Miss Misery (14 page)

The seventeen-year-old on the other side of the country was right. I wasn't grounded. I wasn't in trouble unless I let myself be. If there was another me running around, it was time for him to find out who the boss was. It was time to go out.

I stood up and nearly tripped over a pile of CDs. I still wasn't wearing any clothes. OK, change of plan: It was time to get dressed.
Then
it was time to go out.

 

A few minutes later, racing down the stairs, clothed and anxious, I almost bowled over Mrs. Armando, who was standing in the dark hallway with her arms crossed.

“David,” she said sternly, “you forget about somethin'?”

My brow furrowed as I racked my brain for some sort of plausible answer.

“Probably a lot of things, Mrs. Armando,” I said, trying to mask the panic in my voice.

She tut-tutted under her breath.

“It's July, David, whole new month.” She said “month” like “munt.”

“Oh!” I slapped my head. “Rent. I'm sorry, Mrs. Armando. I guess I did forget. I'll get it to you first thing tomorrow.”

“I don't know,” she said as she slowly made her way through the dark toward her apartment. “Ever since Amy leaves, I don't know where you're at!”

You're not the only one, I thought as I raced out of the door and into the steamy night.

In my pocket I had all of the dollar bills and change I had found on my dresser and under my couch. I had my passport for identification and my iPod for a soundtrack. I also had the “emergencies only” credit card that my parents had given me when I had moved to New York. I had never used it, because this was the first time I had ever felt like I was experiencing an emergency.

In my head, in addition to a nonlocalized state of panic, I had the voices of the bank operators from a few moments before telling me that I did not have the authority to cancel my cards, as I had just recently called them and told them that they were to ignore me if I called back and told them to cancel everything. It seemed that in addition to my wallet, my pride, and my PIN, the doppelgänger had the most important tool of all in the world of telephone finance: my mother's maiden name. Bastard.

I was wearing my “fancy” jeans—that's what Amy called them, as they were the expensive and pre-scuffed pair I had bought in a fit of confidence one weekend the previous winter when she had been away. My standard-issue jeans were hanging in the shower, still drying from the complete soak they'd received on the way home from the diner this afternoon. I was also wearing a plain dark-green T-shirt—one of the few in my collection that didn't pimp for a criminally underappreciated indie-rock band on its front. These would be my work clothes for the night: I was on assignment again at last. Except that this wasn't an interview; this was a manhunt. I was going undercover. I was going to the Lower East Side. To prove my commitment to the mission, I had even pushed a dollop of Amy's product through my hair in an attempt to recreate the flickering hipness that Cath Kennedy had given me the night before.

Other than that, though, I had no plan, no confidence, and only a sputtering hold on my identity. I was—like thousands of post-college young people every year—going into the heart of Manhattan
to find myself.
The thought alone would have made me laugh if I hadn't felt like crying.

 

The sky was burning a dark shade of orange over Fifth Avenue as I walked briskly down the street toward the subway. The clouds were almost gone, and now the sun was dying. The sidewalks had dried from the afternoon's thunderstorm, but I could hear the rainwater continuing to pour down the drains by the curb. Tomorrow was trash day in the neighborhood, and the overflowing cans that marked my walk were ripe with a sickeningly sweet aroma. I raised my hand to my face and smelled that instead—warm and salty and, thankfully, familiar.

Down the hill, at the intersection of Fourth Avenue and Ninth Street, Latino vendors were selling homemade popsicles and Ziploc bags full of sliced fruit out of the backs of navy-blue vans. The check-cashing spot hummed with activity, and the traffic, inching forward in both directions, was continuous. The F stop there was above ground, and after swiping my Metrocard I took the stairs two at a time and then hurried toward an empty spot near the end of the platform. It felt strange to stand still; my heart felt like it was about to cannonball out of my chest. I kicked at the ground and tried to slow my breathing.

It was possible to see the Statue of Liberty from where I stood, its familiar outline sheathed in the embers of the setting sun. Up here the air—an awkward marriage of exhaust and barbecue—somehow smelled cleaner, less heavy. For the first time that day I let my shoulders relax. God knows how many evenings I had stood in the same spot, seeing the same sights, hearing the tracks click and switch below me, smelling the air. And yet it still made me smile. New York was a beautiful city—you just had to have a different definition of beauty to appreciate it.

