Lowland Rider (13 page)

Coolly and methodically, he won the game.

I try to do what I can. The opportunities occur infrequently, but more often than you would expect them to. If I let my imagination roam, it would not be difficult to conclude that I am drawn to these things. Or drawing them. As though my experiences imbued me with some electromagnetic force that pulls me to where these things are happening, where this evil is taking place.

That sounds too melodramatic—
evil
. As though this is some moral swamp which nurtures sin. Yet maybe it's not too far off the mark.

And it's not too far off because I don't want it to be. That's one positive thing about the underground—you can make it whatever you like. It reeks with symbolism, with countless opportunities for micro-cosmic role-playing. It lets me take fifteen-year-old punks and turn them into criminal masterminds, lets me take the tunnels and make them halls of Hell. It lets Rags take this man Enoch and turn him into the Devil himself, Satan ruling the underworld, pulling the strings that make all the puppets dance to the tune of evil.

Enigmas within enigmas. Webs within webs.

Here's one I like: tunnels within tunnels. And no light at the end of any of them.

Enough writing. My fingers hurt, and so does my head.

May, she thought, was not the best month to do research on the subways. The place was a madhouse any time of the year, and the unseasonably high temperatures only made things worse. People seemed edgier, and the crazies, who in cooler weather were merely amusing, were now bathed in sweat, poised on the brink of violence. Or so it seemed to Claudia
Dorner
.

Claudia was no stranger to subways. She had ridden them for twelve years, since she had first moved to Manhattan when she was twenty-two. Her outlook then had been as fresh and new as her looks and her MBA from Penn. She had taken a position with an investment firm, which she found, despite her degree, bored her. To alleviate this boredom, she had two passionate yet unproductive love affairs, began to write, and finally got married to Steve Fuller, an accountant in her firm.

She sold her first article, a humorous guide to executive fashion, to
Working Woman
, about the same time she got a divorce from Steve, who she discovered was cheating on her after five years of marriage. Figuring that she had more of a talent for satire than for holding men, she concentrated on satire, and wrote and sold so much of it so frequently that eventually guilt replaced the pleasure in her success, shunting it aside with the unforgiving question of why, with all her obvious talent, she had not yet produced anything
serious
.

The only thing that oppressed her more than this nagging question was the subway ride she took every day from her Eighty-fourth Street apartment to her office on Wall Street. Although she could afford a cab, she felt that the twelve dollar a day fare was a type of blackmail, an unnamed predator upon the fear and discomfort she felt so intensely on the trains, and she quite simply would not be so manipulated. So she rode the lines that gradually got worse and worse, and her freshness withdrew, deeper in, masked by the white bisque that serves as flesh on so many New Yorkers, until one day her fear and her desire met in the realization that here was her subject, here was something
serious
, something inconceivable and alien that was somehow also rich in meaning. Once the idea took root, she became obsessive about it, and quickly produced a proposal which she presented to Julia McWilliams, the articles editor at
Manhattan Magazine
, to whom she had sold several New York pieces. Julia bad been intrigued by the idea as well.

"The subways," she told Claudia, "have always caused that ambivalence, that love-hate relationship, in New Yorkers. I mean, they're as much a part of the city as cable cars are of San Francisco, but everybody
likes
cable cars. I don't know of one poor bastard who'd admit to actually liking the subway."

"Is it a go then?"

Julia paused for a long while. "You really think you can get these people to talk to you?"

"I can try."

"You'll go escorted."

"I wasn't planning to."

"Christ, Claudia. Even Paul Theroux went with cops. The piece in the
Times
he did a few years back?"

Claudia narrowed her lips, shook her head. "Do you think anyone down there would talk to me if I was with a cop? I read the article too, and Theroux didn't interview any skells."

"So what are you planning to do, pack a gun?"

"I thought about it." And she had, but decided not to. She didn't know weapons, and the thought was strong that when someone takes out a weapon, it usually gets used. "I'll be all right."

Finally Julia nodded. "Okay then. But up your life insurance, toots. I'll tell you that
I
wouldn't do it."

They talked money then, and the next day Claudia went down with a tape recorder and a note pad. Julia insisted on assigning a photographer, a bearded veteran named Wynn who looked like a retired fullback. Claudia quickly learned that it was a mistake. When she got close enough to a
skell
to talk, they invariably looked at her, then at Wynn standing a yard away like some strap-enwrapped mountain of muscle, and scurried quickly away. Although she was reluctant to lose the protection that Wynn provided, she knew there would be no story as long as he was around. After repeated urging, Julia agreed to drop Wynn from the piece, use artwork, and leave Claudia on her own.

Even then, Claudia was unsuccessful at establishing any rapport between herself and the skells. Her first conversation with an elderly gentleman, wearing coveralls and a yellow T-shirt that had once been white, was transcribed from her tape recorder as follows:

CLAUDIA: Hello.

MAN: Hey.

CLAUDIA: Do you mind if I talk to you?

MAN: Hey.

CLAUDIA: Do you mind?

MAN: Got a quarter?

CLAUDIA: Yes, here you are.

MAN: Got a quarter?

CLAUDIA: Yes. I just gave you one. There, see?

MAN: Got a quarter?

CLAUDIA: It's in your hand. Your hand.

MAN: Quarter.

CLAUDIA: Yes. What's your name?

MAN: I don't know.

And there the conversation stopped. The old man stood up and left the car.

There was another conversation, with another old man:

CLAUDIA: Hello.

MAN: Hello.

