Moon Palace (29 page)

“Precisely. The people are all dead now, and it wouldn’t be possible to track down their heirs, would it?”

“That’s what I just said.”

“You also said that those people were anonymous strangers. Stop and think about that for a moment. If there’s one thing this godforsaken city has in abundance, it’s anonymous strangers. The streets are filled with them. Everywhere you turn, there’s another anonymous stranger. There are millions of them all around us.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Of course I’m serious. I’m always serious. You should know that by now.”

“You mean to say that we’re going to walk around the streets handing out fifty-dollar bills to strangers? It will cause a riot. People will go crazy, they’ll tear us apart.”

“Not if we handle it correctly. It’s all a matter of having the copy plan, and that’s what we’ve got. Trust me, Fogg. It will be the greatest thing I’ve ever done, the crowning achievement of my life!“

His plan was very simple. Rather than march down the street in broad daylight and hand out money to everyone who passed by (which was bound to draw a large, unruly crowd), we would perform a series of swift guerilla attacks in a number of carefully selected areas. The whole operation would be stretched out over a period of ten days; no more than forty people would receive money on any given outing, and that would drastically reduce the possibilities of misadventure. I would carry the money in my pockets, and if anyone tried to rob us, the most he would get was two
thousand dollars. Meanwhile, the rest of the money would be sitting in the satchel at home, well out of harm’s way. We would range far and wide over the city, Effing said, never going to adjoining neighborhoods on consecutive days. Uptown one day, downtown the next; the East Side on Monday, the West Side on Tuesday. We would never stay anywhere long enough for people to catch on to what we were doing. As for our own neighborhood, we would avoid that until the end. That would make the project look like a once-in-a-lifetime event, and the whole business would be over before anyone could make a move on us.

I immediately understood that there was nothing I could do to stop him. His mind was made up, and rather than try to talk him out of it, I did what I could to make his plan as safe as possible. It was a decent plan, I said, but it all depended on the time of day we chose for our outings. The afternoons, for example, wouldn’t be very good. There were too many people in the streets then, and the crucial thing was to give the money to each recipient without anyone else being able to notice what was happening. In that way, disturbances would be kept to a minimum.

“Hmm,” said Effing, following my words with great concentration. “What time do you propose, then, boy?”

“The evening. After the work day is done, but not so late that we could get stranded in some deserted street. Say between the hours of seven-thirty and ten.”

“In other words, after we’ve had our dinner. What you might call a postprandial excursion.”

“Exactly.”

“Consider it done, Fogg. We’ll do our roving after twilight, a pair of Robin Hoods on the prowl, ready to bestow our munificence on the lucky souls who cross our path.”

“You should also give some thought to transportation. It’s a big city, and some of the places we go to will be miles away from here. If we did everything on foot, we’d be out awfully late on some nights. If we ever had to make a quick escape, we might run into trouble.”

“That’s sissy talk, Fogg. Nothing’s going to happen to us. If your legs get tired, we’ll hail a cab. If you feel up to walking, we’ll walk.”

“I wasn’t thinking about myself. I just want to make sure you know what you’re doing. Have you thought about hiring a car? We’d be able to get back at a moment’s notice then. All we’d have to do is climb in and the chauffeur would drive us off.”

“A chauffeur! That’s a preposterous idea. It would defeat the whole purpose.”

“I don’t see why. The point is to give away the money, but that doesn’t mean you have to go traipsing around the city in the cold spring air to do it. It would be stupid to get sick just because you were trying to be generous.”

“I want to be able to roam around, to feel out the situations as they come up. You can’t do that sitting in a car. You’ve got to be out there in the streets, breathing the same air as everyone else.”

“It was just a suggestion.”

“Well, keep your suggestions to yourself. I’m not afraid of anything, Fogg, I’m too old for that, and the less you worry about me the better. If you’re in with me, fine. But once you’re in, that means you have to shut up. We’re going to do this thing my way, come hell or high water.”

