Ment is not interested, and plays with his beeper. That’s how he stays in touch with the outside world: if someone beeps him, the nearest pay phone is two minutes away in the parking garage. I ask about his friends who I met in the morning. “Oh, nothing,” Ment says, “just my crew.”
Frankie wants to turn on the radio when we hear a loud bang, followed by a dog barking and whining. “Something goes wrong,” Ment says dryly. He gets up, grabs the baseball bat, and jumps outside. Frankie follows him, his shoes not even tied. As I am about to follow them, they have already returned with Lady Bug in their arms.
“Oh my God,” sighs Frankie. The dog groans and cries. The poor animal fell off the roof and was slashed by a protruding nail. Across her lower abdomen stretches a nasty cut, blood dripping from it. We put Lady Bug on the couch and use a flashlight to inspect the wound. It is nearly four inches long. “Fuck this tunnel,” curses Frankie and he grabs his head. “And fuck this Christmas.”
We discuss what to do. Going to a vet is out of the question. Most of them are not working on Christmas Eve, and it would take an hour of walking to get to the nearest one. And there’s no way a cab would take us with the bleeding Lady Bug. On top of everything, a vet would cost a few hundred dollars. Without a cash advance, they wouldn’t do anything.
The only thing remaining is to perform the operation ourselves. In my backpack I carry a sewing set, and my father was a vet. I used to look over his shoulder when he set broken sheep legs or delivered calves. I also remembered seeing in a Rambo movie how he pulled a bullet out of his shoulder with a knife, and afterwards sewed up the wound himself. Frankie and Ment have seen the movie, too, and are comforted. It can’t be that difficult.
We need hot water and soap to shave the skin and wash the wound. Frankie heats the water in the coffeemaker and goes looking for soap. The only thing he can find is toilet disinfectant and detergent. The latter should do. While Ment and Frankie hold on to the dog, I clean the wound. Now we can see how deep it actually is. Frankie puts his hands in front of his eyes. “I can’t see blood,” he moans.
There is no razor, and so we try to cut away the hairs around the wound with blunt scissors. It is not easy. Surgery is much more difficult than we had imagined. The other dogs start to bark. The neighbors are coming home. “Let’s get Joe,” Ment suggests. “He got experience sewing up people in Vietnam.” Ment returns with a bottle of aspirin drips. “Kathy told me first give this to the dog to sedate her.”
We open Lady Bug’s mouth and administer drops of the painkiller. The poor dog looks at us with frightened and fearful eyes. Now I notice how skinny and dirty she is. She smells awful, and leaves smudges and smears on my coat. A moment later, Joe enters with his sleeves rolled up. “What a night,” Frankie says. “First this guy that needed to throw himself under a train in front of my house and now this with Lady Bug.” Joe remains calm, lights up a cigarette and looks at the wound. “It’s gonna be a difficult job,” he mumbles.
Meanwhile, Kathy has also come up, and she strokes the moaning dog’s head. “I told you so, Frankie, you need to make a fence,” she says sternly. “This is already the third time a dog has fallen off.”
“I know, I know,” Frankie says impatiently. Joe goes to work. But the sewing set is clearly meant to fix buttons, not to sew dogs. It takes all our force to restrain the writhing Lady Bug while Joe grumbles and curses the needle and thread that keep slipping out of his thick fingers. The wound is big, and the skin as tough as the sole of a shoe. After half an hour, we give up. According to Joe, the only thing we can do is put a bandage around the dog and hope for a miraculous healing.
With duct tape and an old T-shirt, we bandage the dog. She now looks like a walking sausage and Kathy bursts out laughing. Lady Bug starts to feel better and wags her tail. Frankie’s mood also improves when the dog licks his face.
It’s late. I say goodbye and bike back to Bob’s bunker. On my way home, I realize the champagne is still in my backpack.
Next morning at the grill, I tell Bernard about the suicide. He has already heard the news on the radio. “A train takes no prisoners,” he comments simply. Actually, the news is now dominated by a new tragedy: A cop shot himself through the head just before midnight in Times Square.
Bernard pours a glass of white wine and steals nibbles from a piece of Emmenthal cheese. The delicacies are from a Christmas package that Sabine, the reporter from the French TV, gave him. Satisfied, he leans back at the warm fireplace and takes a sip of wine.
“What the fuck are they whining about?” he says. “If someone wants to leave from this earth, goddammit, he has the fullest right to do so.” Bernard stares at the glowing embers. “Fuck it. We are still down here with our daily trouble. At least these two guys managed to escape.”
Part 2
SUMMER
June, July, August & September 1995
12. BACK IN THE TUNNEL
I return in the summer. I have been kept a little up to date by Margaret, a photographer who has been working for the past three years on a conceptual photo project in the tunnel. Every Sunday at 12 o’clock sharp, she calls through the intercom and goes around with Bernard for a few hours. He introduces her to other tunnel people, carries her tripod, and doubles as a bodyguard.
I met her last autumn for the first time in the tunnel. A spark of mutual antipathy sprang up between us. I can’t help it; I just hate non-smoking vegetarians who always dress in black. Margaret questioned me extensively about my work methods and potential publication possibilities, even wanted to know the size of my notebooks. She herself was very stingy with giving info.
But somehow, we stayed in touch. We are sitting at a sidewalk cafe in the East Village, close to the prestigious Cooper Union School of Arts where she works as a professor. “That’s one fifty for you,” prof Margaret says as she puts a paper cup of espresso in front of me. We discuss the tunnel situation. Amtrak has resumed its efforts to evict all the tunnel people. Every year, they try the same thing, but this time it looks like they are serious. The Amtrak police have been to the tunnel a few times, and have told everybody they needed to leave in a few weeks. A British documentary maker, Marc Singer, was nearly arrested. Singer was shooting a black-and-white 16 mm documentary last winter and spring. A few weeks ago, he ran into the arms of Captain Combs, the feared chief of the Amtrak police.
Captain Combs is a black woman, a difficult combination for someone working in a white, macho, male police culture. That’s maybe why Captains Combs opts for a ruthless Law and Order policy. The captain pointed out to Singer that he was trespassing on Amtrak property. Next time, she would arrest him and confiscate his equipment. No kidding!
I shiver. The captain seems like a woman I should try to avoid. Or maybe visit and start a charm offensive.
Margaret tells me the latest. The Coalition for the Homeless, one of the biggest advocacy organizations, is trying to find alternative housing. But things go slowly.
“Looks like the people down there don’t want to be helped,” she sighs. “And all these poor cats, what should happen to them?” She has already contacted an asylum where all the animals can be sheltered in an emergency.
Reluctantly, Margaret gives me the name of Mary Brosnahan, director of the Coalition. She pronounces the name a few times so fast I can’t understand it. Only after I explicitly ask how to spell it does she write down the name on a stained napkin. She doesn’t know how to reach Singer. And Captain Combs is somewhere in Penn Station. Where exactly, she can’t tell.