They’re torching bums in Brooklyn. That’s what I hear anyway, I haven’t seen it myself. It’s too dangerous to take the subway even if you pay the men at the turnstile for protection, and cabs are no better now that the gangs have started firing on them. They say that they set the bums on fire and they glow like fireflies and scream like lambs. The residents of Brooklyn Heights and Williamsburg just watch from behind their barred windows with the lights off and try not to attract attention. They don’t know what else to do. I wouldn’t. Most of them are gone anyway. A lot went inland to Westchester and set up a militia. Most of the Jews went to Israel. Lucky bastards. I’d do anything to get off this island, but there’s not much to do about that, so mostly I just run to work and back as fast as I can and try to avoid the rapists.
Gary down the hall says that he can get me on a boat to Cuba. It would be nice, but Gary is a sick fuck and, frankly, I don’t believe a word he says. I didn’t before and I don’t now. After all, now I’m rich. When the guns started going off so often that I couldn’t get any sleep, the exhaustion set off some sort of OCD lodged in my brain. I started to buy batteries like a madman. At the time everyone said I needed to see a shrink, but now I’m a hero and a wealthy one at that. People who took out all their money in cash now have a steady supply of toilet paper, but without a toilet, the whole system kind of breaks down. The funniest part is that now the gunshots don’t even bother me all that much and I’m the most well-rested person on the Lower East Side.
When you get right down to it, living here isn’t so bad. It is bad, of course, but in a grand, life-affirming kind of way. Not everyone shares this opinion. Just ask the flaming bums. But my building is still standing mostly and I’m a good sprinter, so it’s kind of exciting really. I don’t have to go to work anymore. I mean I do, but not to that soul-murdering bitch of a job on Wall Street. If I had been making any money maybe it would have been OK, but I made shit and they treated me like shit, and part of me is glad that the place is a war zone. That way I never have to go back. They probably think I’m dead which is fine by me. That’s presuming, of course, that they’re alive enough to be able to construct coherent thoughts themselves. Either way, I don’t have to see them every morning.
Now I run a bookshop on Eighth Avenue. The shutters are locked shut and I don’t know where the key is, but that’s fine with me. I don’t want to open them anyway. It used to be that you had to spend millions on advertising. Now it’s better if no one can tell where you are. People hear things by word of mouth, so I get enough business to feed myself and I only have to use the batteries for bigger expenses and capital improvements. I got some gas lanterns in there so that customers can see the merchandise. I bought some solar panel system too, but it was a piece of shit and never worked. I suppose I shouldn’t have had any high expectations for that since the sun doesn’t rise much any more and when it does it’s usually dull and filtered through the black smoke. Someone told me that this is nuclear winter, but I’m pretty sure that the smoke is too low for that. I think of it as nuclear fall. It might not be nuclear at all, but who’s to say what’s going on out there. I just sell my books and smoke cigarettes when I can get them and try not to make eye contact with strangers.
I always wanted to own a bookshop, but I have to admit I always thought that the circumstances would be different. I used to come here a lot, and when the gangs started attacking it one day I was here and helped out Herb who used to own the place. He had two shotguns and no cartridges so my job was to stand there and look tough while he told them he’d blow their brains out and that he had way more ammunition than he would ever need to kill them all. They decided it wasn’t worth that much trouble to vandalize a bookstore and moved on to trash the Starbucks across the street. The whole time my hands were shaking so hard that I thought I’d drop the gun but Herb was cool as ice. His voice never shook at all and when he was done I thought maybe he did have a whole armory in the back room. When we went back inside he stank of booze and I realized that most of his courage had come from a half-empty bottle of Scotch he kept behind the counter. He told me he used to be a Marine back when they fought against foreigners. I guess you could say we became friends although that wasn’t a word Herb used much. When he got the Cancer, he said I could have the shop if I wanted and if I didn’t I should close it up and fill the lock with glue on my way out. He was a big guy with tattoos all over, but he loved books like they were his kids. Defending the shop wasn’t about pride for him, it was about the books. I think he’d be pissed if I let anything happen to them. I traded some batteries for ammo, but I know that I could never use it. I don’t even really like having it around. I just think it would be stupid not to.