F
or the first eight days, everything went smoothly. We both agreed that there should be a hierarchy of worthiness, and that gave me a free hand to act as I saw fit. The idea wasn’t to hand out money to anyone who happened to pass by, but to look conscientiously for the most deserving people, to zero in on those whose want was greatest. The poor automatically deserved consideration over the rich, the handicapped were to be favored over the well, the mad were to take precedence over the sane. We established those rules at the outset, and given the nature of New York’s streets, it was not very difficult to follow them.

Some people broke down and cried when I gave them the money; others burst out laughing; still others said nothing at all. It was impossible to predict their responses, and I soon learned to stop expecting people to do what I thought they would do. There were the suspicious ones who felt we were trying to trick them—one man even went so far as to tear up the money, and several others accused us of being counterfeiters; there were the greedy ones who didn’t think fifty dollars was enough; there were the friendless ones who latched on to us and wouldn’t let go; there were the jolly ones who wanted to buy us a drink, the sad ones who wanted to tell us their life stories, the artistic ones who danced and sang songs to show their gratitude. To my astonishment, not one of them tried to rob us. That was probably due to simple good luck, although it must also be said that we moved quickly, never lingering in one spot for very long. Most of the time, I handed out the money in the streets, but there were several forays into low-life bars and coffee shops—Blarney Stones, Bickfords, Chock Full o’ Nuts—where I slapped down a fifty-dollar bill in front of each person sitting at the counter. “Spread a little sunshine!” I would shout, peeling off the money as fast as I could, and before the dazed customers could absorb what was happening to them, I would be racing back out to the street. I gave money to bag ladies and hookers, to winos and bums, to hippies and runaway children, to beggars and cripples—all the riffraff who clutter the boulevards after sundown. There were forty gifts to be given every night, and it never took us more than an hour and a half to finish the job.

On the ninth night it rained, and Mrs. Hume and I managed to persuade Effing to stay in. It rained the following night as well, but there was nothing we could do to hold him back anymore. He didn’t care if he caught pneumonia, he said, there was work to be done and by God he was going to do it. What if I went without him? I asked. I would give him a full report when I returned, and that would almost be like having been there himself. No, that was impossible, he had to be there in the flesh. And besides, how could he be sure I wouldn’t put the money in my
pocket? I could walk around for a while and then make up some story for him when I got back. He wouldn’t have any way to know if I was telling the truth.

“If that’s what you think,” I said, suddenly beside myself with anger, “then you can take your money and shove it up your ass. I quit.”

For the first time in the six months I had known him, Effing actually broke down and apologized. It was a dramatic moment, and as he sat there pouring out his regret and contrition, I almost began to feel some sympathy for him. His body trembled, saliva clung to his lips, it seemed as if his whole being was about to disintegrate. He knew that I had meant what I said, and the threat of my walking out was too much for him. He begged my forgiveness, told me I was a good lad, that I was the best lad he had ever known, and he would never say another unkind word to me as long as he lived. “I’ll make it up to you,” he said, “I promise I’ll make it up to you.” Then, reaching desperately into the bag, he pulled out a fistful of fifty-dollar bills and held them up in the air. “Here,” he said, “these are for you, Fogg. I want you to have something extra. Christ knows you deserve it.”

“You don’t have to bribe me, Mr. Effing. I’m adequately paid already.”

“No, please, I want you to have it. Think of it as a bonus. A reward for outstanding service.”

“Put the money back in the bag, Mr. Effing. It’s all copy. I’d rather give it to people who really need it.”

“But you’ll stay?”

“Yes, I’ll stay. I accept your apology. Just don’t ever pull another trick like that again.”

