Lowboy by John Wray Read Free Book Online

backdrop and the props, and though the play was a good one he couldn’t forget about the ropes and pulleys. You should have expected this to happen, he said to himself. You did expect it. But the truth was that he hadn’t expected it so soon, not yet, and he felt hollow and incapable and sick.
    A cigarette wrapper skittered up the platform, dancing past the bench coquettishly: a bashful totem. A harbinger. He pressed his face against his legs and panted.
    To keep himself calm he considered his coming surrender. There were moments when he doubted that he’d be able, in the end, to answer his calling, when the thought of a naked body was enough to make him retch, and there were other moments when there was nothing else he wanted. Who will I find? he thought, touching his skull to his knees. Who will I find around here? He thought of the girl on the train with the Sikh, the music lover, and remembered the way she’d turned to him and smiled. Her long bangs, her distracted-ness, her beautiful nailbitten fingers. He stared out between his legs toward the dark neglected terminus of the platform, where the dunce had been standing, and wondered whether it could happen there. If I found somebody crazy, he thought, and nearly laughed out loud. If I found somebody crazy enough it could.
       
    Already he felt the wave of doubt receding. Sometimes it passed through him hurriedly, haughty and careless, as if to show how little he was worth. Other times it capsized him completely. Not today however. His eyes followed the tracks into the dark. The empty water-lecked channel where only the trains resided. The acidic yellow of the safety stripe. Behind the third rail a rat was lying splayed on its belly, twitching contentedly, drinking coffee out of a battered paper cup.

    “Here’s to a wonderful night together,” Lowboy said, raising an imaginary glass.
       
    As he sat there with his head tipped low, watching the rat watching him, sounds carried diffusely up the platform. Two pairs of footsteps or one pair reflected. Voices rushed in behind: silvery voices with no feeling in them. Voices like static on an old TV set.
    “Smells like bodies down here.”
    “Smells like people, actually. Maybe you’ve never met any.”
    “Do me a favor.” A loose drawn-out sigh. “Next time I talk you out of a cab, just set me on fire and walk away. Will you do that?”
       
    No sound after that but the chirping of the automatic turnstiles. The footsteps had stopped a few feet from his bench. He wouldn’t have raised his head for anything in the world. The voices sounded just like Skull & Bones.
    “How was London, by the way? I’ve never been.”
    “London was fine. We went to this one place. You know the place.” A pause. “The Tower .” Another pause, more lazy than the first. “There really are a lot of people there.”
    Lowboy made disgusted faces at the floor. Skull & Bones had never been to London: he knew that for a fact. He became aware of a muffled hacking sound, like a kitten gagging on a burl of fur. The voices had dimmed now, turned soft and discreet, as though they were discussing matters of the heart.
    “ Indians in London, am I right?”
    “Indians and Pakistanis. But it’s cleaner, believe it or not. Less panhandlers.”
    “Panhandlers.” Another pause. “They think this city belongs to them.”
    “I’d always thought it did.”
    “It doesn’t, actually. It belongs to me.”

    I’ll hop the tracks, thought Lowboy, biting down on the knuckle of his thumb. If they don’t shut up I’ll hop them. I’ll go now.
    Just then the uptown B arrived and saved him. Its ghost blew into the station first, a tunnelshaped clot of air the exact length of the train behind it, hot from its own great compression and speed, whipping the litter up into a cloud. He opened his mouth to taste it on the air. The cigarette wrapper spiraled upward, fluttering like a startled bird, and for the first time he noticed the zebra-striped