the Manhattan Bridge! In the fucking rain!

Now his brights are on, blinding Ali, flooding his car with light.

Ali slows down.

Pass me, muthafucka.

And then a yard behind him the tailgater rips to the right on the slick bridge, and Ali glances at him. A BMW. A black-haired white kid. Maybe twenty. Maybe younger. Someone beyond him in the passenger seat. A girl, for sure. The kid’s laughing, eyes cocaine-wide, and then he races past. Foot harder on the pedal, and there’s a taxi up ahead. The kid wants to pass the cab, racing for Manhattan, for Canal Street. Speeding to SoHo or Tribeca. Or the Meatpacking District. But he clips the cab, spinning it off to the right, and then the BMW swerves, and hits a steel restraining wall, and flips and turns, once, twice, then comes to a tumbling thumping halt on its roof. Filling two lanes. Ali stops three feet from the wrecked car.

Fuck.

He puts the Mazda in park, red lights blinking, turns off the ignition, grabs a heavy-beam flashlight, gets out. Waving the flashlight at oncoming traffic. The taxi is backing up, righting itself, leaving a path.

Ali glances into the crumpled BMW, still waving the flashlight. He sees the driver and a young girl splayed on the inside of the roof, which is now the bottom. Blood moves in a lumpy way from the driver’s mouth. The girl’s neck looks broken, her shirt near her waist. She’s not wearing panties. Neither of them wearing seat belts. The motor is running, as steady as the rain. They look very dead. He touches the driver’s wrist. Warm. Then stops himself. No, wait for whoever gets the squeal. For a moment, he wonders how many dead people he has touched in his life.

Then he taps 911 on the cell.

Wait for me, Mary Lou. Wait, my darling. I’ll be a bit late. Wait.

He reports the accident, clicks off. Then glances at the ruined car. And imagines the parents getting the news from a tired cop. Two hours from now, the phone call at the wrong hour, the hearts thumping in alarm, hands lifting receivers. Seeing the boy at four, the girl at three, running barefoot in a backyard on a summer afternoon, splashing in surf. Seeing New York from the Circle Line. Full of amazement. Staring at the phone. Then sobbing, collapsing, falling, screaming.

At least it’s not Malik.

The rain falls hard.

2:22 a.m. Consuelo Mendoza. The N train to Brooklyn.

She is wearing a thick brown polyester jacket, cloth gloves, a watch cap. She speaks good English, but usually thinks in Spanish, and knows that at this hour of the night, on this night of all nights, she must be extra careful. Por seguro . She carries no purse, nothing to tempt some pendejo. In her hidden belt, she has 207 dollars in cash. In her jacket pocket, some change and a Metro-Card. The last payday. The last night of a job she has held for seven years. The thick down jacket hides an immense gouge in her stomach, an emptiness put there by her boss. There were many consoling words from the woman who was her boss. But the hole is still there. Getting larger.

The windows of the train are streaked with rain, racing left to right instead of top to bottom, as they cross the Manhattan Bridge, high over the river. The train turns and an empty plastic Diet Pepsi bottle rolls from one side of the car to the other. Just another passenger, lost and empty. Two men move to a window, looking down at something. Bright whirling lights. An accident. The train keeps moving. The men can see nothing now and one returns to a seat. A sleeping Chinese man lurches and almost falls from his seat. His eyes widen, and then he gazes around the car, relaxes, and returns to sleep. An unshaven white man in a Giants jacket stares at something in the back of his eyes. There are three other women on the train as it comes down off the bridge into the tunnel. The rain now makes paths from top to bottom. Usually, her friend Norma is with her, and they can talk and make jokes in Spanish. But Norma was laid off two weeks ago and still doesn’t have a new job. She helps out at a taco van in Red Hook on weekends, but that’s not a real job. The last year, lots of people lost jobs. Maybe tonight was just her turn. Just like that. Paid in cash by Sara, the Colombiana, as always, so they’d have no records at the cleaning company. I’m carrying the money alone. And alone, Consuelo tries to look small, insignificant, worthless, homely, avoiding all eye contact, especially with the men.

The train pulls into Atlantic Avenue — Pacific Street, and several people get up. Down the car, near the middle door, she sees a sign:

IF YOU SEE SOMETHING,

SAY SOMETHING

Consuelo Mendoza never sees anything that they’re talking about. No crazy Arabs. No guys with guns or bombs. She sees a lot of other things. But no musulmanes locos . The train waits, with doors open. Down the aisle are two other women, one of them Mexican. Or maybe Guatemalan. She has an Indian face, like Consuelo’s. Sad too. The R pulls in, the doors open, and more people hurry into the N. On the platform, dozens of others start pushing into the R, which is always late. On one of the benches, Consuelo glimpses a white vagabundo in clothes made shiny by filth. No socks. Stretched out, one sneakered foot on the cement floor, one arm hanging. There are many of them now. Homeless. Jobless. Borrachos, adictos, most of them, but not all.

In her work building back in SoHo, she and Norma weren’t the only persons fired. So were the men who worked there days, and sometimes nights. All the women too. Many worked late, sweating, ruled by the computer, sometimes joking. But when she arrived at seven sharp on this night, they all were gone. She cleaned anyway, sensing it was over, but not knowing for sure, didn’t call home to Raymundo, didn’t want him to worry, to lose sleep, to fret. He is such a sweet man. All evening, she didn’t do anything except her job. While the emptiness began to widen in her belly. She ate nothing, took nothing but water. Her head was buzzing with unspoken words. We all knew what was coming. We knew for weeks that if the men left, if the office closed, if the computers were all blank, there’d be no garbage to empty, no cardboard coffee cups, no half-eaten sandwiches, no banana peels, no apple cores, no empty soda bottles, no pizza crusts. No floors to sweep and mop. No work. What will we do?

Raymundo is home, right this minute, sleeping in their bedroom, the three children in theirs. She and Raymundo will sleep together for three hours tonight and then he will rise up in the morning dark, mi Dios, whispering, walking in socks to make no noise, and wash and get dressed and take the train to his job in the coffee shop. Does she tell him when he wakes up that she has lost her job? No. Then all day at the coffee shop he will be sick in his heart, in his hands, in his belly, like me. The coffee shop won’t be the same. Usually, he would be there all day, starting at six, finishing at five, hurrying home, where they would kiss and she would show him the food in the pot, and then hurry off to her job. In the coffee shop, he cooks sandwiches, ham and bacon and cheese and eggs. All the stuff the gringos love. Sometimes a club sandwich with turkey and lettuce and tomato and bacon. He slices and toasts bagels. He fills many cardboard cups of coffee.