him, a layer of soot and dust left a black crease on the sleeve of his white tee. He hated this place, hated every fucking inch of it.
He thought about Jake.
The map inside the terminal had been useful. Several times Jake had included his address in the blackout e-mails, inviting Sam to visit, to take him up on a place to stay for a few weeks. Nominally, the couch, but it was easy to crack Jake’s code. Jake had been playing straight too long. Jake was getting thirsty. And maybe Jake didn’t want to risk his career, his reputation, his girlfriend by trawling the gay clubs or cruising Grindr. Jake wanted take-out dick. No, delivery dick. Jake just wanted Sam to sleep on the couch. Yeah, right.
A quick look at the map showed Sam where he was and where, more or less, he thought Jake’s apartment ought to be. Less than a mile. And, not far from the apartment, the precinct station house where Jake had worked. In the Army, even though Sam hadn’t been infantry, he’d rucked a lot of miles. And after leaving Benning, Sam had walked more. He’d walked thirty-some days. Forty, when the weather was nice, when he knew he could hit the next town by nightfall, when he needed as much fresh air and open sky as he could take in. A mile, even in a city—what the fuck was one mile?
Well, he thought, taking those slow, deep breaths, hands tucked in his pockets because the shakes were going. Well, when you were too fucking overwhelmed to take a single fucking step, a mile started to look a lot longer.
He thought about taking a cab. Thought about how fucking ridiculous that was, and the sheer weight of his own scorn got him moving again. He pushed off, grimacing at the second neat, black crease on his white tee, and started walking.
Counting the blocks, the street numbers ticking down, Sam focused on things he could control: the movements of his body (well, more or less, no thanks to the fucking tremors), the rhythm of his breathing. But New York City hit him like a typhoon: horns blared; a woman jogged past with a stroller, bumping Sam from her path; ahead, a digital billboard flashed Dear Evan Hansen Critics’ Must-See over and over until Sam had the words burned on the back of his skull. Halfway through his count, he ducked into a pharmacy—Duane Reade, who the fuck had ever heard of that?—and pretended to look for razor blades until he could count twenty steady breaths.
On his second try, he did better. He caught the tempo of the bodies on the sidewalk. He was a fast walker, tall, taking long strides with long legs, and this time he was the one passing people—although one skinny lady with her hair up in locs, probably two feet shorter than him, shot past like a burning arrow, and Sam had to admit he didn’t stand a chance. He turned on Forty-Ninth, jogging the last half of the crosswalk as a taxi blatted at him and tried to cut him off. Sam gave him the finger; every inch of his body prickled with adrenaline, threat response, the need to unholster the M9 he had under his arm. When he came up on the sidewalk, he met eyes with a woman who had to be eighty, built like a Star Destroyer and wearing a motley of animal-print spandex. She gazed at him with disgust and then flicked her hand under chin. Why would anybody live here, Sam wondered. Why didn’t they all run away screaming?
Two more blocks. They were semidecent, which for Sam meant relatively less crowded. One had active construction proceeding, so Sam had to detour off the sidewalk and follow a plywood maze under metal scaffolding. And the last one had what Sam thought might be intended to pass as a playground: asphalt and basketball hoops, low cement walls with chain fencing, orange-and-white plastic traffic dividers snugged up against the walls like they were in storage. Two teenagers were playing basketball. One of them, obviously older, dunked the ball and came after the other kid, shouting down into his face.
Fuck. Men everywhere, every age, were always spitting the same fucking macho bullshit. Sam never thought about women, but maybe he needed a change just so he could have a fucking conversation.
Sam wandered two more blocks, cutting up, back, up again, until he spotted the massive brick-and-stone building of the station