Bed

Cull the Steel Heart, Melt the Ice one, Love the Weak Thing; Say Nothing of Consolation, but Irrelevance, Disaster, and Nonexistence; Have no Hope or Hate — Nothing; Ruin Yourself Exclusively, Completely, and Whenever Possible

Snow was everywhere that Friday, in clumps and hills, glassy and metastasized as SUVs, and none of it white. The sky was a bright and affected gray — lit from some unseen light source, and not really that interesting. People went up and down Sixth Avenue with the word motherfucker in their heads. They felt no emotions, had no sensation of life, love, or the pursuit of happiness, but only the knowledge of being stuck between a Thursday and a Saturday, air and things, this thought and the next, philosophy and action; birth, death, God, the devil, heaven, and hell. There was no escape, ever, was what people felt.

Colin himself was dressed lightly, in dark and enveloping colors. He felt of the same endless machinery and danceless, starless trance of the city at night, if a bit cold. He stood on the perimeter of Washington Square Park, waiting for Dana. They were going to a Leftover Crack show. Leftover Crack was a ska-punk band fronted by a person named Stza; their recent CD was “Fuck World Trade,” Colin knew, as he owned that CD.

Dana crossed the street quickly, as if over water. She wore a yellow beanie, stood with Colin on the sidewalk. They smiled at each other and nothing else happened. The atmosphere was not conducive to talking. Visibility was low because of a fog. In the distance, vague things were falling or rising between the buildings. Bats, flying trash. Werewolves, throwing themselves off of roofs. Dana was holding herself with her own arms, Colin could see. They’d known each other almost four years, beginning with the first college-orientation thing before September 11th, but hadn’t really talked in more than three. A few days ago they’d met on the street and made plans. Tonight, Dana’s boyfriend was at a boxing seminar or something, was unavailable, so here she was with Colin.

In the street, a car idled by, a little off-kilter and without its lights on. An unmanned car, lost in the world. It spun slowly around and continued down the street, backwards and twisting.

It began to snow.

“Sure you want to do this?” Dana finally said.

Colin felt cold. He probably should’ve worn more clothing. The show was in Brooklyn, he knew, and they were in Manhattan. “Um,” he said.

“I want to do something with you still,” Dana said.

Colin looked at her. His eyes were very dry. He could feel his contact lenses there, little walls in front of his eyes. He yawned and Dana went out of focus, a bit wild and diagonal in the air, as if about to travel through time. There was snow on her beanie. Colin brushed at it. But it was just white dots — smiley faces.

“There was this beanie floating through the air the other day,” Dana said. “Minding its own business, and I reached over and plucked it out. Like a flower or something. Not this one I’m wearing now. A different one. This really shitty one.” She smiled, then laughed. “I never say ‘shitty.’ I’ve just been listening to this song. It goes, ‘the world’s a shitty place / I can’t wait to die,’ and at the end he goes, ‘just kidding world / you know I love you.’ ”

Colin knew that song. There was nothing to say about it. “They should have beanies with beans on it, not smiley faces,” he said.

“Yeah. Anything but smiley faces.”

“When I see a smiley face I feel demented.”

“What if beans were alive and they all had smiley faces,” Dana said.

They talked some more like that. Dana seemed to move closer over time, then began to touch Colin’s shoulder sometimes. Colin didn’t know if this was flirting or what. He knew he didn’t know anything about motivation, the world, the future, the past, or human beings. He knew that Dana was marrying her boyfriend. Actually, he did know many things. But it was maybe too many, and he didn’t care. His knowledge was an indestructible machine, made of a million pieces of metal, and flying — a gigantic, gleaming, peripheral blur that Colin was not at all curious about.

A while ago, one night, Colin had eaten the universe, and from then on had felt black and spacey inside, had felt his heart, tiny and untwinkling, in some faraway center, white and tepid as a dot of Styrofoam.

Dana had changed her mind. She wanted now to see Leftover Crack. Would not do anything else, no matter what.

“I’m doing a film,” she shouted on the train. “I’m filming tomorrow. Want to be in it?”

Colin said, “What did you just say?” Then realized what she had said. Then the train started screeching and someone began to play a saxophone. Colin told himself to ask Dana about the film later. There was a building that was Colin’s future, a tall and glassy place that he’d have to enter, and if he didn’t fill it, he’d end up wandering the floors, wheeling around on an office chair, rolling his own body on the carpet, like a log. But then probably that’d be a lot easier. Him in his empty building. Harmless, mute. Irrelevant.

