Chapter 23
Deep in the logical part of her brain that sometimes surfaced to give good advice, Rai may have known that finding Z in a city of 10 million people would be impossible, but as was often the case, she stubbornly dismissed that logic. She would find Z, heal him — first body, then soul, just like she had done before — and then they would go back to what they had always done. Well, maybe off the street, because she was getting tired of that, but go back to being old fashioned intellectuals, ineffectual revolutionaries, reading and arguing incessantly in the city’s parks.
As she pushed through the Ramble, searching for campsites they had abandoned months before, she dwelt on “ineffectual,” another of those words that rolled off the tongue with a strange, vague pleasure. The problem had begun when Z began to think that he could actually accomplish something. That had made him violent and crazy. But their happiness came from knowing the right answer and knowing that they could never do anything about it. Superiority and cynicism. A great combination, and they’d lost it.
None of the old campsites showed any sign of her friend. Discarded cans of beans and chili suggested that someone had been there, but Z never littered like that.
By the time she had emerged onto 5th Avenue, Rai had convinced herself that ineffectual cynicism was the meaning of life, and that she needed to find Z so that she could beat all of the passion and hope out of him. That’s what Pechorin would have done, or Bazarov, or Dmitry Karamazov. That thought turned her mind to Anna, and she became sympathetic to passion once again…
“Damn it, God, why couldn’t you make this fucking easier?” she shouted, to the clear distress of tourists walking up to the Met.
Z wasn’t sitting by the sculptures across from the Plaza Hotel, where he often had read his revolutionary tracts and spit vaguely in the direction of the Trump towers. He wasn’t in any of the atria (Rai congratulated herself on the correct use of the Latin plural) along Madison in the 50s. Nor was he in the Rose Reading Room, where Rai sat for a while to stare at the clouds. In the open stacks of the branch library across the street, she even paged through the biographies of Che and Trotsky where he had left her messages last summer.
On page 69 — an inevitable and unfortunate touch, she thought — she found the old message: “Bryant Park, noon, Saturday,” but even if she hadn’t remembered that long week when Z disappeared with a pretty I-banker, who gave him all the acid he wanted in exchange for eating her out when she came home from work at midnight, the faded pencil showed how long ago Z had left the note. In the other book, some conscientious reader or librarian had erased Z’s ancient message.
She didn’t really expect to see Z in Bryant Park, in spite of a warm afternoon that would have given him an excuse to show off his pecs, but she still felt a twinge of disappointment when she failed to see him in the streaks of sun that penetrated the skyscrapers from the west. He was hurt and she still couldn’t find him. How many times had she saved his ass from drugs or gangsters or his own idiocy? She wasn’t going to fuck up eighteen months of work just because he didn’t want to be found.
Not only was Z not at The Place, no one had seen him for days. Nurse Martinez hadn’t patched him up, and Tanya insisted that he hadn’t come in the front door since that morning when she found the bomb.
“How did he look then?” Rai wished she could have kept the fear and worry out of her voice.
“Like Z, I guess. Real intense, but bored at the same time. He was real eager that you get that note, though. What was in it?”
“Politics.”
Tanya laughed, but Rai didn’t join her. She had already pushed through the front door.
In the bat cave, where her intense questioning of Toker and Petey blinded her to the angry eyes of a handful of gangstas, she remembered the quote on the wall across from The Place. “If you see him, just tell him to find me!” she interrupted, and sprinted across 46th, oblivious to traffic. She ran to the quote and stared at it.
Refuting Z was far from her mind. She needed to find him. How could she make him come back? Some line from Henry Miller or Anïas Nin to compliment the sexual prowess she’d insulted? Except that she’d never read those books, and didn’t have the time to go find them. Perhaps a good line from Adorno or Horkheimer, something to flatter him that he’d won her over…
In the end, she chose another line she remembered from Sunday school.
“If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.”
– Gospel of Matthew
Forgiveness, she thought. That’s what Z needed to feel, the knowledge that she still loved him, wanted his friendship. And the Bible — it even showed that she’d forgiven him for that awful insult from John’s passion narrative. He’d see that, and he’d seek her out.
