FOUR

1977. New York City, New York. Carey.

The cops said Debbie tried to light a cigarette and her wig went up in flames. That’s how she died. Officially speaking.

Were cops this fucking stupid everywhere, or was it just in New York City?

I was trying to drink away the anger, but the parasites had been out in force ever since Jezza hooked up with the blond girl in the scuffed flannel shirt. They were not helping ease my jangled nerves.

“Like this?” the kid with the Elmer’s glue holding his hair into little spikes asked another.

“No, it’s more bouncy,” the other parasite, a pretty young thing with safety pins in her ears, corrected him, hopping up and down.

She was trying to teach him some kind of dance. It was apparently the punk thing to do now, this hopping up and down. She bounced for a few seconds, her tits heaving every which way.

“Like this?” Elmer Spikes asked again, shuffling from foot to foot like an angry ape.

“No,” Safety Pins answered, bouncing again, “watch me.”

“Like this?” Elmer Spikes asked when she was done, rocking back and forth on his heels.

He said it with such earnestness that I almost didn’t catch what he was doing.

“You just kind of hop, really quick; your feet leave the ground,” Safety Pins tried again, breasts jiggling frantically.

Elmer Spikes’s eyes never left her chest. I couldn’t help it. I burst out laughing.

“What?” Safety Pins asked, her chest still heaving.

A huge grin split Elmer Spikes’s face in half.

“Oh, god damn it.” She finally caught on, stopped mid-hop, and shoved Elmer Spikes down onto the tracks. “Real cute, asshole.”

We both laughed. When he picked himself up, I tossed Elmer Spikes a beer from the pack I’d been zealously guarding like a mother bear. He took it, popped it open, and drained the entire thing in three large gulps. I raised my eyebrows at him and tossed him another. Crack, hiss, three gulps, gone.

“Shit.” I elbowed Wash and gestured at Elmer Spikes. “This one does tricks.”

“Such as?” Wash asked.

Wash wore these thick glasses, and something about his bone structure—high cheeks, broad forehead—reminded you of some grim scientist in a sci-fi flick. He had this detached, formal way of speaking that made you think his ideas were worth listening to. Which usually got you in trouble: Wash was, without a doubt, the dumbest motherfucker I have ever met. I once saw him get caught in a subway turnstile. For ten solid minutes.

“Last one,” I said, tossing another beer to Elmer Spikes. He downed it in a second.

“Interesting,” Wash said, after a moment’s consideration; “you must be a hit with the ladies.”

The remark sounded like it might have been witty at first, but when you thought about it, it was completely moronic gibberish. That was Wash.

In response, Elmer Spikes emitted a belch so loud it echoed down the tunnel and rebounded, coming back to us as a guttural chorus. It was strangely beautiful.

“This place is cool,” he said, peering up and down the tracks. “What is it?”

“South Ferry Station.” Jezza instantly spoke up, eager to claim some sort of credit for the find by answering first. “Bobbies closed the inner-loop platform earlier this year. Blokes come round sometimes during the day, but she’s abandoned come night.”

“Bobbies are cops,” I told Jezza matter-of-factly. “The cops don’t close subway stations. For somebody that talks like a chimney sweep, you sure don’t know fuck-all about the English.”

“Piss off,” Jezza said, flipping me a peace sign.

I take it the gesture meant something different in England. You could give him all the shit you wanted, but as long as Jezza got the excuse to say “piss off” and flip you that “V”—which, I admit, he did perfectly, just like Johnny Rotten—he still felt like a rock star.

“Wash found it,” Randall clarified, and you could see Jezza’s lip curl at the stolen credit.

“Don’t worry,” Wash said authoritatively, “there won’t be any trains.”

“Well, yeah,” Elmer Spikes said, eyeballing Wash with confusion, “I figured.”

“The trains all filter through the outer loop now,” Wash continued, oblivious to Elmer Spikes’s sarcasm. “I know this, because my father used to drive the one line through here. I would sit with him sometimes.”

“Yeah?” Elmer Spikes laughed. “I know this because the rails are dusty, man.”

Wash, Randall, and I had grabbed prime spots under the only lights, a series of dim yellow bulbs in a narrow tile archway that only comfortably fit three. Jezza had elbowed his way up onto the platform a split second later, seeing it as some kind of hierarchal move. He grandly invited the girl in scuffed flannel up after him, like a spot on the cracked, filthy tile was some kind of honor. She was wiggling around on top of Jezza by way of thanks, which he seemed to be enjoying immensely.

