City On A Snowy Night

City On A Snowy Night

by Mick Hale


Tina walked. The city on a night like this was icy walls, no cars or buses or trucks, just snowballs flying through the air. The cops broke up a big snowball fight on 12th that got out of hand. The bars were packed. Kento the Ethiopian guy gave away free meals to shivering bums on the down and out. Hans the Swede took out his snow shoes and tromped around Thompson Park like he was in the Yukon.

Nothing stopped the big town, except snow, lots of snow; the city hum and drum replaced by Bing Crosby crooning little ditties that floated on the air while the fluffy stuff piled up.

A lot of people wandering, a lot of play going on too, but Tina was on a mission, which meant she missed the point. Everybody in New York was on a mission 24/7, but not tonight; hustle suspended until further notice; let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

Three years and counting in the city and the first thing she learned was this: If you're not on a mission move to Boise. (Boise's in Idaho. That's somewhere west of Hoboken.) A lot of what rattled round Tina's skull revolved around a guy named Kevin. He was always saying things like:

"It ain't nose to the grind, it's sit on the damn grinding wheel until it hits bone."

"You walk slow, you get mugged."

"New York is a one-way street. One way to the top, one way to the gutter."

That was Kevin, the love of Tina's life, except he didn't know he was the love of Tina's life.

The first place she looked for him was a bar called 'Tankers.' Bartender, guy named Henry, had a soft spot for Tina. If it was vodka it was a triple. If it was a burger it came with extra fries. If it was some guy trying to flirt with her, Henry hung around and annoyed everybody until the guy left. Henry didn't help things, and he didn't know where Kevin was either.

"I think I saw him earlier," he said. "He left with a blonde."

(Take out knife, insert in heart.)

So, Tina went back to the street, the snow and the urban fairyland. A snowball, one part snow, three parts ice, smacked her on the shoulders. That worked tears across the eyeballs, but she kept walking. There was some kind of reverse formula at work in the city. If you walked fast you were trying to get somewhere, and trying to get somewhere made you a clay pigeon. Two more snowballs whizzed by her head and smacked a frayed poster hyping a DJ called K RU. 'K RU at Club Rivington!' Tina knew the guy. He had dreads below the waist.

A fourth snowball made her turn. Kevin stood there.

Now let's spend a moment talking about Tina.

Any cat stepping across Tina's path was a lucky cat. She'd pick it up and find it a home. She always kept a couple of apples in her pockets to toss to homeless guys. She'd listen all night long, especially to weepy tales about broken hearts. Tina was everybody's friend, but without a clue how to be a friend to herself.

Take this guy Kevin. He was what we call in the city a 'floor guy,' patrolling the pine at the stock exchange waving slips of dreams in a manic trance. There was a direct feed from Starbucks into his nervous system; stock exchange symbols for pupils and a Dow Jones mouth; tracking the day's trading average like a leopard scenting prey; living for the opening bell and passing out in a bar at day's end; a good-looking guy, never with any woman longer than ninety days.

Tina was positive the right dress, the right hair, the right workout resulting in the right legs, and Bingo! Kevin would notice her. No ninety-day return policy with a woman like Tina. She'd make any man happy. She was sure of it. Now to convince Kevin.

Kevin was convinced of this: he was going to be rich, drive something fast and red, and live in the Hamptons. He was also convinced Tina wasn't the woman for him. She didn't buy it. Kevin didn't see it yet. Maybe tonight.

Remember that poster for DJ K RU? That guy's real name was Roland. He lived across the hall from Tina. She thought he looked like a pirate because he kept his dreads tied up in a tight scarf most of time. She also thought he was gay because she never saw him with a woman. She never saw him with a woman because he had a thing for Tina, but was too shy to talk to her about it. The guy could get up in front of a club and spin discs all night long, but he couldn't bring himself to talk to the woman across the hall.

So, let's review. Tina liked Kevin, Kevin liked himself and Roland liked Tina. This is how it worked out.

Block by block the city shut down; plow guys in 'golden' mode, but Mother Nature in a perverse mood. The snow piled up at about four inches an hour. No amount of steel blades and salt made a difference. Parked cars disappeared under mounds, pavement vanished, and fire hydrants, garbage cans, dog poop, litter and parking meters were buried in a mountain of snow. This big buzzy universe of concrete and glass became a winter wonderland. It became the kind of night you walked forever and every street corner was a new place.

Tina wanted to slip her arm through Kevin's, but contented herself with picking up fists of snow and dumping them on his head. Kevin was sure this made him look like a dork. He brushed the snow off. He tried to re-assert order on his new thirty buck haircut. He didn't understand why Tina wouldn't leave him groomed.

