Sammy watched as the homeless man wove among repulsed platform-standers. He was white of beard and cheek, and he carried blue-and-black boxes under his scrawny, dirty arms. At regular intervals he'd holler, "Play yourself some DVDs! Twenty dollar!"
She was well used to seeing vagrants, beggars, crackheads, bottle fiends, and vendors of hot junk in her city. The last couple of years, New York's underclass had actually given her a kind of bitter cheer, as the truly pathetic are bound to do for the slightly pathetic. Being closer to the ground had given her perspective on those who dwelt there permanently. This particular guy she'd seen several times before here at the Canal Street station, always with the DVD player boxes in tow-for all she knew, the same ones every time. Even tourists weren't stupid enough to buy electronic merchandise from somebody who smelled like soured milk and urine. She didn't understand why the guy didn't just take his seat next to the black panhandlers lining the wall. Those brothers could pull in money just by holding their cups out.
Most of the people waiting for the green line train had cleared out of the path of DVD Man, but one clueless stander still stood there, his back to the scene, staring at some point of interest on the tracks, maybe a candy wrapper or a foot-long rat. DVD Man approached the stander, still chanting his sales pitch. When that ploy failed to grab his mark's attention, the homeless guy punched him on the arm: "Play yourself some DVDs!"
The unexpectedness of the assault, combined with the way the stander jumped in surprise, made Sammy erupt into a full-throated laugh. DVD Man suddenly backed off, and the stander, a teenager no more than a few pubes past fourteen, slowly turned around to stare at the girl who mocked him. Twin scars were carved into his fuzzed cheeks, three inches long apiece and fresh. Sammy's laugh met a quick death.
Behind him, the train slid in with a jagged scream. Sammy began wheeling herself furiously at the train at a forty-five-degree angle so that she and Kid Freak would not occupy the same train car. Unfortunately, her brick of a go-chair could not go fast enough to win her a different car, so she was forced to settle for the opposite end of Kid Freak's.
Litch had agreed to meet her, but he insisted on the middle of Grand Central Terminal for their transaction. He claimed that he preferred brazenly public forums over hidden alleys. Where would you expect a coke deal to take place, he said? He had been in the business for a while, had built up a network-a big deal, you could call him, ho ho-so she accepted his wisdom. She had no idea what Litch would look like. Sammy's old boyfriend Doug had been her lifeline to Litch, but he was on vacation with family this week in the Maldives. The dealer would find her. There could only be so many hot blonde girls in wheelchairs in the station at a given time, the dealer had said on the phone. Sammy conceded that unless the Scandinavian Paralyzed Modeling Team had just shipped in from Oslo, he was probably right.
She had never dealt directly with a drug dealer before-well, besides Doug himself. "Can't ever show them how needy you are," Doug had said, smirking, on her bed. Since the accident, whenever he paid a visit to her at her parents' flat Doug took perverse pleasure in stretching out on her bed, squirming and roiling on the fine spread while he talked to her, while she sat stiffly in her traveling throne. She had granted Marty Royce and Jim Wierzebowski access to that bed, when she'd had feeling enough in her legs to tweeze them apart for the deserved, but she'd never gotten around to granting Doug that boon. She'd liked him, wanted to wait. Now the only way for Doug to claim Sammy's bed was to mess up her sheets.
"Or else you can count on some extra last-minute 'service fees,'" he'd said. He ran a lazy finger down her left knee. "As with all salesmen."
If she hadn't needed him, she would have barred his snide face from her room and her Egyptian cotton sheets long ago. He'd never dared treat her like this back when she was still a biped. She and Jen McBride and Jen Yeoh were in those days queens, idols, their glamour putting even upperclassmen to shame. There was no one at Stuyvesant, student, teacher, janitor, who did not want to fuck them or be them or both. Look at the remnants now. Her shackled to four wheels, Jen Y. with a tiny Wierzebowski growing inside her. Jen M. was unscathed by comparison, but seemed to have lost most of her power when the triumvirate broke, and anyway never talked to her former heart-sisters anymore.
