"Hello. Are you by yourself?" a girl walked up to him and asked.
She had a canvas bag over her shoulder and was wearing a hat pulled down to her eyebrows, blue fingernail polish, and a silver ring in her nostril. Alex stared at her in wonder; she was almost as pretty as his secret love, Cecilia Burns, despite looking half starved and more than a little dirty in her ragged jeans and combat boots. Her only wrap was a short jacket of orange artificial fur that barely came to her waist. She didn't have gloves. Alex mumbled some vague reply. His father had warned him not to talk to strangers, but this girl couldn't be dangerous, she was only a couple of years older than he was, at the most, and almost as thin and short as his mother. To tell the truth, standing beside her, Alex felt strong.
"Where're you going?" the stranger pressed on, lighting a cigarette.
"To my grandmother's. She lives at Fourteenth Street and Second Avenue. Do you know how I can get there?" Alex inquired.
"Sure. I'm going the same way. We can take the bus. My name's Morgana," the girl informed Alex.
"I've never heard that name," said Alex.
"I chose it myself. My stupid mother gave me a name as obnoxious as she is. And what's yours?" she asked, blowing smoke in his face.
"Alexander Cold. They call me Alex," he replied, a little shocked to hear her talk about her family that way.
They waited by the curb, stamping their feet in the snow to keep warm. Morgana used that ten minutes to give Alex a brief rundown of her life: she hadn't gone to school in years—school was for jerks—and she had run away from home because she couldn't stand her stepfather, who was a disgusting pig.
"I'm going to play in a rock band, that's my dream," she added. "All I need is an electric guitar. What's in that case you have tied to your backpack?"
"A flute."
"Electric?"
"No, it runs on batteries," Alex joked.
Just when his ears were turning to ice cubes, a bus drove up and they got on. Alex paid his fare and took his ticket, while Morgana dug through one pocket of her orange jacket, and then the other one.
"My wallet! I think s-someone took it," she stammered.
"Sorry, kid. You'll have to get off," the driver ordered.
"It isn't my fault someone robbed me!" she said, almost shouting, to the mortification of Alex, who hated scenes.
"And it's not my fault either. Go tell the police," the driver said coldly.
The girl opened her canvas bag and dumped everything on the floor of the aisle: clothing, cosmetics, French fries, assorted boxes and packets, and some high-heeled shoes that must have belonged to someone else—it was difficult to imagine her in them. She checked every article of clothing with maddening slowness, turning clothes upside down, opening every box and every wrapping, shaking out her underwear in front of everyone. Alex looked the other way, more and more upset. He didn't want people to think he and this girl were together.
"I can't wait all night, kid. You'll have to get off," the driver repeated, and this time his tone was threatening.
Morgana ignored him. By then she had taken off the orange jacket and was feeling around the lining, while the other passengers on the bus began to complain about the delay.
"Lend me some money," she demanded finally, turning to Alex.
Alex felt the ice melt from his ears, and imagined them turning red; that always happened in moments of high emotion. The ears were his cross; they always betrayed him, especially when he was with Cecilia Burns, the girl he had loved since kindergarten without the slightest hope of its being returned. Alex had concluded that there was no reason for Cecilia to notice him, since she could have her pick of the best athletes in the school. There was nothing special about him; his only talents were climbing mountains and playing the flute, but no girl with an ounce of sense was going to be interested in hills and flutes. He was condemned to love her in silence for the rest of his life, unless some miracle occurred.
"Lend me the money for my fare," Morgana repeated.
Under normal circumstances, Alex didn't mind losing money, but, at that moment, he wasn't in any position to be generous. On the other hand, he decided, no man can abandon a woman in a jam. He had enough to help her without having to fall back on the money in his boots. He paid for the second ticket. Morgana blew him a mocking kiss, stuck out her tongue at the driver, who gave her a dirty look, quickly scooped up her belongings, and followed Alex to the last row in the bus, where they sat down together.
"You saved my butt. As soon as I can, I'll pay you back," she assured him.