Once I get to work, my days in the store are fairly uneventful. I’ve gotten a lot of reading done while I sit alone behind the counter. Mostly I read the old stuff. I like Thomas Hardy and George Eliot a lot. Sometimes I like Dickens. I like Shakespeare more every time I read him. When someone comes into the store I have to put down whatever I’m reading and watch him. Sometimes I set one of the guns on the counter, just so that they can see it. It’s not really criminals I worry about. People who steal for money or food are pretty easily dissuaded. They’re stealing to stay alive, so they steal whatever’s easiest, which isn’t books from my store. It’s the Word Lovers I worry about. Those are the people who steal without reason. They steal because they’re desperate for reading material the way some people are desperate for smack. They aren’t all that hard to spot. They smile a little when they walk in. They usually wear glasses. If they have a hat they take it off in deference to the books. I watch them as they walk up and down the aisles. I do it in part because they have to be watched all the time or they’ll start stuffing paperbacks into their waistbands. But I also do it because it’s strangely beautiful. They read the spines of the books and breath softly. After a while they reach out and touch them. Sometimes they take the books off the shelves and sometimes they don’t. They just brush their fingers over the bindings and feel the wrinkles that run up and down between the pages. They never read much in the store. I wonder if they even read them at home, or if they just stare at them and touch them like sexual deviants with some bizarre fetish. Even though the Lovers are the ones who steal the most, or at least try the hardest, I don’t mind them in my store. They’re the ones who buy the most, first of all. You can tell they’re spending their food money half the time. But I think I mostly like them because I know that I’m one of them. I mean I come here every day past the skinheads and the crips and any of them could kill me if they felt like it. I could sit at home with my batteries, or even try, at least try, to get out of here. But instead I come to the shop every day and reread Tess of the D’Urbervilles behind the closed shutters and watch the Word Lovers paw the books with my hand resting on the barrel of an empty shotgun.
Reading and watching is how I spend most of my days. I don’t really talk to people all that much anymore. I don’t really think that anyone does. Nowadays people spend their time just getting by. Food is hard enough to come by without having to share it with someone. I don’t know anyone with a family, but I guess I never did. People are quieter now. They don’t talk so much. I for one don’t miss it. People in general are pretty stupid and I’m happy to be rid of their bullshit. I haven’t really had a conversation with anyone in quite a while. I guess I should say that I hadn’t had a conversation in a while because a woman came into the store today and talked my fucking ear off.
I was worried about her from the minute she walked in. She said hello, which almost no one does, and then just walked around and browsed a little. She wasn’t a Word Lover. She didn’t even really seem to care about the books at all. She didn’t rub them or stare at the covers, she just looked and read the synopses on the back and then returned them to their shelves. Her coat was red, dull but clean. It looked gaudy and out of place. No one has clean clothes now. Just about everything else in the city is some muted shade of gray. She approached the counter with nothing in her hands.
“Hi. I’m Baby. It’s Evelyn, actually, but no one calls me that.” She paused and watched me expectantly. “And you?” I looked at her. I thought for a minute that it might be a trick, to make me take my hand off the gun. I stared at her for a second and she just stared back. She smiled. I wasn’t sure what to do.
“John,” I said.
“I love your shop. It’s cozy. The lanterns are a nice touch. I had some trouble finding it though. You should open the shutters. Natural light is supposed to have healing powers. Looks like you could use some.” I shrugged and wished she would leave me alone. She took out a cigarette. “Have you got a light?”
“The lamp.” I wasn’t sure about having her around at all and I sure as hell wasn’t going to waste a match on her. She walked to the blue flame near the door and reached out her face towards it, the cigarette between her lips. She pushed it as far forward as she could and it looked for a moment like she was going in to kiss the fire itself. I saw her inhale gently and then back away as soon as the tobacco lit.
“I love to smoke. It’s nice now, since probably none of us will live long enough to get cancer. Not lung cancer anyway. It’s a guilt-free pleasure. Smoking’s about all I’ve got since fucking became a job.” She laughed loudly and then took a drag. “I used to love the post-coital cigarette more than the sex itself. It’s so much more sensual really. The flame on the tip of the cigarette. The little flick of the lighter. Mmhm! And of course when you’re smoking, size doesn’t matter.” She laughed again, longer this time and sat on the stool I put my feet on sometimes. Then she stared at me. “What? What’s wrong? You don’t want to talk? Fine. Or are you uncomfortable with a whore in the store? Don’t worry, I’m not looking for business. I saw your book. I don’t mind. I love fags.” I looked down. Jane Eyre. What a bitch. “Cigarette?” I took it.
