In the Blind

JUST a thin metal rod no longer than your finger.

A thin metal rod, looped at one end to give you something to grip, flattened and slotted at the other. She told me what there was to tell about it—even the sound it made, the blood it sometimes drew. She told me how a tab would fit into the slot, how when you twisted the loop a strip of metal or the lid itself would wrap around the other end. I don’t think you would open a can of shortening this way anymore. Or a tin of sardines. I don’t think anyone would open anything this way.

She told me other things: that I knew how to walk, that I slept in a bed, that I’d learned to talk but didn’t have much to say. She told me what I was afraid of.

She told me this about myself, and some of it hasn’t changed.

THERE might have been blood. There would have been sharp edges and, unwinding the lid or the strip of tin from it, she might have felt one before she gave it to me—just a thin metal rod that for a while was mine.

I don’t know what became of it.

I must have put it down. Sometime during the course of the day, I must have put it down and forgotten about it.

After the blood. Before there was a moon.

AT night, she told me, was when it happened.

In the small hours, she said, was when I woke up, if I’d slept at all, climbed out of bed and went looking for it. Roamed the dark sleeping house, working the shadows like a prowler. The hall, the bathroom, the stairs—I went everywhere but I never turned on a light. There might have been a moon. I looked until my looking woke them and she came for me. I could have been anyone. I could have been someone who’d come to take something, or everything, but she knew who it was, she said. She wasn’t afraid.

The stairs, the living room, the dining room, the kitchen.

It happened every night.

AFTER the second time, she told me, or the third time, she said, when she’d put me back to bed, she crawled in and stayed with me till I went back to sleep. She said it took me a long time, she had to come into my bed more than once. She said she stayed with me and told me stories, looking for the one that would make me stop. Sometimes she rhymed.

We looked out the window.

Out there, she said she told me.

The world, she said she’d said.

We lived at the end of the street. There was nothing beyond us.

Everyone in the world was asleep, she said, except for us. When the world sleeps, she said, everyone else must, too, because the world won’t wake up again, she said, until they do.

It would go right on sleeping. It wouldn’t let the sun come up. The night, she said, won’t stop.

She didn’t mean to rhyme but this is what she told me. I think I remember some of it, and I believe the rest.

I believe I do.

IT was still dark when I got back into town. I was last off the bus but still had to wait with the Mennonites while a porter emptied the luggage bin. The garage was a narrow cave with fluorescent tubes nine feet long. That diesel smell, Greyhound chug and hiss. Standing around in the black and brown, muted blues and purple, the men with wide brims and beards without mustaches and coats without lapels. The children like miniature adults. Their luggage was made of cardboard like mine, tied with jute or hemp, but the box I was looking for was small and had been used only once.

Inside the terminal a couple were making out next to a video game. The pilgrims steered clear and grabbed most of the seats in the waiting area so that anywhere you sat was near them. They drank their own coffee and ate their own sandwiches. An old woman peeled an orange. I saw that she was pregnant then and thought maybe she wasn’t so old. The children looked at the video game, at the couple next to it sharing their tongues.

Some of the seats had coin-operated television attached, looking up at you from your lap. Once in a while a loudspeaker issued bursts of articulated static in which only the names of cities were intelligible. People moved or didn’t move accordingly, as if somehow they’d heard what they needed.

A woman worked the crowd. For a grilled cheese sandwich, she said, and carried a dollar bill to invite further contributions. When she came to someone with a beard and a wide-brimmed hat, he stared right through her and spoke to his own. They spoke German right through her.

The static said, Points east.

A kid showed me an imitation Swiss Army knife. He was part of a group in which everyone carried backpacks, wore black trousers and white shirts. The uniform of some other ascetic order. It was a key chain. I told him I had nothing to put on it and he thought I was bargaining. I gave him two dollars. I couldn’t afford even that but it seemed like some kind of start.

I got up to get a drink of water. A blind man and a German shepherd squatted against the wall next to the fountain. Dark specks jumped from the dog to the man, and from the man to the dog. I went back to my seat not thirsty anymore, just sleepy. I leaned back and closed my eyes. Heard laughter, joking. I was surprised, did not associate this with the beards, the German, the black and the brown. Must have been the length of their journey, I figured. The lateness of the hour.

A security guard woke me up. I opened my eyes and he was tapping my shoulder. His features wide and flat like he had his face pressed against a window. We don’t park it here, he said.

I couldn’t speak. I looked around. It was dark and everyone was gone except the blind man and his dog.

Don’t know how you slept through all that-to-do, the guard said. I looked at him. Cops came and arrested one of those Amish boys, whatever they are. Supposably muling dope for someone. Believe that?

I tried to say I’d be looking for a place to live, that I couldn’t do anything till morning, but I hadn’t spoken to anyone in a day and it probably sounded longer than that.