CLAUDIA: What's your name?

MAN: Bob. What's yours?

CLAUDIA: Claudia.

MAN: Will you marry me?

CLAUDIA: Marry you? This is awfully sudden.

MAN: You're all alike. All bitches.

As with his predecessor, the man stood and left the car.

Later that same day, Claudia approached a middle-aged woman sweating inside a heavy cloth coat, who, as soon as Claudia spoke to her, began screaming. "Shut up! Shut up!" the woman cried. "You won't give it to me! You got it, but you won't give it to me!" On this occasion, Claudia was the one to retreat from the car.

It did not take her long to rethink her premise. She had supposed that there were people who came down into the subways for logical reasons, or at least for reasons that she could sympathize with, if not fully understand. She had thought of the subway as a symbol, that perhaps she could answer mysteries, illuminate the mystique, crude and cruel, that hung, veil-like, from the cold walls of these tunnels. Instead she had found only an asylum, and the theory that, instead of people being made mad by the life below, they had come down here already insane.

Now she sat trembling in spite of the warmth, and felt the fear and discomfort creeping back. Into her mind came the urge to resign herself to the fact that she would not understand, that this place and its people would be, to her, eternally alien. Just as she was about to stand and walk into the sunlight, Jesse Gordon entered the car.

She did not recognize him at first. His hair was long, with dark tendrils curling over his collar, and his black beard had grown in fully, covering his throat to the hollow of his neck, and riding up his face to the top of his cheekbones so that his eyes seemed hidden behind a mask. Rags was with him, bundled in cloths, and Claudia marked the pair of them as skells.

Talk to them, she thought, but hesitated. If she had been alone with them, she would have obeyed her impulse and forgotten the subway and her piece, and sought the fresh air. But the presence of other passengers gave her courage, so she waited until the train began to move, then stood and made her way to where the men sat talking quietly. She grasped the hanger in front of them and looked down. "Excuse me . . ."

The younger man looked up first, and she saw his eyes and the contours of his face beneath the beard, and she remembered those eyes looking down at her in candlelight, that face
sheened
with satiny sweat…

"Jesse…"

His expression was perfectly blank. Then the furrow between his eyes deepened, and she knew he remembered too, remembered his ex-lover from the time they had both been single, careless, and, perhaps just a little, in love. "I'm sorry, I don't think I . . ."

"Claudia. Claudia
Dorner
, Jesse."

He gave a grim smile that admitted he was found out, then nodded. "Hello, Claudia. I didn't think anyone would recognize me."

"My God, it is you. What are you . . . doing down here? I mean, I mean they're
looking
for you."

"Then I suppose I'm hiding down here." He turned to the black man next to him. "Rags, this is Claudia. Claudia, Rags."

Rags and Claudia looked at each other without speaking, both of them wary.

"Say hello, Rags. Miss
Dorner
is the first to have found me. I guess that merits some recognition."

" 'Lo," Rags said, and looked at Jesse, fear in his rheumy eyes. "I gotta be
goin
'. Things to do."

He shuffled off into the next car, as Jesse looked after him. "There goes my best friend," he said. "And he was lying. He has nothing to do. Nothing at all except to get another train." He sighed deeply. "So. What are you going to do now?"

"Do?"

"You said they're looking for me. Are you going to tell them you found me?"

"I . . . don't know. I hadn't thought about it."

"You'd better." He turned toward her, resting his thigh and knee on the seat. "What do they want me for?"

"For questioning, I think. I mean . . ." She laughed uncomfortably. "After what happened. Your. . . wife and daughter—I was so sorry to hear—and that man they found."

"Rhoads?" Jesse asked quietly.

"Yes, him. But the other one. The Spanish man. No one knows what really happened. No one knows where you went."

He nodded. "I went down here."

She frowned as if she did not understand. "You're . . . living down here now."

"Yes."

"I don't . . . why, Jesse?"

He leaned back, looked up at the ceiling. A moment passed before he spoke. "What happened. Because of it. They were. . . killed. I wasn't. Maybe I should've been. Maybe not. I don't know. But this seems, somehow, like the right place to be."

She nodded. "Inexplicable."

"That's the word."

"And you're staying?"

"I am."

The door at the front end of the car opened, and a transit policeman walked in. He paused as he neared Claudia and Jesse, pursed his lips, and made it plain by his expression that he thought the well-dressed Claudia should not be sitting so near such a disreputable character as the heavily bearded
skell
at her side. But Claudia disarmed him with a smile, which he gave back grudgingly, and he walked out the rear door.

"What did that mean?" Jesse asked.

"Sorry?"

"Did that mean you're not going to turn me in?”

“Is there any reason I should?"

"In God's blind eyes, no."

"Then I won't. On one condition."

"Which is?"

She interlaced her fingers as if praying, tried to appear sincere, even though she knew that what she was making was a deal, and looked full into Jesse Gordon's eyes. "Let me ride the trains with you."

He frowned, and his eyes squeezed nearly shut in concentration. "What?"

She told him then about the story she wanted to write, about her fascination with the lines and the people who rode them, about her desire to turn over the rocks and uncover the mysteries of the skells. When she finished, he laughed softly.

"There aren't any mysteries. Not one thing or two or three, at any rate. They're down here because they want to be, or because there's nowhere else to go. If you're looking for something you can say in one sentence, or one paragraph, or even one article to sum it all up, you won't find it. If there are ten thousand skells, there are ten thousand reasons."

"I'd like to find some of them."