I thought for a minute about going over to the lamp, but I didn’t want to leave the counter or the gun so I just used my lighter.
“Oh. Look who’s a little smart ass. And to think, all this time I just thought you were stupid.”
“Don’t forget gay.” She smiled. I tried not to. It’s not worth letting on sometimes. She paused and looked at the smoke.
“It’s nice to get a rise out of someone. People don’t care about wit much anymore. They don’t care about anything except staying alive. And I mean that in the narrowest possible sense. Business is down.”
“Poor you.”
“Poor me. Too many people turned to Jesus and not enough people remember that Jesus loved hookers. That’s in the Bible you know. You can look it up.”
“I don’t believe in Jesus.”
“No, of course not. You believe in books. Too bad you don’t believe in ass. I need to put food on the table, too, you know.”
“What did you do before?”
“I didn’t do anything before. Before is only a myth used to comment on the present situation. You read; you should know that.”
“And I’m the smart ass?” I smiled against my better judgment. She just looked at me and kept smoking. We sat for a minute. After a while she put out her cigarette and got up to go.
“Well fruitcake, I’ve got to be on my way. Thanks for the light.”
“Thanks for the cigarette.”
“Any time.” She opened the door and paused. “They say next year will be better. Do you think it will be?
“They say that every year. Every year is always the same.”
“Yeah.” She walked out into the street and I watched the door close behind her.
On the way home today I saw a street preacher. I know that it’s stupid to stop on the sidewalks, but I did anyway. He was old and wore a gray coat and he obviously had the Cancer because he was bald and there were sores all over his head. A few other people passed, but no one else stopped. He just yelled out at them and kept talking. Once I stopped to watch he ignored me altogether which pissed me off a little since I was obviously the only one who came even close to caring about what he said. He talked about Babylon and the lamb and the seven seals. He said that the end would come with the millennium which is only two years away. He talked about New York and Philadelphia. He was fucking nuts; it didn’t take too long to figure that out. But I listened to him for a while anyway. I guess after Baby came to visit I just wanted to hear someone talk. Maybe now I’m gonna be addicted to listening like I am to reading. That sucks, because I’ve got plenty of books but not a lot of friends.
I saw Baby again. She was walking down the street like she owned it. Like hookers used to do on corners before. Standing in groups and shrieking with laughter and fear. But Baby was alone, pacing back and forth along the curb. I’m not sure what she was waiting for. She looked worn down. Older. But she just stood there smoking, like nothing the hell was the matter. I watched her crush the butt of her cigarette under the ball of her foot and I realized that I wanted to touch it. I wanted to touch her feet and her legs and I remembered how long it had been since I had held a woman’s breast. In ninth grade my friend Amanda let me put my hand up her sweater and I wanted to feel the warmth of Baby’s flesh through a faded pink bra. But eventually Baby just walked away.
Last week I got a handwritten copy of Paradise Lost. Some fuck wanted a new book so badly that he copied down the whole thing into two big notebooks. His handwriting isn’t so bad. On some pages I can see the spills where food got splattered on the pages. I wanted to ask the preacher about that. I wanted to ask why he was talking about the end of the world when it might just be the beginning, the story of creation being copied over again and again into speckled composition notebooks. Maybe the end isn’t coming and won’t be coming anytime soon. Maybe the future is just a convenient explanation for the present the same way the past is. I don’t really know. Sometimes it makes sense but most of the time it doesn’t. I just know that I live in New York City in 1998 and if the world ends tomorrow then it ends. Otherwise I’ll just go to my shop and read and smoke and hope that maybe Baby will show up again so I can listen to her talk. She’s crazy too, that’s obvious, but I don’t mind that so much. Maybe people should talk more even if the island is sinking like they say it is. But what do I know.
When I left the preacher he was talking about the alpha and the omega and the word and the CIA. He says they’re putting acid in cigarettes. That’s a risk I’m willing to take. I ran the rest of the way home. I doubt he’ll be back tomorrow. His coat looked pretty nice and people with nice coats don’t last very long in this part of the world. I think I’m safe though. I bought a bunch of locks and the door is pretty thick so I don’t worry too much. When I get home I just eat a little and then lie in bed until I fall asleep listening to the gunshots and thinking of the homeless drunks burning and bleating in the darkness.
