Hello? To whom am I speaking?
To whom do you wish to speak?
My internist.
You’ve got him.
I feel weak, my legs are shaking. I’ve just run forty blocks, but I’m in good shape and I shouldn’t feel this way. I’m here in Times Square, there are thousands of people standing around and waiting for what I don’t know and I have never felt more alone. I think my heartbeat is irregular.
You’re not alone.
I’m not?
Irregular heartbeats are quite common.
What’s the use of talking to you!
You’re just frightened. It’s understandable. But it will pass. This is not an urgent situation, you know, you have all the time in the world.
I have?
Yes.
Until what?
Until something happens.
What can happen?
If we knew. But we don’t. On the other hand, what choice did we have?
You mean I will continue to feel miserably alone in the middle of crowds with my knees shaking?
That is probably the case, he says. And at other times too.
Why didn’t you tell me before this?
We’ve been telling you forever.
You have?
We inform you periodically. So when and if it happens you’ll be prepared.
Prepared for what? You are giving me the willies!
The willies is a slang term. Slang terms are time-sensitive, they are really not useful in the long run.
What?
Please use only the durable words. They’re no less important than grammatical relations.
I’m ringing off, I say, I’m hanging up, that’s two time-sensitive words right there, I say, and I flip the phone closed.
I STEP OUT OF the doorway and am swept into the crowd that’s pressing forward with great excitement. Here I am in despair, grieving for what or whom I don’t know, and all of it means nothing to the people around me, who are surging forward with eyes alight and shouts of joy. I let myself be carried along and I gaze upward to the array of signs and ads and giant videos of runners racing and racing cars crashing and movie actors shooting one another and other movie actors kissing one another in scenes from movies that they want you to worry over. Times Square is unnaturally brilliant in a light brighter than daylight with gigantic signs of sulking models, and cantilevered broadcast studios with flashing call signs, and modern glass tower office buildings reflecting the rainbow colors of the flashing signs and videos — it is all enough to make me want to forget my troubles here with the enormous swaying crowd, of which I am a part, basking as if it were in the radiant sunshine of the Great White Way, outshining the sun and turning the blue sky white.
But now the crowd, having packed itself tight and motionless, grows still, as all the buzzing signs shut off one by one and the video screens go blank and in the natural light of day an enormous stage rises into view in the heart of Times Square. I fight my way forward and the crowd parts for me.
Seated on the stage is an ensemble of what must be a thousand children, the boys in white shirts and red ties, the girls in white middies with red neckerchiefs, and the violin sections waiting with violins tucked under their chins and bows raised, and the little cellists hunched over their cellos, and the dozens of bassists half hidden behind their basses, and the rows of horn players with their arrayed horns catching the sun, and timpanists triple the usual number waiting with earnest intrepid faces, and banks of child harpists at either end framing it all in celestial gold. A thousand dutiful faces are raised to the conductress who has taken her place at the podium, in her long white gown. She lifts her arms, her chin rises, down comes the baton, and I have to choke back the tears because this is the famous Children’s Orchestra of the Universe and they are playing “Welcome Sweet Springtime” only slightly off key.
I am overwhelmed with emotion and find myself crying with remorse for a life almost too painful to endure.
ELBOWING MY WAY through the rapt crowd into one of the side streets, I run heedlessly, crossing avenues where, as if there were no concert back in Times Square, people are going about their ordinary business, dog walkers walking packs of dogs on leashes, joggers jogging, old women with walkers, cars unmoving, the drivers having gotten out to stand by their open doors.
A block or two farther west, I run up the steps and through the oak doors of a steepled church of black stone. It is cold and damp here and smells of cement. Empty pews. Banks of votive candles in little red glasses. I spy a filigreed door off to the side, open it, and step into a box-like container with a bench, and I know exactly what to say because I desperately mean it.
Bless me Father, for I have sinned.
I’m sorry, that is the one consolation we do not offer.
Well then, what consolations do you offer?
The corporeal illusion. A gender identity.
What is the corporeal illusion?
A euphemism for the disgusting belief that you inhabit a body.
Wait just a minute. Is that a consolation, a priest telling me I am an illusion of myself?
And cultural memory. That’s nothing to sneeze at. You should be thankful for that. Keeping you within what you knew. Enswathing you in what was.
Enswathing me? Enswathing me?
The ultimate consolation is forgetfulness, of course. There is progressive awareness, but to a point. So that you know but don’t know. So that you have to be told again and again. Until …
Until what?
… an untreated sentience is required. But at this moment you have all the time in the world.
I have all the time in the world.
Yes.
Until sentience is required.
Yes.
And when will that be?
When something happens.
What can happen?
If we knew.
BACK IN TIMES SQUARE and not a soul is in sight. In the cavernous emptiness the buzzing of the Broadway signs is like the roar of machinery. I dodge into a movie. Nobody there to sell me a ticket. Nobody selling popcorn. I’m the only one in the theater. The picture shows a dark red sky as if the world is burning. A hot wind blows litter along the streets of a city. Torn plastic garbage bags rolling about, paper trash spinning in the air. Violins in pieces, smashed underfoot. No cars, no traffic. Where buildings stood, craters, piles of rubble, and pikes of twisted steel. Overhead, the sky has turned into a bronze vault with clouds the color of smoke drifting fast. I don’t understand this film. What has happened? Water flows through the streets. Human shadows bounding ahead, looming, racing backward. There appears a Chinese man bicycling furiously, his balloon tires leaving a track in the water. A moment later a pack of yelping dogs splashing after him. Now sirens, I hear sirens.
It is all too real for my taste. I leave. When I reach my block, I am almost surprised to find it up and standing. I have lost my sense of time. What time is it? What day is it? The doorman nods. The elevator works. I close my door behind me and listen to my own breathing. Having expanded my horizons, I know for a certainty I am a deportee. I am in the wrong place.
Is this, in fact, my apartment? There is food in the refrigerator that is not my food. There are pictures on the wall of people I don’t know. And then the changed pattern in the carpet.
I open the doors to the little terrace and step into the mild evening air. The lights of the city are on. Across the way a Buddhist monk is dancing with the naked girl. I must speak to somebody.
At this moment I understand that I don’t need a cell phone and never have.
To whom am I thinking? Is it the Program?
Yes.
I have questions to which I expect answers.
Are you calm?