You walk north from the diner on Ninth. 19:40. Weekday evening.
You do not go home.
You have four hours before Carmen and you do not have anywhere to be and you are carrying a bag you cannot set down.
You walk the Village the way you have walked it for three years. East on Fourteenth. The wide pavement lets you see who is behind you. Then south on Fifth. Past the cafe on Eleventh with the dog that is always at the window and the dog is at the window. Past the bookstore that has been closing for five years and is still open. Past the restaurant with the red awning where you ate with your mother the week you moved down, when she paid and did not let you see the check.
For one block you walk without anyone watching you. No coat-man. No face you recognize. The bag on your shoulder is just a bag. Your feet are just feet. A man walks past with a guitar case and the case is old. The dog at the window watches.
You are not going to have this block again.
The light changes.
The air smells of new leaves and the bakery on Sullivan. You pass the bakery. A girl is closing up. She is wiping the counter. Her hair is in a knot.
She is the age you were when you moved down.
You walk.
You know which bodegas have stockroom doors onto the next street. You learned that your first winter down here, trying to lose a man who followed you off the uptown 6 without knowing you had noticed him follow.
Washington Square at 20:10. The fountain is on today. The fountain was off yesterday at 3:47. Twenty thousand people are buried under the square. You stand at the south edge. Two girls are playing chess with old men. The jazz trio is on the east side. Cassandra Wilson's "Tupelo Honey." A child is crying because a balloon went.
Keep your face still.
The survival voice activates because a man on the north side of the fountain is not moving the way men near fountains move. You do not look at him. You walk west into MacDougal.
You do not look back to see if he follows.
You know he does.
You are walking faster now than you were three blocks ago.
You did not choose to.
MacDougal. Then Minetta Street because Minetta Street curves and a man who follows you past the bend has to commit. He does not follow you past the bend.
Which means he is not alone.
Which means the other one is somewhere ahead.
You take Bleecker east, staying close to the buildings.
20:49.
The restaurant is closed for the night hour — between the dinner rush and the late set. The lights are low. The faces along the bar are a catalogue you have worked three years to learn. One of them reads at the end of the bar. The book does not change. He nods when you bring the bread; you nod back. Two of them have been saying the same sentence to each other every month for a year. You do not need to hear it tonight to know it.
The bar's playlist is Carmen's. Twenty years of evenings choosing what to put on. You first heard Nick Cave at this bar in February — a slow piano, a voice you did not know, Carmen at the speaker-volume turning it up half a notch. You did not ask.
The track-list at the restaurant has been the same for three years otherwise — Reich and Glass through the dinner-rush, Górecki and late Coltrane after midnight, Mary Lou Williams on Tuesdays. You know the pieces by their first three bars now.
There was a year sophomore year you went to Smalls every Wednesday and to the Vanguard whenever there was twenty dollars in the apron. He was a music major; he did not last past spring. The music outlasted him.
You do not go in.
You go past.
You keep walking east toward Bowery.
The plan was eleven. The plan was back door, dumpster, Carmen. You have two hours and ten minutes.
You cannot go home. You cannot go to the apartment. Your mother has arrived or has not arrived and either way the apartment is a known address. Alina told her to come. The pursuers know where Alina lives because Alina lives where you live.
You walk.
Men in doorways. A woman selling loose cigarettes. A restaurant supply store with its lights off, a steel shutter half down. The sweetness of weed over garbage, the sour of last night's beer from bar sidewalks not yet washed.
You go south.
Past Bond, past Great Jones.
You eat a slice of pizza standing up at a window. The man behind the counter is from somewhere. He does not ask where you are from. He wipes the counter. He calls something over his shoulder in a language you do not know to a woman in the back and the woman laughs.
The slice is five dollars. You leave a twenty.
21:32.
You are on Elizabeth. A text comes through.
You do not read it.
Every buzz is a hand at your waist. You take the phone out, look at the screen, put it back.
Your mother.
You do not read it.
21:47.
You are standing in a doorway on Rivington watching the street for three minutes and then five and then seven.
Nothing. A cab. A delivery boy on an electric bike. A woman walking a small dog wearing a sweater.
You step out of the doorway.
You walk.
22:14.
The Bowery again, moving north. The second man — the one who was ahead, not behind — is now behind. You do not know when he moved. You know because the prickle at your neck you learned at fifteen is prickling.
You turn west on Prince.
He turns. You catch it at the edge of your vision, half a second late — not a definite figure, just a shape that moves when you move.
