I felt the prick of a knifepoint against my back as the foul breath of the man
who held it warmed my neck.
"I really like that watch, man," he said, low, trying to sound menacing.
I was in no mood to be mugged on a busy street corner in broad daylight. This
fool was standing close behind me, pressing his knife into the small of my
back, trying to rip me off without letting anyone walking past know what was
happening.
"Just gimme the watch, shitface, and keep your mouth shut."
I lifted my hands as if to slip the watch off my wrist, then whirled and gave
him an elbow in the abdomen and a backhand chop across the bridge of his nose.
The knife clattered to the pavement. The blow to his middle had cut off his
wind so he couldn't even yelp. He sank to his feet, nose broken, blood gushing
over his ragged clothes and spattering the cement. I grabbed a handful of his
filthy hair and jerked his head back. His face was covered with blood.
"Get out of here before I lose my temper," I told him. With my left foot I
kicked his knife into the gutter.
Gagging, wide-eyed with pain and shock, he staggered to his feet and limped
away. A few passersby glanced at me, but no one said a word or lifted a hand
to intervene. The city at its finest.
Underground. I heard a subway train rumble beneath my feet, its wheels
screeching on the iron rails. Underground is a British word for subway. There
was a subway station just outside the hospital's main entrance. Looking across
the street from where I was standing, I saw the entrance to another station. I
dashed across the street, leaving a chorus of bleating horns and cursing
drivers behind me, and raced down the steps. In the grimy, urine-stinking
underground station, I went from one map of the subway system to another until
I found one that was readable beneath the spraycan graffiti. Sure enough, a
red line connected the station at the hospital with this station downtown.
Underground. They had come down here on the subway and gotten off at this
station. I was certain of it. That's what Aretha's hastily scribbled message
meant.
Now what? Where had they gone from here? A four-car train pulled in, roaring
and squealing to a stop. The cars were decorated with bright graffiti
paintings, cartoons and names of the "artists." I found myself scanning the
words on the sides of the cars, looking for a message. Foolish desperation.
The doors hissed open and everyone got out. I started toward the first car,
but a black man in a Transit Authority uniform called out to me: "End of the
line. This train's goin' t' the lay-up. Next train uptown in five minutes.
Next train over th' bridge on the other level."
The doors hissed shut and the train, empty of passengers, lumbered away from
the platform and screeched around a bend in the track. I listened as carefully
as I could, filtering out the other echoing noises in the station: the
conversations, some kid's radio blaring rock music, high-pitched laughter from
a trio of teen-aged girls. The train went around that curve, out of sight, and
then stopped. "The lay-up," the Transit man had said. Trains taken out of
service are kept there, down the track, until they are needed again.
I looked around. No one was paying attention to me. I walked to the end of the
platform, vaulted easily over the padlocked, heavy wire gate that barred entry
to the tracks, and went down the steps that led to the floor of the tunnel.
The steps, the tunnel walls, the railing I touched were coated with years of
filth, of grease and accumulated grime. The floor of the tunnel was like a
sewer with tracks. In the dim lighting I saw that the electrified third rail,
which carried enough current to drive the trains and kill anyone who touched
it, was covered by wooden planking. I stepped up onto that; my shoes were
already dank from the foul-smelling wetness of the tunnel floor.
In the distance I heard a train approaching. The walls were scalloped with
niches for a man to stand in, and as the train's headlamp glared at me and its