“What time is your flight?” I asked, as we crossed Broadway.

“Three o’clock.”

“Well mine is now,” I replied and dashed down the flight of subway stairs. An R train fat with people was sitting in the station making awkward attempts at sliding its doors shut. The beach boy was tumbling down behind.

“Wait a second,” he yelled. As he fumbled through his pockets for a token, I hurdled like a gazelle over the turnstile and shoved in just as the doors locked.

Looking through the plate glass on the subway door, 1 could see the panic in his eyes, like a lost child in the crowd rushing upstairs. I made rapid and meaningless gestures that tried to indicate concern and sorrow. As the train pulled out of the station, I regretted that this random guy had been made into my Exhibit “A” for Miguel. Slowly I made it back to Helmsley’s.

I wearily walked up the stairs to Helmsley’s apartment and found the door unlocked. When I opened it and flipped on a light, I wished I was back on the train. His house had been busted up. Clothing was tossed, dishes were broken. I noticed that some of his prized books had been damaged. No one was home. My first guess was that a struggle had occurred. Where the hell was Helmsley? Maybe he too had been brutalized.

His first German printing of Spengler’s The Decline of the West had declined into shreds. His nineteenth century folio facsimile of Shakespeare’s tragedies was tragic. His autographed first edition of Being and Nothingness was now the latter.

When most of the harvest was in, Helmsley walked through the door. Wordlessly he dropped onto the couch and threw his head back, closing his eyes. I immediately noticed that his reddened nose had a new angle to it, his hair was tousled and his old clothes were tugged and ripped.

“What the fuck happened?”

“I got into a fight,” he replied with a nasal honk. He was a mess.

“Well, I’m back from work,” I replied furiously. And putting a letter opener that might serve as a weapon in my pocket, I said, “Let’s go kick some ass.”

“We can’t.” There must have been too many of them.

“Then I’ll call the police.” I started dialing.

“Put it down—it was Angela,” he said and didn’t look at me. I didn’t know what to say. I wrapped some ice in a towel, brought it to him, and inspected his nose. Considering his nose was broken and a chunk of his precious collection had been mauled, he seemed to be taking it well. Perhaps he was just fatigued.

“Well, I suppose that ends that relationship,” I finally said, not knowing what else to say.

He looked to the ground and began whimpering that he didn’t know how to deal with this. He tried discussing it rationally, but she had kept pounding at him. When he pulled his shirt off, I saw welts and bruises zebraed along his lower chest, his ribs bruised, probably cracked.

“Exactly what happened?”

“Well,” he started, as his fingers ran across the lumps rising out of his scalp. “We were lying in bed this morning, just a couple hours ago, and she said that it was time for me to arise. I explained that there was no reason to get up, but she insisted that she wanted to go out for breakfast immediately. Maybe she’s hypoglycemic.”

“What happened next?”

“I said that I wanted to sleep for another hour.”

“What happened next?”

“That’s when she shoved me hard with her foot.”

“And how did you respond?”

“I told her violence was the language of animals.” I waited for him to tell me more, but he volunteered nothing. “What did you do next?”

“She laughed and made some weird reference to colleges and called me a wimp and that’s when I told her to stop laughing, and she slapped me.”

“Did you hit her back?” I yelled at him.

“Of course not. I told her that if she was angered over something it should be discussed.”

“And was it discussed?”

“No, I told her she was acting like a simpleton.”

“A simpleton, huh?”

“Yeah, that’s when she started tearing up the books, and when I tried to stop her, she hit me on the nose with an ashtray.” No wonder he didn’t want to volunteer anything; what a pathetic tale.

“Maybe you should go to a hospital; I think you’ve got a broken rib.”

“They don’t tape ribs anymore.”

“Your nose is bent to one side.”

“I never cared for symmetry,” he tried joking, “and it isn’t worth seven hours in a waiting room to look harmonious. Just help me into bed.”

I helped him into his room and laid him on his bed. Then silently I unknotted his shoes and helped him off with his clothes. He dropped the ice pack to the floor and laid quietly with his aches and pains.

“What happened to you?” He pointed to my shoulder from his supine position.

“Nothing, I’ll tell you when we’re awake,” I replied and pulled down the shade, concealing the morning light. He quickly drifted off. I kicked my shoes off and laid on the couch. As the sun rose high in the Brooklyn sky, I listened to Helmsley’s newly acquired snore, thanks to the newly angulared nose. I also thought of last night’s silly date and slowly slipped into asleep.

When I awoke, it was pitch black outside; it was seriously late. Helmsley was still soundly sleeping. I tiptoed into the bathroom, where I showered and carefully peeled off my arm bandage. I should have insisted on stitches, because the scar was crisp and permanent. I prepared a new bandage, dressed, and left. It was about midnight and Brooklyn, unlike Manhattan, still had that old duration of time labelled “late.” Places were closed and mass sleeping was in effect. People obeyed the sun’s ebb. But I was now too corrupted by the irregular cycles of Manhattan time; I was irrevocably awake.

I dressed and went to the F train and paced the empty station. I looked along the tracks covered with filth and followed them as far as I could up the dark tunnel. Looking in the other direction, I could see the sky. At this stop the elevated track poured its rails purgatorially into the ground.

Waiting for a train in New York requires more than just patience; it also demands a defensive outlook. During the early eighties, the city cordoned off “designated waiting areas.” They were encased in yellow overhead signs and usually they were within view of the token sellers, so if you were beaten to death within this section, your benefactors might have a good case at suing the city.

Despite the wolf-pack gangs and the doubtful worth of the overpriced token, I had nurtured a perverse pleasure in riding the subways. I would get a ninety-cent thrill out of pressing against the front unwashed window, leaning next to the conductor’s booth and straining into the near darkness as the train whipped between the ribbed support beams through the enigmatic bowels of the great city. What subway riding in New York offers that far surpasses a train ride anywhere else is the wonderful relief upon arriving safely at your destination. I experienced this relief an hour later.

I got off at Fourteenth Street and walked across it, past the many cheap storefronts that were all covered with metal pull-down gates at night. Past the old Luchow’s and the Palladium, I walked. From the corner of Third Avenue, I could see the Zeus Theater flag snapping in the wind. Why the theater had a proud flag, I wasn’t sure. The theater lights were still on and I had no particular place to go, so I decided to stop in and see Miguel. When I got to the corner of Thirteenth Street, I noticed the crowd out front. But then I remembered, the vanguardists Hans and Grett were premiering their film tonight. As I approached the NYU film students and punks flocking outside, I waited as gaggles of gays slowly filtered through and out, and then I pushed in. Hans, who was acting as a doorman, let me in. I walked rapidly through the theater.