Sammy Albrook was not needy. She could feel the persistent throb of chemical desire inside her, but she recognized, after all, its nature. She was separate from her body's demands; she controlled them. She held the strings. Thus when Sammy got high, it was because Sammy wanted to, not Sammy's thalamus. Coke helped her forget her still-raw crippled life for a while-the drug had a purpose. It was an escape, not an addiction.
When the train pulled into the 42nd Street/Grand Central stop, Sammy wheeled her way behind a couple of gentlemen who had already claimed a place at one of the doors. One of her hands slicked off its wheel. She stared at her damp palm. Fear? It couldn't be. She was just too hemmed in by blazing bodies, needed some space. The doors opened. As Sammy made her way up from fifty feet below ground, she could feel herself centering, calming. Yes. She wasn't afraid. She had gone through shit that made this look like a walk on cool sand.
Partway up a ramp in a dim hallway, her left wheel jammed. She closed her eyes and bit back a cry of frustration, because that'd be the surest way to bring a Good Samaritan a-calling, and she would rather die. She would rather transport herself back through time to the sidewalk and ensure that this go-round the fall was fatal, that her miserable neck snapped like dry spaghettini. She looked down, knowing that the window of dignity was rapidly closing. A person goodhearted and true would stop and offer assistance soon. So. Some sort of grate. If she jerked the wheel just so-harder this time--
Sammy's chair lurched backwards, and she thought, Too hard, and she didn't have a chance to let out any sound of alarm before someone caught the back of the wheelchair and set it level against the ramp. The helping hand, all she saw of the interferer at first, was soft like a girl's, but the ragged nails suggested maleness. Because Sammy knew God hated her, she figured out before she turned to see the face that it was Kid Freak holding her by the chair.
"Okay," she said. "You can let go."
He hesitated.
"I've got it!" she snapped. "Let go. Let go. Touching my chair is like touching me. Do you understand?"
Kid Freak removed his hands from her, backed away an inch. His scars were even uglier up close, and Sammy was fascinated in spite of herself. "Who mutilated you?"
"Cut…" he mumbled, his voice turned way down.
"What?"
"Cut… myself shaving," he said, a bit louder. He wouldn't have been a bad-looking kid without the gouges, even though he was a touch effeminate, pale, probably an indoorer, a video gamer. Just a kid, though, as in her original appraisal, probably three years younger than her. "And your eyes?"
Sammy blinked. Aftereffects from last night's session had lasted longer than she realized. "Allergies."
They just looked at each other for a moment with the unspoken challenge of mutual liars.
"My-my name is Micah Berrier," he said hesitantly. "B-E-R-R."
"Thanks for the help, kid," said Sammy, "now buzz off." She began to wheel herself along again. She sensed his presence without having to crink around. "What?"
He walked beside her, but with ginger steps, as if expecting the lash of her fist. "Do you… like it? My name?"
A retard, she thought. Great. "Sure, it's, like, really cool. Did you hear the part about buzzing off?"
His damaged face contorted with disappointment. "I thought… I don't know. What's your name, though?"
She sighed. "I'm Sammy." She knew that wouldn't be enough to get rid of him. On the contrary, now he'd wedge in more questions. It didn't matter that she kept wheeling herself up the ramp, looking straight ahead. Being a retard, he would not be well versed in nonverbal cues.
"Sammy…" he said. "I like it. All right. I'm sorry-I'll leave you alone, but I just have one other thing to ask. If it's okay."
"What?"
"Is there…" said Micah Berrier. He cleared his throat. "Do you know if there's a place I could, like, for cheap, stay for the night? Here in New York City?"
She turned to face him as she wheeled. "Like a hostel? Or a homeless shelter? Are you homeless?"
Her bluntness worked even better on him than she'd intended. She saw him flush. A terrible despondency crept into his eyes. "No. I mean-I'm not like that. But I just need to find-I'm sorry, sorry, I shouldn't have bugged you." He edged away from her, a hair's breadth from bursting into tears.
Sammy flung out her hand. "Mike. Hey! Don't cry. Come back for a sec." She could see, all in a flash of next morning's newsprint, the weight of remorse. The out-of-towner teen, throat emptying down a drain, lying facedown in a high-numbered street. LOST BOY, the Post would squeal. Lost boy. "All it would've taken," said NYPD Sgt. Pescatore, knowingly uttering the money quote, "was someone, anyone, to stop and help the kid out. But now he's dead, and there ain't no going back." Slightly different wording on the evening news sound bite, but preservation of the ain't. Cop flavor.
