When Cal had delivered his sister to the nuns at St. Augustine, set incongruously in the Village, the ancient walls seemed to whisper “citadel… sanctuary.” A grim contrast to the dark tower of Stern, Ledding and Bowen to which he now strode.
The machine will stop; it will come to a grinding, shrieking halt. And then what? The dream mocked him. The un-spoken certainty of the ones in the dark that he could aid them if only he would, the unassailable power in the sword and himself. It was absurdity. He had no power, only expenses, debts, obligations and a queasy moral sense that had suddenly kicked in to yank the rug from under his feet. As heat shimmered off the concrete, Cal’s head swam. He was seized by a sensation of inexorable velocity, of something uncontrollable racing toward him.
The Stark Building, that Deco-Nouveau-Gothic monstrosity of steel ornament and worked stone that looked blue or black or green depending on the light, loomed ahead at Fifty-sixth like an executioner.
Cal regarded it uncertainly and slowed, shrank from the coming moment. He scanned the masklike faces for a spark of recognition, found none. Then turning, he saw, beyond the clamor and haste, a still, lean figure that met his gaze and knew him.
“Calvin, my friend!” The shout was exuberant. “No rest for the wicked, eh?”
Late or not, Cal headed for him, a candle in the storm. “Doc” Lysenko grinned from behind his gleaming aluminum cart as he slathered mustard on a bun.
“What have you got for a condemned man?” Cal fished out limp singles as he neared, not caring about the food-the churning in his stomach negated any hunger he might have felt-but eager for the word of cheer, the balm to his spirit.
Doc nodded at the steaming array of franks turning on the grill. “Here? Atherosclerosis.” His vocabulary, as always, was good but the accent-Odessa by way of Kiev and Afghanistan-thick. As ever, he moved with precision and ease, the smooth, unthinking routine of assembling the dogs, handing them off, making change for customers who often didn’t say a word, miss a step, even look at him.
The herd bulled past, the swarm blind to the mysteries around them, the wonders. To step out of its rush, to be still a moment, to see. .
“Being a physician isn’t helping you as an entrepreneur,” Cal ventured.
“In Leningrad-sorry, St. Petersburg-I’m physician. Here, my degree’s toilet paper.”
Cal scrutinized him as for the first time, the secondhand jeans and condiment-spattered apron, the Yankees cap turned backward. What chance, what calamity had washed Doc here? The question, when asked, would invariably be dismissed with a laugh and an evasion. But no camouflage could belie the refined complexity of that face, the probing glance like a scalpel. His cheeks were pale and smooth, his eyes so weary and lined, a face at war with itself. And those astonishing hands with their long, delicate fingers. Surgeon’s hands, slopping mustard and kraut.
Cal felt a swell of kinship. Aliens, the two of them, in lives too small, on the run. But from what? To what?
He became aware that Doc was staring at him, his head cocked questioningly. “Condemned for what crime?”
It took Cal a moment to comprehend, but before he could answer, a blare of horns shrilled over the buzz of the crowd.
Cal looked up to see the mass of pedestrians sweeping through the crosswalk, narrowly avoiding the onrush of traffic, a screaming chaos of taxi, truck and bus-and one individual mid-street, trailing the others, strolling unaware.
Cal dove through the obstacle course of bodies, grabbed the tall, rangy figure and quick-stepped him onto the opposite curb. A semi dopplered behind them, wind wake tousling Cal’s hair.
Cal stood trembling, sucking in air. Unable to speak, he gestured wildly behind them at the diesels and SUVs and taxis hurtling past. The other glanced about, seeming to see the street for the first time. Only then did Cal recognize him. A street character. “Goldie,” the shopkeepers called him, no name beyond that. They’d spoken, the man refusing Cal’s proffered coins, explaining in a patient, patronizing tone that he was a scavenger, not a beggar.
“I’m glad you’re here.” Goldie pulled the straw cowboy hat with the five aces in the brim low over lamplight-auburn eyes, high Cherokee cheekbones, as cool as if he stood in a park. “We need to talk.”
Cal’s gaze darted to the Stark Building, its revolving door a summons. “Listen,” he said, not unkindly, “there’s somewhere I need to be.” He nodded toward the thirty-fifth floor.
Goldie craned his neck, then gestured offhandedly toward a steam grate. “Personally, I prefer the subterranean.”
A subway roared by below, shoving air before it like the howl of a beast. Cal felt a tremor of unease. He’d heard of the Mole People, the pale outcasts who inhabited the less-traveled corridors of subway and sewer, the dark city under the bedlam of the city he knew.
Cal offered, “Maybe later.”
“Later will not do.” Goldie stepped in abruptly, political buttons, free promo pins and other pop-culture accretions clattering on his padded electric blue vest. “Be gone to ground then, man, we all will. Been reading the paper lately? Fire, flood, earthquake. Scary times.”
“Yeah, pretty scary,” Cal agreed, trying to ease past. Goldie cut him off, sliding sideways, staring down at him with jangly intensity.
“I will show wonders in heaven and signs in the earth,” Goldie’s voice exploded into a shout as he switched from Cal to the studiously not-looking pedestrians rushing past. “Blood, fire, vapors of smoke! Your old men will see visions!” It was Revelation, of course. What other book did lunatics read?
Cal seized the moment to duck under Goldie’s outstretched arm toward his office. But steely fingers clamped on his coat sleeve and yanked him back, nearly off his feet. Goldie shoved his face ominously close. The smell of him was musty and thick, his gaze lucid and dazzling. In a whisper like a talon strike, he warned, “Your young men will dream dreams. . ”
Cal felt unaccountably stripped of all defenses, seen. It wasn’t just the words or the look, but something deep and enigmatic behind them.
“I’m telling you this ’cause you talk to me, don’t just look through.” Goldie brought his lips to Cal’s ear. “No such thing as coincidences. It’s omens, Cal. Something’s coming.” His eyes suddenly went flat and distant, as if his mind had disengaged from the street and was plugged into some other landscape, some other time. “Metal wings will fail, leather ones prevail.”
Bad poetry now, Cal thought, uncomprehending. Where did that come from?
Goldie’s eyes returned to him now, back in the moment. He released Cal and stepped aside. “You keep your head low.”
Cal nodded mutely, turned to the doors. Just before he entered, he glanced back. Goldie was still there, watching him.
“I’ll see you later,” Cal murmured.
“If there is a later,” Goldie replied, still and gray for all his outrageous color. Cal faltered, missing the revolving door, and had to wait for it to come around again.
Herman Goldman watched the young man vanish into the building, lost among all the identically suited men. He doubted he’d been believed, certainly not fully, not enough. It didn’t surprise him, but how could he not have tried? He wiped a bit of powdered sugar from his stubbly chin. Time to find another Gillette in the endless cornucopia of trash receptacles.
How much they discarded, he thought. How little they saw. The street was emptying as the Others fed themselves into the towers like so many termites. He hardly ever thought of when he’d been one of them. He hadn’t known himself then, hadn’t known the many worlds that made up the one world. But which was better, he wondered, knowing or not knowing? Blindness could be a blessing, sight a terrible burden.