Dana shouted something but Colin couldn’t hear. He saw her mouth move in a laugh. “I’m going in there with white and green,” a little girl screamed, “and you’re going to choose green!” Dana took a paper from her pocket, gave it to Colin. A drawing of two whales; one with a fishhook in its mouth, a harpoon in its eye; the other with lipstick, squares for eyes — the saddest-looking whale Colin had ever seen — and a thought bubble:

I wish I could round these eyes

I don’t like myself but I think I like you

Give me a kiss and shred off my face

Give me a very square farewell look

Colin read it and nodded at Dana. She was blushing. She touched her face, grinned, shouted something, took back her paper. They got off the train in Red Hook, Brooklyn. It was very quiet here. Snow had come down from heaven, swirled about, absorbed all the smoke and dust — all the coppery, spray painted wooziness of a city — and then fallen, thwarted, to the black and coagulated ground, stopped on its way to hell. There was not a deli anywhere, and no buses. A police van was ahead.

“Show’s over,” a policeman in the van said. “Concert’s canceled.” Colin and Dana kept walking toward the venue, a bit quicker. “Turn around and go home,” the policeman said. “There’s nothing here for you two.”

Colin and Dana turned slowly around.

“Just kidding!” the policeman said. “Hey!”

As Colin and Dana walked by, the policeman smiled at Colin. Because of snow, they had to walk within touching distance of the van. All the cops inside, Colin saw, were distinctly different in body size. Maybe a dozen cops, all in jackets. “Have fun,” the policeman said.

The venue was Polish-owned, had an outside area where kids smoked and where three Polish women — a mom, her daughters — sold hot dogs, vegetarian hot dogs, chips, and an orange, potion-y drink, which was in a large punch bowl. A hundred or so kids were out here.

Colin thought of saying something. He hadn’t for a while. But he felt very calm, and a little dizzy; felt as if washed out by some sweet and anesthetic water, as he often did. Kids were moving in and out of shadows, being loud or elusive, eating chips or smoking. They were sad and pretty in their anguished and demonic colors, their piercings, their hands in their pockets. The bassist for Leftover Crack, Colin recognized, stood alone, eating a hot dog that was not vegetarian, drinking the orange drink.

Dana was looking at Colin. “I’m taking a vampire class,” she said. “We just watch vampire movies.”

Something black and warped was rippling through Colin’s head, little voids, and he couldn’t concentrate. Probably it was unacceptable to be distracted in this way, he knew, by nothing — by nothingness. It took him a minute or two to respond. “Is Bram Stoker a vampire?” he finally said.

“Bram Stoker,” Dana said. “Are you a vampire?”

“Yes,” Colin said. Leftover Crack’s bassist was looking down into his orange drink. “I was a cat when I was five, for Halloween. With a cape.” A cat from three to eleven, then a boy with a ghoul mask, then nothing. Halloween quickly became mostly for vandalism; no one dressed up anymore, just destroyed property, attacked one another openly and in teams. It was a different world back then. There were a thousand different worlds in the world, Colin knew. Each had a hundred thousand secrets locked-up in invisible steel rooms in the bright blue sky. Before bedtime, each night, you took a multiple-choice test based on those secrets. You never knew if you failed or what, and each morning you woke with the uncertainty of that. You also woke with a craving for new and requited love. The craving was unrelated to the uncertainty. Both were loyal only to their own causes. You yourself had no cause and seemed, at times, to be simply the effect of something. Fixed, unstoppable. Existing by momentum only, but pretending always otherwise.

“That’s good for five,” Dana said. She touched his elbow. “Colin, you were a vampire cat.”

“Look at the bassist.” Colin extended his arm straight out and pointed, startling himself in a dull and private way — he hadn’t meant to point like this. Some kids saw Colin pointing and looked. The bassist noticed and moved the hot dog down to his side, held it there like it wasn’t a hot dog, but something insurgent — a microphone or pipe bomb.

Dana laughed. “You’re embarrassing him!”

She slowly pulled Colin’s hand down.

“There aren’t enough songs against McDonald’s,” Colin said. “There should be a song called ‘Fuck McDonald’s.’ ” He felt suddenly excited, and looked directly into Dana’s face. He was not afraid. There was her face. At night, it would move through his vision, colorless and behind the eyes, like a phantom, floating bird — a hood of wings, folding away. “Do you think McDonald’s is objectively bad?”

