All up and down the spine of the city there were unexplained surges and dips in the power supply, failures on the grid as the network struggled to match the throughput to the load, too many air conditioners and entertainment systems running at once, and then suddenly shutting off as the millions changed their minds, refrigerators opening and closing, extra subways added for Labor Day weekend, and the A train short-circuited when someone running from the police though the Canal Street station threw a stolen bicycle frame onto the tracks, where it fell with one end touching the third rail, causing relays to trip circuit breakers here and there. Then it came back on line, with a billow of voltage that burned through circuit boards, caused modems to power down and then start up again, servers to overheat in the carrier hotel on Hudson Street, the balance shifting and faltering like a wing walker, now saved by a brownout in Kips Bay, now threatened by a sag in Battery Park—a thrilling and perilous journey toward midnight, almost madcap, in its way.
Are you a Brodie? Are you a Brodie? There was a young man on the path below Benny, sitting astride a motionless bicycle, his sweet moon-face turned up. — That’s what they’re called, people like you. If you are what I think you are. Brodie was his name. That was more than a hundred years ago. He jumped. He didn’t die, though: he lived, but . . . You’re probably going to die. If that’s what you’re going to do, that’s what’s going to happen. You know, there’s going to be cops out here in about three minutes, probably. You’ll hear the sirens. Someone called them, someone who drove by and saw you up there, which wasn’t all of them, but there was probably at least one. I’d call myself, but I don’t have a phone. It broke. I had it in my pocket and I hit a patch of grease or something, and I went down, shattered it. Fucked up my knee, too, but it’s getting better. But anyway, the cops are going to come. Look how hot it is, they must be out, all over the place. People get loose in this kind of weather, they know that, so they’re ready. Cops in cop cars, EMS trucks, fire trucks, there’s probably going to be a helicopter. They take this stuff very seriously, they don’t like to lose someone. It makes them feel bad. I’ve seen them before, man, they’ll throw a net on you. They hit you with that thing, a Taser. I’ve seen them do it. They’ll tie a rope to your ankle when you aren’t looking, they don’t care.
Benny glanced down at the man and said, Who are you?
I was just riding across and I saw you, the man said.
Riding on the bridge? said Benny.
Across it. I’m on my way to the show, there’s a thing in Washington Square Park, a concert, this kid Caruso—have you heard of him? Everyone has heard of him. Anyway, but I saw you so I stopped. At first, I thought, Well, if you wanted to jump, you should jump. That’s your right. You’ve got rights, and that’s one of them.
OK, said Benny.
Only now I’m not so sure. No. I don’t think you should.
Why not? said Benny.
Because I know the question, the man on the bicycle said. That question you really want to ask. And I know the answer too. I’ve thought about this a lot. I don’t know why: it’s just one of the things I think about. So you’re up there, where you are, and you wonder . . . Is it going to hurt? Not dying, not leaving, none of us know that. What I mean is, is it going to hurt when you hit the water. You don’t even want to admit it, but that’s what you’re really worried about. You don’t want to say so because it should be unimportant, when you consider what you’re doing, when you think of the hurt that brought you up here in the first place. Physical pain, physical . . . suffering or whatever, that wasn’t on your mind until you got up here, and now you see how hard the world is, all this steel and concrete. And the water is hard. Maybe it’ll be over quick, and all you’ll feel is the first hit, that first tremendous hit, enormous, like nothing you ever felt before, and it’ll be the last thing you feel. But if that doesn’t do it? — He gestured. Swimming around in that, maybe with some broken bones. Drowning like that? He smiled, and Benny didn’t know what to say. If he hadn’t been thinking about that before, he was thinking about it now.
The young man knew he was, and he spoke very clearly, and now with a certain sweet confidence, like an announcer on public radio: You didn’t think it through, he said. There’s no disgrace in that. I just wanted to suggest to you some issues that you might have neglected to consider.
Benny looked down at the water. Thank you, he said.
OK, I’ll leave you alone, the young man said, and he must have ridden soundlessly away, because when Benny looked for him again, he had disappeared.
Something had changed: the city was gone. Instead there was just a long, gently curving landscape, a grey shadow against a black sky, with masses scattered among it, barely distinguishable forms, primeval, shattered and jagged, like the mountains of black ice that lie on the far side of the River of Death. It was very quiet. So it was too late, then, and perhaps the young man hadn’t been real, either. And yet he’d felt no pain, no impact, so he must have died the instant he touched the water. And the great mystery was solved! He hadn’t dared contemplate it, but now he knew what no man knew: every wraith was real. For surely he was thinking, and somehow he knew that he had the sense of sight, even if there was nothing to see, and he could hear, even if there was no sound. The universe was kind and he was strong. He felt strangely braced by it all, more confident, perhaps, than he had ever been before—but no, it was something beyond confidence, it was a solemn ecstasy, a slow, serene, opiate peace, half-alert, all of love. It was no wonder the universe kept this glory hidden, leaving each to ponder, speculate, and worry. If this was death, why should anyone wish to remain alive?