They turned a corner. Music pumped out of a basement.

"Let's go in," said Kevin.

"To the club? I'd rather stay outside."

"Come on." He grabbed her arm and dragged her down the icy steps.

As soon as they were inside, the thumping bass wrapped Tina's head in a low-end cocoon. The packed club, the high energy, the mix produced a gravity that sucked people onto the dance floor. It also sucked Kevin away from Tina, toward something approximately 5'8", graced with baby blues and a long trailing fall of highlighted blonde. Tina knew her. Her name was Monica, a seductive mass of swiveling hips and teasing steps. Within seconds Kevin was next to Monica on the dance floor, waving his arms in some sort of ecstatic rooster ritual. Tina went and stood by the bar.

That's when she noticed Roland spinning discs in the DJ booth. He noticed her right back and a broad smile planted on his face. She looked away, ordered a vodka tonic and was taking her first sip when the groove changed; re-mixed show tunes slowing the club down. She looked back across the floor. Roland still stared at her.

She thought: A gay guy spinning me show tunes mixed to a hip-hop beat.

She swallowed the drink in a single gulp and went to find Kevin.

Kevin was wrapped around Monica.

"Do you want to go?" she asked. There was no response.

"I'm going to go," she said. Still no response.

"See you," she said and left the club, back up the icy steps into the snow.

She passed a store with a TV on. The bright blue screen flashed 'Blizzard of 2005.' She watched a bus lumber up 2nd. Its rear slid all the way left and then all the way right struggling for traction. She looked up at the sky. The towers were lost in a metallic sky.

She wandered streets, walked down the center of the avenues. A growing sense of freedom gained pace as the defeated city gathered it's new identity around every corner. A snow bound landscape, transformed and silent.

Ahead was a park, a vast field of snow, and a single light spreading a blue-white cone over drifting mounds. An old woman walked along a trace of a path, pushing a shopping cart. Tina walked by and then stopped.

"Are you alright?" she asked.

The woman looked up. "I was thinking of Florida just now. Why did you bring me back?"

The woman's gentle smile was a counterpoint to the whisper of madness dancing in her eyes.

"It's too cold," Tina said. "Do you have a place to go?"

They stood in the falling snow and talked about the cold, and the streets, no streets on which to spend the night.

"The shelter will be full," the old woman said, and Tina took her arm and started for home.

It wasn't easy pushing the cart through the snow, but the woman insisted, and Tina dragged it through deep banks, across streets rutted with tire tracks. The city became less a wonderland now and more an icy threat, the romance of the scene dampened by the old woman's unsteady tread.

When they reached her brownstone Tina said, "What's your name?"

"Annie," the woman replied.

"Well, Annie, we have to leave the cart here. I live on the fifth floor."

"Then I'll stay on the street with my cart. Don't worry dear, I'll be fine."

Frozen in a minute, Tina thought. She stood there wondering if indeed she could lift the cart up five flights.

From behind her another voice said, "I can help with that."

It was Roland, his dreads loose, covered in snow, a small smile on his face. "I saw you at the club tonight," he said.

"You look like a nice strong man," said Annie.

Why aren't you Kevin? It was the first thought that entered Tina's head. She watched him lift the cart and carry it up to her apartment. Annie took a long time following on the stairs. Finally, Roland went back down and helped. From her landing Tina watched the man gently guide the old woman.

Roland went back to his apartment. Tina made Annie tea.

"Is he your boyfriend, dear?" Annie asked, taking small sips from a cup sweetened with four spoons of sugar.

"No, my boyfriend is . . ." she stopped.

Annie adjusted a pillow behind her back and finished the sentence. " . . .is not here."

"Yes, that's right. My boyfriend is not here."

Within minutes Annie fell asleep in the chair. Tina turned off the light and went to stand by the window. The plane trees were outlined in thick ropes of ice, the brownstone stoops covered in a rolling wave of white. In the center of the street Roland stood making a snowman. He looked up at Tina and waved. He shouted, but with the window closed she couldn't hear his words.

She grabbed the frame and tugged it up an inch. Through the crack she heard, "Have you got a carrot? I need something for a nose."

No edges to the city now. A different world fell from the sky. Things changed on a snowy night. Tina wrapped her scarf around her neck, pulled her wool cap over her ears and went downstairs again to where Roland waited in the street.