“I think so,” Dana said. “Yeah; I agree with you.”

Colin looked away. Leftover Crack, he knew, had a song called “Fuck America”—it had begun to play in his head. It was catchy. It had rhyming couplets.

McDonald’s will bloom as the major competition

Between Jesus and the Devil for this government’s religion

People so caught up in the freedom that they see

While America’s fucking over every single country

Something Something Chorus Something

Fuck America

Fuck America

Fuck America

Fuck America

(Outro)

Dana was talking about if she were Bill Gates. “I’d do things about McDonald’s,” she was saying. “I’d end the McDonald’s corporation somehow. With Windows software.”

“They’ll sue you.” Colin didn’t feel excited anymore. He felt drugged and indifferent. Something enormous and depressed and on drugs had moved through him; had been watching him, from a distance, and had now come and moved through him.

“I’ll sell them faulty windows that would keep breaking,” Dana said. She laughed. “So their restaurants will look all dilapidated. When they sue me I’ll bribe the Supreme Court. I’ll give them supercomputers. Colin, I really like supercomputers for some reason. They’re so big and sad. I just want to take care of them. I get these urges …”

Colin wondered if Dana talked this way to her boyfriend. He knew nothing about Dana’s boyfriend. Except that his name was Tyson, and all Colin could ever think was Mike Tyson. Colin liked Mike Tyson. He didn’t know much about Dana anymore. They had talked a lot at first, years ago, that first August before school, before September 11th — all day, walking up and down Manhattan, side to side, through parks — but Colin couldn’t remember any specifics unless he tried very hard, and he didn’t feel like trying that hard.

Leftover Crack had a history of inter-band disputes. At a show Colin had attended, the guitarist had left the venue after Stza became depressed and smashed his guitar — the body snapping cleanly and quietly from the neck, as if willingly — and sang a few songs lying flat on his back. Another time, at CBGB, a few months after September 11th, the guitarist had on a fawn-colored sweater over a crisp white shirt for some reason and had said, in a sincere way, that he was proud to be an American, that it really moved him how everyone had come together. Then Stza had said that September 11th was the greatest day of his miserable life. Then they had played “Stop the Insanity (Lets End Humanity),” or something.

On stage now, Leftover Crack’s bassist walked to his bass, picked it up, strapped it on, and stood waiting for the others. His face was expressionless and he did not move his eyes, mouth, head, or legs. His shirt said “NO-CA$H.” The guitarist was asking the crowd for beer. Someone passed up a shiny blue plastic cup, but it wasn’t beer.

“Somebody pass this fucker a beer,” Stza said.

“If I don’t get a beer,” the guitarist said. “I’ll put my guitar down, smoke some crack, drink a forty. Seriously, I don’t care.” He had just done a set with his own band; he had his own band.

“We all know, dude,” Stza said. “We all know.”

They played “Gay Rude Boys Unite (Take Back the Dance Hall),” their anti-homophobia song, “Money,” their anti-money song, “Life is Pain,” their anti-breeding song, and “Suicide (A Better Way),” their pro-suicide song. Behind them, against the wall, was a large upside-down American flag with a pentagram drawn over it in black marker. In the corner was a little silvery “666.”

Colin and Dana stood to the side, back a little. Both had toilet paper packed in their ears. About ten songs in, Dana pushed Colin toward the middle and front. They were squished, were pushing forward and screaming the lyrics, and then Colin fell back into a circle-pit area, was okay for a while, moving quick and unharmed, but then was elbowed some place and smacked in the side by someone’s fat, hard body. He fell to the ground, which was cool and sticky. Kids picked him up, righted him, squared his shoulders. “My shoe,” Colin said. “My shoe fell off.” Kids began to search for his shoe. Then someone was slapping Colin’s cheek with his shoe and giving him his shoe. Colin saw some yellow and pushed up front. Stza was dancing something like a jig on stage, rapping, “incarcerate the youth of the next generation / and you get the high-fives at the police station.” Colin screamed the lyrics for a few songs. Leftover Crack played “Born to Die,” their usual closer—“I just can’t escape the lying / the moment we’re born, we’re dying”—and right after that the venue people turned on the lights. The house music was death metal. Colin found Dana and they stood around for a while. They used the bathroom. They wandered to the outside area, where a girl was interviewing Stza.