"Micah," he said, low. He was still here. "I don't use Mike."
"What are you doing here?" she asked. "Where are you from?" And when can you go back there? she might have added, but didn't. She wasn't about to let Kid Freak saddle her with newspaper-induced guilt. She had to send him off in the right direction, or at least have him become the right somebody else's problem.
"Ver-" he started to say, then stopped, watching her, as if to look for genuine concern on her part. She must have been showing enough, because he started again: "Vermont. I'm from Vermont. I'm… visiting a friend here in New York City." He pronounced the name of the city with strange emphasis, almost a reverence.
"So," she asked carefully, "why do you need a place to stay, then?"
"He-my friend-he's not going to be here until tomorrow. And I, I couldn't get a train down for tomorrow, they were all booked up, so I had to take one down today instead."
Airtight, she thought, a sardonic smile curling her mouth. A real master of deception, this one. "Fine. All right. Well, you're not going to find a youth hostel here at Grand Central." They entered the main concourse, and she became distracted, looking for a man whose face she didn't know. Would Litch approach her? Would she have to roll up to him herself?
"Are you taking a trip?" Micah said.
"Meeting someone here." Her hand wandered down, forced open the pocket of her tight jeans, to make sure the wad was still there. Sufficient for a week's worth or so, covering her until Doug got back, at least.
"Boyfriend?"
"Who? Oh. No, a friend."
"Picking them up from a train?"
"No, just have to give him something."
"Oh. Hmm. And get something in return?"
"What's it to you, Mike?"
Micah pointed. "Is that him? In the blue and white coat?"
Sammy followed his finger and saw a man-to her, anyway, though he was probably twenty-one at most-in a Giants jacket and, oddly, a bookie's head shade, black hair oiled back on his head, walking in her direction. He was still some distance away, cutting through the crowd. "Maybe. How do you figure picking him out?"
"He's the one all the men in sunglasses have been watching."
Shitcakes. A quick sweep over the rest of the crowd confirmed Micah Berrier's sharp observation. There were men here and there, fitting in badly, talking on phones. Hiding behind shades. Furtive, regular looks at the Giants-ad stud, who was closer now. "Wheel me out of here right now," she said in a calm, even voice, even as her hands began to shake. "Back the way we came."
Sounding half-snide, he muttered, "I thought you said not to-"
"I don't care what I said before, wheel me!" she snapped.
Micah seized the back of the chair and spun her around. Sammy had a fraction of a second to see Litch's mouth open in surprise before her field of view shifted one hundred and eighty degrees, then she was careering down the causeway, Micah steering her around gawkers and loafers with surprising skill. She directed him to the platform where they could catch the 7 to Times Square. As the kid caught his breath, Sammy looked around anxiously for any signs of John Law. They seemed to be in the clear. Still, she wished the train would hurry the hell up.
What if Litch gave up her name to the police when they arrested him? They might very well be waiting for her back at her parents' apartment when she got there. Then another, more chilling thought occurred to her: what if Litch had been working with the cops and it had been a setup to try to catch her? That is to say, what if that hadn't been Litch at all, but rather an undercover posing as the dealer? But no, it wouldn't make sense for them to go after a mere would-be buyer… she thought cops were more interested in dealers. Weren't they?
"Micah," she said. "How did you know that the guy being watched was the one I was going to meet?"
"Well, the men in sunglasses were obviously policemen," said Micah. "And you were obviously on your way to a drug deal."
Sammy regarded him with new awareness. Micah nodded at the tunnel, which was filling with light. "Looks like your ride's almost here. I'll leave you alone now."
He turned from her. For the second time, Sammy found herself reaching out to him, both with her arm and pity of some mysterious origin. "Micah, hold on!" she said loudly.
Micah Berrier stopped but did not look back at her. Maybe he hesitated at showing his scars to her again, out of fear she'd reconsider her summons.
"This train stops at Times Square," she said, as it pulled into view. "From there, we can catch a red to the Upper West Side, where my parents live. You can stay there tonight."
"They wouldn't mind?"