Eventually, the F train rumbled around the corner, out of the tunnel, and into the fading light, twisting and shrieking to a halt. I boarded a halfway full car and took a seat on the far side, away from the evening glare, up against the panel that separated the bench from the doorway. When I had first moved to Brooklyn, the F train had been my nemesis, always choosing my prime traveling times to stop running, to go express, to magically metamorphose into an entirely different train—a G, maybe, or an A. I quickly became bitter and mocked the train at length to Amy and my other friends; I became convinced that it was out to get me, that it knew the times I was in a hurry, the plans I had painstakingly made, and that it intentionally—no, maliciously—disrupted them. If I was ever out late on a weeknight, it would torment me by teasing me with lights in the distance of the tunnel that would upon arrival turn out to be mysterious cousins of the F that didn't even take passengers and that may or may not have been entirely mythological: a money train, or a windowless series of cars lined with lockers, or a yellow, stinking procession of emptied city Dumpsters. On weekend nights the F would cease servicing the stops I frequented—often without explanation. On Sundays it would make an appearance maybe once every half hour. In the summer it would break the air-conditioning in the car I was riding in. Year-round it would shut its doors in my face.

If the New York subway was the vibrant circulatory system of a living city, then the F train was, to me, a blocked artery.

Until, of course, I chilled out for a minute and allowed myself to learn something important: Your local subway doesn't have to be your friend; it just has to be respected. Despite my litany of complaints, the F had done a pretty good job of getting me home (eventually), and it had certainly provided me with a generous supply of anecdotes. The F, I had come to realize, didn't have to be an object of scorn or derision. It was more like the Mets—a lovable loser. More than that, it was
my
lovable loser. It was like an infuriating but irresistible friend or a quirky uncle: It was irrefutably in my life, and, surprisingly, when I returned to New England and the universe of cars for vacations or visits, I kind of missed it. But here's the crazy part: After that first year, I swear the F began to love me back. No longer did it transform itself mid-ride or not show up when I needed it. Sure, it occasionally ran express on weekends—but who among us doesn't? No, once I started being good to it, the F train started being good to me.

Which was, I thought—as I settled into my seat, pulled my iPod from my pocket, hung my headphones on my ears, and began fiddling with the dial in search of a good soundtrack to the strange night ahead—a pretty good metaphor for life in New York in general. There was a lesson to be learned in the frustrating quirks and vagaries of all aspects of city living, of the profound uncertainty of security alerts and armed guardsmen on street corners, of not knowing where your next paycheck was coming from, where your girlfriend was, or what drugs your friends might be doing in the bathroom. The lesson: Don't fight it. Fighting just points out the dissonance, the difficulty, the anger. It brings out the worst in people. Fighting made my heart beat too quickly in my chest, the volume of my voice rise to dangerous levels in public places. It was better to keep moving, to adapt. To deal with it. This was, I realized, the mantra that was ringing in my ears as the train approached Carroll Street and dipped its long silver head back below ground: Deal with it.

So I had a doppelgänger. That's OK. Some people had desk jobs or ponytails or tumors or jury duty. They'd dealt with them and so would I. That's what you did as a freelancer in New York. As a twentysomething. As a suddenly single person. You dealt with it.

My thumb spun the click wheel on my iPod until it settled on what I was looking for, a spindly pop song by Longwave called “Tidal Wave.” I thought it was about getting pulled under by things out of your control and liking it. As I sped toward the city, I certainly hoped I was right.

I CLIMBED THE STEPS and came aboveground on the south side of Houston Street, right where First Avenue becomes Allen. The sun was almost entirely gone now, but its heat seemed to have permeated the neighborhood. It was the day before a holiday—an extra weekend night!—and so the people scampering to beat blinking
DON
'
T WALK
signs had the manic energy of criminals or any other ne'er-do-well who had somehow pulled a fast one and gotten away with it. It had been some time since I had been out on a night like this, and I steeled myself before crossing the street. My iPod clicked over to “Victim of the Crime,” a rhythmic track by a French band called Phoenix. As I fell into the flow of people on the cramped sidewalk in front of the falafel joint, I started to feel a hum in my legs, a buzzing in my head. I bobbed and weaved through an idling crowd of bridge-and-tunnelers, sped through a worry of crones. There was a beat to this sort of thing: walking the streets, surfing the crowd. An urban metronome that takes over your internal steering. I was good at it, I remembered now: cutting to the outside to avoid dawdlers, making empty parking spaces in the street my personal old-person passing lane. I even noticed a smile flirting with the corners of my mouth.

The positivity lasted about as far as the Mercury Lounge, on the corner of Houston and Essex. By the time I got there, reality had smacked me back: I didn't really have a destination. I was all fired up, with literally nowhere to go. I paused, then receded and let the pedestrian traffic overtake me. There was a line in front of the Mercury, and I did my best to make it clear that I wasn't cutting it.

Suddenly I felt a tap on my shoulder. I pulled my headphones from my ears and spun around.

Jack was standing right behind me, arms crossed, smile wide. “Fancy meeting you here,” he said.