“Alright,” the girl was saying. She had bright orange hair and a large tape recorder, and was young, maybe in 8th grade. “So what’s the point of what you’re doing? What do you hope to gain?”

“Well, the point …” Stza said. “Actually we’ve pretty much done everything I had hoped to do. I wanted to be in a band, I wanted people to come to our shows. I didn’t have a lot of friends growing up and I wanted to meet people … see, I’m really shy, and I just can’t walk up to people and talk to them. I feel like a total jerk. But if kids come up to me and talk I can just talk back.”

“Is this the one important thing about the band … that you are going to extremes just because you’re making a point of free speech?”

“That’s one of the things,” Stza said. “But it’s not the only reason I say some things. I mean a lot of the things I say. I joke about a lot of things. But only half joking.”

“Is that why you have satanic imagery on your website? To be offensive?”

“Yeah, yeah. I mean, I’m an atheist. I like satanic art, I think it’s pretty … I’m not a Satanist, but if you read the Satanic Bible, a lot of it is just common sense, really. It’s not about hurting people, it’s about freedom and autonomy.”

One of the Polish women — the mom — was watching and had been moving closer and was now standing next to Stza. She asked about some beers that were sitting on a fence. “I wonder whose they are,” she said. There were three beers.

“Don’t know. You can have them,” Stza said.

“No; you should have them. They’re not mine.”

“Thank you,” Stza said.

“I wish someone would have them so they wouldn’t just be sitting there.”

“I’m sure someone will have them,” Stza said.

“Okay. Goodbye.” She turned to leave.

“Goodbye,” Stza said. “Well, you know, I eat out of the garbage, so …”

The polish woman turned back around. “What?” she said.

“I eat out of the garbage, so it doesn’t matter,” Stza said. “A lot of kids do, so they’ll drink the beers.”

“I don’t think they’re garbage, I think they’re sealed cans, just over there — look.”

“I’ll go check it out if it makes you happy,” Stza said.

“Just chuck them over the fence into that garden.”

“No! That’s wrong,” Stza said. “I don’t believe in littering. This is such a pretty place.”

“But someone might use them to throw at people’s windows.”

“They’re empty aluminum cans, that’s not going to break a window. I know these things.”

“He’s too smart for me,” the woman said to Colin and Dana. She smiled at Colin. “Oh,” Colin said, and looked away. Dana was holding his hand, he saw. “Will you put them in the bin for me then?” the Polish woman said. “They worry me.”

“Alright,” Stza said. “When we go back we have to go back that way — so we will.” He looked around. The little girl with the orange hair was gone. She had vanished.

“Thanks,” the woman said, “you’re an angel.”

“Thank you. An angel of death.”

Outside the venue, the sky was a distinct brown. Kids pointed at it. “What the fuck is that?” someone said. “It’s a piece of doo-doo,” someone screamed. There were clouds but those were brown too. A group of kids began to chant, “Don’t dis the sky, don’t dis the sky.” No one wanted to go home. Everyone loitered in the street, kicked at snow, talked shit about Good Charlotte. Colin walked around a little and soon couldn’t find Dana. He stood in one place, looking and shivering, feeling an unpleasant and comprehensive longing for tonight; it was a thousand years later and Colin was thinking back, remembering — regretting everything. But he would not be alive in one thousand years, he knew. He would be alone in a vast and unimaginable place. He felt a little confused. He saw Leftover Crack’s bassist running away, sprinting down the block, slowing, turning a corner. Then a girl was asking Colin his name. “Colin,” Colin said. “Hi,” the girl said. She had round and vapid eyes and a very thin, silver hoop in her nose. “I’m Maura. Join me, Frank, Donnie in a Chinese dinner. We’re going to Manhattan Chinatown. You’re invited.”

Dana walked up.

Maura introduced herself again. They talked briefly about a building across the street, then buildings in general. What if they got so tall that they broke off into outer space? “You two are together,” Maura said after a while. “You aren’t alone and feeling bad … feeling alone,” she said to Colin. She gazed at them. “Things haven’t changed. You’re both invited.”

The moon was fuzzy and it looked like it had snowed there too, or else it was a large piece of snow, falling slowly, carefully, in an orbit. It was the moon, and could do what it wanted.

“You two aren’t very curious,” Maura said. “Not a good sign. Hmm. Look. Frank and Donnie.” She stepped aside, pointed behind her. Frank and Donnie were standing there, small and indistinct, down two or three blocks.

