The Colossus of New York by Colson Whitehead Read Free Book Online Page B

intersection and proclaim it your masterpiece. The critics love it, applaud your sense of color, wonder how you got the faces like that. An undercurrent of metropolitan alienation, says one. Like the best art, it was right in front of you all along but now you see it for the first time. Like the best art, it will outlast you.
    EVERYBODY remembers the city. Some people the city remembers. He is disappearing with every step. Who is he among that crowd. Pick him out among the great unwashed. Wouldn’t it be funny if the city actually gave a damn about you. If you made your mark despite odds, if all this step-taking was actually alms-giving and in one unlikely moment after all these years this place smiled upon you. It would happen like this, on an afternoon much like this, when you are between corners and it begins. Every building is somehow a place you have lived in, good times peer out from between curtains. All the streetlights have agreed to grant you speedy passage, safe passage. That would be something. He trips. His shoes are untied. This is Broadway after all and it will undo you bit by bit.
    WALK FARTHER. These things float up and what’s a boy to do. Have these mannequins no shame. What are they wearing, what’s up with their nipples and can I get a date. If only there were zoning laws to regulate strange thoughts. Keep them in other neighborhoods. Only after a few blocks is the sadism of the shoe designer evident. Shop in stores for things, shop on streets for people. You know what you want on your skin. What you choose will wear on you. Forget this block because there’s nothing in your size. There’s always another across the curb and maybe it will be better. Cross quickly and cross fingers, too, tell yourself, Maybe the next block will be better.
    THIS IS WHERE they shot that scene from that movie, you know, the one about that guy. The whole city is make-believe after all. Not famous, merely famous-looking, but he really works it. The real celebrities leave craned necks in their wake. I didn’t know he was so short. The uncensored director’s cut of his present state of mind would include multiple shootings, not one bludgeoning and untold car crashes. But he doesn’t have the budget and has to make do with cheap special effects, manic hornhonkers, and obscene gestures. One take unrehearsed mayhem, roll camera, roll sound. Around him people make their musicals, inducting extras from those around them, casting bit players in their big-budget technicolor extravaganzas. No duets, please, no one else to grandstand in the spotlight. The other pedestrains hit their marks, fall dead, and he’s the last man alive in a lonely city finally dramatized. Dance over prostrate bodies as music swells. Every car passing blares this season’s inescapable hit. That radio station and its payola choices. One car passes and another car or storefront picks up the baton to make sure the lyrics are always on your lips. What’s the name of this song, anyway.
    WALK TO DRIVE the point home with your feet as if making wine. From gutters, rats exclaim in gutter chorus; life is an argument with the world over time. If anyone were listening, it’d be worth the breath. People on cell phones realize they were cut off blocks ago and wonder if they have the courage to repeat their words. Mixed messages, lost signals. The masters of billboards shuffle messages and enticements, hector and hang above street level. Airbrushed anatomical parts. He receives word of a remarkable new treatment or other indispensable thing. Lacking a pen he tries to memorize the phone number, repeating it to himself in a singsong way until more vulgar ditties shoulder it aside, bassoon of buses rumbling to beat the light, high-heel castanets on cement, and soon all he has is two digits left and his own lost cause. If he had the money he would advertise his weakness on every billboard, along the brick walls of prewar buildings, and hire the squirrelly and deranged to