You can’t park it here, he said. He nodded behind me, Coffee shop’s open. Grab you a cup.

The coffee shop sold plastic-wrapped sandwiches out of a display case. Hot dogs on a rotisserie, a popcorn machine. Souvenirs. I had a fake Swiss Army knife now, so all I could buy was coffee. The panhandler was at the register trying to buy a sandwich. The cashier told her she was eighteen cents short. She looked at me.

She had bulging wet eyes, an open unconditional face. Baggy shorts and a winter coat buttoned only at the neck. I dug into my pocket. The cashier offered a receipt lengthy out of all proportion to the transaction.

I don’t need this, the panhandler said. You want this? She waited for my answer.

I just got into town. I said it carefully. You know of anywhere I could stay?

You got money?

I was thinking the Y.

The Y, she said. Real estate company took over the residential. Four hundred a month for an efficiency. Call em suites anymore. Security deposit, references, credit check. You want that?

What else is there?

She mentioned a place called the Avenue. It had once had another name, been the kind of place where touring rock bands demolished rooms.

High-classy days are over, she said, lucky for you.

I asked where. She gave me a corner, the name of one street and the number of another. I pressed my luck and asked her where City Hall was.

They don’t even have grilled cheese here. She turned her back to me. The cashier had gone somewhere.

I sat in a booth by the windows and watched the dark turn gray, then blue, then transparent for the rest of the day. I liked the blue and wished it could have stayed that way. You could live in that light.

I knew being back was going to be strange, just not in what way. The streets were familiar but I no longer knew where they went. I heard people talking to themselves, then saw they all had phones. I had to ask someone where City Hall was, heard myself stutter. That was something new.

I was sure it was Monday. It was already warm and you could feel the air filling with sweat. Two new buildings stood over Public Square, sudden shadows across Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument. One of them was a bank and was now the tallest building in town. I saw it pull lightning out of the sky, window washers washing windows where height became altitude. A big sign in the concourse at ground level said they were leasing space. The smaller building was a federal courthouse and would probably have less trouble finding tenants.

Crossing the street wasn’t as easy as it sounds. All the people, and everyone had a phone.

I got to City Hall just after it opened. I recognized the building but I’d never been inside. Huge, white stone, the entrance flanked by enormous fluted columns like an ancient temple. To the left was a wide grassy commons, and beyond that a familiar openness. I knew what was there and wanted it, but it would have to wait.

I went in, through the colonnade.

A vast hall, dim and cool. A woman in the middle of it, under the gold leaf dome of the ceiling, surrounded by frescoes of heroic service. She wore a blue blazer and held a walkie-talkie. I told her I needed a birth certificate and she gave me directions. Everything you said boomed and echoed, there were no small matters here. She was pleasant but the box would have to stay with her. That was a relief.

I went down a corridor to a narrow room with a long wooden counter. I gave someone my social security card and the letter I’d been given. My hands shook, my voice, even my thoughts. She consulted a supervisor. I was given a long form to fill out. The form was stamped and I was advised to take it to another part of the building, on another floor. I didn’t mind, I liked moving through the marble, the high vaulted spaces, the cracks polished and noble. There was an elevator but I didn’t bother with it. I wanted to hear the sound I made on the steps, rise with the curve of the balustrade.

I sat on a bench in the Records Department while they produced the document. The clerk apologized for the wait and for a second I didn’t know what he meant—there is sitting on a wooden bench for ten minutes, and there is waiting.

The brightness outside was harder to take now. I rounded the corner of the building and went into the commons. I walked across the grass with my box and my birth certificate and for once knew where I was going: I was headed for the parapet at the north side where everything rose into view. But even before I got there I saw that today everything wasn’t what it used to be.

In front of the lake the new stadium was under construction. A football team had been acquired while I was away. I’d forgotten. A cloud of dust hung motionless above it and even from where I was you could hear the clank of invisible machinery. Next to it a geodesic dome surrounded by a cluster of new-looking buildings, the spidery vehicle that had landed on the moon parked out front. I realized then it must have been a replica because the real one hadn’t come back.

In the gap between you could see water and sky, and though there was a haze over the lake it was still better than nothing. I knew I had to take things a little at a time anyway, especially the good things.

Fifty feet below me a train went by.

I was already sweating and it was the kind of day where once you started you didn’t stop. My ear throbbed. Without touching it I could feel the seam where they’d put it back on. I sat on one of the benches behind the parapet. For all I knew I might end up sleeping on it—there were people on the grass who didn’t look like picnickers. A girl was sitting on the bench next to me. I glanced at her. I wanted to know what time it was and I wondered if I should ask her. I looked her way again. This time she noticed, or noticed it was the second time, and yelled the name Steve. A guy whose name must have been Steve came over in jogging shorts. He had an overdeveloped torso and skinny legs and looked like he was about to topple over. She asked him where he wanted to go for breakfast. The word gave me no appetite. After they left I stayed there for a while, waiting to see how much the box would weigh the next time I picked it up.