At the Chinese restaurant, Maura had an idea that everyone should spend all their money tonight; they’d found a homeless person on the train and he was here with them too — a short, bearded man who hadn’t said anything. They put their money together, a little over a hundred dollars. Maura brought the cash to the large Chinese woman in charge of the place and asked her to order for them, and keep twenty percent for tip. A waiter appeared and engaged the Chinese woman in conversation without looking at her.

Dana’s cell phone rang. It was her boyfriend and she said that she was going to go now, and stood up.

Colin wasn’t thinking that he wouldn’t ever see Dana again after tonight. He didn’t think of that until after Dana had left. It was later, now, that Colin realized: when Dana was standing by the table, a few minutes ago, looking, she was waiting for him to stand up, so that they could say goodbye or something, exchange phone numbers maybe, but Colin had just sat there, without moving — had been thinking about Dana’s film, about asking her where to meet tomorrow, if she was just being nice; then about how good and mysterious it was that Dana had held his hand earlier — and then she had come over, leaned down, hugged him, and left.

“I wonder if Stza masturbates to celebrities,” Frank was saying. “What about to nine eleven? That’s so dumb, when people say that. Getting off on nonsexual things, I hate that shit.”

“He probably masturbates to the idea of masturbating to nine eleven,” Donnie said. “He’s one step ahead like that. That’s how people are. There’s like five steps, and you figure out what kind a person you are by what step you’re on. Fuck you, Mrs. Johnson.” He said to Colin, “Um, my math teacher. She was in my head just now. I was like, what are you doing …”

“What if someone wrote a song called ‘Fuck Africa,’ or something?” Frank said. He had a worried look on his face. “ ‘Fuck Black People.’ A song called ‘Fuck Native Americans.’ ”

Maura was leaned over the table, her head low, and was gazing up, a bit blankly, at Colin. “Are you offended?” she said.

Colin shook his head no.

“You’re crestfallen,” Maura said.

“I’m not.”

“Crestfallen?” Donnie said. “Nice. I like that. Romantic.”

“What if Stza saw a slide,” Frank said. “Like a playground slide. In a field somewhere. And he was alone and no one was watching — would he do it?”

“He’d probably hide in it — on top — and masturbate to the idea of hiding there and masturbating,” Donnie said. “See how we’re different? I’m on one step, you’re on another, lower step. Me and Stza are pointing and laughing at you.”

“No … because I’m being serious,” Frank said. “I’m on an elevator or something, being serious.”

“I’m operating your elevator,” Donnie said. “Your elevator’s a cardboard box. You live in a cardboard home and sit there being serious all day. At night, you make beastlike noises, you clutch your face in horror …” Donnie looked off to the side at something.

“He would — he’d do the slide,” Frank said. “I wouldn’t though. I’d be too apathetic. I’d be like, what difference does it make? Stza would be like, ‘Hey, a slide.’ Stza wouldn’t get along with bin Laden.” Frank was shaking his head. “Stza would be all sarcastic and bin Laden wouldn’t get it. They’d just have all these awkward silences. Bin Laden would murder Stza in his sleep.”

“Apathetic is pathetic with an ‘A,’ ” Donnie said.

“Osama bin Laden,” Maura said. “Ouch.” Her head lay on its side, on her arms, on the table. Her eyes were closed. “I feel so alone when I close my eyes and talk. I hear my voice and everywhere else is this sad music, like, behind me.” She began to hum, very quietly, “La-la-mm-mm-la, ah-ah-mm …”

“Did she say sad music or sadistic music?” Donnie said. He put his hand in the air. “Give me five,” he said to Frank. “Give me a high-five for what I just said.”

Frank looked at Donnie. “I wonder if bin Laden ever gets depressed,” he said. “I’m serious. I think about this a lot. Depressed people … are so depressed and harmless. Bin Laden and everyone, Bush — they’re always grinning on TV. What the fuck is that. No one ever thinks about this shit, really.”

There was a metal rod inside of Colin. The rod went up from his stomach into the middle of his head. It was made of steel and sugar, and had been dissolving inside of Colin for ten or fifteen years, slow and sweet, above and behind his tongue; and he would taste it in that way, like an aftertaste, removed and seeping and outside of the mouth. Sometimes he’d glimpse it with the black, numb backs of his eyes. But what he really wanted was to wrench it out. Cut it up and chew it. Or melt it. Bathe in the hard, sweet lava of it.

