D A Novel (George Right) - By George Right Page 0,13

looked around with increasing confusion. If he, indeed, had gotten out from City Hall station, even through some closed and abandoned exit, nearby there should be New York City Hall itself, and a courthouse, and the bulk of the Municipal Building topped with a gold statue to the northeast of them, and to the west–Broadway with the Woolworth Building. With such recognizable reference points, it is impossible to lose one's way. However, Tony did not see anything familiar.

In the gloom directly before him, impassable thickets sprawled. Thick, curved, knotty branches stuck out extensively in a hilly-clumsy place disfigured by ugly fissured outgrowths. Naked branches, similar to picked bones, intertwined at inconceivable angles, squeezing tree trunks in suffocating embraces like monsters' tentacles tightly linked in a last painful agony. Here and there, hung down dirty rotten tatters of exfoliated bark and long shreds of polyethylene (probably blown onto branches by the wind). But nowhere, despite the early autumn, was a single leaf.

Never in all his life had Tony seen such ugly plants. They resembled not at all the numerous trees surrounding City Hall. And, nevertheless, these terrible thickets were enclosed by a high and strong metal fence (also nothing like City Hall Park's low fence); however, branches had intertwined with it long ago and sprouted through it. In some places, corroded fence rods were bent and broken under pressure from the branches. In other places, the rods had grown into the wood, piercing thick branches and curved trunks, bulging them like bursting abscesses and strengthening the impression of a deadly fight without winners. If there were any buildings behind all this mess, it was impossible to distinguish them in darkness through the interlacing of branches. Tony felt almost physical discomfort from this view–it resembled everted guts stricken with cancer with plural metastasizes. Trembling with cold (and, probably, not only with cold), Logan hastily walked along the fence to the left–as he believed, to the west.

But the narrow street where he soon found himself resembled Broadway as little as these terrible dead tangles resembled City Hall Park. There were no skyscrapers on this street. Only gloomy brick houses like those built in city slums before the Second World War–or maybe even before the First. Somber, ugly dark cubes–Tony knew that even in daylight their walls would look dirty brown–six or eight floors, without any decoration or plaster, and with rusty zigzags of fire escape stairs hanging outside. Some windows gaped with broken glass or had been boarded up with plywood; in none of them was there a single spark of light. The street, as far as the eye could see, was absolutely empty, without either cars or pedestrians. But even the dark could not hide how much garbage was on the street. Not only on the sidewalks, but on the trafficway as well, as if nobody had driven here for a long time. Tony shuddered, nearly stepping on a dead pigeon. The carcass was almost decayed and from under the tousled feathers small bones gleamed whitely.

What area is it? The boondocks of Harlem or Bronx? How he could be there if just recently he was on DeKalb Avenue in Brooklyn? And City Hall Station... no matter how it looks, there is only one City Hall in New York and it is in lower Manhattan!

Perhaps something is wrong with his mind? Hallucinations? Memory blackouts? He definitely didn't want to believe in anything like this, but, after all, these events should have an explanation! What time is it now, by the way? Perhaps almost daybreak already? Tony looked at his watch but could not see the hands in the darkness. The cellphone! It shows time, too! And, by the way, it's not a bad idea to make a call... only to what number? There was probably no lawful reason to call 911 and he did not remember any phone numbers to call a taxi.

Nevertheless, he reached into his pocket and, having darted a glance around–the last thing he wanted would be the arrival of any thugs interested in his cellphone, an expensive folding model–he pulled out the device. He unfolded the phone, woke it up by pressing a button, and looked at its right corner, where the time was displayed... 12:00 a.m.

What? It can't be. He had sat down in that devil's train nearly at 1 a.m. and now it's probably not less than two... Anyway, definitely not midnight.

Had he, without noticing it, spent almost a day underground?

No, that's impossible. How could he–without eating,