I see a cab and wave it down. The name of a newish hotel at Park Avenue South and 26th comes to me — the Giraffe — and I tell the cabdriver to go there. Kinda far, he says. Or I think he says. What did you say? I ask, and he laughs. I repeat the question and he answers, sarcastically, Glad to take you anywhere you want to go. The relief of the hits I’ve just taken fades quickly as we head up Third Avenue. I start wondering if I should get out of the city, but when I think of places like Florida and Boston, I immediately come up against the problem of finding drugs. Also, I can’t travel through an airport in the area, certainly not Newark. I imagine photographs of me posted in all of them, and dozens of Penneys swarming the terminals. The cab slows, caught in traffic. As horns sound around us I feel caged and vulnerable. As if the cab could be surrounded at any moment. I throw a twenty into the driver’s seat and get out.
The Giraffe is ten blocks away. I begin to monitor my breath and try to impose a sense of ease as I get closer. Calm, I repeat to myself. Calm. The hotel is empty and smells like ammonia. Everything is very new and much more corporate than I had imagined. It feels wrong. Still, I go up to a guy at the counter and ask for a room. He’s cheerful, in his twenties, and says sure. He asks for my I.D. and starts typing away at his keyboard when an older woman joins him behind the desk and says she’ll take over. He looks confused and steps aside as she inspects my passport and the screen he had been typing on. Oh, she says, it looks like we’re full up. The young guy begins to say something but stops himself. Really? I ask. Yes, she says, we’re booked through the rest of the month. I start to say something but realize there is nothing to say, so I turn around and head through the door, onto the street, where there are two gridlocked corridors of traffic stalled up and down Park Avenue South. If SoHo had seemed a strange landscape, this bustling, steely sliver of the metropolis is utterly other. There is no soft corner, no shadowy sanctuary to hide in. The cold March sun glares everywhere, shines off the cars in traffic, the glass panes showcasing large restaurants with multiple eating levels, the cuff links and briefcase buckles of the perfectly dressed businessmen marching blankly between appointments. I head back to Third Avenue and then south. Again, it seems as if people are clearing a path for me, stepping aside, making way. I remember a dream I had growing up — about a picnic in the woods and an invisible force that magically lifts all the food off the blankets and carries it beyond the tree line. Everyone — my parents, my sister, childhood friends, our neighbors — accepts that the food is gone, but I refuse to let go of a bag of Cheetos. I’m determined not to lose this bag and as I hold on, thrash alone against the unseen hand pulling just as hard to rip it from me, everyone steps away. One by one, they shrink back to the field’s perimeter and refuse to come near me. Walking down Third, I shudder at the spooky precision of what the dream forecast. I feel very small and freakishly large at once. Critical and insignificant. At the very center of things and at the farthest edge.
I remember a building, some kind of subsidized housing development on 23rd Street, where I had once seen what I thought were junkies. The memory flashes through me like a strobe of hope. I remember the place was next to a used-furniture store I had gone to, years before, looking for a rug. I pick up my pace and when I hit 23rd Street, head east toward Second. I see the used-furniture shop and then see the building. I can also see — how can I say this? — my kind, everywhere. Shuffling here and there. Leaning against buildings. Arguing into pay phones. They might as well all be dressed in bright orange jumpsuits, they stand out so clearly to me. I exhale and begin to relax. I lean up against the building and let the sun hit my face. The warmth feels wonderful and it’s a relief to stop moving. I feel safe for the first time all day.
After a few minutes, I see a guy who apparently has some kind of authority over the scattered flock outside the building. Someone asks for a light, another pats him on the back. He whistles at a middle-aged woman entering the building. By the way she laughs it’s clear they know each other. He has a glint of kindness in his eye, but also a toughness. He squats to smoke a cigarette not too far from where I am standing, and I go over to say hi. We talk for a while. He seems to get me. Get what’s up without my saying a word. I feel comfortable. Comfortable enough to ask him if there is a place inside where I can hang out. A place I can duck into and crash and be left alone. It would be worth someone’s while, I add. As I speak, he half smiles, as if he has been expecting every word. After a pause, he says, I know just the person. And don’t worry, no one will bother you. He says he’ll arrange it and quickly disappears into the building. I go to a cash machine at the bodega next door. Twenty or so minutes later he comes out of the building and says, It’s all set, follow me. I walk in and we go to a desk. They ask to see my passport, and I am given a sign-in sheet where I write my name and the time. My new friend, whose name I don’t know, says to the very old man behind the counter that I’m with him and just visiting.
We go up the elevator to a high floor, fifteen or sixteen, and he asks me if all this has been worth his while. I hand him $200 and he smiles and says, Yes, well, yes, it has.
We get off the elevator and head down a hall, and for some reason I’ve not had a jumpy impulse, a nervous second, since entering the building. Even signing in and showing my passport felt perfectly safe. We stop in front of a door and he knocks gently. I can hear a woman’s voice on the other side, something thudding to the ground, and a high, squeaky giggle. The door opens and a small black woman stands there, beaming. Oh, hello, you’re the young man Marshall mentioned. C’mon in. Her accent is tricky — Cajun, southern, something. She tells me her name is Rosie and to sit right down. My new friend, who I now know is named Marshall, excuses himself. The door clicks behind him, and Rosie and I are suddenly all alone in an apartment the size of three refrigerator boxes. I take a seat on a wicker loveseat heaped on either side with boxes and luggage and bags upon bags spilling with string and Styrofoam and towels. There is a familiar smell in the room. Familiar enough that I ask her if she minds if I get high. She says, in that high voice and tricky little accent, Why, of course I don’t mind, so long as you share.