Their food came. Three dishes, then three more, then a pot of something murky and deep. The large Chinese woman sat down with them. “I sense a new person,” Maura said. “Hi.” Her eyes were still closed. “It’s the boss-lady,” Donnie said. Maura sat up, opened her eyes, asked the Chinese woman about getting some more homeless people to come help eat. The Chinese woman laughed. She shouted something and the waiter left the restaurant on a bike.

The short homeless man was eating and so was Colin, but no one else.

“My phys-ed teacher-person called me ‘homeslice’ yesterday,” Frank said. “What the hell is that? He kept doing it.”

“He probably said he needed to go home and slice some pizza,” Donnie said. “I’m going to go home, slice some pizza.”

“No, he was like, ‘Frank, homeslice, get over here and do twenty push-ups.’ ”

“You should’ve said, ‘Your mom’s a homeslice.’ Then stayed where you were, doing zero push-ups.”

“I feel depressed,” Frank said.

“Do you know?” Maura said to Colin. “What is a homeslice? You’re older than us. You’re wiser.”

“Crestfallen,” Donnie said.

Colin looked up and shook his head. Blood moved slowly and disproportionately through his head, like a water and a syrup both. He concentrated on eating a piece of vegetable. It wouldn’t fit in his mouth and he concentrated on that.

“You seem hungry,” Maura said. “Are you undernourished?”

“Are you a reporter?” Donnie said. “I’ve had this … bad vibe, that you’re a reporter from USA Today. When I saw you, the headline came into my head, ‘Teenage Terrorism Gangs at Punk Shows,’ and it had a bar graph. I was like, that’s not right, that’s fucked up — the bar graph, I mean.”

Frank began to eat. He had a damaged, pensive look on his face. He ate rice.

“I don’t think you are,” Maura said. “Your posture.” She gazed at Colin. “Reporters wouldn’t dare have your posture. Reporters have horse eyes. You have dog … bird eyes. You don’t move your head to look at something, you move your eyes.”

“I’m going to carpet bomb the Super Bowl with my al Qaeda friend, who lives on Second Avenue and …” Donnie said. He stared at Colin, who was looking down, at all the vegetables that he had moved onto his plate. There was a withered piece of carrot, a mushroom, a pile of baby corn, and an enormous green thing.

“Reporters aren’t as hungry as you,” Maura said.

Frank stood up. “I’m going to the bathroom to vomit,” he said, and went there.

“I like you, Colin,” Donnie said. He looked around. “I mean it. I usually hate all people. You should come to my birthday party next week. I don’t have friends. Just these people here, and they don’t even like me. Frank. Ha. I don’t ever talk this much. I’m probably on anti-anxiety drugs right now. I’m always like, ‘I hate you, what’s the point of talking.’ Or I’m walking around and I’m all like, ‘I’m normal. I’m a normal person. Fuck all these weirdoes.’ Really, I’m probably exactly like you. Exactly. You should see me at school. I stare at the wall. There’s this wall. Anyway.” His voice was wavering a bit. He took out a 3 × 5 note card and set it in front of Colin:

Donnie’s birthday extravaganza

No clowns, no presents, no singing, fuck no, no cake, no nothing

Sure to be a depressing time for everyone involved

You shouldn’t even come, please

The waiter came back with his bike and three other people — his twin, a tall and bearded man, and a tiny, wrinkled, peanut-colored woman. They pulled up another table and sat down. The waiter went and got more soup and bowls.

“These are gargantuan,” the short homeless man said. He held his bowl up to the light and everyone looked. It was a normal-sized bowl.

The tall man smelled a little sour. He was sitting by Colin, and now stood up. “Thank you, sir,” he said to Colin, and sat down.

Colin said something shocking yet compassionate, but he wasn’t sure what exactly — or if, even, as he didn’t hear his own voice and also had been thinking about something completely else.

“Thank you, Colin,” the short man said.

“Thank you, Colin, sir,” the tall man said.

The tiny, wrinkled woman was smiling very pleasantly. She had a little teacup in front of her. The waiter’s twin had on a “NASA” hoodie and was talking to Donnie. “We lived in Seattle then moved here. We’ve written four film scripts each, eight in total. We have a shared identity but we also have distinct individual identities. Well, what do you think?”

Frank came back. His face and hair were wet, his eyes were unfocused, and his seat had been taken. He stood there a while, then focused his eyes, put food on a plate, sat alone at an adjacent table, and ate.

