He peers out the gate, through the lacy ironwork, to the embankment covered in a foot-high drift of snow. All is silent, few cars even on the curve off the West Side Highway. There are often crashes on the curve, and he likes to remove the hubcaps from the wrecks before the tow trucks take them away.
Treefrog hunkers down on the metal steps, shoves the empty coffee can through the gaps in the gate, and scoops up some snow and packs it down with his gloved fists: right first, then left.
Below the fresh coating of snow he comes upon hard ice. He should spread water on his catwalk and it would ice over and then nobody would come calling to his nest for sure, they would slip and fall and snap their necks and he would be left in peace forever.
He shoves the can of snow into his overcoat pocket and returns along the tunnel, climbs up on the catwalk — he knows he will never fall; he can even do it on tiptoe — and, in his nest, begins to light another fire. Almost out of wood and leaves, he uses mostly newspaper.
The flames rise up quickly.
He dumps the snow into a blackened pot and chooses an herbal teabag from the Gulag. The Gulag is four feet in the air and one foot deep into the tunnel wall above his bed, built in his second year underground. It took him weeks to chisel out and smooth down perfectly flat. He laid down a little steel toaster tray in the center, so the food wouldn’t get rock dust in it, and hung a red bandanna in front for a door. He hammered nails in the wall and then meticulously filed the nails down into spikes, so that if rats jumped up and tried to steal the food they would rip their feet to bits on the sharp points. He has never seen a rat make the leap, so mostly he uses the spikes to hang his socks from.
He leaves the pot over the fire, gets back in his sleeping bag, listens to the sibilant wind whistling along from the south end, waits for the gray snow of Manhattan to boil. So slowly time passes, he thinks, if it passes at all.
* * *
On Broadway in the evening, when the snow has briefly relented, he walks along with a bag full of cans and spies her, sitting under the awning of Symphony Space.
With an outstretched arm she holds a tall stack of perhaps twenty paper coffee cups. The top coffee cup almost bows in supplication to the street. He laughs at the sight and listens as she says to passersby, “Spare some change and I’ll dance at your wedding!”
Even when nobody gives her money and her body slumps to the ground and her arm becomes tired and her feet are splayed and her eyes are glazed and the edges of her mouth are carved into two deep sorrowful furrows, she continued to smile and say, “Spare some change and I’ll dance at your wedding!”
* * *
He listens at the door until he is sure that Elijah is not around: easy to tell, since the radio is not playing and Elijah always insists on noise — even when he’s sleeping.
Treefrog toes his way forward, waits, knocks, and hears her moan.
“Heyyo.”
A long silence and a ruffle of blankets, and he nudges his feet against the door and raps on the wood again. Another moan, but he can tell she’s shifting in the bed.
“Get out.”
“It’s me.”
“Who?”
“Treefrog.”
“Who are you?”
“Just me.”
“Get out.”
“Hey, where’s Elijah? When’s he back?”
“Don’t touch me.”
“I won’t touch you. Got a smoke?”
“No.”
“Is today Wednesday or Thursday?”
“Get out.”
“It’s Friday, ain’t it?”
He enters, and she is flat on a mattress in the fabulous dark; he can’t even make out her shape. Electricity must be out. He flicks the lighter with one hand, then the other, holds it over where he knows the bed to be. She puts her arm across her eyes and says, “Get out!”
He can tell that she’s been crying, her upper lip sucked in against her teeth, her fists clenched, her eyes red.
She looks like a sad sandwich between five sets of blankets.
Shoving the lighter into his pocket, he sits down in the darkness on a wicker chair by the bed, puts his feet on a shattered television set with a fist hole in its glass, and listens to her rummage under the blankets. The chair has two short legs, so he rocks it diagonally.
“What’s your name?”
“Don’t hurt me.”
“I won’t hurt you. What’s your name?”
After a long silence she says, “Angie.”
“There’s a song about that.”
“If Elijah finds someone here he’ll kill me.”
“I just wanted to say hello.”
“You said it. Now get out.”
“You look just like somebody.”
“Get out, I said.”
“I just want a cigarette.”
“I have a knife,” she says. “If you come any closer, I’ll kill you.”
“Saw you this morning,” he says. “And I saw you up there on Broadway, too. With the coffee cups. I like that. A big long line of coffee cups. Never seen that before.”
“Out!”
“You look just like a friend of mine. I thought you were her. Hey. Why you crying?”
“I ain’t crying. Shut up and get out.”
“What’s wrong with the juice?” he asks.
“The what?”
“What happened the electric?”
“Elijah’ll kill you if you don’t get out. He said don’t let nobody in here.”
“You’ll have to get Faraday to fix the electric.”
“He that ugly white motherfucker in the suit?” she asks.
“Yeah. Connects everyone up. From the light poles topside. Runs the cable down. Even goes to the other tunnels. He can pirate it off the third rail. Sometimes he steps the electric down with transformers. He’s a genius with the juice.”
“Elijah’s gonna kill him too. He whistled at me. Say, what’s your name again?”
“Treefrog.”
“That’s the weirdest goddamn name I ever heard in my life.”
“I play the harmonica.”
“That don’t explain nothing.”
“Everyone else calls me that. I don’t call me that. I don’t like it.”
He hears her pull the blankets high around her neck. “Motherfuck,” she says, “it’s cold.” There’s a scuffle in the background and she sits up urgently. “What’s that?”
“A rat.”
“I hate rats.”
“You should get a cat.”
She shivers. “Elijah don’t like cats.”
“You want some more blankets?”
“Yeah.”
“I got some extra,” says Treefrog. “Back in my place. Gimme a smoke first. A smoke for a blanket for the barter man.”
“I don’t got none.”
“I saw you smoking this morning.”
“You promise you’ll give me a blanket?”
“Yeah.”
He feels a cigarette land in his lap and he searches in his overcoat for a lighter, snaps it aflame, pulls the smoke down deep into his lungs, continues rocking the chair diagonally in the darkness.
“Thanks, babe.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Thanks, Angela.”
“It’s Angie.”
“I like Angela better.”
“You’re an asshole,” she says. “Motherfuck, it’s cold. Ain’t it cold? You ain’t cold? I’m cold.”
He rises up from the wicker chair. “Don’t go nowhere,” he says. “I’m gonna get you a blanket.”
He goes to the door and looks across the tunnel to the fading light from the grill. “It’s snowing,” he says, after a moment.
“I know it’s goddamn snowing.”
“I like it when it snows. The way it comes down through the grates. You seen it?”
“Man, you’re crazy. It’s cold. Snow is cold, that’s what it is. It’s cold. That’s all. Cold. This is hell. This is a cold, motherfucking hell.”
“A heaven of hell,” he says.