Alex didn't answer. He had a principle: if you lend money and never see the person again, that's money well spent. Morgana aroused mixed feelings of fascination and repulsion in him; she was completely different from any of the girls in his school, even the most daring. To keep from staring at her with his jaw hanging open like a ninny, he spent most of the long ride in silence, his eyes fixed on the dark window where Morgana's face was reflected beside his: black hair like his mother's, thin face, round eyeglasses. When would he ever start shaving? He hadn't developed like some of his friends; he was still just a beardless kid, one of the shortest in his class. Even Cecilia Burns was taller than he was. His one advantage was that, unlike the other adolescents in his school, he had good skin, because as soon as a zit appeared, his father injected it with cortisone. His mother kept telling him not to worry, that some grow early and some later. All the men in the Cold family were tall, but he knew that it's a matter of luck what genes you inherit, and he might very well favor his mother's family instead. Lisa was short even for a woman; seen from behind she could pass for a girl of fourteen, especially since her illness had turned her into a skeleton. When he thought about his mother, he felt as if something was squeezing his chest and cutting off his air, as if a gigantic fist had him by the throat.
Morgana had taken off her orange jacket. Beneath it, she was wearing a short black-lace blouse that left her midriff bare, and a leather necklace with metal studs, something like a dog collar. "I'm dying for a joint," she said. Alex pointed to the sign that said smoking was prohibited on the bus. She looked all around her. No one was paying any attention. There were several empty seats around them and the other passengers were reading or dozing. When she saw that no one was looking at them, she put her hand in her blouse and pulled out a filthy pouch. She elbowed Alex in the ribs and waved the pouch in his face.
"Grass," she murmured.
Alex shook his head. He didn't think of himself as a puritan, not at all. He had tried marijuana and alcohol several times, like almost all his high-school classmates, but he couldn't understand their attraction—except for the fact that they were forbidden. He didn't like to lose control. In mountain climbing, he had developed a taste for the thrill of controlling his body and mind. He was exhausted when he got home from those excursions with his father, hurting all over, and hungry, but absolutely happy, filled with energy, proud of having once again conquered his fear and the obstacles of the mountain. He felt electrified, powerful, almost invincible. On those occasions, his father would give him a friendly clap on the back as a kind of prize for his accomplishments, but he never said anything that would feed Alex's pride. John wasn't a person for flattery. It took a lot to win a word of praise from him, but his son never expected it. That manly clap on the back was enough.
Imitating his father, Alex had learned to do his best to fulfill his obligations without bragging, but secretly he took pride in the three virtues he thought he possessed: the courage to climb mountains, a talent for the flute, and a clear head for thinking. It was more difficult to analyze his defects, although he realized he had at least two he should try to improve, things his mother had pointed out to him more than once: his skepticism, which made him question almost everything, and his bad temper, which caused him to explode when least expected. That was something new because only a few months earlier he had been easygoing and always in a good humor. In any case, Morgana's offer held no charm for him. The times he had tried pot he hadn't felt as if he were flying to paradise, as some of his friends said they did, but that his head was filled with smoke and his legs as weak as cotton wool. For him there was no greater stimulation than swinging on a rope at three hundred feet, knowing exactly the next move to take. No, drugs weren't for him. Cigarettes either, because he needed healthy lungs for climbing and for his flute. He couldn't help smiling when he thought of how his grandmother Kate had shortcircuited any temptation to use tobacco when he was eleven years old. Even though his father had given him the sermon about lung cancer and the other consequences of nicotine, he had sneaked smokes with his friends behind the gym. Kate had come to spend Christmas with them, and her bloodhound nose had quickly sniffed out the telltale odor, despite the chewing gum and cologne Alex used to disguise it.
"Smoking so young, Alexander?" Kate asked pleasantly He tried to deny it, but she didn't give him a chance. "Come on, we're going for a little drive," she said.
