The Things That Are Not There

Chapter OneLondon stepped off the uptown F train with a shudder of relief. He had
boarded the subway downtown in the Village where he lived to travel the
few miles uptown to his offi ce. The cars had crashed by him as always
when they arrived in the station, screeching harshly, noisily, each one littered
with papers and cans, smashed bottles, ruined food scraps, grease, mud, urine,
as well as the brown and yellow lumps that let him know the homeless had
camped in this train until it had been pulled into service that morning. He
would have preferred it if the Transit Authority workers who had assembled
the train earlier in the morning had hosed it out fi rst.“Well, hell,” he thought. “They’d already made it to work. I guess it didn’t
matter to them what the trains look like.”The dark, grafi ttied tunnels leading to the surface were overfl owing with
the same fi lth as the subway. As always. London took each breath in shallow,
open-mouthed gulps with the practiced ease of any longtime New Yorker, not
taking in a deep lungful until he’d passed through the excrement-stench of
the underworld and reached the pavement above.Coming out up above was no better, however. He hit the streets only to
fi nd a misting gray rain, a wet blur of soot-heavy water sliding down out of
the sky in constant dirty rivulets. Pulling his hat’s brim down and his jacket’s
collar up, he dodged the umbrella points stabbing at his ears and eyes, fi ghting
his way to his 31st Street offi ce.A business-suited careerwoman pried her way through the crowd toward
him with practiced arrogance, using an umbrella the size of a parachute as
her crowbar. London unconsciously prepared to dodge, the corner of his eye
catching one of the umbrella’s extended tines fl ashing for his face. Before he
could close with the woman, however, she collided with the man in front of
him, raking his face with her weapon.The man, maybe ten years London’s junior, screamed foully, swatting the
stinging edge away with his fi st, knocking the whole device out of her hands.
The umbrella snapped, collapsing under the trampling herd around them.
The woman screamed after him, letting him know in shrill, raging curses just
who she was and how important she considered herself.Some of the passersby laughed; some applauded. There were some to take
each side, hooting and barking, shoving at each other in the street, causing
more of a jam, more accidents, more bad temper. London took it all in with-out saying anything. What was there to say? It was just another dark, humid,
angry morning in Manhattan.Coming into the lobby of 132 West 31th Street, a building named decades
earlier as the Greeley Arcade, he joined the crowd milling in the lobby, waiting
for an elevator. They were all of a kind—burdened by umbrellas, or wet
hats and coats, or both, slopping their ways up and down the blackly wet tiles,
waiting in bad humor for just one of the solemn, vault-like sets of doors to
open.Everyone took their turn slamming the buttons on the wall until fi nally
one elevator returned to the lobby, allowing them all to jam in, body on body,
repeating their commutes in miniature all over again. At least, thought London,
the elevator fl oor wasn’t covered with garbage. And then he smiled—half
at the realization that it always helps one to get through the day by fi nding
something to be grateful for, half at the fact that it was not always an easy task
to do so in the...