Chasing Shadows 09: Take On Me
A Journey from Despair to destiny.
Little West 12th St, New York, NY, 1988
The days following Thanksgiving bled into weeks that bled into months. And in the middle of all this bleeding, the seeming blurring together of a world once soaked by blood and a new world now soaked by regret, I was beginning to lose myself — I started turning down work, I started sleeping until noon. I began doing everything I could to escape the world I built for myself. The only catch of this new world into which I burrowed myself? In the sleep into which I now retreated, I slept not out of exhaustion but as a way to avoid catching my reflection in any surface that might have the gall to show me who and what I really was.
In my dreams and in the nightmares that ruled over the dream world, I didn’t have to face myself, I just had to face the spectre of The Vicereine and nameless, faceless Agency thugs all coming for me with the scent of blood in their noses and my name on their lips. It would seem awake, asleep, no matter what, my world was coming for me no matter where I ran from it, although I tried.
After a night of what could be called “fitful” sleep at best, I decided, enough of this shit — Fabian and Marie would have never put up with this kind of self loathing and so I knew I should hold a high a standard for myself as they did for me. I got up, got dressed—sliding into my black leather pants, my trusty black leather jacket and then I actually sat in front of the mirror applying makeup and doing my hair gently rubbing a brush through it as much as I didn’t want to — each brush felt like running a metal rod heated in a fire across my scalp. Once I was done, I even pouted my lips and applied three swaths of rosy pink lipstick and smashed my lips together.
The Black Russian may feel like hell, but she was going to look like a million bucks, no matter what. So, the question was, now what?
I stepped out of my room as Holly, Liza and Nadia looked up at me gawking at the fact I had actually emerged from my room in daylight. “I’m going to Star Deli,” I announced, “I’m getting smokes and beers and maybe some bagels from Bagel Bros. On the way, anyone want anything?” I asked clear to everyone but me that I was making this up as I went along even though I was bound to reclaim normalcy by force.
“Pack of smokes, and one, no make that two onion bagels with scallion cream cheese, onions and lox, please,” Holly pleaded.
“You’re sure, babe?” Liza asked kindly.
“Of course,” I said projecting my armor so hard it almost hurt.
“Cigarettes and Doritos, please,” Nadia pleaded asking for her new favorite American treat.
I smiled at the girls, nodded and left. As I stepped out onto Washington Street, it was as if I could hear and feel ghosts overtake me, I could practically feel me and the girls running by in ghostly afterimages of us shouting at each other as we ran to the Heliport that fateful day. I could almost faintly make out a ghostly image of us running past me and further up Washington. Except in this ghostly “memory” I saw myself and the girls stop for a brief moment and whip their heads around towards me as I looked at Nancy before she faded away once more.
As I began walking towards Star Deli, I turned onto Little W. 12th. As could usually be expected any morning, the ‘morning shift’ was in full gear, young hustlers, male and female pinging between corners and in and out of alleyways like human pinball games looking for the car that would sail past with money, dreams, and for some, maybe even a way out. I had come to know some of these survivors by name and on occasion I might treat one of them to a cup of coffee or a sympathetic ear but today? Nothing happened as I planned.
An expensive looking town car pulled up and its back door flung open almost stopping me in my tracks. As I jumped back from the swinging door, a young man was discharged from the car. His clothes looked nice, but not expensive and as he hit the sidewalk, he looked at me with a look that said sorry, but it was said through eyes I recognized.
His eyes told me stories of a life lived on the street, he was not much older than I when I ran from Lavrovo, living place to place, hardship to hardship. I may not have known him but I knew him all too well — working this street, toiling in this world where he could so very well fall into the cracks in the cobblestones at any moment.
He ran his hands through his hair, a rich caramel brown as he said flustered, “So sorry about that.”
“It’s no worry,” I assured him asking, “Hey, can I buy you a cup of coffee?”
“You don’t have to,” he said with a practiced deflection.
“I want to,” I said, “I need to.”
“Well, okay,” he relented, “I could use a good cup of coffee.”
813 Gansevoort Street, New York, NY, 1988
The kid and I ducked into Midnight Joe’s, a low-key coffee joint tucked between a boarded-up pawn shop and a 24-hour laundromat on Gansevoort Street, just off Little West 12th.
“Take on Me” by A-Ha was playing over a tinny radio by the counter and boy if that couldn’t have summed me up better right now. Midnight Joes was known for its burnt-but-strong coffee and questionable but cheap food which consisted mostly of day-old bagels and soggy egg sandwiches wrapped in wax paper. The cash register was behind bulletproof glass, but no one really robs the place—there’s nothing worth stealing. And the trick to the rickety payphone by the bathroom? It doesn’t always work unless you hit it just right.
The clientele was made up of streetwalkers finishing a shift or waiting for the next, Night shift cabbies looking for a caffeine hit and guys in wrinkled suits who definitely shouldn’t be in the Meatpacking District at this or any hour rounded out by low-level hustlers, bagmen, and the kind of guys who can get you a fake passport if you know what to ask for
The booths are cracked vinyl, sticky with time, and the smell is a blend of coffee, stale cigarettes, and the ghosts of bad decisions.
The kid and I sat and I ordered us two coffees.
“So Kid,” I asked, “Rough night?”
“Aren’t they all?” he said with a knowing sigh.
“Sonja here,” I said.
“Christopher,” he offered.
“You been out on Little W. 12th long?” I asked telling him I knew all about the goings on around here.
“Long enough to know how to survive it,” Christopher said with a knowing smile.
“Not to judge a book by its cover,” he added, “But you look like one hell of a survivor too, you just might not know it yet.”
His words landed like Marie’s warm Austrian kasnocken dumplings in my stomach, like little pearls of warmed love and tenderness. And I had to hand it to the kid, he was probably more right about me than I was. He knew the truths I wouldn’t even admit to myself.
“Survivors, eh?” I said, “Can I give you some advice between us survivors?”
Smiling, Christopher nodded.
I leaned back in the booth, stirring my coffee even though I didn’t take sugar. Just something to do with my hands. The kid—Christopher—watched me like he wasn’t sure if I was about to give him advice or bad news. I guess in this world, those two things weren’t always so different.
I exhaled and tapped a finger against the table. “First rule of surviving? Always clock the exits. The fastest way out, the second fastest, and the third if you’re desperate. Doesn’t matter where you are—a motel room, a restaurant, a john’s car. If you know how to leave, you’re already ahead.”
He smirked, but there was something wary behind it. “Sounds exhausting.”
I shrugged. “So is being dead.” I took a sip of my coffee, letting the words settle. Then, softer, I added, “Second rule? Never let them see how hungry you are. For anything. Food, money, kindness. They see hunger, they see leverage.”
Christopher looked down at his coffee, like he was thinking it over, like maybe it wasn’t the first time someone had tried to give him rules for staying alive. Then, without looking up, he asked, “And the third?”
I leaned forward, lowering my voice just enough that he had to meet my eyes. “You decide what you’re worth. Not them.”
For a second, neither of us spoke. The diner hummed around us—cabbies slurping coffee, a waitress smacking gum, some guy by the window lighting a cigarette with hands that shook just a little. I watched Christopher swallow, nod once.
“Clock the exits,” he repeated. “Don’t let ‘em see you’re hungry. Know your worth.”
I raised my cup in a silent toast. “That’s a start.”
“Just what is it you do again?” Christopher asked, a wry smile parting his kind face.
And then as if speaking it into existence I said plainly, “I go on, I survive.”