Angela sits shivering on the beam. She has stopped crying and she blinks her good eye several times, wipes more blood from the other.
“I don’t feel good.”
“All you gotta do is walk across here. Relax. See? Up there. Don’t look down. Don’t look down, I said!”
“He hurt me.”
“I know.”
“Did you kill him?”
“No.”
“I want you to kill him,” says Angela. “Kill the asshole. Stuff his throat with a blue washcloth.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t kill him, Treefy.”
“All right already. Whatever.”
“You’re gonna let me fall.”
“Trust me. I worked on the ’scrapers once,” he says.
She stares at him. “I’m scared.”
“It’s okay. I promise nothing will happen to you.”
“You’re weird.”
“You ain’t exactly normal yourself.”
“I’m normal! Don’t call me disnormal.”
“All right all right all right. You’re the normalest woman I ever saw. Come on.”
“You’re cute, Treefy.”
He stands behind her and guides her across the narrow beam. Her steps are slow and precise, and he keeps his arms wrapped around her: only weather stops him — the steel becomes slippy with fog and ice and rain, and lightning is the most dangerous of all. The men have a makeshift rod at the top of the building, but at the first sign of heavy storms they are given the day off. When weather is good, they go at the rate of a floor a week. The sun bounces off the metal, but at least there is a wind to cool the ironworkers down. Although it’s against the rules, Clarence Nathan often works without a shirt. He has a body still free of stab wounds and scars. The foreman, Lafayette, talks of frozen waterfalls in Canada, of climbing on thick ice with special shoes and ropes and carabiners and ice picks, of staying in sweat lodges and incanting chants to the sky. Clarence Nathan likes the thought of it — suspending himself on a river — and he imagines himself halfway up the face of a fall, water trickling behind the ice.
On Fridays, at the end of the shift, the men drink beer together on the top beams, sit in a row, let their legs dangle over, and drop the beer cans into the nets way beneath. They like to achieve this appearance of nonchalance; nonchalance is their greatest gift. They will not be seen without it. Even if they become aware of moist cloud settling around them, they will stay and sit and talk. Beer cans pop. Hardhats are clipped onto carabiners at their waists. Many of the hats have stickers: Harley Davidson insignias, badges from the New York Mets, an emblem from Yellowstone National Park, a circular sticker from the Hard Rock Cafe, and, quite often, Canadian flags with marijuana leaves in the center. The men chat about their upcoming weekend — who they will see, how much they will spend, how many times they will get laid. Their guffaws get carried off by the wind. Only the faintest of sounds rise up from the city; an odd siren, a truck horn. They wait until Lafayette is gone and then take out bags of coke and thin red straws and sometimes a little dope. Matches flare the end of joints. Razors chop through large white grains. One man cups his arms around a fat line of coke so none of it blows away.
High on marijuana — he doesn’t snort coke — Clarence Nathan talks to the helicopters that come across from the East and Hudson rivers.
After work, he takes the train to 96th Street and walks the rest of the way home with the sun arcing downward in the west. His spud wrench hangs from his construction belt and taps in rhythm against his thigh. He still feels as if he’s up on the beams, floating, and he makes absolutely sure his feet don’t touch the cracks in the pavement. It’s a short walk home to where he lives with his family in a small apartment on West End Avenue and 101st, but he goes down to Riverside Park first, smoking as he walks. Sometimes — before he reaches the park — he stops at a parking meter and works on his old trick, balancing on top of the meter on only one foot.
He keeps his head down and counts his steps as he goes. A curious thing, he likes to land on an even number, although it’s not absolutely necessary. It is just a game of his. In the park, he often gets bothered by male hookers offering him a blow job. The park is one of their favorite haunts. “Not today,” he says, and sometimes he is whistled at; they like it when he wears sleeveless T-shirts, his arms are fretted with muscle. At the door of his apartment there is the traditional joke—“Honey, I’m home!”—and Dancesca appears as if she’s just climbed out of the television set, makeup precise, hair in beads, dark skin, white teeth, their young daughter holding on to her leg. In the hallway, Clarence Nathan takes off his shirt and Dancesca rubs her fingers over his chest and pinches him playfully. Lenora stands outside the shower room as he cleans off the day’s work. When he emerges, he lifts her and spins her in the air above his head until she says, “Daddy, I’m dizzy.” After dinner, he puts the child to bed. On her bedroom wall Lenora has tacked up a huge sheet of see-through blue plastic, which she calls her aquarium. Beneath the plastic there are cut-out photos of fish, shells, plants, people. A Polaroid of her parents, at their wedding, is positioned near the top of the aquarium where her favorite people go. Photographed outside a registry office in 1976, Clarence Nathan wears a wide brown tie and flared trousers. His hair is short. Dancesca is already in a maternity smock. They look embarrassed, bewildered. She folds her hands over the stomach bulge. He has his fingers knotted together nervously. Their shoulders barely touch. But vaguely triumphant in the background is Walker, who, without a hat, is pointing comically at his own bald crown.
There is also a black-and-white of Walker posing with other sandhogs in the mouth of a tunnel. All the other men seem stern under their large mustaches, but Walker, covered in muck, looks happy. A shovel leans against his hip, his hands are folded beneath his arms, and his muscles bulge.
Before she goes to sleep, Lenora shifts the photos around in the aquarium. Clarence Nathan sits by her bedside. When she finally nods off, he blows her a kiss from the doorway. Sometimes, for fun, he closes his eyes and walks blind through the rooms. The apartment is small and old, yet clean, with a stereo, a flowered couch, an old-fashioned television set, a kitchen full of red and white machinery. The bathtub had once been situated in the living room, but it is discarded now, filled with junk now and covered with a tarp. Along the walls there are framed sketches of New York storefronts, presents from Walker.
Popping open a beer, Clarence Nathan sits on the couch beside Dancesca and they watch television. In the late evening they make love, and Dancesca moves under him like a river. Afterward they settle into television shows once more and he likes this dullness, this rhythm. He wants his grandfather to come live with them, but Walker says he will die in Harlem; he will die in the room where he spends his days chatting with the only ghosts in the world worth their salt; he will die with a whisper for each of them: Sean Power, Rhubarb Vannucci, Con O’Leary, Maura, Clarence, Louisa Turiver, and, most of all, Eleanor, who gives him a rude and lovely smile as she adjusts her hair and shunts herself up onto the bathroom sink.
Treefrog’s foot moves forward to steady Angela as he guides her on the beam.
“Just a couple more steps,” he says to her. “A couple more and you’re there.”
Her arms flail wide, and he pins them to her body. He wraps his own arms around her and feels the warmth of her fur coat. Her feet inch along the beam, and just before they reach the low wall of his elevated nest she lunges forward and grabs it with both hands.