Alexander got into the car, fastened his seat belt tight, and muttered a good-luck prayer, because his grandmother was a terrorist at the wheel. Using the excuse that no one had a car in New York, she drove as if carjackers were on her tail. She took Alex, lurching and braking, to the supermarket, where she bought four large cigars of black tobacco, then drove to a quiet street, parked far away from prying eyes, and proceeded to light one stogie after another. They puffed and puffed, with doors and windows closed, until the smoke was too thick to see through the windows. Alex's head was spinning and his stomach doing flip-flops. After a while he couldn't take it anymore; he opened the car door and dropped into the street like a sack of flour, deathly sick. Smiling, his grandmother waited as he vomited his guts out—not offering to hold his forehead and console him as his mother would have done—and then lighted another cigar and handed it to him.
"Come on, Alexander, prove to me that you're a man, smoke this one," she challenged him, highly entertained.
He had to stay in bed for the next two days, as green as a lizard and convinced that he would die of nausea and the pain in his head. His father thought he had a virus, and his mother immediately suspected her mother-in-law but didn't dare accuse her of poisoning her only grandson. From then on, the idea of smoking, so popular among his friends, turned Alex's stomach.
"This is the very best weed," Morgana insisted, referring to the contents of her little pouch. "I have this, too, if you prefer," she added, displaying two small white tablets in the palm of her hand.
Again Alex concentrated his gaze on the bus window, not answering. He knew from experience that the best choice was either to say nothing or change the subject. Anything he said was going to sound stupid, and the girl would think he was a baby, or some kind of religious fundamentalist. Morgana shrugged and put her treasures away for a more appropriate time. They were approaching the midtown bus station, and would have to get off there.
At that hour, the traffic and the number of people in the street still hadn't thinned, and although offices and businesses had closed, the bars, theaters, coffee shops, and restaurants were open. Alex could not see the faces of the people he met, just hunched-over figures bundled in overcoats and walking fast. He saw shapeless lumps beside sidewalk grates billowing columns of steam. He realized that those "lumps" were homeless people huddled together beside the heat ducts from the buildings, their only source of warmth in that wintry night.
The harsh neon signs and car headlights made the wet, dirty streets look unreal. There were mounds of black plastic bags on the street corners, some torn, with garbage spilling out. A beggar wrapped in a ragged overcoat was poking through the bags with a stick as she muttered some endless litany in an invented language. Alex had to jump aside to avoid stepping on a rat with a bloody, bitten tail; it had planted itself in the middle of the sidewalk and refused to move as the people went by. Horns, police sirens, and the occasional wail of an ambulance filled the air. A very tall and ungainly young man went past shouting that the world was coming to an end; he thrust a wrinkled sheet of paper into their hands that featured a half-naked, pouty-lipped blonde advertising massages. Someone on skates, with a Walkman plugged in his ears, ran into Alex, slamming him against a wall. "Look where you're going, moron!" the aggressor shouted.
Alex could feel the wound in his hand beginning to throb again. He felt as if he were trapped in a sci-fi nightmare, in a terrifying megalopolis of cement, steel, glass, pollution, and loneliness. A wave of nostalgia washed over him for the town beside the sea where he had spent his lifetime. That tranquil, boring place he had so often wanted to escape from now looked wonderful. Morgana interrupted his mournful musings.
"I'm starving. Could we get a bite to eat?" she asked.
Alex tried to excuse himself. "It's really late, I need to get to my grandmother's."
"Chill, man. I'm going to get you to your grandmother's. We're almost there, but it would do us good to get something in our stomachs," she insisted.
Without giving him a chance to protest, she dragged him by the arm into a noisy hole-in-the-wall that reeked of beer, rancid coffee, and fried food. Behind a long Formica counter, a couple of Asian waiters were handing out plates of greasy noodles. Morgana climbed onto a stool at the counter and studied the chalkboard menu on the wall. Alex realized that he was going to have to pay for the meal, so he went to the men's room to get out the money he had hidden in his boots.
The walls of the rest room were covered with four-letter words and obscene drawings. There were crumpled paper towels on the floor and puddles of water that had dripped from the rusted pipes. He went into a stall, shot the bolt, set his backpack on the floor, and, overcoming his distaste, sat on the toilet to take off his boots, a task that was none too easy with a bandaged hand in that cramped space. He thought about germs, and all the diseases his father had told him he could contract in a public rest room. And he had to watch what he spent.