"They'll never know. C'mon." A few kids in droopy pants stuffed themselves into the open subway doors before Sammy could get in. She could feel Micah behind her, almost sensed his hands instinctively reaching for the chair before she saw them. She shot him a warning glance over her shoulder, to signify the old rules were back in place.
They caught an uptown-bound number two from the thicket of tunnels underneath Times Square and walked through the high seventies streets to the apartment building where Sammy and her parents lived. Like its neighboring towers, it was a huge, imposing cock of a building, and Micah couldn't help but gaze all the way up, to look at how it battered the sky. She wondered just how long he'd been in the city before she happened upon him. The doorman opened a glass door with a half-frown for Micah and a greeting for Miss Albrook-Roddy had never called her by her first name, all these years, maybe he'd never known it-and they passed through the foyer to the bank of golden elevators.
"I don't s'pose… you have anything to eat?" he hazarded as they rode up.
"Not really," she said. But before his face could fall too low, she added, "But we could order something. You can have anything delivered in New York."
Anything? her cravings spoke. If only that were really true.
No cops were waiting for her in her parents' apartment. No voicemail from Sergeant Pescatore inquiring into the whereabouts of Mr. and Mrs. Gregory Albrook's daughter. For the time being, at least, she was in the clear.
Upon first entering the apartment, Sammy had expected Micah Berrier to show some sign of appreciation, maybe a little gasp or a whistle, but he gave it a mere once-over, removed his shoes, and went and sat primly on the Italian-leather couch, his hands folded. She was offended on behalf of her mom and dad, who probably had the roomiest pad in the building, if not the block. This was luxury Manhattan living, the kind that Sammy would never be able to afford herself, ever. Suits of the caliber that Daddy worked with would never let a Wheeled Wonder into their ranks. And the notion of one of them marrying a crippled girl was just a laff and a half. Even one that looked like her. What use was a doll, she thought, that you couldn't play with?
"They're not all this big, you know," she prompted.
"What?" he said, genuinely puzzled.
She indicated the apartment. "How big's your house? In Vermont? I mean, you've got a lot more room up there. This is huge for New York."
Micah paled, his scars becoming pink worms, and for a moment Sammy was sure he was going to upchuck all over her parents' six-month-old, seven-thousand-dollar couch. What did puke look like when the puker hadn't eaten for a while? Probably half-spit. But he kept it in and actually smiled a little in a futile attempt to cover up. "It's, it's, it's big. And really old. Great-Grandpa built it, a farmhouse. Mom used to-Mom says that on a clear night with a full moon, you can see him out in the field-the part that wasn't bought up by the Fairfield condos, I mean." He blinked rapidly to keep the tears from fleeing his eyes, denying them with an ever-growing smile that Sammy found inexplicably terrible.
Suddenly she was sure he no longer had an old farmhouse to go back to.
"Who exactly are you visiting here, again?" she said.
"My friend… Steve."
She rolled over to a drawer in the kitchen and pulled out a sheaf of takeout menus. Sammy Albrook's Insta-Cookbook. Ready in fifteen minutes or less! She threw it to Micah. "Pick what you want. My parents' treat."
When the doorbell rang, she peeled off a twenty from the stash of her father's gambling money under the table by the door. Micah reached for the bag of food after she'd paid the delivery guy, but she held it back.
"What's your real name?" she demanded. Do you… like it? he'd said. My name? "No one is named Micah B-E-R-R Berrier."
He opened his mouth, then closed it again, apparently giving up on the rebuttal before it began. "Jon," he murmured.
"Jon what?"
"Jon Steffensen."
"Why did you lie to me about your name, Jon Steffensen?"
"Because… it's not my name anymore," he said. He began gnawing at his lip, either from anxiety or the waft of pad thai rising from the bag in Sammy's hand. "Micah is my new name."
"Why do you need a new name?" For the first time, it occurred to her that this soft-spoken boy could be dangerous. As a Wheeled Wonder, she was utterly vulnerable. Yet she wasn't afraid. "Did you kill someone? Are you on the run from the police? Or is someone trying to kill you?"
"Please," Micah whispered. "Please don't ask me that stuff."
Sammy rustled the bag. His eyes darted toward it, his lip quivered. "No food until you answer me!" she said.