He felt himself exhale, inhale, exhale again,— and then he heard the sirens, just as the man on the bicycle had said he would, and he saw the police cars coming over the darkened bridge, he felt a surge of nausea and he realized at once that he wasn’t dead, after all, no he wasn’t. No he wasn’t. No he wasn’t. Living was his crime, so living was his punishment, the true one he was sentenced to.
There was a movie showing in Washington Square Park, projected digitally onto five big screens scattered here and there, synced through an elaborate wireless apparatus that was temporarily stationed on the second floor of the library on the southeast corner, a silent film, Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast, for which a DJ with a girl singer from the Bronx was meant to provide the soundtrack, and then afterwards, Caruso would sing his new song, just the one, before sending these children off into the night. It was August, and the heat had been working its way into the concrete for weeks: tonight it seemed to be releasing all at once, almost audibly rising and rising, hotter and damper than breath. There was no breeze. We all knew the world was coming to an end, sooner or later, but no one was sure whether this was the start or just another warning.
The show, which was open to anyone who cared to come by, was having problems: the screens had become unsynchronized and sometimes got stuck on an image, or showed failure messages from the operating system. Occasionally, they went blank altogether. The sound, too, was faltering. The mix dropped out of the singer’s monitors and she couldn’t hear herself; after a few minutes of this, she turned to look around with tears in her eyes but found no one sympathetic to return her expression: the DJ was hunched over his machines, and, since he was having trouble with his headphones—the left side had switched to the right, and the right side had disappeared—he hadn’t noticed that she’d missed her cue. The crowd in Washington Square was unhappy, though more indolent than angry: they were uncomfortable, and many of them were very young and waiting mostly for Caruso, waiting to see him and to hear his new song, the one about honey and ashes, and unsure of why this ancient, awkward fairy tale was playing, why there was no color. They wandered this way and that in the park, some drugged, some sick, some street-flirting. A pair of pretty boys and a pretty girl sat, all three with their legs entwined, on one of the benches. There were people standing in the windows of the sleek buildings overhead, watching silently. At each of the corners of the park, two policemen on horseback were stationed, looking at once bored and stern as they sweated through their uniforms, occasionally instructing someone to stay on the sidewalk, even though the streets around the park had been closed off, or saying, Keep it moving, to no one in particular. The horses themselves were wet and martyred. On stage, the DJ missed a segue when one of his turntables started spinning too fast, and then faster, and faster still, while he switched back to the first and tried to find a beat again, throwing the singer off; the song carried on for another minute or so, and then ended with a curse, followed by the brief, amplified sound of a police dispatcher whose frequencies had somehow found their way into the PA. What’s that? the dispatcher said. 10-9. 10-9. I can’t hear you. What have you got? There was an imp in the mains. On one of the screens, Josette Day as Belle was lying back in bed, looking at herself in a small mirror on her nightstand. On another, Jean Marais as La Bête was drinking from a stream. The singer left the stage, and the DJ followed. Applause here and there. The movie played on, while the students who had conceived of the show sent frantic messages back to their colleagues in the library, trying to explain what was going wrong, though they didn’t know themselves what was causing it.
Caruso was in a tour bus parked on Waverly Place, just west of MacDougal, sitting hunched over on a narrow couch, wearing a sleeveless T-shirt and the wide-legged trousers from a red zoot suit, and sipping hot tea with honey. The bus had been rented just for that night, and it was idling so that the air conditioner could run, but it was still uncomfortably warm inside, and he repeatedly dabbed at his brow with a handkerchief. He was nervous. It didn’t help that the door to the bus kept opening and closing, as various members of his backing band—for that night, there were ten of them, in all—grew bored with waiting and went out to stand on the sidewalk, then became uncomfortable standing outside and climbed into the bus again. The only one who wasn’t restless was the keyboard player, who sat motionless in back. Caruso watched him for a bit. What do you think? he asked.
We’re going to be all right, the keyboard player said.
