Advent Under Chamber Street

A stranger picks a pocket, steals a wallet, and leads an average man beneath a Manhattan street to a forgotten subway platform.

    Life, as he knew it, would end on a Friday. Roland Oliver was a simple man who lived with his wife on Adonna Lane in Stratford, Connecticut. His existence was blessed with the kind of modest fortune that eludes most, all of the accouterments that a man of thirty might desire. His car was reliable, if bland. His home was outfitted with tasteful furniture and high-speed internet. His bed was shared with a woman of many great qualities. Roland was not particularly handsome or muscular or wealthy, but he was not an alcoholic or drug addict. He ate breakfasts high in fiber. He made an earnest effort at foreplay.

    Friends would think, but never say, that Roland’s wife Cassie was the kind of woman who made him better"made him seem, by extension, as vibrant and quick-witted as she was. She laughed loudly and often; Roland grinned sheepishly, as though guilty of some breach of etiquette. She taught art, he calculated risk. Her tattoos outnumbered his, three to zero. Cassie had seen something special in Roland, though. Perhaps it was his openness, which often passed for naiveté. Maybe opposites did indeed attract.

    On a Friday morning in June, Roland woke, showered, and joined Cassie at the breakfast table. They sipped from mugs of coffee and perused the morning paper in the cool bright comfort of their kitchen. They ate a breakfast of cereal in lime green bowls.

    “I dreamt there were bees in the walls,” Roland said. “Last night.”

    “Did you read this?” Cassie hoisted the metro section of the New York Times a fraction, eyes still scanning. “It says ‘Man assaulted on downtown subway platform.’ Bees?”

    “Wasps. In the walls. That’s all I remember.

    “It was at the Chamber Street station. At rush hour. I hate bees. Where do you stop?”

    “Fulton Street. The wall in the upstairs hall crumbled, like it was wet, and there were"”

    “Bees... ” She shook her head gravely, then lost her composure and burst out laughing.

    Roland smiled with her. He was thinking about wasps, though.

    “Watcha doin’ today?”

    “Relaxing.” She spooned some cereal in her mouth and spoke through it. “I’ll probably lay out for a while, entice the mailman.” She smiled and chewed.

    After breakfast, Roland patted himself down, taking inventory. Each of his pockets had perpetual inhabitants: cell phone, right inner jacket pocket, wallet, left inner jacket pocket. Each had its unique shape, and each was accounted for. “Ready?”

    She rose then, and took a step towards him. “Yep. Hey… wanna play hooky?” Caught in a dusty sunbeam, Cassie was glowing. Her smile spread slowly.

    “Baby"”

    “C’mon. We’ll relax, go back to bed… ” She gyrated towards him as she spoke, leaned back and grinded against him. “Make the mailman jealous.” she broke off, held two of his fingers in hers. She bit her lip.

    “You’re the devil, y’know that?” He clenched her fingers in his, then let go.
    She grinned. “No, but I’ve met him.”

    Thoughts came in a rush. She's my wife, she's being childish, she's beautiful. I’ve met him? I want her, I have an obligation, she's needy, she wants me, I have an obligation. They came and went in the space of a breath and unnerved him; a dizzying collage of weights and balances that warred for control of the moment. At times, Roland wondered if this was a universally human experience, or his alone. “I can’t, baby. You know I gotta go…”

    Roland could sense her disappointment--the way it came over her face like sleep and her eyes lost their depth. He was grateful when she hugged him and led the way out.

Cassie dropped him at the train station (“Watch out for bees!” she said through a smile), and he embarked on his commute to Manhattan. Roland dozed on the train. He marched across the bright marble expanse of Grand Central Station in a haze, and joined the melee of commuters pressing into the Lexington Avenue subway terminal. As always, Roland stole glances at his fellow commuters and took secret delight in remembering their faces. The young black woman who sucked her thumb. The bearded man who wore white gloves and covered his mouth. The girl in the hospital greens whose eyes were always red and dewy and heavy-lidded. She seemed more sad than tired. Sometimes he wished he could talk to them, say something comforting.