Seven Thousand Gates

Seven Thousand Gates

by Mick Hale

The route was fixed so one foot followed the other. Lenny drifted to some distant place in his skull where the tenor of his thoughts paced with the pounding blood of his racing heart. Down University, up Fordham Road, cross the Deegan on the Heights Bridge, move through the back alleys of Upper Manhattan, over to the park on the other side of Inwood. He did it every day, clocked about eight miles in thirty minutes. Good pace.

Old guy named Henry, who owned the fruit stand Lenny passed, always yelled, "Hey, where's the fire?" Henry thought that was a funny thing to yell. It always cracked him up.

Then there was Mr. Lee, who owned a Chinese Restaurant downtown. Mr. Lee practiced tai chi in the park every morning. As Lenny sped by, Mr. Lee advised things like, "Slow" or "Balance" or "Upright." Always one word timed to sneak into Lenny's ear and reside there like a flea as he ran past.

One day on his run he met Sibyl.

Along the banks of the Harlem River, at a spot called Spuyten Duyvil, he stopped, walked and caught his breath. He met Sibyl on a crystalline morning, sun climbing into a high blue sky, light breeze from the west carrying a scent of the plains and mountains beyond the Hudson.

Sibyl dressed for another world: long flowing skirt, sandals, blouse stitched with beads and tiny mirrors that caught the morning light. Her auburn hair hung loosely to her shoulders. In her eyes danced dreams no one else saw. There was a frailness to her, as if a strong wind might come and lift her away into the scudding clouds.

She smiled at Lenny and held out her hand, each finger bedecked in a silver ring.

"I see you coming every day to this place," she said.

Lenny took the hand and felt the fine bones arrayed beneath her alabaster skin.

"Off with you now," she said.

She turned and walked away.

Sibyl became the finish line of every morning run. Lenny sped across asphalt and dirt, running toward something now, a woman in long flowing skirts, standing by the narrow waters of Spuyten Duyvil.

"Do you know what that name means?" Sibyl asked one day. "Spitting Devil. The old folk used to think a devil lived in these waters. They were correct."

Sibyl appeared to have a direct line of communication to some other place. Lenny never understood it, but he accepted it.

"What is the point of all this running?" she asked on another morning.

Lenny was always out of breath when he met Sibyl. Often she just answered her own question.

"There's something chasing you," she said.

Lenny wasn't sure about that. He ran to burn off excess energy. He worked the night shift on a security team down at the Con Ed plant. He didn't get home most nights until dawn, and there was no sleeping then, so he ran.

He tried to explain it to her.

"Think what you want," she said. "I see it there, right over your shoulder."

He actually turned to look. It made him laugh.

"What world do you live in?" he asked.

"The same one as you," she said. "There's just more of it."

One day he sat on a bench. There was no place to run to now. He was where he wanted to be, sitting by the muddy waters of the Harlem, next to this woman.

On the river a crew team stroked across the mirrored surface. A train rumbled across the bridge, a long roll of freight. A silver jet banked above, making a slow turn toward the runway at LaGuardia.

"What was her name?" Sibyl asked.

"Whose name?" Lenny replied.

Sibyl didn't answer. She watched the crew stroke in practiced cadence down the river.

After a time Lenny said, "Her name was Kelly. She was from the Bronx, like me. The first time we kissed I was gone. A passion like that, it can eat you up, you know? You stoke the fires red hot -- the whole thing can explode. We were together five years. I loved her every minute of it. We used to go at it over everything. Politics, food, clothes, how to raise kids, every damn thing you could think of. My work hours were pretty funky, so we talked on the phone a lot. I mean we'd be on the phone for hours sometimes. Maybe it wasn't such a good thing. Kelly had this tongue, sharp as a fang bite. I got it though. I knew going into it -- you want a passion like that there's two sides to it. I was just crazy with her. She could say anything and I didn't care. One night, we go out, and maybe have a couple too many glasses of wine, and finally I say something, probably shouldn't have, I just answered back. With Kelly I knew I had to hold my tongue. I thought it made me a better man. But that night I said something just to piss her off and she said, that's it, don't ever call me again, I'm leaving and don't bother looking for me, you'll never find me. I never saw her again."

"And you didn't want your heart back."

Lenny shook his head.

"I gave that woman everything I had. I've got nothing left," he said.

The next day he ran extra hard. If there was a hill he tore into it. He didn't stop for traffic lights. He weaved through lines of cars, brushing sheet metal and chrome. Mr. Lee was doing his tai chi, but Lenny moved too fast to get the day's word. He reached the path along the river. He waited, but Sibyl never came.

Two weeks passed. Lenny ran to the same place day after day, even on a Sunday, a day he usually didn't run, but Sibyl was gone.