“You’re trying to say something,” Maura said to the tiny, wrinkled woman, who was moving her lips in an unhurried, fishlike way. Some spit got onto her chin and she coughed a few times. Little coughs, like drops of water. Finally she very clearly and quickly said, “What are your movies about?” She did not have an accent. They were all looking at her.

“That depends. Wait … do you mean plotwise?” the waiter’s twin said. “Wait,” he said loudly.

They all continued looking at the tiny woman. She was very wrinkled. She began to cough again, then reached for a napkin and knocked over her teacup, which was filled with something not easily describable. It wasn’t tea. There was food in it, and a small mound of sugar or something. “Oh shit,” she said, softly and without agitation, and then carefully stood and walked slowly out of the restaurant.

“I think what she meant?” the waiter said, looking at his twin. “Was overall, as in what are our preoccupations?”

“Life,” the twin said quickly. He stared at his brother, the waiter. “What, you don’t think so? I hesitated earlier. I shouldn’t have. We’re different.”

Maura stood. “Let’s go help her,” she said, and pulled Colin up. As she and Colin left, the waiter was saying, “She’s not as old as you think. She uses the internet, you know? Friendster?”

It was snowing outside. Colin felt cold, but in a stony, immune way. He was a marble statue, unearthed after a hundred million years — fascinating. The woman stood on the corner, small and shoulderless as a penguin. The wind lifted her hair above her head, like a small, white flame.

“We’ll each hold one of her arms,” Maura said. They went and did that.

Maura leveled her face with the woman’s and asked where they were going, then positioned her ear directly in front of the woman’s mouth. Maura’s nose ring was very bright. Colin stared at it and could hear it shining. It was a noise like a happy person waking from a nap — continually waking from a nice nap.

The woman pointed across the street. There was a McDonald’s, glowing yellow and red in complex, ongoing, and freakish acknowledgement of itself. As they crossed the street, Colin couldn’t see that well; snow moved elaborately toward his face, in curlicues and from below. But he felt that he could hear better. He could hear their six shoes sloshing against the snow. It was a crumbling noise, he realized, only faster.

Inside McDonald’s it was very warm. They sat in a booth by the entrance. The woman said she wanted an Oreo McFlurry, but had no money.

“You don’t need money,” Maura said. “Don’t move.” She stood and went to the back, to the ordering counter.

The woman began to shiver. Colin took off his jacket and put it on her back. She touched her ears. “It’s cold here,” she said. “These places.” She touched her forehead and eyebrows.

Colin pulled the jacket up, covering her head completely. It looked like it put an uncomfortable weight on her neck. Colin slid in close, right next to her, and held the jacket up a little.

“That’s pretty good,” the woman said. “I don’t like the city. No, never. Don’t ask me that.” She began to talk faster and louder. “I’m moving to the Florida Keys. I’m not driving. I’m taking a plane. I’m living in a hut on the beach.” She paused, then coughed.

“Oh,” Colin said.

“Everyone’s doing something and that’s what a city is,” the woman said. “I’m old. I don’t want to communicate at the speed of light on Mars. My daughter died in the towers. She didn’t need to be there, typing, doing things at the speed of light. Not my daughter but other daughters. I mean — people. Something. I can’t get at the things in my head. They’re tiny. They move too slow.” She was coughing or sobbing now — or both; there was a sound like two or three hamsters squeaking. Colin leaned over to look at her face, but it was just a shadow under the jacket, an abyss. “Where were you when the towers happened?” she said.

“Sleeping.”

“Singing? What?”

“Sleeping.”

“Oh, that’s good. So don’t wake up. Build a home by a beach. Leave the city and get a bed. Those are important. Beds. Don’t wake up through any of this, ever. Don’t dream about cities or progress. Don’t wake up or dream. That’s what I’m saying. Is that wrong? What should I say then? It’s too late to say anything.”

“It’s … what time is it?” Colin said inaudibly.

Maura came back holding a McFlurry and with a McDonald’s manager following her. She set the McFlurry down and sat opposite the woman and Colin. The McFlurry had some ice cream smeared on its outside and no cap on top.

The manager stood by the booth. “None of you have money?” he said. He was extremely tall and was staring down at Colin. “I believe that. I’m not self-righteous. Listen,” he said. He stared at Colin without blinking. “Okay. Listen. ‘From anyone who takes away your coat, do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you, and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again.’ Listen; just keep listening. ‘Students of Buddha should not take pleasure in being honored, but should practice detachment …’ ” He continued on like that.

