* * *
Treefrog unloops the clothesline, takes down a dark necktie, and beats it against the wall to free it of tunnel dust. The dust slips through the candlelight and descends lazily, landing on the spider limbs of wax at the base of the candles. The tie emerges black, with a pattern of red squirrels. He has forgotten how to fix a knot and so he simply loops it under the collar of a filthy flannel shirt. He tries to run a comb through his hair, but it is too long and matted and twisted. He shoves an extra T-shirt into his overcoat pocket to use as a balaclava later, if necessary. Reaching into his bedside table drawer, he takes a sample bottle of aftershave, stolen once from a drugstore, and dabs a little high on his cheeks. It smells nauseating to him. He completes the blind ritual through his nest, touching everything with both hands, finally laying his hands on the speedometer.
While waiting for the others, Treefrog plays handball against the Melting Clock to warm himself. He is down to one handball and will have to buy another soon in case he loses it.
When Angela, Dean, and Elijah arrive he lifts up his beard and shows them the tie. They laugh at the sight of him—“Mister Treefrog Rockefeller!” says Angela — so he wraps it around his forehead and the four of them leave the tunnel together. Papa Love has decided not to go. They shove themselves through the gap in the gate and leave footprints in the snow on the steep hill up toward the park. Angela squeals as the snow touches her feet. She and Elijah are soaring on what they have smoked, and she has drenched her mouth with lipstick, looking vaguely beautiful and gaudy.
Treefrog has to walk the hill four times to get an even number of steps, touching his hand against the icy trunks of the crab-apple trees each time as he goes.
“You’re a goddamn loon,” shouts Angela.
He jumps the fence and catches up with the others as they walk past the playground by 97th. A shiver runs through him as he watches a mother launching a child on a swing, the child’s feet swinging through the air. He tips his sunglasses on his head and waves goodbye to Lenora.
Between West End and Broadway, they stop at the Salvation Army store for Angela to get a scarf. She emerges with an extra pair of socks tucked under her fur coat, saying, “I think I’m about frozen.”
She pulls the socks high on her legs and steps back into her lopsided heels.
On the subway train to Brooklyn, Treefrog sits alone at the far end of the car. The others stay by the door, looking at their reflections in the dark glass. Treefrog tucks himself away in the corner seat, reaches for his Hohner, and plays softly.
* * *
In a Brooklyn diner, under a neon sign for Boar’s Head ham, the cook is so perfect at cracking eggs that he does it with his eyes closed. Treefrog’s head bobs in approval. The cook pierces the shell with one long fingernail and flips the contents out with ease, two eggs side by side.
The yolk doesn’t break or spill. Hands and spatula are held over the hot grill.
Treefrog, still wearing his tie on his forehead, rubs a bill between his fingers while he watches the cook; he got the money at Faraday’s funeral. They had been late for the mass, but a deacon told them where the interment would be. They walked to the nearby cemetery. The dead man’s father saw them approaching halfway through the service. He came over, shuffling on a cane, and offered them each ten dollars to stay away, saying “Please” as if the weight of his world depended on it. Behind him, at the graveside, the rest of the family watched. A woman — it must have been Faraday’s mother — kept dabbing at her eyes with a long black scarf. Dean demanded twenty dollars apiece, and Faraday’s father looked at him long and sad. Dean shrugged. Faraday’s father reached into his pocket and took out a wad of bills from an envelope meant for the priest. The old man removed one glove and, with shaking hands, passed around the twenty-dollar bills.
By the time he got to Treefrog he had only a ten and one five left, but Treefrog said, “That’s okay, Mister Bedford.”
Faraday’s father looked at him and for an instant his eyes brightened, but then he said, “Just don’t come near the graveside, okay?”
He turned his back and walked away like a man unburdened.
The four of them watched the rest of the service from a distant gravestone.
“There goes Faraday,” said Elijah, as the coffin was lowered.
“His name ain’t Faraday,” said Angela.
“It’s Faraday to me.”
“I shoulda got forty bucks!” said Dean. “He owed me twenty! The sonofabitch never paid!”
“Man, look at that coffin,” whispered Angela. “Them gold handles. Goddamn. He’s stylin’.”
“He’s stylin’ down.” Elijah laughed.
“I bet he was rich,” said Dean.
“No less dead if he was rich or not,” said Treefrog.
He swivels a little on the stool at the counter, and the money is warm now in his hands.
Watching the cook, Treefrog brings the bills to his nose and smells them. Then he folds the ten-dollar bill down until it is tiny. He checks out all the pockets in his overcoat for a good hiding place. The red lining of his coat is full of holes, but he finds a good place for the bill and punctures it with three pins to make sure he doesn’t lose it. He chuckles to see the pin go through the eye of a dead President.
The cook flips the eggs in the air and they somersault onto a bun. Laying two slices of bacon across the eggs, he winks at Treefrog.
Perhaps he will give the cook a tip for the show. He hasn’t tipped anyone in years, but he suddenly feels huge and magnanimous. When the plate is set down on the counter, Treefrog takes off his tie, puts it in his pocket, spins the plate twice, licks each of his fingers, and lingers over the food like a man in love.
* * *
A thumbnail of moon in the sky and the snow has briefly relented. He shoehorns himself through the gate and climbs up to his nest, carrying two bottles.
From his overcoat he drops a pile of branches and splintered wood — on the walk home he found the wood beneath the overpass, the stash belonging to some topside bum living under the bridge at 96th Street. The wood was wrapped in a blanket, kept dry. No accounting for the stupidities of the ones who live topside, some of them warming themselves over steam grates, gusts of hot wind cooking the undersides of their bodies, the top half of them frozen, always rolling over like absurd pieces of toast.
Treefrog uses his Swiss Army knife to chop some of the wood into kindling, makes a tiny lean-to of twigs, and tears a newspaper into strips. He squats over the small fire, his overcoat lifted and his ass just above the flame.
He remains perched until the heat seeps through him, and then he throws on a few larger twigs and a black plastic bag to help the fire take quicker. As the flames jump, he goes over to his bed and lies down with his arms behind his head like a bored teenager. The smoke drifts across the tunnel and out through the grate on the opposite side.
He kicks at the end of the blanket and sees some pellets of rat shit somersault in the air. He whistles for Castor—“Here, girl, here, girl”—but she doesn’t come.