Chapter Seventy-Two

WHITE MIKE WENT to Times Square the previous New Year’s Eve. It was what he expected, a huge drunken confluence of humanity, hookers and crooks and fools from the bridges and tunnels and, of course, teenage drug dealers. White Mike arrived in Midtown on the late side, so he couldn’t get anywhere near Times Square itself. The mass of bodies extended blocks and blocks in every direction. White Mike wondered if Dick Clark somehow soaked up all this energy from doing it year after year and that was what made him look maybe forty years younger than he actually was. Anyway, there was an energy. White Mike liked it. He liked moving through the crowds alone, sneaking through the police barricades and watching everything flow by around him.

The crowd extended up to Central Park South, and White Mike climbed a tree on the park side and sat in it looking down Seventh Avenue and could just make out Times Square. It wasn’t snowing, but the cold was blistering, and White Mike wished for a second that he smoked, because he bet it would have made him warmer.

When the ball dropped, the crowd below went wild and White Mike watched everybody make out. It was cold, but White Mike liked it in the tree, so he stayed there for a long time and watched the crowd disperse in all the different directions. When he came down and started walking home, the city was still wired, and there were crowds of people in the park, and in front of the dome where the skaters came, there were a lot of people dancing. On the stage was some terrible salsa band with a thumping techno beat and lights flashing on the dancers. The crowd was young and old, everybody drunk and dancing in the freezing cold. White Mike was almost tempted to dance but didn’t and kept walking. When he got over to Fifth Avenue, he decided against going home and headed back downtown. It was very bright, and there were still crowds moving across the city like small storms.

Outside an expensive restaurant, White Mike saw a lady with a lined face and knit gloves biting her thumb and crying. She looked terrified and reminded White Mike of the refugees he had seen on CNN. Her hair was pulled back, but wisps of it were flying loose, and her scrunched-up face was so terrible and haunting that White Mike looked at her twice. He realized that she was whimpering and biting her way through the glove, and he thought that her thumb must be getting all mangled. Next to her, two couples in evening clothes were walking into the restaurant.

White Mike turned back into the crowds of people. He wanted to be far away. Just way the fuck gone from this whole city. This place where people chewed off their own hands while the people next to them sipped champagne in tuxedos.

Get hold of yourself, he thought. Don’t be an asshole.