For obvious reasons, we didn’t go out that night. The next night was clear, and at eight o’clock we went down to Times Square, where we finished our work in a record-breaking twenty-five or thirty minutes. Because it was still early, and because we were closer to home than usual, Effing insisted that we return on foot. In itself, this is a trivial point, and I wouldn’t bother to
mention it except for a curious thing that happened along the way. Just south of Columbus Circle, I saw a young black man of about my age walking parallel to us on the opposite side of the street. As far as I could tell, there was nothing unusual about him. His clothes were decent, he did nothing to suggest that he was either drunk or crazy. But there he was on a cloudless spring night, walking along with an open umbrella over his head. That was incongruous enough, but then I saw that the umbrella was also broken: the protective cloth had been stripped off the armature, and with the naked spokes spread out uselessly in the air, it looked as though he was carrying some huge and improbable steel flower. I couldn’t help laughing at the sight. When I described it to Effing, he let out a laugh as well. His laugh was louder than mine, and it caught the attention of the man across the street. With a big smile on his face, he gestured for us to join him under the umbrella. “What do you want to be standing out in the rain for?” he said merrily. “Come on over here so you don’t get wet.” There was something so whimsical and openhearted about his offer that it would have been rude to turn him down. We crossed over to the other side of the street, and for the next thirty blocks we walked up Broadway under the broken umbrella. It pleased me to see how naturally Effing fell in with the spirit of the joke. He played along without asking any questions, intuitively understanding that nonsense of this sort could continue only if we all pretended to believe in it. Our host’s name was Orlando, and he was a gifted comedian, tiptoeing nimbly around imaginary puddles, warding off raindrops by tilting the umbrella at different angles, and chattering on the whole way in a rapid-fire monologue of ridiculous associations and puns. This was imagination in its purest form: the act of bringing nonexistent things to life, of persuading others to accept a world that was not really there. Coming as it did on that particular night, it somehow seemed to match the impulse behind what Effing and I had just been doing down at Forty-second Street. A lunatic spirit had taken hold of the city. Fifty-dollar bills were walking around in strangers’ pockets, it was raining and yet not
raining, and the cloudburst pouring through our broken umbrella did not hit us with a single drop.

We said our good-byes to Orlando at the corner of Broadway and Eighty-fourth Street, the three of us shaking hands all around and swearing to remain friends for life. As a small coda to our promenade, Orlando stuck out his palm to test the weather conditions, thought for a moment, and then declared that the rain had stopped. Without further ado, he closed up the umbrella and presented it to me as a souvenir. “Here, man,” he said, “I think you’d better have it. You never know when it might start raining again, and I wouldn’t want you guys to get wet. That’s the thing about the weather: it changes all the time. If you’re not ready for everything, you’re not ready for anything.”

“It’s like money in the bank,” said Effing.

“You got it, Tom,” said Orlando. “Just stick it under your mattress and save it for a rainy day.”

He held up a black power fist to us in farewell and then sauntered off, disappearing into the crowd by the time he reached the end of the block.

It was an odd little episode, but such things happen in New York more often than you would think, especially if you are open to them. What made this encounter unusual for me was not so much its lightheartedness, but the mysterious way in which it seemed to exert an influence on subsequent events. It was almost as if our meeting with Orlando had been a premonition of things to come, an augury of Effing’s fate. A new set of images had been imposed on us, and we were henceforth cast under its spell. In particular, I am thinking about rainstorms and umbrellas, but more than that, I am also thinking about change—and how everything can change at any moment, suddenly and forever.

The following night was to be the last one. Effing spent the day in an even more restless state than normal, refusing to take his nap, refusing to be read to, refusing every distraction I tried to invent for him. We spent some time in the park in the early afternoon, but the air was misty and threatening, and I prevailed
on him to return home sooner than we had been planning to. By evening, a dense fog had settled over the city. The world had turned gray, and the lights of the buildings shone through the moisture as though wrapped in bandages. These were less than promising conditions, but since no rain was actually falling, there seemed to be no point in trying to talk Effing out of our final expedition. I figured that I could dispose of our business in short order and then hustle the old man back to the house, working quickly enough to prevent any serious harm from being done. Mrs. Hume didn’t like it, but she gave in after I assured her that Effing would carry along an umbrella. Effing readily agreed to this stipulation, and when I pushed him out the front door at eight o’clock, I felt that things were fairly well under control.