Micah fingered his scars, more out of agitation than implying some link to his answer. "I'm-I'm ashamed of that old name," he said softly. "I can't stand to hear it anymore. When I was Jon, I let my-I let someone down. And I can't ever fix it now."
She sensed that to hold the food back any longer would cross a line of cruelty she'd rather not cross. He eyed her with new suspicion before accepting the bag.
Dinner was silent shoveling despite her efforts to initiate conversation. Then he just sat there with a blankness that unsettled her. She steered him toward the TV, an appropriate venue for his zombie face. After about a half hour, his chin pulled toward the floor and he slumped back into the couch. It was early in the evening, but who knew when the kid had last gotten a good doze?
As she was trying to puzzle out the kid's back story-escaping the New England Mafia? multiple-personality schizo rapist sliced by his last victim?-her fantasies were interrupted by an earlier fancy reasserting itself: Micah B-E-R-R Berrier spraying all over fine Italian leather.
"Cover… mouth," he mumbled in his sleep. That was what it sounded like he said, anyway.
"Micah," she said, first at a soft pitch, then louder. "Micah. You can't sleep here. You can use my bed instead. Hey!"
"Have to get out," he muttered, the words thick. "No, this way, no!"
"Wake up!"
He shot upright, looked around with panicked eyes until he remembered where he was. He focused on Sammy as best he could; he was still out of it. "I… have to leave?"
"No," she said, almost gently. "You get to sleep in my bed. Lucky you. I'm not tucking you in, though."
She wheeled herself into her bedroom, and Micah shuffled after her. He did a tired sway as she threw a teddy bear into a chair and pulled the coverlet back. "All right, all clear," she said. Obediently Micah climbed into her bed. She put the coverlet on top of him.
While he was still suspended between consciousness and sleep, it seemed like a good time to slip in another question. "Hey…" she whispered.
"Hm."
"Who cut you?" Sammy asked. "Did you do it?"
"I… had to," said Micah, barely audible with half his face mashed into her pillow.
"Why?"
Some moments passed, and she thought he might have dropped off. Then he sighed. "Because… I never got burned." His lids clunked down into place, and his breathing took up a sleeper's gait once again.
She wheeled over to her desk and switched on the computer, then brought up a search engine on the internet. She had only a couple keywords to go by-Steffensen, Vermont-but they'd be enough.
When she'd finished reading, she wheeled herself back to the bedside. Micah was into a sleep that appeared uneasy for all its depth; he jerked from time to time, whimpered, and his face went through periodic contortions. She stroked his damp hair. The rhythm of her touch calmed him somewhat, so she kept stroking, feeling like a dog owner.
She wanted to tell him what she had read in the Bennington Banner and the other accounts of that night at the Steffensen house. That she could picture what it must have been like to wake up in the black billows, terrified and disoriented, seeing the yellow-white pulse of flame through the sliver of your doorway. How it was the likeliest thing in the world in that moment of total fear to have surrendered to the blind, writhing creature inside-Flight. And you took flight, you fled through and out the burning relic of a farmhouse, emerging, as one marveling neighbor put it to the Banner, "like a bat outta [expletive]." Only then, once out of the grip of the sightless beast, did you remember that someone else was still inside. But strong hands held you back.
How could you face your father when he came pelting onto the scene, eyes wider and wilder than you had ever seen them? So you kept running, kept flying, until everything you knew was left behind.
She wanted to tell him that maybe there was no way he could not have given in to Flight, that had he had the chance to do it all over again, he would have been destined to do the same thing. That maybe in all possible worlds, he made the same choice, infinite Jon Steffensens running coughing through infinite burning farmhouses. Just as, perhaps, infinite Sammy Albrooks broke their bodies on infinite sidewalks. And once you accepted the nature of that across-the-board fate, you could look at yourself and say, What should I do next.
Sammy waited for him to stir again, for the pretext of waking him to talk, but he'd settled into a more peaceable sleep now, and soon enough her own eyelids betrayed her. When she woke sometime before dawn, still in her go-chair, she found herself stationed by an empty bed. Micah, along with her father's wad of gambling funds and some saleable watches from her mother's dresser, was gone.
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