One day he stopped by Mr. Lee and asked, "Do you know the woman who walks in the park most mornings?"

He described the way she dressed.

"Sibyl," Mr. Lee said.

"That's right."

"I haven't seen her lately."

"Do you know where she lives?"

Mr. Lee looked at him for a moment.

"Do you think running is a good thing for the body?" Mr. Lee asked. "I think you sweat too much. You lose too much vital fluid."

"Maybe." Lenny didn't know what to say.

"You come tomorrow. Maybe I can help you then."

Run, Lenny. Glide the paths of DeVoe Park. Jump the jersey barriers on the bridge. Yell Fire! as you pass Henry's fruit stand, Henry laughing in your wake.

Mr. Lee was there the next day, a slip of paper in his hand.

"This is Sibyl's phone number," he said. "She said you can call."

Lenny left messages on Sibyl's answering machine. At first he left one each day, then one a week, then every month or so. Sibyl never returned his call.

Winter came and Lenny ran. Even in the bitter cold he ran his route. The holidays inched by and Lenny kept his eyes to the asphalt. He was so afraid to feel these days, so afraid of the hurt still there at the center of his heart.

Then one winter Monday morning he returned home to find a message from Sibyl.

"Meet me at the park today."

His feet were never lighter. He floated through the streets. When he got to the park, Mr. Lee signaled him over.

"Come with me," Mr. Lee said.

He led Lenny across the park to a street where a van was parked. In the back sat Sibyl.

"Would you come with me for a ride?" she asked.

Mr. Lee drove the van south. Lenny sat in the front and swiveled round to see Sibyl. She looked very pale, but her smile still filled his eyes.

"Where are we going?" Lenny asked.

"Mr. Lee's driving us to Central Park. I'd like to go for a walk. Is that alright?"

They drove until they reached 96th Street, then Mr. Lee pulled over. "I can pick you up here in a couple of hours," he said.

He got out of the van, went to the back and unloaded a wheelchair. Lenny watched him lift Sibyl into the chair and didn't utter a word.

Sibyl laughed.

"I should have been more accurate, Lenny. You walk and I ride. Like a queen."

Mr. Lee drove away. Lenny and Sibyl started for the park.

Lenny struggled for words.

"Sibyl, I . . ."

"You want to know what is wrong with me?"

"Yes."

"Everything, dear. Everything in a physical sense. Mentally I feel perfect."

"How long have you been ill?"

"I'm dying, Lenny. I've been dying for such a long time. Dying shouldn't be a forever thing. I'm tired of all this. I'm ready for the next thing now."

They entered the park.

Ahead was a river of orange, twisting and turning through the trees, fabric catching the wind and light, sometimes opaque, sometimes translucent, long shadows fluttering in a breeze, a fabric flow marching across hilltops, winding through granite ravines, circling round a field, a promenade of gates, a living thing come to rest in the park this winter day.

They passed under one gate after another, and each seemed to lead to a new place created just for the steps they were taking. Lenny had run through the park many times, but this park was new, he'd never seen this place before. It was like the veins of the park were exposed, orange blood coursing through the trees, surprising glimpses of orange through branches, the sky pale blue, then orange again. They walked entranced. There was no end to the choices they might take. All the paths seemed to flow together in an infinite twirling orange spiral of fabric.

On the crest of a hill they stopped.

"Look at that," Sibyl said.

Throughout the park was an orange-sketched wind. Shadows painted flags, strokes of branches caught in a falling sun. On outcrops of rocks people stood in an orange sea. Angles and elevations traced the park paths, bridges and tunnels framed in orange trim.

"Sibyl," Lenny said, "why didn't you call me?"

Sibyl looked up and smiled.

"She didn't take your heart, you know, that woman Kelly. Your heart's your own to keep. No one can take it from you."

"Kelly seems so long ago now," he said.

It was not what Lenny wanted to say. There were words in his head, a question to ask, but he didn't want to hear the answer.

"Do you know the most amazing thing about this labyrinth of gates?" Sibyl asked.

Lenny wasn't thinking about the gates. He was wondering how much time Sibyl had left. I'm tired of the dying, she'd said, I'm ready for the next thing. Lenny wasn't ready. He felt at the start of something, not the end.

"We're walking through the gates," Sibyl said, "and it's like time stops. They flow one into the other. It feels like they go on forever."

Lenny nodded his head. "Maybe they do."

He grabbed the back of Sibyl's wheelchair and they began to walk again, wandering the orange paths and shadows and dancing fabric streaked with light. On they walked as the long shadows grew, and the pale winter sun slipped behind the towers to the west.