Colin’s eyes were very dry. He was staring back at the manager, wide-eyed, and when he finally blinked, both his contact lenses crinkled and fell out, onto his cheeks. He brushed them quickly off his face.

The manager stopped talking and affected a sudden, neutral expression. He stared at Colin’s contact lenses, which were on the table.

“Do you need something for those?” the manager said slowly. “Yeah. I think you need alcohol solution to clean them, now that they’re dirty.”

“It’s good to not wear them sometimes, for a change,” Maura said. “Once a year … week.”

They were all looking at the contact lenses, which were squirming a little, slowly unfolding.

The old woman was weeping and coughing very quietly.

Colin brushed at the contact lenses until they fell off the table. He was blushing hard and was sweating a little in some places. He rested his hands in his lap, and felt them there — light as gloves, gentle and dead as birds.

The manager took from his pocket a colorful wad of Monopoly money. He stuffed that quickly back in his pocket, then took a five-dollar bill from another pocket. “Here,” he said. He set it on the table, looked at it, flattened it out. “That’s five … real dollars.” He smiled and looked very happy. He smiled less after a while, then renewed his smile, then left.

“People can be so nice,” Maura said. She was looking at the woman. “Maybe you shouldn’t eat that freezing-cold … you’re shivering. You’re hyperventilating.”

The woman moved the McFlurry into the dark area below the jacket and the weeping noise stopped.

Maura climbed over the table and held the woman. She set the side of her head lightly against the woman’s back and closed her eyes. “I’ve wanted to ask about your friend Dana,” she said after a while. It was snowing very hard outside; snow was flying against the glass then vanishing, quiet and rescued as the tiny ghosts of baby doves. Everything else outside was a lucid and excited black. “What do I want to know?” Maura said. “I don’t know. Something.” She began to hum loudly.

Colin had been thinking about the week after September 11th, had been thinking about that for a long time — but wasn’t anymore. He wasn’t thinking anything anymore. He was the effect of some inception. There was the first thing, and then so on, all the rest being effect, and there was nothing Colin could do about that. If he was going to feel this way, then he was going to feel this way. Feelings were a part of the effect too. The effect was everything, and forever. It couldn’t be changed or gotten out of.

But Colin wasn’t thinking or feeling any of this, really.

It was all just there, in him — what he’d think or feel if he were to. It was a leaf, waiting for him. His heart was a leaf. A white leaf, inside a gigantic noise.

September 11th, that Tuesday, Colin had called Dana’s room and left a message. He called again the next day and left another. It was the second week of college and Colin didn’t know anyone. He spent that week lying awake in his room, listening to music, not eating barely anything. Mostly just thinking about Dana. Waiting for her call.

By Friday, Colin had convinced himself that Dana hadn’t called because she had left the city; a lot of people had — his roommate had. Though, really, he wasn’t sure, as he’d been thinking about when they last hung out. It had been different than the times before. They hadn’t had fun really — not nearly as much as at first — and hadn’t made plans. But then maybe she had just left the city.

It wasn’t until a few months later — after Dana met her boyfriend — that Colin found out she had been across Washington Square Park all that week; she hadn’t left, hadn’t called.

But that was later.

On Friday, Colin could still feel a little less lonely thinking about Dana.

That night they were showing movies for free at Union Square, and Colin went. There were many homeless people, all of them alone. No one wanted to sit by a homeless person — with their puffy, Godless coats; their animal largeness — but then every seat filled, and some people had to. Colin was a little dazed, watching this, and had stopped, for a time, feeling sorry for himself, but for everyone else — everything. The movie was very independent and very sad. Outside, the streets were closed to cars. People walked on them. Missing-person flyers were taped over ads and poles. It was very quiet without any cars. Colin felt vast and detailless and disembodied; it was the same tired and endless feeling everywhere, he felt, inside of him and out — in the stung and ashen air, the buildings tall and pale as apparitions, the strange and lowered sky. Colin didn’t want to go back to his room. He walked around for a very long time, looking down at the sidewalks and streets, and thought of the things he and Dana might say to each other if she were with him. And every once in a while he would catch himself smiling and laughing a little, and it was those moments right after — as, having lapsed into fantasy, there was a correction, a moment of nothing and then a loose and sudden rush, back into the real world in a trick of escape, as if to some new place of possibilities — that he felt at once, and with clarity, most exhilarated, appreciative, disappointed, and accepting.