1 When Bernice hit, the lights were out for the longest time. You watched the news, and the newsmen didn’t want to be out after dark in the city, even with the protection of the TV camera on them, broadcasting to the whole world. The lights stayed out in the city for the longest time, except the few solar-powered streetlights that hadn’t been washed away. The bridges were ruined, the tunnels were a nightmare, and the only way to get back there was by boat or helicopter. But I had to get back. I had to see what had become of that quaint little place that I loved so much, and the little garden out my window.
Me and Pollock were staying at my dad’s compound in-state, and he didn’t want me to go into the city at all. We talked about it while I was sitting around in my room, listening to the Lounge Lizards. I have all their albums in my cloud, and also the real, old copies in my physical record collection. I want to like them, I do. I really want to understand their music. It’s nice, it is. And John Lurie was great. He was at Basquiat’s funeral and everything, and he supposedly even had the idea for the boxing photos that Basquiat did with Warhol. I own the original Bear Surprise and everything. Their music is passionate, which I love. But also frustrating, if you understand what I mean. It’s so strange. But I want to like it, so I listen to it over and over.
So I was sitting there listening to this kind of wild jazz, and Pollock was sleeping on my bed, looking like an angel, and my dad was really annoying me about me not going back. Not yet, he said, not with the people who’d been left behind roaming around the streets in packs.
“Fath-er,” I said, screeching the arm off the old record. I only call him that when I’m upset. “You can’t just refer to people in terms of animals. They’re human beings.”
“My little darling,” my dad said, condescending as anything, “there is no way you’re going into that city without proper protection.”
So my dad made some calls, right then and there. He wants me to have what I want, but he also wants me to be safe. I understand. It’s not like he doesn’t love me. He made some calls and hired personal security guards for me. Problem solved. I didn’t put the Lounge Lizards back on after he stopped talking on his wristscreen. The mood had been ruined.
2 I made it to the island one sunny winter morning with a burly guy named Chet who was dressed all in black, and a beefy, bodybuilder type woman named Marcia. I was happy my dad had been progressive enough to hire her, even though she was a woman. She looked like she could keep me safe. They both had guns and I knew they wouldn’t be afraid to use them if it came down to a matter of my well-being. Of course, I hoped they wouldn’t use them frivolously. I read the news—I know how trigger-happy cops can get. I just wanted to be safe, but not at the expense of others.
On the boat, I chatted with Marcia. At first she just grunted at me, but I kept talking. I can get anyone to talk, I always have been able to. I’m sort of a charming person, when I want to be. Finally, I found out that she lived with her ailing mom and a slew of little Chihuahuas (which I loved, so I decided I liked her), she had never been married, and she worked out every day.
Chet and Marcia went into my chou little apartment first, and I stood out on the street. They had stopped some National Guardsmen, and they were waiting with me. As they went in, these people just scurried out like rats. The guardsmen pointed their guns at them as they ran away down the street and yelled for them to stop. But they ran and one of the guardsmen put his hand on my shoulder and asked me if I was okay, seeing those people like that in my place. I think there was a tear in my eye or something, but I’m not quite sure for what—those people or my house or myself. I told him I was okay.
Chet and Marcia came back outside then. Marcia put her hand on my shoulder, too. It was like they were about to tell me I had cancer or something.
“It’s going to be okay,” she said. “But I just want to let you know before you go in that it’s really bad.”
“I think I can handle it,” I said, trying to smile a little at her.
But when I walked up my little stoop, and in through the door that I’d walked in so many times, broken now so that I didn’t have to use my keys, I felt like maybe I was really going to need their sympathy. Everything was destroyed. The paintings had been pulled off the wall, the books taken off the shelves, the food raided from the wide-open refrigerator. There was a gaping burn hole in the middle of the living room where somebody had started a fire. There was a garbage can where more fires had been built in the middle of the main bedroom. The toilet was overflowing with shit and piss, and I thought animals, what kind of animals would do something like this? Then I felt bad about thinking it, because I know that it’s really messed up to compare people to animals—hadn’t I just yelled at my dad for it? But I had never seen humans act like this, so that was where my mind went. I put my hand over my mouth then, and a little gasp came out of my throat. I started sobbing. Marcia put her hand on my shoulder again as I stood there in my ruined little place that I had loved so much, where I had come back after nights out on the Lower East Side, where so many of my friends had slept in the guest bedroom, where I had sat with my sketchbook and drawn. All these memories came flooding back to me then, and I cried and cried.
I leaned into Marcia’s massive bicep and wept like a baby. After a few minutes she patted me on the back and pulled away.
“Is there anything left that you want to take with you?” she said. “There doesn’t seem much point in us staying here any longer.”
Heartless, I thought. What if it was your home, I thought, and your little dogs? But I looked around to see if there was anything worth salvaging. Anything that hadn’t been burned or pissed on. And that’s when I saw it. There in a garbage can that somebody had set on fire, was what remained of the face of my teddy bear, Jax. I’d had Jax since I was five. My mom had given him to me for my birthday the year she died. Her giving him to me in a big box with a bow on top of it is the last memory I have of her before the car crash. I’m close to my dad, I suppose, as close as you can be when years are spent away at boarding school, and summer camp in the Alps, and you only get winter vacation together the whole time you’re growing up. But I loved my mom. She died when I was so young, before she had a chance to be anything but wonderful. Sometimes I’d held Jax and talked to him like I was talking to her.
I went and picked what remained of Jax out of the garbage can. Then I dropped his charred fur back into it and sat down on the floor, crying.
“So there’s nothing you want?” Marcia asked again.
“I just need a minute to grieve, for God’s sake.”
So I stood there in my ruined living room crying, and I got to thinking how New York City really was heartless. And how I was never coming back.