“What humanity,” Mr. Wright observed with cold judgment. “Did your parents teach you that, or did you just pick it up along the way?”
Jay glared at him. “Do you think I wouldn’t give anything to change all that happened? Maybe things would have been different if I’d done like you said and told him to fuck off, but I don’t think so. I think this fate was cast in stone from the minute I gave him that buck fifty five. No—from the
second
I remembered the donzerly light. That was when this fate was cast.”
“You mean your fate.”
Jay shook his head. “There were more lives than mine weaved into this fate. I understand that now. My destiny was not my own. My life was not my own. I’m not sure anyone’s is completely their own. Not even Sign Guy’s. I really believe now that life is a...well...a random collaboration.” He eyed Mr. Wright, waiting for a reaction. None came. “I don’t expect you to understand that. Not yet.”
“Then make me understand,” Mr. Wright said, using a variation of his ‘how’ or ‘tell me’ mantra once more.
Jay still wasn’t sure that was possible. He hadn’t been when starting to tell the tale, and he wasn’t now.
Yet, he had started, and he had come to this point. He
could
speak of things past. Could let them out again.
But all ‘til now had been only...odd. Fantastic. Weird. Even troubling. What came next, what began next, were the first blind steps toward a precipice shrouded in darkness. Not a darkness born of night, or mere absence of light, but one that was birthed in the human soul. In tainted corners of the human soul.
He’d waded into that darkness, not feeling cautiously ahead, not testing the next step with his toes, and he had gone over that precipice. Had fallen.
Could he travel that black path again, in memory this time? He believed so now. It was only memory, he told himself, and memory couldn’t hurt you.
It could only drive you mad.
Hot breath hissed in and out his nose.
“It was the best of times after Mitchell died,” Jay said with a quiet but obvious shame.
“How so?”
“It rained money. That’s the way it seemed. We were unstoppable. In the two months after he died we pulled in two million in commissions. Two million. Not bad for four young turks loose on the Street.”
“So times were good. They obviously didn’t stay that way.”
“No,” Jay concurred, “they didn’t.”
“What happened?”
“Someone got wise,” Jay said with soft, uncertain reverence for the moment still. “I still don’t know why, or how, but someone got wise to him.”
“To the bum.”
Jay nodded.
“Go on.”
Nineteen
Give And Take
It was a Wednesday, a hot August Wednesday morning, the twenty third of that month in nineteen eighty nine, and Jay Grady was beginning to think as he walked to work through Manhattan’s thick warmth that both Christine and Jude were right. She had made her feelings known that morning, a full month after Jude had suggested that, uh, buddy, you can afford
not
to take the subway now, and had further informed him of amazing things called limousines that came with drivers, and phones, and built-in bars. And, oh yeah,
air conditioning
.
Jay glanced at the yellowing sky above the spire of Trinity Church, the sky that, at eight o’clock in the fucking morning, was already spilling wet heat into the city, and thought that, yeah, a climatically-controlled seventy degree ride would have been nice right about then.
But what would he have to give up to have that? To travel about the city in a style his new status and its accompanying bankroll could provide? Some green, sure, but there was green to burn (though he had actually only done that once, for real, just a few weeks back when Christine said it would get her hot to see him light up a cigar with a C-note). Yeah, some money and little else. The only other thing was...
...he might not see Sign Guy.
Sure, maybe in a glimpse through the deep tint of auto glass, but that, Jay felt, would not be enough. Strange as it was even to him, he felt drawn to the (what was he? really? what?) bum, though he had not spoken to him since the night on the bridge, a night he had come to terms with through heavy doses of rationalization, and the comfort of his two best friends—Jack Daniels and Christine (and sometimes her little white buddy)—when the former wasn’t holding strong. Yes, each day he came this way, subway to station, station to street, street to work. Feet to the pavement, a solitary stroll down Broadway to the crosswalk, the same pair of white lines that bridged the street every minute out of three. The same crosswalk that began a whisper’s distance from where his mystical benefactor had staked his claim. And not a word would Jay speak. Not a syllable, not a peep, though the bum still looked up every morning when Jay stopped to wait for the light to change and flashed him the V and uttered the familiar, ‘Peace, brother.’ And to that Jay would nod, and nod only, because, the truth be told, there was menace deep in the twinkle of the bum’s smiling eyes. A menace Jay had come to know the night he scrambled off the bridge with dozens of grinning drivers playing chicken with his backside.