The rest of the parasites were milling about a few feet below, down on top of the tracks. Elmer Spikes was trying, and failing, to balance on one foot. He was a pile of twigs in a torn T-shirt, and I think he was terrified of me. I don’t know why, but every time I asked him for something, he went sprinting off like an eager secretary. Safety Pins was kind of a poser. She was always telling us what was and wasn’t punk, but she was good-looking and never wore a bra, so she got to stay. There were two other girls with bright blue hair. Mostly kept to themselves, but they always had money to throw in for beer. We called them Thing 1 and Thing 2. And then there was a black kid with a Mohawk. His name was Matt.

You don’t need nicknames to remember a black punk. They’re like unicorns.

“Did anybody tell Mike where we were hanging out?” Safety Pins asked Thing 1.

“Nobody’s seen Mike in weeks,” Thing 2 chimed in; “he probably moved back home.”

“Man, everybody’s calling it quits. Denny, Brat, and The Spitter all split, too,” Safety Pins added, then, after a moment’s consideration: “Going home isn’t punk rock.”

“The Spitter?” I asked. “His name is The Spitter?”

“Yeah, he spits,” Thing 1 answered laconically. She was slightly better looking than Thing 2, but she was also kind of a smartass. Two plusses for her.

“He spits a lot,” Thing 2 added.

I should hook her up with Wash. They could have history’s stupidest babies.

“That’s what’s wrong with punks these days,” Jezza piped up: “got no manners.”

We all laughed, but Scuffed Flannel carried it just a bit too long. Made it awkward.

“How do you know they’re all moving home?” Randall asked. He was staring down the tunnel after Elmer Spikes, who was singing “(I Live for) Cars and Girls” to himself as he disappeared into the darkness.

“Where else would they be going?” Matt asked. He’d been eye-fucking my beer all night. I tossed him one. Not every day you get to share a brew with a unicorn.

But that’s four down to charity, Carey. Watch yourself.

“Could be on the nod,” Jezza guessed.

“Could be whoring out on the Loop,” I supplied.

“Could be dead,” Randall finished.

We all fell silent on that one, not because it was in bad taste, but because it had an awful measure of truth to it. Life was cheap in NYC lately. Everybody knew it. You could get blasted just trying to lift a measly six-pack from some Korean corner store. You could shoot dope and wander into traffic. You could say the wrong thing to the wrong bald guy with the wrong color laces on his boots and get yourself kicked to death by skinheads. You could go any number of ways, and it happened too often to bother reporting them all.

Or you could meet the tar men.

I knew Randall and Wash had seen them. I had a feeling Jezza had spotted them once or twice, too. But he wouldn’t admit to it. Still, whenever we talked about the tar men, he protested too much and too quickly—just a bit too eager to call us assholes. I wondered if any of the parasites had seen one. I considered asking them, but I knew they’d think I was crazy if I mentioned it.

“You parasites know about the tar men?” I asked—because fuck what they think about literally anything.

“Yeah, they’re great,” Safety Pins immediately said. “Their new stuff is bullshit, but their first album was really good.”

“God, you are so lucky you have rockin’ tits,” I said, shaking my head.

She looked confused.

“They’re not a band,” Randall clarified.

“Not this bollocks again!” Jezza cried, too loud. He had this crazy smile, like he was hearing the funniest thing in the world. “Every time we get a little pissed, you two knob-ends start telling bleedin’ ghost stories!”

Jezza looked around to the parasites, hoping to share a conspiratorial laugh. Thing 2 obliged him, while Safety Pins went quiet and flushed bright red, pissed at being caught in a lie. But Matt and Thing 1 were staring at the ground like it was their favorite TV show.

“I saw ’em.” Matt finally spoke. “People keep saying I was just drunk, and … well, fuck it: of course I was. But I saw ’em. I saw ’em take a girl down an alley, and when I looked after, they were gone. Thin air.”

“I’ve seen them, too,” Thing 1 said, her voice flat and distant. “Not up close or anything. Just shapes moving out by the waterfront. But you could tell they weren’t human, even from a distance. Too big, and they moved all wrong.”

“That ain’t it, either.” Matt spoke again, eager to be done with it. The words spilled out of him all at once: “There’s normal-looking people too. But they’re all wrong inside, just like Jenny said.”

“The fuck’s Jenny?” I asked.

“Her.” Matt pointed at the blue-haired girl. Thing 1. “Sorry. But it’s like she said about the tar men: They’re all wrong. These people look normal, but you can tell by the way they move and look and talk. They dress like us—kind of—but they’re not doing it right. They’re so hard to notice. It’s like only when you’re not looking for ’em do you notice how weird it is that you’re not looking for ’em.”

“You’re arseholed!” Jezza laughed. “Totally arseholed! You sound like a bloody fortune cookie!”