Yazmín signaled enthusiastically for Rai when she walked into the common room at the Place. “Nice duds, babe. Did I do a good job on you.”
Rai looked at her, confused, and then remembered the punky outfit that Yazmín had chosen for her — it had begun to feel so comfortable that she didn’t remember it was a disguise. Or perhaps, she had enough real real stuff on her mind that she didn’t have time to worry about clothes. “Yeah, thanks,” she mumbled.
“Hey, so you wanna see a movie or something? I feel like I gotta get outta this fucking rut, y’know? Place, 34th Street, fleabag crackhouse…”
“You could move in with Toker and Petey.”
“That squat they got over on 9th? You know the price they’d charge me for that. I don’t even wanna fuck for money, so why the fuck’d I wanna fuck for fun?” She winced as her tongue twisted. “But whatever. I got twenty bucks and I wanna see a movie. You gonna come, or I gonna have to blow the rest on popcorn?”
Rai didn’t remember the last time she’d been to a movie theater — not just the videos they showed from time to time at the Place, or the little screen at the MoMA on free Friday nights, but a real movie. Maybe it would be entertaining. Maybe it would get her mind off Z. Maybe… “I can’t. Z’s lost. Prob’ly hurt. And I gotta find him.”
“You’s better off with that cuntlicker a longass way away, girl.”
“He needs help. Like, serio. This time I think he’s really fucked himself up.” She told her about the bomb across from the Place, the drops of blood on the sidewalk.
“You gotta get your head fucking screwed on right, yo. That boy can take of his scarfaced self.”
“He can’t. That’s my point. He’s gonna kill himself, or get himself thrown in jail, or I don’t fucking know what, just ‘cause I’m not looking for him hard enough.” Rai was having to struggle to fight back tears. She wasn’t used to these emotions.
Yazmín looked at Rai with unexpected seriousness. “You made of something, girl. He’s whack, but you stick with his black ass. I admire that.” She spoke more softly. “I just wish you’d find someone worth saving.”
“So you see why I gotta find him?” Rai had missed, or failed to understand, Yazmín’s quiet commentary. “I’m looking everywhere, and he’s not around. He doesn’t even come here to eat. It’s like he’s trying to avoid me.”
“Then you’re sure as fuck not gonna find him tonight. C’mon. Let’s go see a flick.” She took Rai’s hand and squeezed it, almost tenderly. “We’ll go see something real sexy, or real scary. Whatever you want.”
It took another half hour of talking and a heavy dinner in her stomach before Rai finally agreed. Maybe she needed to chill out. Z would find her, or she would find him, and she’d fix him, and then they’d go off to Africa and… something. She didn’t ever let her fantasies go that far, because details hurt too much. Where was he?
Yazmín read her obsession well, and would not allow Rai to leave the theater until she agreed to a date at the MoMA that Friday night.
Over the next several days, Z did not seek her out. Nor could she find him, even as her quest became maniacal. The north end of Central Park, the Cloisters, the quads at Colombia, Washington Square Park, Wagner Park, the Ferry, even — once — a trip over to Prospect Park in Brooklyn.
She did, however, find signs of him. Later, she could not even describe the feeling of relief when she saw a line of graffiti under hers on 46th Street. Every muscle in her body had relaxed, almost dropping her into a faint, there on the sidewalk.
“A spectre is haunting Europe, the spectre of communism.”
– Karl Marx
For the next fifteen minutes, she couldn’t even think about the fact that the quote made no sense. But after she had lost a pair of cops in the thick crowds of Times Square — much easier there than on Lafayette — she began to wonder what it meant. In the basement of Virgin Records, listening to the newest in Algerian hip-hop, she couldn’t figure it out. Marx after Matthew, a spectre after forgiveness. Was it a rejection of her offer of Christian charity? Did he think she was advocating pacifism again, or patronizing him? Was he the spectre? Was New York Europe? It made no sense.
