I’m angry and tell him so, first because he thinks I’m racist and second because he thinks I’m stupid.
“If I thought that way, I wouldn’t be standing here with you at night. I’ve been in a lot more dangerous situations,” I blurt out, “and I’ve been just fine.”
“I know you done stupid things getting stuff for that book, but you been lucky. Someone must be watchin’ over you, girl,” he shakes his head. “You better believe, because you have no business in those tunnels. You don’t know the rules down there.
“By rights you should be dead by now. Better believe it. You’re lucky you made so many friends, but one day you won’t be so lucky,” he warns.
After that, he begins to instruct me about tunnel life, telling me of tunnel communities he knows. I ask him to take me to them, but he refuses. “A girl shouldn’t go down there,” he says. I intend to go down with or without him, I say, and he concedes. We are to meet at an entrance to Central Park.
Blade doesn’t keep the date. I wait two hours that day, and the same on the next day. When next I see him at St. Agnes’, I tell him he’s unreliable. He laughs and says he showed up both days but just watched me to decide if he trusted me. I challenge him to tell me what clothes I wore, what color shoes, how I fixed my hair. He does, correctly.
Over the next several weeks he calls me “kid sis” and often pats my head. He takes me into the tunnels, where we visit many communities. He is usually cold and aloof to the people there, and I asked him why.
“They’ll kill if they want, don’t forget that,” he says.
No one has ever come close to threatening me, I retort. Maybe you just don’t want to see good in them.
“Maybe you’re afraid to see the bad. You don’t live with them. You don’t have to. It don’t matter how much time you spend with those people, you will never understand them because you’re not one of them. You don’t know. I do. I know how to kill people. You don’t,” he says intensely, as if willing me to understand.
“I know how easy it is to kill people, and I know that it don’t usually bother you after you do it. You just go get something to eat and forget it. You can kill for a cigarette, for five dollars, for anything you want. You don’t think that way up on the street, but down there, it don’t make any difference if you kill or you don’t. You don’t think twice about it,” he explains earnestly.
I offer to pay Blade for escorting me the first time. He is insulted.
“Never do that again,” he says flatly.
Why are you spending so much time showing me the tunnels? I ask.
“Because I’m crazy,” he replies. “And you remind me of a girl I sat next to in the first grade.
“I always thought if she was black, she’d be cute. But she was white, transparent like,” he cringes. “White skin just looks bad to me. Anyway, she was a weak little kid. But one day this kid came over and ripped up a picture I was drawing for my mama, and she bit him. There was blood on her teeth and everything.”
“Besides,” he goes on after a pause, “you’re funny and I like to keep an eye on you. You do stupid things.”
Blade likes the responsibility of guiding me, I decide. He sometimes walks me in a huge circle underground and claims we are in a new tunnel, just to make me confused and more dependent.
After finding communities with him, I go by myself to interview the underground homeless. With him nearby, people are less free to talk, glancing nervously at him. They are even more anxious when I’m with him than when I’m with a policeman.
One day I tell Blade that I’ve heard of a new tunnel to investigate and describe its location. He immediately says no one lives there, but later I learn that Blade sometimes sleeps there himself, so I avoid mentioning the tunnel again. He has said that he no longer lives in tunnels.
So on one fateful day, a Thursday, I go into that tunnel alone. I find no one, although there are mattresses and garbage bags that suggest it is used nightly. I resist the temptation to look for Blade’s clothes. He had become more than just a guide and protector; he was a friend and it would be treacherous to search for his home in this unhappy place.
I go away from the city for the weekend, but on Monday, I visit a familiar tunnel community. Sneakers, a small man who earned his nickname by being fast and quiet, tells me that Blade is looking for me. “In a bad way,” he adds pointedly.
I laugh, wondering if he is angry at me because I left town without telling him. But Sneakers is obviously worried, so I ask why Blade wanted me.
“Dunno,” Sneakers says, looking away.
Another camp member, George, freezes when he sees me. It is in sharp contrast to the great warm smile I usually get. He stares at me for a minute before turning to Sneakers.
“You tell her?” he asks.
“No man, I jus’ tell her he was lookin’ for her,” Sneakers replies, kicking the ground.
“You gotta get outta here,” George says urgently. “He’s not messin’. He’s looking for you bad.”
George drops the garbage bags in which he has been collecting soda cans, takes my arm, and walks me toward the exit.
“It’s no joke,” he says, looking into my face. “He’s after you.” He was visibly upset, so much that he could barely speak clearly.
Why? I ask, but George just shakes his head. He doesn’t know, but it doesn’t matter why, he says. Just go. I wonder if he just doesn’t want to tell me.
That afternoon, still not believing the danger, I visit another community. Tyrone, one of its runners, frowns.
“It’s on the street that someone’s looking for you,” he says severely. A large man named Blade is looking to kill me, he says, “and he ain’t messin’.” He says that I should stay out of the tunnels from now on.
I can’t believe any of this. They are serious, I know, but it is a huge misunderstanding. When I last saw Blade, on a subway platform, he patted me on the head as usual and was laughing. The image was crystal clear. Now I am standing on the same platform, at 33rd Street on the Lexington Avenue Line, and a homeless woman comes up—I’ve never seen her before—and warns me to be careful. “Blade is looking for you,” she says in a terrible repetition of the words I’ve heard all day.
By now I have become thoroughly frightened. I know it is not a joke. Blade is angry, but about what, I have no idea. I must find out and set him straight.
In the next few days I speak to other tunnel people, but they also warn me about Blade without offering any information about his anger. I should stay away from the tunnels for a very long time, they say.
Tyrone agrees to try to learn why Blade wants to kill me. A few graffiti artists do, too, particularly Chris Pape, who has painted many underground murals and is accepted by tunnel people.
Chris asks if I saw drugs in Blade’s tunnel, on the theory that Blade may have been dealing or storing drugs there. Perhaps he saw me, or suspected I saw him with drugs, and now he is scaring me away from any thought of talking to the police about it. No one really knows.
Then Blade phones me at home. I have never given him my phone number. On my answering machine he says he wants to see me. He sounds angry and distant. Even when he has been angry before, he has not sounded so cold.
“I need to talk to you,” he says coldly. He calls again, his messages increasingly frustrated and furious.
“I need to see you. You need to talk cuz I know what you done.” I have never given him my address either, but he says he knows it.
“I know where you live and I’m gonna come visit you. We need to get something straight finally.”
The phone wakes me up, but no one speaks. I’m certain it is Blade.
Tyrone calls me at the office. He wants to meet in Queens. I am now badly frightened, and, although I know Tyrone, I don’t know him as well as I know—or knew—Blade. So I ask Tyrone to meet in Central Park and he agrees.