Lisa had been out wandering through the park, in part because she was curious, in part as a kind of reconnaissance, and in part, too, as an escape. She had always felt useless when he was working, which lately had been almost all the time. She wasn’t able to see him as often, and when she did, there were always other people around, musicians, promoters, new friends, someone with a video camera, and there was never enough time to introduce her to them all. It was like watching him float out with the tide, and all she could do was wait anxiously on dry ground for it to turn and bring him back again. Some of the people around him didn’t think much of her; nothing they would say out loud, not to her face, anyway, but they didn’t like it, her and Caruso, together. Some of them looked right through her, as if she were an apparition, as unreal as the illuminated figures on the movie screens outside; she found that unnerving. And he didn’t need to sleep, he could get by on four or five hours a night, but if she didn’t get a full eight hours she could hardly make it through the next day, wandering around in a heavy cloak of dumb exhaustion, mumbling and numb, forgetting to take things when she left, fumbling with her door keys when she got home. She was supposed to be working at a production company down on Varick, but she was going to be fired soon, by a woman she hated, which will set off a season of tears and sobbing, made a hundred times worse when, after a fortnight during which they’d hardly had a chance to talk, let alone make daytime love, she’ll feel like she needs Caruso to know how lonely she is, how stray and blue. But she won’t be able to find the right words, so instead she’ll tell him that she doesn’t think they should see each other anymore, and he’ll just say, Maybe you’re right. She’ll notice the muscles on his forearms; he hadn’t had them when they met. When she leaves, she’ll be crying so hard she’ll get hiccups, the way she did when she was a child. You’ll find another, everyone will say to her, but she won’t, not for quite a few years.
In the park that night, she’d run into a friend from high school, a boy named Evan, who was shirtless and so high all he could do was say her name over and over again, grinning like a moon-man. Lisa, Lisa. Lisa. He put his hands up in an attitude of prayer and shook them back and forth like a Buddhist. Lisa! Lisa. He bit down on his lower lip. Lisa Lisa. He laughed nervously.
Hi, Evan, she said patiently. Having a good time? He nodded vigorously, and she said, Good, and kept walking.
Somewhere among the treetops, La Bête was staring at his hand, which slowly began to smoke. The smoke seemed to drift off the screen and wend its way through the branches, eventually dissipating as it reached the ground. She bought a watermelon slushy from a vendor, took a sip, and frowned: it was so sweet she shuddered. She liked the idea of having a cold red tongue, but she couldn’t imagine finishing it, and she looked for someplace to throw it out, finally settling for balancing it on the very top of an overflowing garbage can on the west side of the fountain, her fingers outstretched for a few seconds as she backed away, just in case it fell. La Bête had been transformed by love into a handsome young prince, and together he and Belle were ascending into the sky. She lingered on the image for a moment and then started to the bus, through a park that had grown ten times as full in the preceding ten seconds, so that she had to push her way against the crowd as they streamed in, vaguely worried that someone was going to grab her as she passed. By the time she reached the door she was soaked through, her shirt pasted to her back, her eyeliner smeared; but it wasn’t much cooler inside, there must have been a dozen people crammed in there, watching Caruso as he sat in front of a makeup mirror, doing something with his hair. She went over and kissed his cheek softly, and he smiled nervously. We’re almost ready, he said, and he stood so suddenly that the entire bus abruptly shifted to accommodate him. Donny, don’t miss the turnaround, he said, and from somewhere in the back of the bus a man said, I got it. Can you go out and tell them we’re ready? he said to his manager.
The others were standing now, one or two stretching, Tino playing a brief, quiet paradiddle on a cushioned headrest, the horn players blowing the spit from their valves, the backup singers checking each other’s hair. They began to file out of the bus, and outside there was the smell of ozone, and the faint, muffled rippling in the air that comes from a waiting audience. Backstage there were cables and consoles and scaffolding, and a stage manager with a headset, and Caruso stood at the edge of the stage, surrounded by the band, while the MC pumped up the crowd; and then they were inside the lights, swiftly plugging in and walking up to the microphones. Caruso turned to catch the eye of his mixer, who was standing just offstage holding a laptop that had been loaded with clips and effects. He didn’t want to speak, he just wanted to sing his song. The drummer started playing and he danced a little bit around the mic, and then stepped up and gestured to the band.
Nothing happened, and he immediately thought they’d missed their cue, but his voice was gone, too, if he was singing then he couldn’t hear himself, all he heard were the drums behind him, and he turned to look at Tino, but now curiously he couldn’t see him, the lights had vanished, or the dark had crept in. The drums faltered and stopped, and Caruso walked apprehensively to the lip of the stage, where the crowd stood unmoving, some staring around at the others beside them as if they were shades, some with their heads back, looking up at the sky, and behind them all, the buildings of Lower Manhattan, impossibly tall and perfectly dark, like spaceships in a primitive time. There were no lights, no lights anywhere, and he craned his neck back just like those in the audience below him, and saw a thousand sparks spattered across the pure blackness overhead, swirling dizzily, seeming to dart and fall, and then rise back up again, a terrifying beauty that he, with all his life played under city lights, had never seen before, had hardly known existed: the universe of stars, prickly and cold, all come down and swarming around his head like heaven’s nocturnal crown.
