I suspect that long ago and far away this material was part of chapter 2. I learned a lot since then. At least I hope so…
Three creatures stare down at me like I’m the one who doesn’t belong. They make sounds like babbling babies learning to speak. People flee South Street Seaport under the FDR, across the Greenway and South Street, scream their way up Fulton, John, Beekman, and the Slips. Mounted NYPD officers yell commands no one pays attention to. Sirens get closer but the sound of squawking seagulls, screeching pigeons, shrieking blue jays, clomping horses, screaming people, and crying children drowns out everything else.
The asphalt’s covered with my bloody handprints from crabwalking over smashed sunglasses, trampled phones, and broken souvenirs to get away from these things.
I look past them to the white sand desert they just crossed, a desert which used to be the East River and Brooklyn, and protect my eyes from a gale force sirocco blowing sand in everybody’s eyes.
Foot patrol officers shout emergency instructions and are ignored. Car alarms go off all over the place as people run blindly and smash into them, into vendor carts, into each other. People trip over curbs and barriers. Some fall and are trampled. Some people scream and curse as legs and arms and hips break because those still moving aren’t careful and race over them like they’re ascending wobbly stairs. Only foot patrolman Distasio helps the fallen, lifting one in each arm, carrying them and dragging others intown.
How many heartbeats does it take to change the world?
Ten minutes ago I stood in line with my son, Jiminy, to get him a brown sugar&cinnamon zeppoli and me a hot Italian sausage sub with extra onions and peppers. It was our first day alone together since I went north to the Home for Mental Wanderers and he always wanted to go to South Street Seaport so here we were watching tugs and ferries go up and down the East River.
Jiminy pointed. “There’s rainbows on the water, Dad!”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him it was diesel slicks from the river traffic. Kids that young deserve some magic in their lives. One foot patrol officer, Distasio, tall, tanned, broad chest, muscular arms and legs, and blonde with a pencil-thin mustache, followed Jiminy’s gaze, looked back at us, and smiled. I nodded in return and wondered if he were a real cop or some movie or tv star and we were being filmed unawares. Other patrol officers walked in twos through the crowd, bronzed arms and legs protruding from uniformed shirts and shorts, their arms often resting on the equipment in their utility belts, and smiled and nodded under their patrol officer caps and behind their aviator sunglasses. Two mounted policeman on South Street stand resolute like the NYPL Lions, Patience and Fortitude, their only movement their horses shifting weight from one leg to another and the occasional nod when a parent asks if their kid can pet their horse.
Seagulls, pigeons, blue jays, grackles, and other birds seem to be in the line with us and caw and squawk like tourists as their heads bob back and forth looking for scraps on the ground. A guy got in line behind me and I realized he was the one who worked the dolphin tank they brought in for tomorrow’s aquarium exhibit.
“Big tank,” I said.
“Yeah. State of the art.”
“What’s the netting for over the top of the tank.”
The aquarium guy nodded towards it without taking his eyes off the fat Italian-looking gentleman ladling peppers and onions into an open subroll. “If we didn’t have the netting there he’d kill himself trying to leap into the open sea. He sees the netting and knows he can’t do it.”
“I thought they worked more by sound than sight.”
“Yeah? Works so far.”
I walked over to the dolphin tank, the sub in one hand and the zeppoli in the other. Jiminy’s right beside me, a big coke in each hand slippery with condensation. The dolphin just swims and swims and swims in circles, its eyes out to the sea.
Until I got next to the tank. Then the dolphin stopped and moved next to me. It looked me in the eye and I imagined it asking me, “Hello? Hello? Is anybody there?”
Jiminy looks up at me. Between chews of zeppoli he says, “You sure it’s okay us being here, Dad?”
I look down, frown, and quickly scan the crowd, quickly become a bigotry sensor, searching the multi-racial, multi-ethnic porridge of humanity for signs of prejudice, malice, hatred for a black man with a biracial child, and detect none, everyone caught up in their own moment to interfere with ours. “Of course it is, Jiminy. Why are you asking?”
He looks down and swallows hard. “I…I don’t want to…your work. I know it’s important.”
Yes, it was. Past tense. Was. So important I damn near destroyed my marriage, my family, my life, and it’s why I escaped to Happy House. I knew I was in trouble, couldn’t bear what I was doing to people, and just left. Emailed Grace Krazinski, the math department’s secretary, a link to Lakeshore Psychiatric in northern New Hampshire with “Get me there.” She made all the arrangements, got me a cab to La Guardia, the next seat on Southwest, told Lakeshore when and where to pick me up, and gave me a hug as she put me in the cab. “You’ll be okay, Ben. You’re too brilliant not to be okay.”
I looked up as she closed the door. “I haven’t told Gayle, I – ”
She gave me a thumbs up. “I got this, Dr. Matthews. Go get well.”
Suddenly Jiminy wrapped his arms around my hips and I felt the cokes sweating against my butt through my pants. He looked up at me and screamed, “I love you, dad.”
“I love you, too, son.”
We heard some applause and saw a crowd gathered around a good juggler. People threw real, folding money into his hat. Between bites of a brown sugar&cinnamon zeppoli, Jiminy asked if he can have a dollar to drop in the juggler’s hat. I handed him a wetwipe because his hands were all sticky and took one for myself because my sub’s dribbled oil all over mine.
“He’s really good. Here’s a five. Let’s be generous.”
Jiminy smiled, all proud and adult-like, and placed the fiver on top of the cash already there.
The juggler winked at him and called to the crowd, “Everybody ready for the big finale?” His juggling balls dropped into a box beside him. He reached into the same box and pulled out a machete, a bowling ball, and a tomato. “Please, folks, be quiet. This is going to be real difficult because, as you can see, these are different colors.” The adults laughed and the kids oohed.
“Ready?”
We all watched the tomato, bowling ball, and machete fly around him in a big circle.
“He’s really good, dad.”
I pull Jiminy back a few steps just in case. “He sure is.”
A stray wind came off the water, a hot breeze more like mid-August instead of early May. The seagulls, pigeons, grackles et al took to the air and flew inland in great sweeping dives.
Jiminy pointed south towards Governors Island and Brooklyn. “What’s that?” A desert of pure white Caribbean sand stretched from the edge of the seawall south and east.
The wind increased until it felt like staring into a high-power hair dryer turned on full. Ice cream wrappers, crumpled napkins, Seaport Points-of-Interest and visitor guide sheets, ticket stubs, all the trash thrown on the ground got whipped intown and the wind strengthened like it wanted to push the Seaport towards TriBeCa and the World Trade Center.
Jiminy wrapped his arms around my legs and tucked himself into me. I dropped my sandwich and picked him up just as some lady’s umbrella flapped open and lifted her off the ground. Another lady screamed and pointed at the juggler. I tucked Jiminy’s head in my shoulder and headed towards the subway. “Don’t look, Jiminy.”
But he wasn’t looking at the juggler, he’s straining his head over my shoulder looking where Brooklyn and the East River used to be. Other people looked that way, too. “Dad?”
I put Jiminy down. The wind still blew strong and hot. The mounties steadied their horses and worked crowd control. One of the mounties called to the other and pointed towards the desert.
Three creatures, their images shimmering in the heat like a mirage, walked across the sand towards The Battery and TriBeCa South. The desert echoed back at us the horses’ snorting, the birds’ squawking, the crowd’s screaming, the sounds of traffic, the car horns, … The mob mentality fairy threw her dust at the crowd and panic clusters sucked up people like an amoeba preparing to divide.
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