A menace Old Man Mitchell had felt for a split second when the hard and dark street had popped him like a zit.
Yet still he traveled this road, subway, street, crosswalk, and the reverse on his way home in the evening, and with each brief encounter Jay began to feel more and more like a moth that had figured out too late that candle flame was more than a bright and special light. Something more hurtful and dangerous than that special kind of light.
And like the moth, he did not turn away. Could not turn away from that special kind of light. And, God, why was that?
It was that question these days that troubled him most.
So this Wednesday, like all the other days of the week since Mitchell had done his grand exit, and since Jay had watched the bum make his deposit into the East River while traffic parted for him like the red sea, Jay had every intention of nodding to the greeting that would come as soon as he reached the crosswalk and then be wordlessly on his way. But intent was never translated into action this steamy summer morn, because a few yards or so from the place where Jay would pause and wait to safely traverse Broadway he stopped altogether. Stopped and looked ahead to the strangest sight he could recall since the night on the bridge. Just up the street, right in front of the church, some old fellow was yelling at Sign Guy.
“I want it back, fella,” the man demanded, his face flushed from the viperous mix of heat and anger, his fist balled tight and thumping the air between him and the bum.
And to this, Sign Guy smiled. Smiled as the stares of passers-by danced over him and the balding gent voicing some dispute.
“It was a fuckin’ mistake!” the man shouted. Beads of sweat bloomed on his ample forehead and dragged glistening streaks down his face. “I’m not crazy! Why would I give you a hundred bucks
on purpose?!
” He gestured derisively at Sign Guy. “Why would I give you
any
money?”
Jay drew closer now, near to the crosswalk, more heads turning toward the tempest. The suits and the skirts taking in a sight quite opposite a perceived norm—a
businessman
(suit, tie, briefcase, and a
Journal
tucked under his arm, of course) was berating a
bum
, something reminiscent of the man bites dog cliché. And though cliché it might be, Jay thought as he reached the curb by the crosswalk proper, there was something wrong with this scene. Wrong because this man was biting a dog that he somehow knew had bit him first, picked his pocket, wronged him. And this man looked not to be afraid of the dog at all, which was not a good thing, Jay knew, because the very real possibility existed that this dog was mad.
But this man would not know that. He already knew too much, namely that he was light in the wallet—and knowing that was miracle enough, Jay thought. What was in the bum’s head he could not be aware of. What the smiling fellow with the sign was capable of was something he could not know, and that could be a dangerous thing. A very dangerous thing, Jay knew all too well. And for that reason he was damn glad that there was a good number of witnesses around, and the angry man still shouting at the bum should be thanking his lucky stars for that one as well.
“I want it back! Now, dammit!”
Sign Guy kept his look straight on the man as he reached up and took his hat off, dragging the sleeve of his white cotton shirt over his forehead to mop up the sweat that had gathered there. All the while smiling that smile. While he put his hat back on there was that smile, and as he picked his Yuban can off the ground and set it on his knees behind the shield of his sign there was that smile, lips parting a bit now over pickets of clenched teeth, and as he peeled the plastic lid partly back from the top of the can and slipped one hand into it there was that smile, teeth and the curl of his lips and cheeks puffed taut above the expression, and when his hand came out with a single hundred dollar bill between the fingers there was that smile, tight and chiseled now like a stamp of permanent happiness upon his face, a happiness that might have been true were it not for the pale fires of malevolence blazing in his eyes.
“I’m sorry to have troubled you, brother,” Sign Guy said to the man, and held out the hundred like one might a peace offering.
But that it was not, and that it would never be, because the balding man first looked at the refund as though surprised by it, his lips pursing and breath hissing in and out, sweat twinkling on his face like a galaxy of mini stars. Very quickly, though, he quashed his shock at the reality that the bum was giving up a hundred bucks without so much as a verbal parry to outrage directed him and grabbed the money that had been his that morning. An hour ago, he thought. That was when he had given it to the bum, this nut with the sign, and why had he done that? Why? He couldn’t remember the why as to it, but he had, not ten minutes ago while seated at his terminal readying trades for the day, recalled that for some insane reason he had given the bum money, and that money had been a hundred fucking dollars!