Stephanie was walking down Fifth below 14th Street, the night hot enough to melt glass, students on the sidewalk, a man in kitchen whites standing outside a deli smoking a cigarette and watching passersby. She was looking up, watching a backlit man in a bedroom a few stories up lifting hand weights as he watched television, but she didn’t take his picture. She was saving her sight for the park; she had wanted to find a crowd, it would be a fitting way to finish her portfolio. Her time at the Carrier Institute was coming to a close, and she still hadn’t decided what she would do afterwards, but tonight’s picture was to be a gift to the place. She had something softer for the Costers, but to the Institute itself she would give the population at night, the people they were all working for—and there it was: she could hear the sound of someone shouting happily over the loudspeaker, the voice echoing up the avenue until it was unintelligible. She could hear the cheers that followed. There was a slight pause, and then the drums started playing. She walked more quickly, and as she did, she lifted her camera to shoot down the avenue, but something had gone wrong and her viewfinder was dark; she panned around, looking for the edge of a building or a street light. She couldn’t find anything. The drums had stopped, but there was the sound of cars honking, so she brought the camera down and everything had changed.
Two cabs heading west on 11th had pulled out into the intersection, where they’d become entangled with a car going south on Fifth, a man on a bicycle, and another man in an expensive suit who was walking a small terrier, which barked harshly over the sound of shouting. No one was hurt, but no one was quite sure what had happened, either, and she stood with a small group, watching the five or six protagonists illuminated by the harsh raking light of their headlights. The bicycle was bent under one of the cabs, the man who’d been riding it was menacing a cabdriver with the metal chain from his lock, swinging wildly while the driver of the other car tried to calm him, eyes wide, hands up. Easy, man, easy, friend. It was an accident. No one got hurt. She looked north on the sidewalk; the deli was closed, all the stores were closed, and a hundred car headlights were illuminating the scene, as if a spaceship had somehow landed in their midst, silhouetting all the humans on the street, who stood scattered and unmoving in confusion and awe. For a moment she thought she saw Bridget emerge from the crowd and slip swiftly past her, and she almost called her name. Then someone spoke, lips pressed right up to her ear, murmuring something though she couldn’t tell what, and for a moment all the figures arrayed in front of her stood stock still, shadows in a snapshot, all of them thinking the same thing, mournful and supplicating: Miss me, will you miss me? Though I am nothing, will you miss me?
The stasis was interrupted by the sound of breaking glass, another accident? Or someone was angry, overhead the buildings loomed, all of them snuffed out like so many candles, tendrils of mist floating in the night sky above the wick-dark towers. The man with the terrier stood beside her, the dog panting heavily and looking up at the two of them as if they had an answer. He took a cell phone out of his pocket and dialed a number, turning away to talk, but the call didn’t go through. Hello? he said. Hello? He brought the phone down and stared at the screen, which illuminated his face so starkly that he looked like he’d been singled out.
He glanced up at Stephanie and put the phone away, and then turned in a full circle, but he didn’t start off, because he wasn’t sure which way he was facing. He said to Stephanie, Which way is downtown? Then he looked down at the dog, who peered back up at him eagerly, waiting for instructions. — What just happened?
As far as I can tell, someone ran a red light, Stephanie said.
He shook his head. I’m just trying to get to 10th and Broadway, he said, sounding angry and frightened. Which way am I supposed to go?
At first she thought he was shaken by the accident, but when she tried to help him she found she didn’t know, either. There’s the church, she said, pointing across Fifth. But—what street is this? She looked to see which way the traffic was facing, but she wasn’t able to read the street sign.
12th, I think, the man said.
So the traffic is going east, she said, though the traffic wasn’t moving at all, and the cars were honking again, all of them, louder and more insistently, creating a terrific cacophony. A young black man in street clothes stepped into the intersection and started directing traffic, haphazardly but with great enthusiasm, dancing a bit and making elaborate gestures as he turned to address traffic from every direction. I think that’s south, Stephanie said, moving her finger around like the sight of a rifle.
OK, the man said, but he didn’t move. Down the avenue she could see people walking in the street, swarming around the immobile traffic like rioters with nothing in particular on their minds. What the fuck is going on? the man said.
I’m not sure.
But something is? he said.
I think so, said Stephanie. But I’m not sure. She could smell the buildings. Now a police car lit up in the middle of it all, lights whirling, siren sounding in short, uneven bursts, mixed with the blat of its radio being keyed through the speakers, though the police inside didn’t say anything, and the car, like all the others, wasn’t going anywhere. There was something missing, some law of nature had dissolved. Was it gravity? She felt the sidewalk firmly under her feet.
The man on the bicycle was the first to understand. He wasn’t angry anymore; instead he spoke with great wonder, like a penitent at the Final Horn, speaking truth in advance of belief. The traffic lights are out, he said. All the lights are out. There are no streetlights either. There are no streetlights, there are no . . .
The buildings, Stephanie said, there’s no electricity.
The man with the dog laughed in discomfort and delight. It’s a blackout, he said.