I shook his hand. “What's up?”

“You tell me, homey.” He jammed his hands into his pockets. “From what I hear, you're quite the party-starter these days.”

“That's what they tell me,” I said, but tried to smile back.

“You here for the band?”

I shook my head. “Who's playing?”

“Some hardcore act from Boston. Crash Activated. Kind of derivative but the singer is supposed to be insane.”

“Doesn't really sound like my thing,” I said, and tried to check my watch surreptitiously. “Is Pedro with you?”

Jack looked surprised. “I though he was hanging out with you tonight.”

I tried to play it cool. “Oh, yeah?”

Jack didn't blink. “Yeeeah.”

“Well,” I said, trying the words out in my mouth, “that's later.”

“Ah,” he said. His eyes were laughing.

I hit him on the arm. “What?”

“Nothing, dog!” He raised his hands in surrender. “It's just
you.
You've been holding out on us.”

“Honestly,” I said. “I haven't.”

“Sure,” he said. “It's just that…”

“What?”

“When wifey's away, the mouse will play…with lots of kitties, apparently.”

I shook my head.

“C'mon, David!” Jack threw his arm around my shoulder. “It's cool! Are you smiling or blushing?”

I honestly wasn't sure. “I gotta go, Jack.”

He pulled his arm away. “You meeting someone?”

I put my headphones back over my ears. “Looking for someone, actually.”

“Anyone I know?”

I paused. “I don't know. I hope not.”

“All right, then.” He gave me a pound. “Peace. Let me know next time you're throwing one of your parties!”

I shook my head a final time, pressed
PLAY
on my iPod, and walked around the corner as quickly as I could.

A block down Essex Street, an idea began to form in my head. I pulled my cell from my pocket and texted Pedro as I walked:

I was headed southeast with the vague goal of finding the Satellite Heart, hoping that maybe—just maybe—Cath would be there. With
him.
Of course, what I would do with them when I found them was still a mystery.

I turned left onto Rivington and paused. The block was packed, with hordes of smokers gathered on opposite sides, clustered in front of rival bars—one group in front of the Magician on the north side and one in front of Welcome to the Johnsons on the south. The groups were nearly identical, yet they were glaring at each other across the street like metrosexual Jets and Sharks. I pushed past them on the north side (my allegiance, however flimsy, had always been with the Magician) and paused to look around. This was where Cath had led me the day before, but I couldn't seem to remember where the bar actually
was.
I spun around and got bumped and jostled on both sides by handbag-carrying Condé Nast types giggling and smoking en route to a birthday party. Across the street there was a tiny sandwich shop. I turned around again, still hoping to spy something familiar. It was only when I considered clicking my heels together that I noticed it. Just next to the sandwich shop (which was, it turned out, actually called the Tiny Sandwich Shop), obscured by a Dumpster, was the unmarked alley. I shot across the street—just narrowly avoiding a speeding cab—and into the alley. There it was: the metal steps down, the red velvet curtains. The Satellite Heart. I jammed my iPod and headphones in my pocket, ran my hand through my hair, and stepped down into the bar.

 

“You again!”

Franta threw his hands up in the air dramatically when he saw me enter. The mood of the place was the same as it had been the day before—hushed, intimate, glowing—but the music was not. Rubbery bass lines bounced off my eardrums, and I could feel the crack of the snare in the small of my back. I recognized the rapper's voice—it was Freeway—but not the beat. The DJ—hunched low over the turntables, desperately scratching some musical itch—was definitely not Andre. It was a small, bespectacled white kid whose red hair ran wild under a Detroit Tigers cap.

“Hello, Franta,” I shouted over the music as I approached, scanning the couches for familiar faces. I spied plenty of beautiful young black-haired girls seated close to skinny guys with too much product in their hair, but not the two I was looking for.

“So,” Franta bellowed as I took the stool in front of him. “You going to be polite this time?”

“What?” I yelled. “When was I not polite?”

The DJ segued smoothly into another bass-heavy track, this one by Cam'ron.

“Before!” Franta leaned in. “You come in here with girl; I say, ‘hello, David!' And you don't say anything to Franta, sit all the way over there”—he pointed to the couch closest to the entrance—“and you make
girl
get you drinks.”

“Oh,” I said as Cam'ron's juvenile rhymes echoed around my skull:
God damn you / Cam'll blam blam you / Van Damme you / ram-a-lam-a-flim-
flam you.
“I'm sorry, Franta. That's not like me.”

“No problem,” he said, clapping me on the shoulder. “Sometime you have to act funny with girl…and sometime girl make you act funny!” He chortled with laughter. “So,” he said, composing himself, “what you doing now?”