Without an east answer, he mind wandered. A spectre — wasn’t that the name of the evil cartel in the Bond movies? Bond was all narrative, all sex and violence without meaning at all. Was that the message? Or did Z see himself as a sort of Bond villain? She would never pass for a Bond girl, she knew, with her dark hair and small breasts… no, that was a dead end. And Europe… was he trying to play the race card, that blacks and hispanics and asians would rise up against the children of Europe? But that made no sense, either.
Europe, Europa — he’d quoted that silly line from Heraclitus, so maybe it was about Greek mythology? The rape of Europa? What was that about? She remembered a painting from some museum, a naked woman on the back of a bull… was this another threat?
The relief she felt at learning he was alive had dissolved in a sea of confusion. As always, her solution was peripatetic: she needed to walk. She paced through Times Square, looking at the huge and meaningless ads that had first inspired this graffiti philosophy campaign, at the pubescent girls gathered outside the MTV studios, at the tourists flowing along the sidewalks.
The MoMA, she thought. Maybe he’s left another clue there. Maybe that would explain what he was trying to say, or tell her where to find him, or assure her that there was real hope. She stretched her legs along 42nd, then rushed up 6th.
Nothing was there, only the long list of quotes she and Z had exchanged over the last several days.
“He alone is worthy of life and freedom
who each day does battle for them anew.”
-Göthe
“You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.”
-Gospel of John
“And Pilate said to the Jews, ‘Here is your king.’ They cried out, ‘Crucify him! We have no King but the Emperor.’”
St. John 19:14-15
“Only theft can now save property, only perjury, religion, only bastardy, the family, only disorder, order.”
-Karl Marx
Nervously, she looked around her, but then she remembered her courage. No need to shit her pants because of cops. She could always get away from them. She was too fast for them, too sharp, too well disguised. She felt her back straighten with that thought, and it felt good.
She thought for quite some time, allowing the crowd to flow around her, but no one’s words came to mind, none that conveyed the forgiveness and worry and hope and love and everything else she felt for Z. Or maybe she didn’t feel it — but she needed him to think that she felt it. If that’s what it took to save him, she’d write anything. What she needed was a complete break, something that would end the silly, erudite game they were playing. She moved five feet to the left, so her writing wouldn’t fall under the long text that scrolled down the wall.
She didn’t even introduce the word with the usual quotation mark.
Z. Come back. I need you.
– me
That was exactly the thing, she thought. Flatter his vanity with her need, letting him ignore the fact that he needed her. If that’s what it took, she’d act humble. Act, she reminded herself.
She left the same message by the quotes across from the Place, then told Tanya to tell Z to find her. Then she hopped on a downtown N-R and got off at Prince. With a note everywhere, there would be no way he would miss her meaning.
Recently, the cops had been most active by the battleground of quotes on Lafayette, so she approached the garage and the Zapatista mural with some trepidation. No, with care, she corrected herself. She was not scared.
She hid herself in the crush of foot traffic as she looked toward the long column of graffiti; it now stretched from six feet high, where Z had scribbled the quote by Heraclitus, almost to the ground.
“War is common; strife is right, and all things happen by strife and necessity.”
-Heraclitus
“Resist not evil.”
-Leo Tolstoy
“The ends justify the means.”
-Machiavelli
“For the proletarian, the Truth is the weapon that brings victory.”
-Georg Lukacs
Though she wondered if Z had added another quote in the days since she’d last been here, from her angle and distance, Rai couldn’t tell, so she snuck several steps out of the crowd into the empty lot. Nothing on the wall, but she did see something on the ground, in white paint… Still careful, she looked around herself before she approached, and saw two cops in the door of a diner across the avenue. Afraid the cops might see her away from the human camouflage, she slithered toward Prince and stood with two dozen commuters waiting for the light to change.
Though she could not see the cops inside the stoop, she could see the smoke of a cigarette. They stood on the other side of the street from the quotes, with a good view of anyone who walked along the opposite sidewalk. Rai mentally conjured a group of commuters who all walked along Lafayette, where she could hide herself long enough to see what was written there, or even to scribble a response, but people only came down the street in ones and twos. Unfortunately, this new outfit did not blend into the crowd. Not at all.
