Out of Bryant Park. Along toward the Times Square subway. Down the iced piss-slick steps of the station. He vaults the turnstile. Why pay to enter the corridors of your own house?
* * *
Lifting the edge of his wool cap and folding it an inch above his ears, he shuffles on the platform among the commuters; they are swollen with shopping bags. Treefrog watches as an old woman sniffs at the air and tightens her grip on her handbag. She has gray hair, dark skin, muck-brown eyes. The bones in her face look like they could rattle. Her coat is thin at the elbows. Clutching the handbag, her fingers are long and slender and worked. She sniffs the air again, her lips trembling slightly, and her hand tightens its hold on her purse. He has seen this happen often enough to let it slide by. But there is something about her: the coat, the eyes, the fingers. And all at once he would like to reach out to her. He would like to say, Please. He would like to tell her something very ordinary. Treefrog reaches into his pocket, and his fingers crumple the stolen five-dollar bill. The old lady flicks another quick look at him, and then she puts the sleeve of her coat to her nose. She flips the handbag around to the other side of her body. He breathes hard. Begins to rock, ever so minutely. His knees bend, buckle, unbuckle. She looks again. She takes one step. He wants to say, No. She takes another step. He stops his rocking, watches her. She tries to be nonchalant as she steps away, but her movement is flagrant. He says aloud, “Please.” She pretends she doesn’t hear him. He says again, “Please.” She moves out of sight, is swallowed behind pillars. He closes his eyes. When the train is gone, Treefrog remains alone on the platform. He opens his eyes, tightens his fist on the five-dollar bill, and then walks up the stairs in the solitary abandonment of rush hour. From warmth to cold, he thinks, cold to warmth.
* * *
Burma Road. Sheets of steam from the underground pipes. Treefrog moves through the metropolis of cloud. The face of the woman in the subway station follows him. The pipes are thick and gray and hot to the touch. Sodium lights on the wall emit blueness, giving the steam the color of a new bruise. He pushes his hands through the air, and even the air is hot. He has only been down here once before, in this weedlot of steel, four floors beneath Grand Central, the heart of the heart of the city. The ceilings are low, the corridors narrow, the floor dripworn from the steam pipes. It is called Burma Road because of the heat — the words are scrawled in graffiti at the rictus of the steam tunnels. He knows full well that men and women live down here and he must be careful. He is a pinchbeck arrival among them, a man who still lives in some modicum of light. He has seen them, the truly damned. They live crouched under platforms strewn with clothes, or high on steel girders, or in hidden cubbyholes, or buried underneath broken pipes. Wounded men and women living in their lazaret of hopelessness. There are seven floors of tunnels altogether — and he has heard of murders and stabbings down here. But Treefrog is comfortable now in his shame, and he walks with small broken strides.
He opens his overcoats as he goes. Reaching up to touch his beard, he feels the droplets of water that have settled themselves upon it.
The corridor of Burma Road widens where the pipes meet — thin tubes in the air and thicker larger ones low to the ground — all of them hissing and moaning like some aberrant hospital.
A huge wide emptiness seeps into Treefrog’s stomach, and he feels the eyes of that old woman still following him, carving their way through him. His footsteps are loud and echoing. He swipes at sounds in the air. Rapping his knuckles on a pipe, he can hear the vibration, the movement of the noise through water, through steam, through air, maybe all the way up into the city. He comes to the end of the corridor and scales down a metal ladder beyond the CAUTION: OFFICIAL PERSONNEL ONLY sign. The ladder is slippy with wetness but he takes it easily, jumps the final three rungs. He stands in a larger room twelve feet below, where dozens of pipes meet and flow. The steam billows out and forms great clouds that hang and then disperse and drip down toward the ground.
The first time he came here he was with Elijah, who was stealing copper from the tunnel wires. Elijah had stood under the pipes, with steam around his feet, and then he disappeared and left Treefrog alone. It was as if he had vanished into the steam. It took Treefrog half a day to make his way out through the labyrinth, and the domed ceiling of Grand Central had greeted him like a sunrise.
Now Treefrog stands and stares at the room. Water falls down from the filthy pipes like fabulous rain suddenly gracious. Machinery groans. Electric light leaks in and is then arrested so that it paints the outside of the steam.
He takes off his clothes, boots first, then his coats, his jeans, his shirts, his underwear, and moves naked into the sodium-blue clouds. Water drips hot on his skin. He wishes he had soap and shampoo. It is only when he reaches up to his hair that he realizes he has left his blue hat on. He tosses it out of the steam. It is the first time he has been fully naked in ages. The water welts his skin, and he throws his head back and lets the drips wedge themselves down around his closed eyelids, the lovely viciousness of the way the drops thump their heat into him. “Fuck!” he shouts. “Fuck!” He rubs at himself with ferociousness, cleaning his toes, the back of his heel, his shins, bringing his hands upward along his calves and thighs. His penis and testicles are already raw from the heat of the water but he keeps on going, ferreting away in his navel, his ass, his armpits, rubbing the burning water over his chest, the heat pounding down on him, ecstasy, hypnosis, swiping his hands through the steam until he sees her. At first she looks like a shop-window dummy, but then she moves minutely and peers in, still holding her handbag. She allows herself a little embarrassed chuckle as she wipes the vapor away from her wrinkled face. She looks at him and steps forward, fully clothed, into the torrid mist. She sniffs at the air and nods now with approval. Treefrog cups his hands over himself and hangs his head down to his chest, the carnival shape moving around him. There is sudden laughter and Treefrog joins in. His forehead creases and his mouth opens so wide that he can feel the steam burning at his throat and he keeps on laughing. He reaches out to take the hand of the vision and she comes forward until he notices that — right at the edge of the clouds — something real, something human, is staring at him, no movement except for the flickering whites of the eyes.
Treefrog steps out of the steam. He hears a rustling movement, the slap of shoes. He follows the figure, moving quickly now. He hears the sound of heavy breathing. Treefrog reaches the ladder, scales it. The curious shape is already running down along Burma Road, disappearing, laughing out loud. Treefrog remains on the ladder. “Fuck!” he shouts. He knows that his clothes and boots will be gone, so he doesn’t even check, just watches the fading form. But — when the figure is gone — Treefrog descends to the room, and his clothes are still there, even the money in the pockets of his jeans. He looks back at the ladder and wedges his knuckles into his eye sockets and steps back into the steam once more. The subway woman has vanished, and there’s nothing else to do but wash himself clean.
* * *
When Lenora was a baby he would bathe her in the kitchen sink. He would fold a towel and place it beneath her head. Her feet would kick a little and warm water would splash out. He’d dampen a cloth, soften it with soap, and rub it over her. She would cry out until he took a jug of water and poured it from a height. Dancesca sometimes helped him. When they were finished they would swaddle the child in a towel that had been specially warmed over a radiator. Later, they’d gently rock Lenora in their laps while the television flared in the background.