I sighed and leaned forward. ‘You know something?’ I asked him. ‘You really are a scumbag. I thought it was just a swearword until you came along. You’re the first real one I’ve met.’
We pulled over. Rising in his seat he turned towards me gradually. His face was much nastier, tastier, altogether more useful than I had banked on it being — barnacled and girlish with bright eyes and prissy lips, as if there were another face, the real face, beneath his mask of skin.
‘Okay. Get out the car. I said out the fuckin car!’
‘Yeah yeah,’ I said, and shoved my suitcase along the seat.
‘Twenty-two dollars,’ he said. ‘There, the clock.’
‘I’m not giving you anything, scumbag.’
With no shift in the angle of his gaze he reached beneath the dashboard and tugged the special catch. All four door locks clunked shut with an oily chockful sound.
‘Listen to me, you fat fuck,’ he began. ‘This is Ninety-Ninth and Second. The money. Give me the money.’ He said he would drive me uptown twenty blocks and kick me out on the street, right there. He said that by the time the niggers were done, there’d be nothing left of me but a hank of hair and teeth.
I had some notes in my back pocket, from my last trip. I passed a twenty through the smeared screen. He sprang the locks and out I climbed. There was nothing more to say.
So now I stand here with my case, in smiting light and island rain. Behind me massed water looms, and the industrial corsetry of FDR Drive … It must be pushing eight o’clock by now but the weepy breath of the day still shields its glow, a guttering glow, very wretched — rained on, leaked on. Across the dirty street three black kids sprawl in the doorway of a dead liquor store. I’m big, though, yes I’m a big mother, and they look too depressed to come and check me out. I take a defiant pull from my pint of duty-free. It’s past midnight, my time. God I hate this movie. And it’s only just beginning.
I looked for cabs, and no cabs came. I was on First, not Second, and First is uptown. All the cabs would be turned the other way, getting the hell out on Second and Lex. In New York for a half a minute and already I pace the line, the long walk down Ninety-Ninth Street.
You know, I wouldn’t have done this a month ago. I wouldn’t have done it then. Then I was avoiding. Now I’m just waiting. Things happen to me. They do. They just have to go ahead and happen. You watch — you wait… Inflation, they say, is cleaning up this city. Dough is rolling up its sleeves and mucking the place out. But things still happen here. You step off the plane, look around, take a deep breath — and come to in your underpants, somewhere south of SoHo, or on a midtown traction table with a silver tray and a tasselled tab on your chest and a guy in white saying Good morning, sir. How are you today. That’ll be fifteen thousand dollars … Things still happen here and something is waiting to happen to me. I can tell. Recently my life feels like a bloodcurdling joke. Recently my life has taken on form. Something is waiting. I am waiting. Soon, it will stop waiting — any day now. Awful things can happen any time. This is the awful thing.
Fear walks tall on this planet. Fear walks big and fat and fine. Fear has really got the whammy on all of us down here. Oh it’s true, man. Sister, don’t kid yourself … One of these days I’m going to walk right up to fear. I’m going to walk right up. Someone’s got to do it. I’m going to walk right up and say, Okay, hard-on. No more of this.
You’ve pushed us around for long enough. Here is someone who would not take it. It’s over. Outside. Bullies, I’m told, are all cowards deep down. Fear is a bully, but something tells me that fear is no funker. Fear, I suspect, is really incredibly brave. Fear will lead me straight through the door, will prop me up in the alley among the crates and the empties, and show me who’s the boss… I might lose a tooth or two, I suppose, or he could even break my arm — or fuck up my eye! Fear might get carried away, like I’ve seen them do, pure damage, with nothing mattering. Maybe I’d need a crew, or a tool, or an equalizer. Now I come to think about it, maybe I’d better let fear be. When it comes to fighting, I’m brave — or reckless or indifferent or just unjust. But fear really scares me. He’s too good at fighting and I’m too frightened anyway.