“I'm looking for someone,” I shouted. “Cath—that girl who brought me here yesterday. Have you seen her?”

“No, no,” he said. “Not today. Nice girl, that one.” He rummaged underneath the bar for a glass. “Here—if you look for someone, you gonna need some vodka.” He scooped two ice cubes into the glass, then filled it nearly to the brim with Stolichnaya. “Detectiving is hard work. You want lime?”

I looked at the straight liquor in front of me and felt my stomach lurch. “Um,” I said. “Yeah, I'd better take one.”

He nodded and squeezed a wedge into the glass.

Cam and Santana / hit you with a bow hammer / send you back to Atlanta / with a glass of Fanta / banana-fana-fo-fana…

I glanced over at the DJ and watched him stab the air with his hands on every downbeat. Underneath his cap, he mouthed each lyric. Franta saw where I was looking and let out a hiss of disgust.

“This guy!” He gestured wildly in the direction of the DJ. “He think he is black rapper! I don't need this in my life.” He shook his head sadly. “Usually have good kids in here, play rock and roll—who cares? Franta is a hip guy, you know! I like Velvet Underground! You know”—he sang loudly and off-key—“‘it so cold in Alaska!' But this stuff.” He pointed over again with his thumb. “‘Hoo-hah, hoo-hah.' Who wants to give a few shits. You know?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It is kinda loud.”

Franta scrunched up his face. “What you say?”

I yelled again, “IT'S VERY LOUD!”

Franta stepped back. “What you yell for? I know it's loud.” He pushed the drink toward me. “Here. Drink. Makes music quieter in brain.”

I lifted the glass carefully, watching the clear liquid splash against the rim. Oh well, I thought. You've got to start sometime. I took a tentative sip. The vodka burned, icy and peppery, in my throat. I coughed and put the glass back down. I glanced up at Franta, embarrassed, but he was still looking at the DJ with something between horror and disgust registering on his broad face.

“I need new kid with records,” he said. “And quickly.”

 

I was choking down my second full sip of vodka when my phone buzzed in my pocket.

What the hell could that possibly mean? Had my doppelgänger taken up summer stock? Would he soon be starring in a drug-addled Off-Off-Broadway production of
Pippin
? I was lost in thought when Franta put his meaty hand on my shoulder.

“David,” Franta said wearily. “You like the music, right? In general?”

“Yeah, Franta,” I said. “I like the music.”

“You wanna come play it here some nights? I used to have nice kids like you do it. I can't take no more of this one. He make me sick in the head.”

“Really?” I was actually pretty excited at the prospect. “Yeah, definitely. I'd love to. Thanks!”

“Is nothing,” he said, and reached for the brown whiskey bottle. “For Franta this is matter of survival.”

The thundering beats lifted for a precious moment while the DJ wrestled with the fader, and I lifted my drink to toast Franta. As I did so, I distinctly heard a wolf howl from somewhere behind me. I wheeled around on my stool and scanned the bar. Sure enough, there on one of couches against the far wall sat Debra Silverstein with a vodka cranberry in one hand and her Sidekick in the other, furiously texting into it with her thumb.

“Excuse me, Franta,” I said. “I see someone I know.”

He waved me off, and I picked up my drink and walked over to where Debra sat. She was wearing a tight black skirt and a black vintage Duran Duran tour T-shirt that was artfully ripped around the collar and at least two sizes too small for her ample chest. On her sleeve were two pins, one that said
THE KILLERS
and one that said
I MADE OUT WITH ULTRAGRRRL
. I stood directly over her, but she didn't seem to notice.

“Mind if I join you?”

She looked up with a start. “Oh! Hey! Sure!” She motioned to a spot next to her on the couch, then resumed typing.

I sat and took a drink while wolf howls filled the air between us.

“Sorry,” she said. “Just figuring something out.”

“That you have lycanthropy?”

She didn't look up. “What?”

“Nothing. Never mind.”

I sat for a while and sipped; with the ice partly melted the drink wasn't nearly as strong. I watched Debra's thumb dance across the microscopic keyboard. A chorus of wolves bayed at the moon. I began to think that it would take a silver bullet to get this girl's attention for more than six seconds. Then, with a start, she snapped the Sidekick shut and turned to me.

“So!” she said. “Hey!”

“Hey, yourself.”

“What are you doing here?” She sipped her vodka cranberry delicately through a tiny straw.

“I'm looking for Cath, actually. Have you seen her?”

“No, not tonight,” she said, fiddling with her hair. “I was supposed to but I think I'm just gonna have one more drink then head home. I have to go to my parents' this weekend.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. My little sister is getting bat mitzvahed on Saturday.”

“Mazel tov,” I said. “Where's home?”

“Jersey,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Kearny.”