By Nick Iorio
Contributing Writer
Published: December 10, 2009
Ryan Velet walked silently through the streets of New York as a cold, hard rain fell. He longed for human touch; his wife, Samantha, was waiting in Brooklyn. He ducked under an awning and lit a cigarette. A Latino man in an imported suit gnawed at his peripherals. He smelled like cigarettes, tar and nicotine. The Strychnine Man. And for a moment, he thought he might kill him.
He bought a ticket from a woman behind a screen at the train station.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Into Brooklyn.”
She asked him for eight dollars, but he said nothing.
“What is your name?” she asked.
“My name is Ryan.”
“Ryan. You owe me eight dollars.”
The lights beamed brightly over a long and shadowed station, illuminating shapes and figures below. The air whisted and screeched with the sounds of distant cars and people. Ryan’s coat ballooned, as if he were shedding and growing a backbone. He could not see the Strychnine Man, but that did not mean he wasn’t lurking behind a bench, or beneath the tracks by the rails. If he leaped out, Ryan would stab him in the face, or throw him onto the tracks below.
“Fifteen years ago. Ah, New York,” he said.
On a bench, he picked his fingernails with the edges of a newspaper. His thoughts fluttered, refusing to collate into some reasonable pattern. The Strychnine Man played music on his guitar for indifferent travelers. He pushed a child’s stroller, adjusted his breasts, gossiped to girlfriends over the phone.
“Do you have a cigarette?” someone asked.
A young woman. Blonde. European.
“Yes, for your name,” Ryan said.
“Suzanne.”
Ryan boarded the train and pushed to the back, away from the other passengers. Two dark, tattooed young men boarded the train, carrying cases and eyes. They seemed to measure up the travelers, evaluating their careers, and status. As they spoke, Ryan watched with curiosity.
“Ladies and gentlemen. Today, we have a very big surprise for you,” the man said.
“For your entertainment, my associate and I will put on a display of strength and agility.”
The smaller one took out a boom-box and played frenetic dance music, shaking his arms and feet to loosen his joints. The other took a black bandanna and wrapped it around his head, then faced his associate. A pause, and then the car erupted. A flurry of fluid human limbs followed the movements of the train, crossing and pulling bodies up the tracks, down long old poles, over the heads of the passengers and the conductor. They vaulted dangerously into the air, turned on small wrists and forearms, shouting hurried instructions.
A young couple at the back of the car bobbed their heads and danced, incandescent and vigorous. The older travelers ignored the show, their heads buried in newspapers and novels. And when it was over, Ryan knew exactly what was coming next.
“If you give what you can spare, we would appreciate it. Thank you.”
The young couple clapped, and so did a few others who realized it was over. Ryan beckoned for the young men.
“Did you enjoy the show?” one asked.
“I did.” he said, slipping him a twenty. “Forget about the other people. Sleeping.”
They thanked him and got off at the next stop.
“I dream of dark doting devils. Spacemen, Cincinnatus.”
He surveyed the car. Nobody. He shut his eyes and listened to the movement of the machine.
He knew he had to lose one to restore the other. To change—remove the outside influences. Every death marked a new birth, and vice versa. A new name? He already had one other. Do it again, and maybe this time Samantha wouldn’t recognize him. A slow gradation; but even a day could make him a different person. And after everything, New York was still a new city. His city.
He may have dozed a bit. The passing lights of the subway system highlighted intermittently each passenger but Ryan. They looked like caricatures, their faces oblong and dolorous. Time would struggle against them, leaving lines, scars and children. They ached for a place they never lived in, a life they used to have.
Ryan wanted something modern. A true break from history, and yet an aphorism of the past.
“Who weeps for the CD player? Advances keep making things smaller. Forty-year-old cars still do the same thing as the Civic. The LP still sounds better than anything that came after it. Of course the foundation still looks good; it’s what we base our principals on,” Ryan said.
The train came to a halt and Ryan got off. His first instinct was to check if he was being followed. He wondered where the Strychnine man was. He found a convenience store and bought a new pack of cigarettes, tossing the wrapping onto the streets. He moved with new motivation deeper into Brooklyn, where he hoped Samantha waited.