Well, that money was back in his possession now, and the man slipped it back into his wallet and took his handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the bolt of white linen over the damp heat wicking atop his bare head.
“Peace, brother,” Sign Guy said to the man.
“Peace nothing,” the man replied, tucking his handkerchief away and turning from the bum just as the light changed.
Jay was still looking at Sign Guy as the man moved past him and into the crosswalk, the first one to step between the fat white lines, and all that he witnessed next came so fast that he hardly had time to look away from the bum and see the car that had roared through the red light, and glimpse two people behind the bald man jump back just in time, and hear the engine revving as though the accelerator was being mashed to the floor, and catch sight just feet away of fingers clamped hard on a steering wheel, and eyes wide behind the windshield, and between the fingers and that gaping gaze a grin cut upon the face of a woman as she steered her car into the man who had troubled the bum.
The bald man only had a split second to glance left, and no time to react beyond a futile scream. His legs crumpled on impact by the Jaguar’s bumper, his body bending onto the hood as his lower limbs had new joints snapped into them. His head thudded sickly off the sheet metal as the rest of his body tumbled toward the hood, the Jag’s sleek profile scooping his shattered body and vaulting it into the air, sending it spinning in a macabre aerial cartwheel until it slammed into the street to a chorus of screams that nearly drown out the crackle of his spine snapping.
People rushed to him. Pedestrians who had witnessed it, drivers waiting at the light. Someone ran for a phone to call for an ambulance.
Jay, though, stayed back from the commotion. Stood back and looked again to Sign Guy.
“Peace, brother,” the bum said, flashing him the V as the first sirens began to wail in the distance.
The police got there first, a blue and white cruiser having pulled up to the intersection of Broadway and Pine just as the Jag screeched to a halt and skidded onto the curb a hundred feet past the crosswalk. EMS came next, but by the time the first paramedic gloved up and got a look at the man and the crown of his head split open, taking a pulse would have been a waste. An ambulance came, but ended up tending a woman who had fainted after seeing the horror play out before her eyes. The photographers came, too, taking shots of the Jag, and of its hysterical driver, balling uncontrollably and screaming ‘what happened, oh my God, what happened’, and of course plenty of shots of the corpse splayed out in the middle of Broadway, covered by a sheet that was spotted red.
People were crying, others consoling, and to each and every one of these people who had seen what happened the police wanted to talk. Including Jay and Sign Guy.
“Did this guy have the light?” a cop was asking Jay. His collar was soaked a darker blue, as were the armpits and sides of his uniform shirt. The heat was bad. So were other things.
“He did,” Jay answered, looking past the officer who was questioning him to the bum. He was being questioned as well, and was cooperating fully, Jay could just hear, telling the tale as it appeared. Man walks into crosswalk, crazy driver runs him down. That was the way it had played out, wasn’t it? That was what had been
seen
.
Except in this case, appearance wasn’t everything. It was hardly anything at all.
“And this Jag just ran him down, right?” the cop inquired further, looking for more confirmation of what everyone had witnessed. And what could be said against something so concrete as that which had happened in front of two dozen sane and reasonable people? What
truth
could be spoken that would be believed?
“Right,” Jay replied, watching the maker of the truth he understood give his own inquisitor what he wanted to hear. Watching that officer nod approvingly as he was fed the convenience of rational thought. Watching as they shared a smile, and as the wagon from the morgue backed toward the body, photographers rushing forward to get a bead on this part of the drama. Watching as one of the cameramen peeled off of the pack—the same one who had some months earlier snapped that ‘slice of life’ photo of Sign Guy’s downcast mug—and shouted a ‘Hey!’ as he brought his camera to his eye and aimed it at the cop and the bum, maybe wanting a ‘background’ shot for this event. Watching the bum and the cop both look up and away from Jay as the strobe flashed, and then as the photographer lowered his camera and continued on toward the meat wagon. And watched as Sign Guy’s eyes tracked the man who had just snapped his picture, his head turning so that Jay could see his face again, a face that was not what Jay had known all these months. A face whose expression was bland, and ashen, and slack.