I flow through New York’s underground bloodstream, the arteries, veins, and capillaries that transport the city’s basic energy: steam and water and sewage, TV signals through cable and fiber optic lines, electricity, telephone, and enough natural gas to cook millions of family dinners. Water pours first through twenty-foot tunnels, is stepped down from main to main, finally emerges drop by drop from a showerhead to run into drains, to collect in pipes, rushing faster and faster, to sewage treatment plants or into the rivers. I flow now through an artery that transports human energy, a crowded subway train, human on human, male and female, old and young, black, white, and brown, predator and prey, eyes averted, always in a hurry, carry me forward.
Humans flow, flow both ways, in and out at every stop, I’ve got a seat and can afford to watch, to practice the art of seeing without looking, privacy in public. At the other end of the car a tall heavy man hangs on to the pole with both hands as he makes his passionate pleading case, as he begs to finally be understood. Alone, shunned, no fellow passenger within ten feet, his appeals fall on deaf ears. And yet he, too, flows.
A woman boards at Prospect Avenue pushing a double stroller, both seats occupied by toddlers barely out of infancy, a third child trailing behind clutches her belt. Very short, less than five feet tall with a long oval face and aquiline nose, the woman forces her way onto the crowded car, other passengers resenting the intrusion, the stroller, the demand for space. The woman’s mouth is set, though her dark eyes are cast downward. This is something she must do, move her family through this artery at this time, she absorbs the ire, even a half-whispered comment designed to be overheard: “Children having children. Why do they come here?”
I see her and I see us, every day a struggle far from any homeland, much too young to be so weary. I want to reach out, to offer my hope, a gift, finally, in a land where nothing is freely given. I don’t, I can’t, I won’t. I ride to my stop, get off, climb the stairs, take a second to absorb the angled sunlight, and walk away.
There’s a man standing at the bottom of the steps in front of my building—a cop, it’s obvious—probably the young one described in Kirk’s memo. Kirk left out the part about the wide shoulders and narrow hips, the hawk’s nose, the tan skin, the narrow dark eyes that reach into me, searching, searching, searching until finally they reveal a flicker of doubt. Who am I? Not the Carolyn Grand he met yesterday morning, but who is he dealing with, what crazed entity does he intend to question? I feel sorry for him, so bewildered in a profession where confidence is the key to success.
I stop when he glides into my path. “And you are?” I demand.
A smile starts, then just as quickly stops and I know he’s aware, however dimly, of our diagnosis. No details, of course, what with patients entitled to confidentiality, but a rough diagnosis, the same diagnosis that’s followed us for the past fifteen years, multiple personality, batshit crazy.
“Detective second-grade Bobby Ortega.” The smile finally makes it all the way to his face. Whatever he’s thinking, it amuses him. He offers his hand and I take it, imagining the emotions and sensations sure to flow through Eleni’s mind and body when she finally meets him, his smile so much younger than I expect.
“And you are?” he says.
Ortega’s testing the waters, but I’m not a fish and I don’t swim into view. I answer without hesitation. “Carolyn Grand.”
“I knocked on your door, but there was no one home.”
I hear Victoria, her tone sharp: Don’t tell him anything. Don’t be an idiot.
“I spent the afternoon at Coney Island with the ocean, the cool breeze, the rides, and the people, a bubbling stew that only became more and more flavorful as the time passed.”
His smile jumps to a full laugh, but his eyes remain cold and calculating. “You’re trying too hard,” he says.
“Or not hard enough.” I shift my weight, prepared to walk around him. “What do you want of me? How can I be of service?”
“Well, when I notified you of your father’s murder …”
The sharp edge he puts to the word “murder” places me on notice. I think he means to frighten me, but in this case I have the perfect alibi.
“You told me,” he continues, “that you were home that evening and all night. Can you tell me exactly when you arrived home?”
“I can’t.”
His eyebrows rise. “You can’t?” he repeats.
“No, I’m sorry, but I can’t.”
“And why is that?”
“Because I didn’t exist.”
Again he smiles, again the hopeful smile of a very young child, mischievous, genuinely amused. He steps out of my way, then continues speaking as I climb the stoop. “Funny thing, Ms. Grand, but I’ve made a hundred notifications over the years and the first thing family members want to know is how it happened. The only people who don’t ask, in my experience, are people who already know.”
There’s nothing to be gained from this encounter. I pass by, up the steps, through the door, and into the hallway. Doyle stands next to Marshal by the elevator. They look at me and laugh.
“You meet the cop?” Doyle’s arms are folded above his sagging belly.
“Yes.”
“Know what he wanted?” He points to the security camera over the elevator doors. “He wanted the data, night before yesterday, from six at night until six in the morning. Pushy, too, the asshole.”
I’m not good at lying and I didn’t lie to Detective Ortega, which means exactly nothing because if one of us killed our father, all will be punished.
“Did you give it to him?”
“Nothin’ to give, Serena,” Marshal says, the sound of my name on his lips comforting. “The system hasn’t worked in five years. I offered to repair it when I first moved in, but Nazari told me that he wasn’t putting out one dime to fix a system that he knew didn’t work when he bought the building.”