A medium-sized building, peeling to gray. The bottom floor had once housed an exclusive restaurant with valet parking. Now it was a bodega, though its prices were still exclusive. There’d been a pool on the roof, webs of light pulsing in someone’s memory. In between were rooms you could rent by the week or the month. The woman behind the desk in the lobby broke it down for me. She was small and shriveled and wore a flowered sleeveless frock like something you’d wear around the house. Metal clips pinned her hair to her scalp, more metal than hair. A clear plastic tube from her nose to a green tank at her side. The tank on a cart with wheels. She told me how much, and for what.

You can cook in your room, she said. No pets.

No drugs or whores, either, the man behind the desk with her said. He sat on a chair balanced on its back legs, wore a gray shirt with dark pants. He could have been twenty-five or fifty. A name was stitched above his heart.

She turned her head as much as the tube would allow, Only if he gets them for you, huh? She looked at me. You’re not one of those college animals, are you?

I wondered about the scarf tied around her throat. You heard breathing when she spoke, like someone else was there. I wondered if there was a deposit.

A week’s rent if you’re staying by the week, she said. A month if it’s by the month. Plus a five-dollar key deposit. It was half of all I had but I didn’t want to try and find a shelter. I asked if I could see it.

She turned to get a key. The tube grew taut but kept her in this world. She held it in place with one hand, said she needed a longer one.

No comment, the maintenance man said, getting out of his chair.

Not your department anyway, she said. It could have been a routine, but they didn’t care if I laughed. I left my box behind the desk.

We rode the elevator to the seventh floor. The halls were off-white with brown wainscoting. The floor was carpeted and beneath it there was a muted crunch like buried bones. I heard TV sets too well, an unanswered phone. Smelled cigarette smoke, Lysol, the carpet, a permanent odor like leftovers—not just food, but everything that remains.

The room was as ready as it was going to get, and cleaner than I expected. The little hallway you walked into was also a kitchen. Half a refrigerator, half a stove with two electric eyelets, crammed into a nook opposite the bathroom. Then a single bed, nightstand, dresser, a round table with two chairs. Another shade of white. You could still smell the carpet. An oversized air conditioner had been shoved through the wall beneath the window. Beneath a kind of view.

I just put Freon in, the maintenance man said. He switched it on. It was loud and gave off a smell that made the back of your throat itch, but it worked. There was nothing to decide but I thought I should go through the motions a little longer—touching, opening, closing. I turned on the faucet over the kitchen sink. It groaned, twitched, spat out a cockroach. I let the water run and the roach headed up the side of the basin. He would have made it so I gave him a little push and the vortex pulled him down the drain.

We spray once a month, the maintenance man said. We’ll let you know in advance.

What about noise?

Concrete floor slabs. You won’t hear a thing.

I told him I’d seen enough. He asked me if I needed anything to go with the place, a TV, for instance. I said I didn’t. A radio, then, or a CD player. A toaster, a blender, a microwave. He could get me things at cost.

You got the means, he said, I got the ends.

I asked him where the license bureau was. I knew the street but not how to get to it.

Driver’s license?

State ID. To get a job you needed an address and to prove I had one I’d need a state ID. But no, I wasn’t getting a driver’s license.

You got no ID? He shook his head gravely. Man, I don’t know. Mrs. Ivy don’t play that. You need ID to register.

He looked at me. You in some kind of trouble?

I just don’t have a place to live.

He reverted to his transactional mode. Maybe I could hook you up. He put out a hand, but not to shake. Financhual consideration, he said. I got him down to ten but it would have to be up front. I didn’t know if I could trust him. I thanked the name on his breast.

This ain’t even my shirt, he said.

In the elevator he asked if I needed a computer.

Back downstairs Mrs. Ivy let him process the paperwork. I wrote things down and got two keys and a receipt. I put the keys on the chain I’d bought at the bus station and asked the maintenance man about the license bureau again.

He told me where it had moved to. It wasn’t even where I didn’t remember it was in the first place.

I took my box up to the room and put things away. Then I flattened the cardboard and put it in the closet. The closet door wouldn’t shut. A bolt protruded beneath the latch and I didn’t have a key for it. One of those old-fashioned locks, triangular keyhole, rounded at the top. Skeleton key—at least I thought you called it that.

I washed my face. I lay down on the bed for a few minutes and tried not to think about anything. This is harder than it sounds and though I’d had a lot of practice, those days were over. I tried not to feel ten dollars lighter. I’d planned on eating twice a day, a late breakfast and supper, till things got going. Maybe today I could get away with just once. I still wasn’t hungry.

SO the first night was bad.

The air conditioner was loud and too cold. If you turned it to low it still came out high, so I got up and turned it off, opened the window. I lay back down and warmed up fast.