Randall very calmly reached over and flicked him right in the eyeball. Jezza howled.

“Shut up, Jeremy,” Randall said, and pushed himself up off the tile. “I’m tired now. I’m going home.”

“Yeah, fuck it,” I agreed, downing the last of my beer. “I’m out of liquor, too. No point sitting here slowly going sober, letting you parasites drill into my brain with your fucking banter. Let’s go.”

Jezza looked pissed. I couldn’t blame him. Scuffed Flannel had been giving him an extended lap dance since we got there. But he sure as hell didn’t hesitate to scramble after us when we left him in the archway and started heading for the outer platform.

“Hey, wait,” Safety Pins said, jogging up beside me and Randall like we were the scout leaders on a goddamned field trip. “Elmer Spikes isn’t back yet.”

“Boy’s pissing out at least thirty-six ounces of swill right now,” Randall said, heaving himself up onto the outer platform and rolling to his feet. “I’m not waiting for that.”

“The truly great artists suffer for their art,” I told Safety Pins, grabbing her ass as she hefted herself onto the ledge in front of me.

She kicked me square in the throat.

*   *   *

We never saw Elmer Spikes again.

I don’t know what that meant. Maybe he was pissed that we ditched him, and didn’t want to hang around anymore. Maybe he overdosed in a Village dope house. Maybe he just suddenly realized that “drunken malcontent” wasn’t a very promising career path and decided to pursue his lifelong dream of being an accountant.

I tell myself those things, and I don’t fucking believe a word of them. They got him. The tar men. Whatever those black monsters are, they got Elmer Spikes. I won’t say I missed the kid, but I had been forcing Matt to learn to shotgun beers ever since he disappeared.

“I gwfooo…,” Matt said, foam shooting out of his nostrils.

The lessons weren’t going well.

“Oh, guh.” Matt coughed, one eye shut. “Guh in muh fuggin’ eye!”

“If you drink it faster, it won’t explode out of your head like that,” I told him helpfully.

He ralphed up a soft pile of foam, like a hungry dog.

“I can’t drink it any faster!” Matt protested, unsticking his hands from our artfully disgusting kitchen floor.

“Try putting more of the liquid in you at a greater speed,” Randall suggested.

“That’s not fuckin’ helpful!” Matt yelled.

“Try swallowing larger amounts,” I added, one finger on my jaw in thoughtful consideration.

“Fuck you guys,” Matt said. He got to his feet, turned the faucet on, and stuck his face in the water.

“All right, all right—you don’t have to shotgun anymore…,” I said.

Matt smiled up at me hopefully.

“… until I get back from the store with more beer,” I finished.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

“You could always pay for your own beer,” Thing 1 said, sitting cross-legged on top of our wobbly avocado-green fridge. She took a gentle sip of her own drink, by way of demonstration.

“Do I look like a brother who’s got money?” Matt asked, gesturing to his scuffed high-tops and torn jeans.

“You could just not drink,” Thing 2 offered from the living room.

We all stared at her like she’d opened her mouth and a bunch of snakes had come flying out.

“Life is a series of choices,” Wash explained to her, patiently; “that is not one of them.”

They were getting along pretty well, Wash and Thing 2. I say that because I’ve seen all of the signs—the subtle touches of the hand, the lingering smiles, the furtive glances, and the time I walked in on her jacking him off in the bathroom. I’m very observant.

“All right, beer run,” I said, and elbowed my way out of our crowded kitchen.

Thing 1, Matt, Randall, Safety Pins, Jezza, and Scuffed Flannel were all shoved in there like a bunch of cigarettes in a pack, even though the rest of the house was practically empty. Why does that always happen? Throw the most lavish party in the world—pool tables in the garage, jukeboxes in the living room, fucking fire dancers and talking elephants on the lawn—and go check the kitchen. It’ll be standing room only.

Wash and Thing 2 were sitting across from one another on our broken, saggy couch, playing some kind of game. She laid down a card. Wash processed it for a long moment, then laid down his. He laid down a card, and she stared at it like it was a German cipher. She laid down a card.

“What are you playing?” I asked them, wordlessly yanking my leather jacket out from under Wash’s ass.

“War,” Thing 2 muttered, utterly lost in concentration.

“You really are perfect for each other,” I said, swinging my jacket up and sliding my arms through it. It was like strapping into armor. I could take on anything.

Even a quick beer run to the corner store.

“Oi,” Jezza hollered from the kitchen, “pick up some for me and Liz.”

“Sure thing,” I said. “Any preference? You in the mood for a nice, crisp pilsner? Maybe a saucy lager?”

