Kristopher Jansma - Why We Came to the City

Looking over his shoulder, George was soon able to size up the people making the most noise. Three high-school-age girls were hanging on the same pole as a humongous boy who was drinking directly from a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Each time he took a huge gulp from the bottle — God, George could smell it — he would release a roar like Simba at the end of The Lion King , and the pack of girls would collapse into hysterical giggling. George glared at them, but they were oblivious to everyone else in the train car. He could see immediately that the boy was very drunk — past a point that George knew, but only really by inference. Past the point where he wouldn’t remember whatever things occurred between that point and the next morning.

Simba was wearing Birkenstocks, trendy skater shorts, and a North Face fleece. His hair was longer and more feathered than the hair of the girls surrounding him. These girls were rail thin and tanned, still, in mid-October. Instead of concert T-shirts, they were wearing tight dark jeans and the sort of wide-necked sweaters designed to show off carefully selected bra straps, which were, from left to right: fuschia, neon green, and black velvet.

George sniffed. Irene, with her white sweater and her golden scarf, looked like something out of another world. He tried smiling at her, but her eyes were shut tight against the sight of Simba, belching to the applause of the girls.

“What do these assholes think they’re doing?” George whispered.

“Oh, they’re probably going to that Envoy concert at Madison Square Garden,” Irene said. “Don’t you remember Sara was saying she wanted to go?”

George couldn’t believe it. “An Envoy concert? Come on. Seriously? They’re like a stoner pacifist love-in granola peace-sign band! This jerk’s acting like he’s going to Megadeth!”

Irene spoke out of the left half of her mouth. “We were young once too.”

Jesus, what was he doing now? Swinging the bottle of Jack around and nearly clocking a scared-looking old lady in the head! George looked around furiously at all the other people on the subway — was no one going to do something? No, of course not. Everyone was just standing around rolling their eyes at one another. George gritted his teeth.

“Hey! Just ignore him, okay? We’ll be at Fifty-ninth soon, and we’ll transfer to the six anyway.”

George watched Irene, sitting there choking down green sludge. He knew she was right.

“Just put your head back,” George said softly. “I’ll wake you when we get to the stop.”

She shook her head, flinching as Mr. Jack Daniel’s released yet another roar.

“HEY!” George found himself saying. “Come on. Keep it down!”

The boy staggered into the pole and bounced off again. This sent the three girls into fits of laughter, one of them backing up right into George.

“Hey, seriously, watch it!” he said, louder. The girl sneered at him, then looked away.

“Cut it out!” Irene kicked him gently with her foot. “You’re just going to piss them off.”

George was clenching his fists already but felt them go even tighter at Irene’s soft-spoken implication that this guy would surely clobber mild-mannered George into next week.

“It’s just you’re here, trying to rest, and these assholes are—”

“George!”

Irene had a look on her face that he knew well. It was a get-your-shit-together face. He looked around for someone else who might intervene — where the hell was Jacob when you needed him? By this point, Jacob would be cramming the bottle of Jack down Simba’s throat, and what’s more, Irene would be clapping him on the back for it! Why did he get to rant and rave and fly off the handle all the time, but whenever George raised his voice even a little, Sara or Irene clucked at him?

The train made a sudden sideways move, and George watched the boy lurch forward and unwittingly spill his Jack. The splash hit George’s arm, and then a fine constellation of brown dots appeared all over Irene’s white sweater.

That’s when George heard himself screaming.

“WHAT THE FUCK IS THE MATTER WITH YOU?”

Just like that there was silence in car. Outside, just the slow grinding on the tracks.

“IS YOUR BRAIN SO FUCKING SMALL THAT YOU ACTUALLY BELIEVE YOU ARE THE ONLY PERSON ON THE GODDAMN PLANET?”

The hulking kid stared, but it was impossible to tell if he really understood the words coming out of George’s mouth.

“Hey, hey,” one girl was saying, “don’t freak out, okay? We’re just having a good time.”

George couldn’t stand the offended expression on her face, as if she’d simply been behaving as anyone would. He felt cold all over.

“What about that old lady standing over there, who your friend almost hit with his whiskey bottle? That’s somebody’s grandmother. How would you like it if some clown like this guy walked up to your grandmother and hit her in the head? But you’re having a good time, so who cares, right? My friend’s got cancer, and this asshole gets to just spill booze all over her. But that’s fair, right? That’s totally fucking fair.”

“Look, we’re sorry, okay?” the third girl said. “Don’t cry.”

“I’m not! ” George shouted, though he knew he was. He knew it was over, and he knew that Irene was crying too, and not because of them. The girls went back to ignoring George, and now so did Irene. When they finally got off at 59th Street and transferred to the 6, Irene wouldn’t say a word to him. Finally, stepping out into the chilly air of Madison Square together, she walked, with George following, to a quiet corner of the park, and there she stopped.

“Sorry,” George said. “I’m sorry.” And he was. Sorry and sweating from all his pores. Sorry and wishing he could lock himself in a bathroom. Sorry and shaking like a leaf. “Don’t tell Sara, okay?”

Irene put her hand on his and waited for him to calm down. It took a long time, and when he finally had himself together, they were both too cold and embarrassed to keep fighting.

“It’s kind of nice to know you can’t always keep it together.”

Then before George quite realized what Irene was doing, she was tugging the overloaded bag of books from his throbbing hand.

“That’s really heavy—” he tried to say, but it was too late. Irene tried to dead-lift the bag to her shoulder for more support but stumbled backward, and the bag fell to the pavement.

“FUCK!” George bellowed, so loudly that a second later he heard it echo back to him from across the park.

Irene was turned around on the ground and trying to say something, but he couldn’t hear it until he bent down to help her up. “I fell down, George. It’s not the end of the world. What is all this anyway?”

The Barnes & Noble bag had split open, and books had scattered across the walkway.

Irene read off the titles, one after the other. “The Dorling Kindersley Complete & Illustrated Guide to Herbal Medicine … Healing the Soul: Optimize Your Mind with This Proven System! … Kicking Cancer’s Ass: A Memoir .”

“That’s an authorized account by WWE champion Barbarous Bobby Blake.”

“Oh, is it?” Irene laughed. “ Acids and Alkalines: A Chemical Guide to Cancer Curing . And seriously, Yoga, Yoghurt, and Yurts ?” She read from the back. “‘One woman’s triumph over breast cancer while traveling the Serengeti in search of love, inner peace, and bifidobacteria .’ George, there’s got to be thirty books here! Did you buy out the whole Crackpot Cures section?”

He shrugged. It had been called Alternative Medicine, but yes, he had. He’d gone there looking for a juicing cookbook that Sara had mentioned — as a sign of his goodwill and his determination to support the whole wheatgrass-algae-pomegranate idiocy — and once he’d found it, he’d started looking at one book, and then another and another. What if the secret to curing Irene was there, inside one of them? What if he bought twenty of them, and the answer was in the twenty-first? Buying every single title seemed the only reasonable option. The girl at the register had looked at him in abject confusion.