Bright Lights, Big City Read Free Page A

hair are fairly neat, as if he had only recently let go of social convention, but his eyes are out-to-lunch and his mouth is working furiously.
    “My birthday,” he says, “is January thirteenth. I will be twenty-nine years old.” Somehow he makes this sound like a threat to kill you with a blunt object.
    “Great,” you say, going back to the paper.
    When you next look up the man is halfway down the car, staring intently at an ad for a business training institute. As you watch, he sits down in the lap of an old lady. She tries to get out from under him but he has her pinned.
    “Excuse me, sir, but you’re sitting on me,” she says. “Sir, sir. Excuse me.” Almost everyone in the car is watching and pretending they’re not. The man folds his arms across his chest and leans farther back.
    “Sir, please get off of me.”
    You can’t even believe it. Half a dozen healthy men are within spitting distance. You would have jumped up yourself but you assumed someone closer to the action would act. The woman is quietly sobbing. As each moment passes it becomes harder and harder to do anything without calling attention to the fact that you hadn’t done anything earlier. You keep hoping the man will stand up and leave her alone. You imagine the headline in the Post: GRANNY CRUSHED BY NUT WHILE WIMPS WATCH .
    “Please, sir.”
    You stand up. At the same time, the man stands up. He brushes his coat with his hands and then walks down to the far end of the car. You feel silly standing there. The old lady is dabbing at her eyes with a Kleenex. You would like to see if she’s all right, but at this point it wouldn’t do much good. You sit down.
    It’s ten-fifty when you get to Times Square. You come up on Seventh Avenue blinking. The sunlight is excessive. You grope for your shades. Down Forty-second Street, through the meat district. Every day the same spiel from the same old man: “Girls, girls, girls—check ’em out, check ’em out. Take a free look, gentlemen. Check it out, check it out.” The words and rhythm never vary. Kinky Karla, Naughty Lola, Sexsational Live Revue—girls, girls, girls.
    Waiting for a light at Forty-second, you scope among the announcements of ancient upcoming events, strangling the lamppost like kudzu, a fresh poster with the headline MISSING PERSON . The photograph shows a smiling, toothy girl, circa Junior Prom. You read: Mary O’Brien McCann; NYU student; blue eyes, brown hair, last seen vicinity Washington Square Park, wearing blue jumper, white blouse . Your heart sinks. You think of those left behind, the dazed loved ones who have hand-lettered this sign and taped it here, who will probably never know what happened. The light has changed.
    You stop at the corner for a doughnut and coffee to go. It’s 10:58. You’ve worn out the line about the subway breaking down. Maybe tell Clara you stopped to take a free look at Kinky Karla and got bitten by her snake.
    Into the lobby, your chest constricting in anticipation, your throat getting dry. You used to feel this way walking into school Monday mornings. The dread of not having finished your homework—and where were you going to sit at lunch? It didn’t help being the new kid every year. The stale disinfectant smell of the corridors and the hard faces of teachers. Your boss, Clara Tillinghast, somewhat resembles a fourth-grade tyrant, one of those ageless disciplinarians who believes that little boys are evil and little girls frivolous, that an idle mind is the devil’s playground and that learning is the pounding of facts, like so many nails, into the knotty oak of recalcitrant heads. Ms. Clara Tillinghast, aka Clingfast, aka The Clinger, runs the Department of Factual Verification like a spelling class, and lately you have not accumulated many gold stars. You are hanging on by the skin of your chipped teeth. If the Clinger had her way you would have been expelled long ago, but the magazine has a tradition of never acknowledging its