Posted by Atticus on August 27, 2004, at 11:42:51
Hungry Pavement, Part 2
by Atticus
Previously: The narrator has his worst fears confirmed as New York City itself tries to kill him, but the sidewalk botches the hit and devours an innocent bystander instead. A witness casually mentions that his uncle bit the dirt sandwich exactly the same way.
I numbly shoved the remains of my umbrella into a trash bin, where it joined about two dozen others.The buses were gone, my path cleared. The Hispanic man started to cross the street, and I followed, slowly drawing abreast of him, studying his placid face and immaculate clothing.
He wore a white Cuban-style dress shirt that seemed strangely dated. His dark hair was slicked back from his forehead, perfectly groomed with a tonic that seemed to be wafting a scent to my nostrils from another age. He had a small, neatly trimmed mustache. His black leather shoes were so highly polished that they reflected the buildings. And he was perfectly dry. I supposed he’d just missed the gully-washer, emerging from the shelter of an awning or something after the downpour was over.
And yet under the café-au-lait tone of his skin, I could almost make out something else. A second layer of skin that looked like ground-up meat gone rotten. I shuddered and looked away.
“So,” he said to me. “What’d you do to piss them off?”
“Piss them off?”
“The sidewalks. You must’ve done something.”
“But … but … I haven’t …” I stammered. “I mean, I only moved here from Jersey eight months ago, for God’s sake. The worst thing I’ve done here is spit out a piece of gum on the sidewalk.”
His eyes widened. “Ahhhh. Well, that’s probably it, then.” He ran his right hand through his hair. “The sidewalks hate gum.”
I stopped on the opposite corner and just stared. “You’ve got to be fu**ing kidding me. This, all this, is about a wad of gum?”
“Well,” he said, shrugging his slight shoulders, “they can be pretty strict.”
“But … that was months ago. Months. And it was nowhere near here.”
“Well, the sections of sidewalk talk,” he continued. “Sidewalks love to gossip, you know. They’re all interconnected, like one big family. And they’ve got long memories. Eventually, word gets around. I guess they finally found you and tried to make their move today.”
“I … that is … this wasn’t their first try, I think,” I said, stunned that I was having this lunatic conversation.
But still. It fit.
It fit with the sense I’d had for the last few months that New York City, or some part of it, had decided I had to go. That I was being stalked.
“Seven months ago, the sidewalk over on First and 59th, by the bridge and the Roosevelt Island tram, it got soft all of a sudden. Just like today. I tripped and broke my left wrist.”
The man nodded somberly.
“And last week, I swear to God, it was like this big bulge suddenly formed in the middle of the sidewalk under my left foot. It threw me way off balance. If I hadn’t caught a light pole, I’d have ended up stumbling into the street and under a bus.”
I paused. “There’s been a bunch of weird sh** like that. Always on the sidewalk.” I turned to him. We’d reached First Avenue. I was getting near my bus stop.
“Damn. What am I supposed to do? How do I make it up to the sidewalks? How do I say I’m sorry?”
“It’s no good,” he said, looking sympathetic. “The sidewalks aren’t too bright, and they never forgive. The way they see it, they get walked all over every day. They’re always pissed off and looking for a fight. My advice to you is to walk in the street along the curb whenever you can.”
“Sounds like a good way to get hit by a car.”
“Beats getting eaten. And go buy a new pair of shoes right away. The sidewalks have got the scent of your soles now, and a different pair of shoes could throw them off, at least for a little while. If I were you, I’d chuck all your shoes.”
I nodded numbly. It made sense, in an “Alice in Wonderland” meets “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” sort of way.
“Anyway, you bought yourself some time,” he said cheerily. “It’ll be a while before they realize they got the wrong guy. Like I said, they’re hard asses, but pretty fu**ing thick,” he added, pointing to his head.
We started to veer away from each other as I turned left to head up the street to my bus stop, and he pivoted to head back in the direction we’d just come.
“Hey,” I shouted. “How do you know all this, anyway? Who are you?”
He hesitated, as if he were unsure he should continue, then gave that same what-the-hell shrug of his shoulders that I’d seen earlier.
“Name’s Fulgencio. About 50 years ago, I got in over my head with a mob bookie. He decided to make an example of me.”
He sighed, slowly shaking his head. “They cut off my left ring finger, left the wedding band on it, and sent it to my wife. Then they shot me, ground me up and mixed me with concrete. You know how the Mob controlled all the concrete contracts in the City back then. You couldn’t get anything built without a payoff.”
I tried to make it look like I wasn’t checking out his left ring finger, but he caught me and held up the bloody stump. “Anyway, I ended up as part of a sidewalk slab on Tenth Avenue. Hell’s Kitchen. Sucks, huh?”
I didn’t know what to say, except, “Yeah. Sucks.”
“But I hear things in the sidewalk,” he continued, tapping his right ear with his forefinger. “I hear things. And I got wind of a major hit going down in Midtown. The one they tried on you. Usually the sidewalks try to be a lot more subtle. But the dumb fu**s finally ran out of patience because they kept missing you. I thought it was time you got clued in.”
Fulgencio stared off into the middle distance for a moment, then added, “I hate mobsters, no matter if they’re made of flesh or of concrete. I guess you can understand why. They’re all assh**es.”
“I … I don’t know what to say. Thanks.”
“De nada, man,” he replied. “The sidewalks have a major attitude problem. They feel like the buildings all look down on them, like they’re nothing. They say the buildings get all the glory, but no one would be able to get anyplace in the City without sidewalks. And what do they get in return?”
He smiled wryly. “Gum spit on ’em. A century of jealousy, well, it goes a long way.”
I reached out to shake his hand. It felt like gripping raw, wet hamburger. I did my best not to wince.
“You better head for your bus,” he said after a minute, clearly relishing the human contact. “And change those shoes,” he reminded me. “Anyways, now you know why New Yorkers walk so fu**ing fast all the time and don’t make eye contact. They’re watching those son-of-a-bi**h sidewalks.”
I moved up First Avenue along the edge of the curb like a tightrope walker – just in case. “Thanks again, Fulgencio.”
“Hey, I got no love for the sidewalks,” he said, growing less distinct and, somehow, less solid in the early twilight. As he crossed the street to head back toward Tenth, I could swear I saw the traffic right through him.
“Just remember,” he said over his shoulder, his voice now like the sound of wind caressing the eaves of a brownstone on a fall evening. “Whenever you’re on the sidewalks, keep moving.
“They don’t give up easy.”
Turned out he was right. Big time.
To be continued …
poster:Atticus
thread:382964
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/write/20040729/msgs/382964.html