Hel took in the people at the other tables around them—prosperous-looking families, women with strollers engineered with as much sophistication as the one-person pods adults drove at home. The green and maroon awnings on the buildings along Prospect Park West stretched out bravely in the sun, crisp and bright. A vendor sold organic ice cream from a cart. The Victorian-era urns flanking the park entrance—cast-iron vessels with twined cast-iron snakes for handles—stood at even intervals around the edge of the plaza. In her world, these were defaced by graffiti and several of them were missing. “You know, someone slipped me off here once. Robbed me at knifepoint. Practically right on this spot.”
For the first time, Klay seemed interested in her. “What was it like?”
What it was like. “In the ’60s, they routed the BQE through here, and it really tore up the neighborhood. Prospect Heights went downhill after that. It wasn’t nice like this at all. I’m not sure whose idea it was to put the highway so close to the park—maybe there was some graft or bribery involved—the Queens triads, I don’t know.” How might Sleight’s visiting aliens have viewed it, in their wise detachment? “It’s better the way you have things.” She gestured at the treaded tires of a nearby stroller. “With all the coffee shops and the dog biscuit bakeries and stuff.”
Her neighborhood under the overpasses, the way it used to be. Run-down brownstones and Hispaniolan restaurants and old Irish bars alongside newer spit clubs and payday advance shops. All the trash, trash everywhere. Cherries loitering on the street corners and young gangsters casting their nets, pinching their sniff, smoking their dross and their crack and their H. But she’d loved that first apartment she and Raym bought together. Her neighborhood.
There had to be a way to observe without being brought down. Oliveira accomplished it beautifully in his articles, noting the differences in the worlds and making them amusing for an imagined audience while remaining untouched himself. Skating the surfaces: this was the key to remembering without remembering. She understood intellectually, but she’d struggled for three long years to master it, and she was ready to give up.
“Actually,” said Klay, “what I meant was, like, what was it like to get, uh, slipped off.”
“That’s a personal question.” Hel felt the knife, heavy in her pocket. A new blade was the first thing she’d bought, once she had her own money. She realized that her other hand had risen on its own to cover her mouth. She put it down in her lap.
“OK, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I was just interested. I grew up in this neighborhood.”
She was waiting. And Hel needed her, needed her help. This neighborhood. Hel tried to imagine where and how Klay had grown up, but she didn’t have the imaginative empathy at the moment. She didn’t care. She held her silence.
At last, Klay broke eye contact, checked her watch. “Let’s go inside and get a computer.”
Vikram and Kabir waited together in the shack across the parking lot from the storage warehouse, watching the second hand trace its way around the circle of the clock mounted above the door. Vikram, the assigned guard for the third shift, occupied the only chair. Kabir, who was killing time before his occasional second job, collecting the change from all the machines at his cousin’s chain of laundromats, leaned against the file cabinet, cleaning his nails with a toothpick. His body blocked most of the output of the space heater.
“Why don’t you get out of here?” Vikram asked.
“By the time I get home, it’ll be time for me to leave again. It’s a wasted trip. Plus, it’s warm in here.”
“Well, I’m not doing my tour until you leave.”
“Why are you so concerned?”
“The boss will see you on the camera.” Vikram felt his irritation like a stomachache, low in his abdomen. “You’re not supposed to hang around if you’re off-duty. Waiting for you to leave is putting me behind.”
“Please,” Kabir said. “Do feel free to go anytime you want, Professor. I promise to behave myself perfectly while you are gone. Or if you like, I’ll come along on your tour. Just give me one of the hand warmers.”
It was Kabir who’d introduced Vikram to the miraculous shake-to-activate chemical hand warmer packets. Vikram had recently bought himself a family-sized bag of them at Costco. He threw Kabir a packet and grabbed his flashlight from the desk. “Fine. Let’s go, then. Now.”
Kabir pulled the door of the shed closed behind them and followed. They walked across the smooth blacktop, laid the week before, its aggressive black-hole blackness evident even in the dark of this moonless night. The burned-rubber smell filled Vikram’s nostrils and he found himself humming a song he’d forgotten, one that had been everywhere a few summers ago, the last summer he spent at home—constantly on the radio and over the speakers in stores and blasting from the portable players of kids walking down the street—a song he’d wished never to hear again and now never would.
Every summer, when he was growing up in Jersey, they would repave the parking lot of the vacuum depot near his parents’ place. Vikram and his sisters would hike there in the middle of the night, the laces of their roller shoes tied together for ease of carrying, slung over their shoulders. The lot sloped downhill. They glided down the smooth surface, shouting at each other. The three of them raced, or sometimes they would make a train, crouching low to build up speed and then, at Vikram’s count, standing tall.
“Have you seen any strange-colored lights in the warehouse recently?” he asked Kabir as he swiped them into the building. “Lights that go out?” He’d written up the incident a few weeks ago in the shift log like he was supposed to, but he’d tried hard to keep the notes as brief and as sane-sounding as possible. Anyway, he was pretty sure Kabir never checked the log.
“Lights? Do you mean the green flash? It’s a common illusion, when the sun sets over the ocean or any unobstructed horizon. Some people think it’s aliens, but actually, there’s a scientific explanation having to do with the refraction of light.”
“Yeah, thanks, but that’s definitely not what I’m talking about.”
“Don’t be offended,” Kabir said. “I didn’t mean aliens, like the slur. I really meant extraterrestrials.”
“I know. Besides, sticks and stones. Come on.” They entered the elevator, and Vikram put in the keycard and pushed the button for the top floor. “It sounds crazy, this green flash thing.”
“To be honest, you sounds a little crazy, too. What are you talking about, strange-colored?”
“Never mind. Nothing. You’d know what I meant if you’d seen it.”
“Come on, tell me.”
“Not lights in the sky. Lights in one of the units. Blue. But when I tried to find the room, it was just gone. And no one was in there.”
“Please tell me you’re making things up to frighten me. Because this job already gives me heartburn. I’m thinking about going to the laundromats full-time. I’m not a young man. Only, I don’t like night work. I need my eight hours.” Kabir sighed. “I would not be at either of these jobs if I was qualified to do anything else.”