“I could go for a nice pint of bitter,” Jezza answered seriously; “maybe something with autumnal overtones.”

“Right,” I replied, “so the cheapest crap I can find.”

“Righto,” Jezza confirmed, tossing me a wad of filthy bills.

“You good, Wash?” I asked, and he patted most of a six-pack at his feet, too enraptured with his game to spare so much as a glance.

I looked to Safety Pins but saw she still had half a bottle of Jack left. It was her latest affectation: straight Jack Daniel’s, just like Janis. Even if she did make a face with every swig.

“How about you two?” I asked Thing 1. She generally spoke for both of the Things.

She shifted to check her pockets, and from her position atop the fridge—legs at eye level—I saw that her short shorts were riding up provocatively.

“I’m out, but I’m broke,” she said.

“I got your back,” I consoled her, “if I can get your back later.”

“It comes at too great a cost,” she answered, and rolled her eyes.

“You could come for less,” I said.

She tossed her empty can at me underhand. I headbutted it straight out of the air.

“I’ll get you something anyway,” I said.

This was punk-rock courtship: Paying for somebody’s drunk was like giving them flowers dipped in chocolate.

“I’m dry and broke, too,” Matt tried, hope glittering in his eyes.

“Oh, you can drink from my beers,” I said, making for the door, “but you know what you have to do.”

I heard the first faltering start to a long string of swears spill forth from Matt, but I was already out. I stepped from a kind of drunken postapocalypse into a New England bed-and-breakfast. The hallway for our floor couldn’t be more out of character with the rest of the building. The lobby was fucking filthy. The main security door swung on broken hinges. The stairs squealed like every step was going to send you plummeting into the basement, and you’d have to dig a hole for our apartment to qualify as a shithole. But this hallway was always spotless. The carpet runners were carefully vacuumed, the pictures straightened on the walls, fresh-cut flowers in a little vase of clear water on the corner table every weekend.

Somebody on this floor took fastidious care of it, but I never saw who it was. I doubted it was the Somalian in 6, who I once saw take a shit directly into the storm drain out front. I doubted it was Andy, the unemployed writer type at the end of the hall. He dropped a bag of groceries down the stairs back when he moved in, and there’s still a can of beans on the first-floor landing. Been there for a year and a half now. That left whoever lived in 7. I’d never seen the person, but based on the neat, rigidly spotless hallway, I assumed it was either a kindly old grandmother or a twisted Nazi serial killer. The Nazi would be less disturbing.

I thundered down our stairs, listening to them scream like stepped-on kittens, and took a huge flying leap through our front door, hurtling over the stoop and landing with a thump on the sidewalk. I touched down six inches from a pair of chicks who screamed a little with surprise.

“Watch it!” one said. She had clean, feathered hair and wore some kind of disco blouse.

“Take off your shirt,” I replied, “if only because it sucks.”

“Pig,” she responded.

I shrugged.

Fair enough.

I gave her an elegant bow and a quick fart and sprinted off toward Shop Shop, our corner store. The night was warm and thick, and I was buzzing with energy. I felt it in my limbs, in my fingertips. The air rushing by me was slightly cooler, so I ran faster. My legs felt good, stretching and rebounding like rubber, so I ran faster. My beat-up Chucks slapped the concrete like a drumbeat, so I ran faster. And faster.

I am a knife through the New York streets.

I looked up just in time to see that I was about to sprint right by Shop Shop. I managed to shoot my hand out at the last possible second and gripped the metal post between the two propped-open doors. The momentum almost ripped my arm from the socket. I pivoted around the pole, through the open doors, over my own feet, and into an unreasonably giant display of beef jerky.

It cascaded over me like a warm meat waterfall.

Alex sighed loudly from his gouged wooden stool behind the counter.

“Hey, Carey,” he said, barely glancing up from the tiny black-and-white TV that kept him company on the night shift.

“How’s it going, Alex?” I said as casually as possible, taking to my feet and briefly skating on a thin layer of crushed beef.

“Good. If you pick that up now, I won’t make you pay for the broken ones,” he said.

Did I mention the man’s a saint?

I grabbed a few unwieldy armfuls of jerky and shoveled them back into the display, then heaved it upright and picked up the stragglers. I threw the torn packages—only a half dozen, not bad for a night’s destruction—into the garbage can by the door.

“Iron City,” Alex said; “bottom shelf on the far left.”

Alex knows me well enough to remember that the only things I come in here to buy are Ruffles (when I’m high) and the cheapest possible beer with the highest alcohol content. He lets me know if, by some freak closeout or meteorological shift, that happens not to be Schlitz. I guess Iron City was on sale.

