“Watch this,” he says to her.
Treefrog touches his beard, runs his fingers along it. He slips open the scissors, sits on the edge of the bed, and begins. He is surprised at the way the cold chews at his chin when he takes off the first chunk of beard.
Angela says, “Man, you look younger.”
He smiles and from the middle of his chin he works his way up to the left sideburn, continues on the opposite side. The hair falls down into his lap, and he looks down at the strands and says, “I remember you.” The scissors are dull; he can feel his cheeks tearing and stretching. Even so, he continues to cut the beard tight to his skin. If he had a razor he could shave even closer, get down to the very element of himself, maybe even cut all the way to the bone. As he works, he tells Angela that he sometimes carves his real name in the snow, topside, so he doesn’t forget: Clarence Nathan Walker.
His thumb and forefinger work the tiny scissors, and he doesn’t even have to switch the red-cased knife from hand to hand. When his beard is gone, he removes his wool hat and touches his hair.
“Aw, man, not your hair, I like your hair.”
“Just a minute.”
To save the blade he hacks with a different knife, a sharp kitchen knife, and throws the long tangles of hair into the fire, smells it burning. He goes at it again with the scissors, until the top of his scalp feels tight and shorn.
“Come here,” says Angela.
“Meet me,” he replies.
He goes across to the bed and nestles in beside Angela, pulls the blankets over them both. He keeps his clothes and overcoat on. She flips around to face him and her hair touches his head and he reaches his tongue out and he can taste it, all the subterranean filth, but he doesn’t mind, just keeps his tongue at her hair, and she smiles and touches the stubble on his face.
“You’re cute, Treefy, you’re really cute.”
She puts her arms around him, and he nudges up against the closed sleeping bag. Treefrog breathes in deep and makes an X of his arms across his chest and pushes his body in further. She rolls in the sleeping bag and moans. He leans down to untwist the bottom of the bag where her feet have tangled and — when her breathing eases — he moves so that the whole length of his body is against her. The tunnel is lit with the headlights of a train and his nest is flooded with the blaze of oncoming lights and he moves in cadence with the clack clack clack of carriages against the rail.
The light from the passing carriages splays out moving shadows, a webbed pulse against the wall of his nest. He coughs quietly as he hauls the scent of her down. Lifting up the flap ends of the blankets, he removes his gloves and holds the zip of the sleeping bag. She turns a little, and a dryness settles in his throat as he inches the zip down, tooth by tooth.
Opening the bag down to the high part of her stomach, he reaches, feels the warmth of Angela’s fur coat.
“Treefy,” she says.
The coat is cheap; he knows from the imitation plastic around the buttons where his hands roam. With the top three buttons open, he fingers the fourth, and then he relaxes. He opens her three blouses, spreads them out. His hand touches the thermal shirt and he is aware of the soft, beautiful roundness of her flesh underneath. He hears Angela’s hand rising — it swishes against the sleeping bag — and her hand is clasped against his and she guides his hand in under the thermal shirt and there is the shock of his hand on skin and she says, “Your hand’s cold, man.” He pulls away, warms his hand by rubbing it on his own skin, and works his way under the thermal once more. The fabric of the shirt is tight, not much room to maneuver. Angela guides his hand, and the thermal shirt rides way up her belly. She drags the shirt up over her breasts. His fingers hover close to her nipples and his hand moves as if to cup her, but he keeps it hovering above her breast, then lets it retreat to touch her belly button, and he can hear the slightest wheezing into the dirty pillow as he caresses her.
“Treefy,” she whispers again.
“Clarence Nathan,” he says.
And then she says, “Ouch” when his hands touch her ribs.
Angela keeps her hand pasted over his, high on her stomach, fingers meandering, and he can feel the pounding of her heart — she is the first woman he has touched like this in years — the zip of adrenaline through him, the lightness of thought, the levity of blood, the lavish erection. His hand makes circles to the side of her breast but he doesn’t touch it — he can’t touch it — and he leaves his hand to hover above the bumped landscape of her nipple. “Hold on, Treefy,” she whispers. She fumbles as she removes her sweatpants and underwear and lies back in the sleeping bag. Her head touches the pillow and she smiles up at him and he moves his body slightly — take it easy, don’t crash — and she clasps his hand against her breast, and for a moment Treefrog feels no need even for balance, and she doesn’t say a word, not a single word, nothing, she just takes hold of his shoulders and pulls him closer and he squeezes her breast — he has forgotten all — and then he is closer and she has unzipped him and she is warm and he moves within her and she moans in all the vast agonies of a woman on the border of both boredom and some ferocious human passion.
* * *
In the evening, Elijah shouts from beneath the catwalk and then slings a bloody plastic bag up into the nest, where it lands with a thump.
* * *
Before they leave the nest he chooses a section of floor that he hasn’t done in a long time. His hands trembling, he takes a new sheet of paper and draws a horizontal graph on one side and a long straight line below it, using the edge of a cigarette box to guide the pencil.
He walks through the nest, feeling the landscape with his boots. He shows Angela how to mark it. As he walks he calls out to her and she makes dots with the pencil where the floor of his nest rises, each half inch an increment on the graph, and she flicks the lighter and marks the paper carefully. He shuffles backward, knowing exactly what his heels will touch. He has to stoop low to step out of the cave. His feet touch against his collection of hubcaps, and Angela’s pencil traces the rim of a half circle. Toward the front of his nest, he steps on the mattress. It seems like a huge drop from the bed down to the floor once more. He feels his way with his hands over the bedside table, touches the length of a Sabbath candle, zooms down again, just misses bumping against the smashed traffic light, and comes to the end of the nest and the dropoff to the tunnel below. He returns along the same journey, making sure it is all correct, lingering over the mattress with his eyes closed.
The candle leaks down to its very last, white wax seeping into the dirt.
He finishes the graph — the cave, the bed, the Sabbath candle, the little hump of dirt where, in his grief, he just buried Castor — and, when he is done, the geography is one of massive valleys and cliffs and mountains and canyons, a difficult journey, he knows, even for God.
He winds some duct tape on his boots where a flap has come loose, swings his way onto the catwalk, and then helps Angela down to the tunnel floor. She comes tentatively, slowly. He carries blankets. “Where we going?” Angela asks. “Somewhere I been thinking about,” he replies. “I’m thirsty,” she says. And he whispers to her that they’re going to a place where she can find the candy man. She asks if he has enough money and he nods, yes. She skips across the tunnel and collects her high heels and shakes the snow out of them, and then she comes back and leans up on the tips of her toes and kisses him and says, “Come on. I hope you ain’t lyin’.”
He wipes his eyes dry. And then he says that if he sees Elijah he will kill him this time without a doubt, he will crush his skull, he will strangle him, he will mash him into the ground beside Castor’s body. But as they move along the tunnel through all the dimensions of darkness they don’t hear a soul, and when they reach topside it is cold and clear without any snow. They walk through the park and up the street and, outside an all-night store where he buys cigarettes, Angela pulls up her collar and touches the bruises on her face and then she stops for a moment, smiles—“Candy,” she says — and overdoses her mouth with lipstick in anticipation.