You turn south on Lafayette. You count to three.
He is still there.
He is not trying to hide that he is following you now.
Which means the plan has shifted.
Keep your face still.
The survival voice, loud.
You walk into the first bodega you pass, a bodega you do not know, because bodegas have a back door that gives onto a service corridor that gives onto the next street.
The man behind the register is eighteen. He is watching a phone. You walk straight past him toward the cooler.
You do not go to the cooler.
You go past the cooler to the stockroom.
The stockroom has a steel door that gives onto Crosby.
You push the bar.
You are on Crosby. He does not yet know you took the back.
You run.
Not hard. Fast walk. The running posture of someone who has somewhere to be and is not scared. Sneakers on pavement. Breath even. The bag steady on your shoulder.
You run north on Crosby because Crosby empties into Bleecker three blocks up.
You are back in the restaurant's territory.
22:37.
You are two blocks east of the restaurant, standing in the shadow between two parked vans. The restaurant's rear alley is forty feet ahead of you. The dumpster is against the brick wall of the building opposite. Carmen will be there at eleven.
You have twenty-three minutes.
You are shaking.
Not the shake of this morning. A different shake. The shake of a body that has been running on coffee and a slice and adrenaline for six hours.
You crouch.
You wait.
A rat crosses the alley from left to right. It does not hurry. It crosses because the alley is a place where rats cross.
22:54.
The back door of the restaurant opens. Light. The sound of a kitchen — a radio, a pan, someone shouting at someone in Spanish about parsley. On the radio Tom Waits is somewhere into "Tom Traubert's Blues." Waltzing Matilda. The door closes.
Carmen comes out.
She is carrying a black trash bag in her left hand. She is not carrying anything in her right. She walks to the dumpster. She lifts the lid. She swings the bag in. She closes the lid.
She does not look toward the vans.
She takes a pack of cigarettes out of her apron pocket. She lights one. She smokes.
She is early.
You wait.
You do not move.
Carmen smokes the cigarette down to the filter. Her knee is bothering her tonight. It is bothering her for the third night this week. She drops the cigarette. She steps on it.
She walks three steps toward the vans.
She stops.
"Come on, Vera."
You come.
She does not hug you. She does not touch you. She looks at you once, up and down, and then she looks away, back at the restaurant door.
"Jacket's inside. Your jacket from Wednesday. I washed it."
"Thank you."
"Not for me to do that. I did it. Don't thank me for it."
"Okay."
She reaches under her apron and comes out with an envelope. Not new. Not thick. Business-size, creased, the kind that lives in a pocket for days.
"From Joe."
"Joe."
"Joe from the bar. The one who reads. He said give this to you if you came."
"He's been at the bar since before I hired you. Drinks the same thing. Tips in cash. Think about what he has heard."
"What is it."
"I didn't open it."
She holds it out. You take it.
Her hand is warm.
You go to put the envelope away. Your fingers do not open. You wait. You put your other hand on top of the first. The fingers release.
"Carmen —"
"Don't."
"— I don't know when I'm coming back."
"I know."
"I don't know if I am."
"I know."
She looks at you for the first time.
Her eyes are not wet. Her eyes are the eyes of a woman who has watched a lot of girls come and go through her kitchen and has learned not to cry.
"You were a good one, Vera. Go."
The envelope is in your hand.
You do not open it.
You do not hug her.
You turn.
The sound.
The sound is a car door closing on Bleecker.
Carmen hears it before you do. She straightens. She looks toward the alley mouth.
"Go, Vera. Go now. The other way."
You run.
You run through the alley, fast. The envelope in your fist. The bag on your shoulder. The jacket from Wednesday forgotten — you will not go back for it.
Behind you, the back door of the restaurant opens again. A man's voice. Not Spanish. Not the kitchen's.
Carmen's voice: "Can I help you."
The man's voice: "Looking for someone."
Carmen: "Try the front."
The man: "She came out the back."
Carmen: "Nobody came out the back but me."
You are at the end of the alley.
The alley ends on Cornelia. Small street, one block, parallel to Bleecker on the north side. The small streets are the ones the pursuers do not know as well as you do.
You run west. Cornelia to Sixth.
The envelope is in your left hand.
The bag is on your right shoulder.
The avenue is a river of lights.
You do not know where you are going.
You know where the next train is.
You run past a couple standing on the corner of Sixth and Bleecker arguing about which direction the restaurant is. The woman is pointing one way. The man is pointing the other. Neither of them sees you.
You run.
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