A fucking saint, I tell you.

I humped two cases up under my arms and made for the counter. A canned laugh track blared out from his little TV like a pack of lo-fi hyenas. I slid the cases onto the counter, and something caught my eye.

That’s a week’s worth of beer money, Carey.

I broke out in a cold sweat just thinking about it. I had two weeks of drinking money squirreled away at all times. It’s my nest egg. I’ve never been without that padding. Could I live with being only one unlucky week away from sober?

“Something else?” Alex asked wearily, noticing I hadn’t thrust a gob of cash at him and bolted for the doors like usual.

Fuck it.

“Yeah,” I answered, “I’ll take eight of those.”

*   *   *

The disco bitches were gone by the time I wrestled my two cases and paper bag back to the apartment.

“… the BLACKS know, the BLACKS have always known!” muttered the raggedy man on the stoop.

Oh, cool, Sammy’s out.

“What’s up, Sammy Six?” I asked.

I set my burden down, tore open the case, and handed him a beer.

“Sixtimessixisthirtysixtimessixistwohundredsixteentimessixis…” His voice dropped low and the words blurred together into gibberish.

It was his thing: Some hobos hoarded. Some jerked off outside your window. Some peed on you if you were wearing red shoes. Sammy Six did math: He especially liked six, for some reason. All told, there were worse things to do. Besides, the guy’s been around forever. When we first moved to the neighborhood, none of the other tenants would so much as look at us, but Sammy helped out. He showed me where the cheapest beer was, which alleys to avoid past midnight (only two were really dangerous; the rest mostly contained hobos fucking—which is still flagged as “to avoid” in my book), and he’d always share a brew with me. If I was buying, of course. All crazy hobo gibberish aside, he was something like a drunken mentor.

“Hey,” I said, shaking the can around in front of his face, “beer now, math later.”

“Hmm?” Sammy’s eyes focused a little, and his voice lost some of the sleepy haze. “Oh, right. Thanks, Carey.”

He took the beer and cracked it open expertly: no foam at all, despite my long and clumsy walk from the store.

“What’s the news?” I prodded him again.

“Ah, you know. Same shit, different toilet,” he answered, and we both laughed. “You?”

“Drinking, fighting, and fucking. Not necessarily in that order,” I answered, cracking open a beer of my own. Ice-cold beads of condensation ran down the sides. The bite from the first gulp was sweeter than any kiss I’ve ever had. But then again, people usually don’t kiss me too sweetly.…

“You, uh … everybody’s good?” Sammy asked again, his eyes taking on a conspiratorial shift.

“Yeah, why?” I pressed the can to my sweating forehead between sips.

“Nobody’s gone? Nobody’s gone away?”

“Sure. Some people left town. We guess. We don’t really know. People disappear, you know?”

“It ain’t that,” he said, and took a deep pull from his beer. He was quiet and thoughtful for a few minutes while we nursed our drinks. “There’s something going on in this town. It’s worse than you think. I’ve seen it before, it’s…”

Sammy shook his head. Bumped his palm against his forehead.

“It’s hard to think about,” he tried again. “Something buried in my head. You just watch yourself, okay? You come tell me if you boys see anything weird.”

There was something off with Sammy. You can usually bring him around to clarity for a minute or two, but this was the most coherent I’d ever heard him.

“Sure, man. Sure. Hey, are you all right, though?”

“They’re all going away now,” he answered. “The blacks get them. But the blacks can’t get the Six!”

There’s the Sammy I remember.

I laughed. “I don’t think the blacks want you, Sammy.”

I put the lip of my half-full beer between my teeth, hefted my cases again, and headed up the stairs.

“Oh, no,” Sammy called after me, “I’m not Six! The blacks know me! All the blacks know about old Sammy! They know about you too, Carey!”

“Harv a good one, Shammy!” I yelled around my beer, and gave him part of a wave with my shoulder as I turned the corner.

I kicked at our door loudly and for a long time before Matt answered.

“I BRING GIFTSH OF FRANKINSHENSHE AND MYRRH!” I hollered through my sloshing can.

Matt seized a case from under my arm and scampered off to the kitchen. I took the beer out of my teeth with my free hand and followed him.

“I’m not saying you want to”—Randall was in the middle of some kind of lecture—“I’m just saying if you had to: Would it be more preferable to fuck a talking dog, like Scooby-Doo, because he’s closer to people?”

“Definitely,” Safety Pins answered without a second of thought.

I waited until the laughter died down, then tipped my paper bag upside down on the kitchen counter.

“The bloody hell is that?” Jezza asked, peering at the small brass rectangles.

“Lighters,” I said; “one for everybody.”