look like my son. I’m just doing for you what I’d want somebody doing for him. Right?”
Somehow Manny knows: Douglas’s son is dead.
“Right,” Manny says softly. “Thanks again.”
“Está bien, mano, no te preocupes.” He waves off then, and heads in the direction of the A/C/E train.
Manny watches him go, pocketing the card and thinking about three things. The first is the belated realization that the guy thought he was Puerto Rican. The second is that he might have to take Douglas up on that offer of a place to crash, especially if he doesn’t remember the address of his apartment in the next few minutes.
The third thing makes him look up at the Arrivals/Departures board, where he found the word that just became his new name. He didn’t tell Douglas the full name because these days only white women can have given names like that without getting laughed at. But even in modified form, this word—this identity—feels more true than anything else he’s ever claimed in his life. It is what he has been, without realizing. It is who he is. It is everything he’s ever needed to be.
The full word is Manhattan.
In the bathroom, under the sodium lights, he meets himself for the first time.
It’s a good face. He pretends to be extra meticulous about washing his hands—not a bad thing to be in a smelly Penn Station public bathroom—and turns his face from side to side, checking himself out from all angles. It’s clear why the dude figured him for Puerto Rican: his skin is yellowy brown, his hair kinky but loose-coiled enough that if he let it grow out, it might dangle. He could pass for Douglas’s son, maybe. (He’s not Puerto Rican, though. He remembers that much.) He’s dressed preppy: khakis, a button-down with rolled-up sleeves, and there’s a sports jacket draped over his bag, for when the AC is too high maybe since it’s summertime and probably ninety degrees outside. He looks like he’s somewhere in that ageless yawn between “not a kid anymore” and thirty, though probably toward the latter end of it to judge by a couple of random gray threads peppered along his hairline. Brown eyes behind dark-brown-rimmed glasses. The glasses make him look professorial. Sharp cheekbones, strong even features, smile lines developing around his mouth. He’s a good-looking guy. Generic all-American boy (nonwhite version), nicely nondescript.
Convenient, he thinks. Wondering why he thinks this makes him pause in mid-hand-wash, frowning.
Okay, no. He’s got enough weirdness to deal with right now. He grabs his suitcase to leave the bathroom. An older guy at the urinal stares at him all the way out.
At the top of the next escalator—this one leading up to Seventh Avenue—it happens a third time. This episode is better in some ways and worse in others. Because Manny feels the wave of… whatever it is… coming on as he reaches the top of the escalator, he has enough time to take his suitcase and get himself over to some kind of digital information kiosk so he’ll be out of the way while he leans against it and shudders. This time he doesn’t hallucinate—not at first—but he hurts, all of a sudden. It’s an awful, sick feeling, a spreading chill starting from a point low on his left flank. The sensation is familiar. He remembers it from the last time he got stabbed.
(Wait, he got stabbed?)
Frantically he pulls up his shirttail and looks at the place where the pain is worst, but there’s no blood. There’s nothing. The wound is all in his head. Or… somewhere else.
As if this is a summons, abruptly the New York that everyone sees flickers into the New York that only he can see. Actually, they’re both present, one lightly superpositioned over the other, and they flick back and forth a little before finally settling into a peculiar dual-boot of reality. Before Manny lie two Seventh Avenues. They’re easy to distinguish because they have different palettes and moods. In one, there are hundreds of people within view and dozens of cars and at least six chain stores that he recognizes. Normal New York. In the other, there are no people, and some unfathomable disaster has taken place. He doesn’t see bodies or anything ominous; there’s just no one around. It’s not clear anyone ever existed in this place. Maybe the buildings here just appeared, sprung forth fully formed from their foundations, instead of being built. Ditto the streets, which are empty and badly cracked. A traffic