“Are we supposed to ride this train all night or what?” I finally asked.
“We ride until we get what we came for,” he said and erased one of his answers from the crossword.
“You sure we’re on the right train?”
“Yeah, kid, I’m sure,” Connor said, starting to sound annoyed. He folded the paper and set it down. “Look, Simon, consider this a lesson in patience. We’re waiting for a sign. We’re dealing with things on a cosmic and spiritual level. There is a whole subset of rules that we have to play by. Riding and waiting on the R train is just one of them.”
I had experienced enough exercises in patience for one day.
The train was just heading back underground on its return trip from Queens when the door at the far end of the car slid open. Theclick clack of the tracks filled our ears, and an elderly gentleman shuffled into the car. He was dressed in a brown workman’s jumpsuit and wore a tattered wool hat with earflaps, even though it was much too warm. His face was a mass of wrinkles, and I watched as his wild blue eyes darted around the empty car before settling on us. In his hand he carried a blue and gold paper coffee cup, and as he shook it, the sound of coins jingled rhythmically.
“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. I looked around, but there were only Connor and me. The man’s voice was thick with an accent similar to Faisal Bane’s, and once again, I couldn’t quite place it. Serbian, Croatian, something that smacked of the former Soviet Republic.
“Please pardon the interruption of your commute to wherever your destination lies,” he continued. “I’d like to perform a little number for you and if you can find it in your hearts to give…a nickel, a dime, whatever…it would be greatly appreciated.”
Since the subway car was empty, it was obvious that his impromptu “number” was meant only for the two of us. With great enthusiasm, he shook his cup of change and it jingled in a faster rhythm as he hopped around the subway car with superhuman agility. He pranced across the empty seats one second and swung from the bars overhead the next. What he was, I didn’t know. I threw open my coat and eased my hand toward my bat, but Connor’s grip stopped me. I turned to him and he shook his head.
The old man’s raspy voice belted out a song. I recognized the words as vaguely familiar, but couldn’t place them.
“At first, I was afraid, I was petrified.
“Kept thinkin’ I could never live without you by my side…”
“What the hell is he?” I whispered underneath the singing. The crazed man was now hanging upside down from the bars in the middle of the car. He flipped deftly down to the floor and swayed to his own rhythm. The sound of the coins wentclink clink clink as his frantic pace increased, but not a single coin fell from the cup, no matter how fevered the rhythm or his dancing became.
I wasn’t sure how to react. I wanted to smile at the clear enjoyment this man-creature was getting from singing, but at the same time, with Connor and me the sole objects of his focus, I began to feel intensely uncomfortable. The smell of garbage washed down the length of the car and I had to fight back the urge to cough. “Isthis who we’ve been waiting for?”
I found myself slowly recalling the words of the song he was singing, mouthing them as the old man continued. I knew them from my childhood, from a music style I had hoped would never rear its ugly head again-disco. “I Will Survive.”
The man finished the chorus and closed the distance between us by half. Now his scent was overpowering.
Connor shoved his crossword into the space between us while he dug deep into his pocket. He fished out his wallet and flipped it open as the man started to sing his next verse.
“Crap!” Connor muttered. He held up his wallet so I could see. Outside of a variety of credit cards and ATM receipts, it was empty. “Pay the man, kid.”
I nodded and pulled out my own wallet. “I’ve only got twenties.”
“So give him one!”
“Don’t you think twenty is a bit much for an old seventies disco song?” I asked.
“Just do it!” Connor whispered urgently. “Trust me on this; we need his help. Goes by the name of Gaynor. Or that’s what he lets us call him anyway.”
The man called Gaynor landed in front of us now. I coughed as a fresh wave of his stench rolled over me like a blanket. I held my nose and attempted to breathe through my mouth only, but still the strong scent remained. All the while, Gaynor’s cup rang outclink clink clink! and the man did a little two-step shuffle, jumping maniacally back and forth from foot to foot.
I slipped the twenty into his cup, and immediately Gaynor stopped singing to let out a dry cackle. Up close, his features showed the signs of more years than one mortal lifetime could possibly know. Luckily, we rarely dealt with the possible. His eyes danced momentarily toward the cup and he thrust his fingers in and fished around until he pulled out the twenty.
“Oh ho-ho!” his dry voice cackled merrily. “Your little gentlemen’s club must be wantin’ to know something pretty bad there, eh?”
Connor looked at the weathered old man and smiled gently. “Good to see you, too, old friend.”
“Eh!” said Gaynor, looking disgusted. “Enough with the ‘old friend’ crap. You in some kind of fucking comic book? Save your road-movie dialogue.”
“Sorry,” Connor said. I could hear the annoyance barely hiding itself behind his apology.
“And don’t apologize!” Gaynor shouted. “It makes you sound weak…”
The belligerent way he handled Connor was something I shouldn’t have found funny, but I couldn’t help laughing, which switched his attention to me. Gaynor turned as fast as a striking snake and crouched down. His manic eyes locked with mine and his earthy smell overwhelmed me, causing the laughter to die on my lips.
“You find that funny, do you?” he asked. His eyes scurried back and forth across my face. I felt the sudden urge to squirm out of my seat and dash as far away from the man as quickly as I could, but with the handrail to my left and Connor to my right, that was impossible.
“No,” I replied, hating the sound of weakness in my own voice, “I don’t find that funny…particularly.”
I turned my head as far as I could to avoid his gaze. I couldn’t explain it rationally, but I wanted nothing more than to make this creature go away.
Yes, creature. Although he looked human, no human moved like he did or could have caused this sensation in me unless it fell under the category of supernatural. It didn’t matter how human it looked, it was still otherworldly-and that meant that it fell within my bailiwick in Other Division to deal with. I so didn’t want to.
“The kid’s new here,” Connor offered. “Give him a break, will ya?”
Gaynor turned his attention back to Connor. I felt my intense discomfort fall away.
The subway train pulled into Lexington Avenue, and the doors slid open. The platform was full of people, but none of them stepped into the car. En masse, they faltered for a moment as if something was repelling them, and then quickly made their way to another car. As the doors slid shut with the familiarbing bong, our car was just as empty as it had been. The train lurched out of the station.
“Twenty won’t buy you much time, ya know,” Gaynor said, twisting the bill in his shriveled but powerful-looking hands. He stood up and tucked the twenty into one of the side pockets of his coverall. He pushed his hat back to an almost impossible angle and scratched at the mad tangle of gray curls covering the front of his head. “Better get crackin’!”