Michael Thomas - Man Gone Down

I know I’m drifting, in widening concentric circles, toward the bridge — and then back south down Clinton to Atlantic Ave, the divide between old and new, with the North African and Middle Eastern stores, in which there are jugs of olive oil; bins of grain, coffee, and dried fruit; spices and dried herbs; olive-filled buckets; and in the afternoon, especially Saturdays, white people. I suppose there shouldn’t be anything wrong with that, but there is, for me, and when I shop, for them. I stand in line and they stare at me until, of course, I stare back. Then they look away. It’s strange that it should require an imagination to understand that I like olive oil and the bargain prices on Bulgarian feta, too. And stranger that they don’t seem to possess imagination in even that tiny amount. At times I’ve chosen to extrapolate, generalize — a widespread condemnation of an entire people based on the observation of a nervous few. When he first moved to New York, Shake applied for grants to study the habits of Upper East Side white people — their rituals, their culture. It was, of course, rejected.

I turn north, up Henry Street, and finally break a sweat. Even on this hot night it’s taken me over half an hour to get warm. It’s an awful feeling, running cold. Sometimes it’s what keeps me from running. Things bind up and creak and grind. I breathe short and shallow. My sternum aches and I remember my father and his father and prepare to die alone, late night on the asphalt. I’ve been told that I have a death wish. When my chest aches and my stomach acid rises up my esophagus to my larynx, I know it’s not angina, but I can’t believe it’s anything else. I speed up to run through it and then belch or gag up a bit of bile; my sternum pops like a rude knuckle. I wipe my forehead, spit, and I’m free.

I haven’t run in three days — just enough time off to be fresh, fast. The temperatures of the air outside and my musculature seem the same. I lengthen my stride a bit. Whatever the disaster of my past life, or the low-calorie days and sleepless nights, I can still run, which is something that Claire and many other people, being neither ex-junkies nor ex-athletes, cannot understand. She would say, when she thought I was angry, “You should run,” as though it would be some cathartic event. Her suggestion would make me angry.

Gavin’s father would sometimes show up at his mom’s apartment ready to run. He’d point at us and say, “Up,” and then he’d walk out and bark back to us, “Suit up.” He was still young — about five years past his prime — just twenty years our senior, dragging two hungover, hairless late bloomers through a world-class workout. He’d run us hard until one of us puked, and then he’d shut it down and we’d coast back to Gavin’s, his old man quiet and content for the moment — he still had it. Then he’d disappear and come back with meatball subs, beer, and cigarettes. We’d absentmindedly shoot baskets in the driveway until the food was gone, and then we’d play hustle and there’d be a hard foul, and then a fight. Gavin, by that time, probably could’ve held his own against the old man, but he never did. He’d just jab at him to keep him at bay. Then his dad would charge and they’d wrestle. The old man would sneak a rabbit punch in, and I’d pull him off and throw him down on the driveway. He’d call us pussies and weave off in his latest jalopy. I think that we each realized for ourselves that talent and potential were both, in the end, irrelevant, and that winning, and winning big, which required some dark manipulation of mind, body, and soul, was all that mattered. Gavin will not run with me anymore. I suppose I don’t want to run with him, either. I don’t know if I will run with my children. It has become a solitary endeavor.

Ahead of me are two cyclists. They’re riding the wrong way. This always peeves me — you walk and run against the traffic; you ride with it. They’re wobbly, struggling, almost the same amount, up the incline. And this isn’t a hill. New York City, for the most part, doesn’t have any — not like Boston. I drop it in gear and begin to reel them in. I can’t tell if they’re wobbling from the effort, or if they’re drunk. They look to be stuck in too high a gear. They come back to me. By the time we get to Remsen Street, they’re mine. I pass them. The man dismounts, startled. This is going to be a good one. I have no internal organs, only gears, which drive steel-spring legs and suction feet that grip the road and release. I’m like some high-tech primordial machine.

For the last ten months I’ve been drifting back to the bridge though never attempting to cross it. As I get closer, the day comes up, rolling through my head like some conspicuously edited newsreel: I’ve just finished running and I’m walking home from my then favorite coffee shop — now closed — with a pound of freshly roasted beans and the Times, and I smell a strange chemical taint in the air. There’s what seems to be a snow flurry over the East River. I run into one of Claire’s pals on the corner; she’s taking her two kids to school.

“Hey.”

“What’s going on?” I ask, looking around in the sky.

“I heard there was an explosion in the Trade Center.”

“An explosion?” I look west, over the docks, up to the north tower. It’s smoking up top.

“Someone told me a prop plane hit it.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Apparently not,” she asserts, as though she’s annoyed by my faith in pilots and air traffic controllers.

“No, look.” I point. “Do you know how wide that building is?”

She doesn’t seem to understand — the physics of it. I run. The streets are full of parents and children. Some watch me sprint up the street. I open my building’s gate and bang on Marta’s door. She peers through her diamond window.

“Close all your windows, now!”

Up the stairs to the top, banging on the other doors. Claire’s preparing the recycling. The apartment door’s open. She’s smiling. Things are going well. The kids are dressed and fed and ready to go — a plan she’s had ready since mid-August. She looks up.

“What’s up, hon?”

I think I’m breathless, but I’m not, so it comes out as a roar.

“Close the windows!”

She keeps wrapping the packing tape around the newspaper and pizza box — still happy — not wanting to change her expression, not wanting to heed mine. For once, for a moment, things seem to be going well in our lives and there’s no reason to let it go.

“Get inside, now!”

I never raise my voice at Claire; now I’ve done it twice in ten seconds. It crushes her smile. Her long mouth makes the transition dramatic. She drops the taped bundle and backs inside. The windows are closed. The AC is on. I shut it off.

“It’ll get hot.”

I bark something at her. X and the girl are on the floor, playing with toys — dinosaurs, trains, and farm animals.

“Where’s C?”

“In his room.”

The boy’s room is a half flight up, and just as I’m about to push off the landing and go through the door, he yells.

“Daddy! Daddy!”

The second plane comes and it hits like the news of a loved-one’s death, shapeless, soundless, but reverberating, bassy, like the echo of a giant vault door slamming shut — but it’s on my insides. The shock stops my heart. I’m frozen, one foot in the air, one foot on the ground. Then everything begins again — my heart, doubly so, making up for lost beats. I crash into the hollow-core door. C’s on his bunk, looking out the window. I see his face. He’s a child, then he’s not, at least not in his face: It’s wiped clear — no chocolate, no jam smears, no innocence. Then the child returns, which is worse, because that face can’t absorb the horror of the fire across the river.