How had Z written the quote there? she wondered. For the last several days, any time she’d come to this corner, cops had patrolled it. Probably in the middle of the night. Z would need at least a minute to paint the long quote she could barely make out on the sidewalk. How could he stay out of police eyes? She stared longingly at the splash of white on the ground.
Suddenly, the answer occurred to her. He had written on the sidewalk; the rest of the argument occurred on the walls, where space still remained to scribble a graffito. Why on the ground? Because from where the cops stood, they couldn’t see that low. By crawling close to the cars, he would have stayed out of their sight.
Urgently, Rai slid over to the cars in the garage’s lot, then dropped to her knees. Crawling as close to the tires as she could, she moved slowly toward the graffito, trying to ignore the stares of pedestrians walking past her. Within a minute, the splash of white had turned into a barely legible quote.
“The philosophers are dealing in shades, while we who live and breathe know truth.”
-William James
Another quote by William James, she thought. She never even remembered Z with a book by the American philosopher in his hand. At one time he’d even said that he refused to read anything by “any fucking American imperialist.”
“Young lady, may I speak to you?”
Rai didn’t even turn to see who was speaking to her; from the feigned politesse in his voice, she knew it was a cop. Crouched down to hide behind the cars, her position was like a sprinter in the blocks, so without a wasted motion, she dashed back onto Lafayette. She heard the pounding feet of one cop behind her, then the voice of the other speaking breathlessly into his radio. “Suspect spotted, running South on Lafayette. We are in pursuit.” Rai wished she’d looked more carefully at the patrol officers. Were they the fit guys who had chased her before? Or the typical donut chompers she could outrun?
The sound of panting and of heavy shoes on the sidewalk slowly faded. Perhaps the cops were out of shape. She dared a quick glance behind her, and indeed they had fallen behind as she dodged foot traffic. A heavy, older white man and a younger black guy; the younger one looked fit, but his face winced with pain, and Rai noticed a white bandage wrapped around his left hand and arm. Rai quickly thanked God for whoever had hit him or bitten him. The wound was slowing him down.
At Spring, she feinted left into the street, then dashed right. A mistake, she realized too late. The street was almost empty and the cops could spot her easily. She sprinted even faster, then dodged left onto Broadway. Crowds of commuters made it difficult to run, so she dashed into the street, between parked cars and oncoming traffic. A glimpse behind her showed that the cops were now gaining as pedestrians moved aside to let them pass. Her heart began to beat even more wildly. Her energy was flagging; her poor diet might permit a quick sprint, but this much running had drained her last store of calories. She couldn’t let them catch her; in a brief lull in traffic, she sprinted across the street.
The flow of cars had stranded the cops on the other side of the Avenue, so before she doubled over, gasping for breath, Rai managed to give them the finger. Yet before she had time to rejoice in her victory, a cop car roared down the street and stopped just behind her. Mustering the last of her strength, she sprinted downtown again, ignoring the commands to stop. She thought she might have seen the black of a gun, but she knew they wouldn’t shoot her. Cops in New York were in enough trouble without shooting little girl graffiti philosophers.
She crossed street after street at a full sprint, ignoring traffic and lights. She could feel the new cops catching up. They were fresh. She needed to get away now. She dodged through a knot of pedestrians, knocking the shopping bags from a man’s hands and spilling coffee on a woman, then glanced around. The cops were no more than twenty feet away.
The opening to the subway yawned before her, disgorging a crowd of commuters. She pushed through them, not caring what damage her elbows and knees might do. With curses and screams, the crowd parted, and she fell down the steps. A local train stood on the platform. The beep of closing door sounded. Rai leapt the turnstile like a hurdle and threw herself in the closing doors, held barely open by the crush of people. The door slid shut behind her and the train roared away. Struggling against the tired mass of people in the hot car, she turned back, hoping to reward the cops with a rude gesture, but she did not see them before the train slid into the black tunnel.
Exhausted and breathless, Rai was glad for the press of bodies around her; they kept her from falling to the floor. She knew she needed food and water and a place to rest, but she didn’t know where would be safe. The Place, she thought. The cops didn’t seem to know she went there. She seemed to be on an uptown N, and if she remembered the stops right, that would take her right to Times Square.