    As he scanned the car, Roland locked eyes with a tall man. The experience was like catching his own gaze unexpectedly in a mirror, and it unnerved him. Then the man smiled. His eyes held Roland’s for an awkwardly prolonged moment, then slid away. The quirky grin remained. Roland checked his watch, touched his pockets, glanced at his shoes, and chanced another look. The man was gazing towards the front of the swaying car now, head tilted back, the picture of a stoic mariner, still smiling. He was tall, spindle-thin and swarthy, with a mane of hair the color of iron filings swept back as though by a strong magnet. His eyes seemed black; his nose was his prow, long and thin. The impression was oddly comic, set against the backdrop of the crowded subway car; he stood out like some mythic Persian king in line at a grocery store. He wore a plain, wine-colored shirt, open at the collar. Roland noted all of this in one intense second, then looked away.

    For the rest of the ride, the man never looked back, but by the time they reached the Fulton Street stop, he had migrated closer. The car lurched, braking, then released, shuddered, lurched again. Passengers, unused to the new rhythm or asleep on their feet, collided. A body slammed into Roland, then another. He was bumped, sandwiched. The tall, thin man was against Roland, chest to shoulder. He tilted his head, looked down at him and shrugged. That smile spread across his face again. His eyes were indeed black. The doors slid open, and the press of bodies broke the trance.

    When he reached street level, Roland stepped out of the human flow. The sun was touching the tops of the canyon of buildings, breaking to street level in corridors of seraphic light. The air was electrified with sounds blown between the buildings by the morning breeze. He collected himself, performed the ritual pat down, and froze.
    Wallet"left front jacket pocket. Gone.

    He made the motion again, almost by instinct, and reached into his jacket. Nothing. Panicked, Roland re-traced his commute. He’d bought nothing, and frisked himself four or five times since he’d left the house. The last time had been on the subway, before the stop. The thought hit Roland at like a fist"he’d had his pocket picked. A face swam back into his consciousness"the face of the tall, thin man who had smiled at him.

    Roland searched the crowds filing down the morning streets. He took a step, squinting into the blur of bobbing heads and motion. There. The wine-colored shirt, the wild, blackish hair, the slender frame. He was about a block away, walking at a relaxed pace in a crowd of commuters approaching a crosswalk. The glimpse lasted seconds, then was obscured by a white box truck that came to a wheezing halt on the street in front of Roland. The truck was rich with graffiti"exotic shapes that spelled something unfathomable. Near the front, something more crudely rendered, but legible was scrawled in red: War is in you. Peace is you. Roland stood there for a brief moment, frozen on the sidewalk. The city paused with him, cars and trucks and people all waiting for the signals to change. He took a breath and bolted for the street.

    At first, Roland didn’t know what hit him. He found himself on the ground, tangled in something metal, and in pain. Bicycle. It was a bicycle. The bulk of it lay across his chest; mottled black tubes formed a triangle over his body. The toothy circle of the sprocket dug into his pant leg and bit into the flesh of his shin. A handlebar, or a hand, had knocked him squarely in the temple. A man lay beside him"the rider. He was young and richly black, with short dreadlocks and a dazed look in his eyes. They were facing each other on the pavement, and Roland spoke first.

    “You okay?” He began to push the unwieldy bike off of his body.

    “Yes, okay. I’m okay. You okay? You hurt?” The man knelt, stood and looked around. He pulled the bike easily from Roland’s grip; set it against the front of the box truck. He extended a hand. Roland took it, and the man pulled him up. They stood there by the curb together, and the man laughed.

    “World dancin’ on the head of a pin, and we crash"lucky!” He had a blunted Caribbean lilt in his voice.

    “Blood on your ear"you okay?”

    “I’m okay.” He laughed again, less heartily. “Glad you wasn’t a taxi! Got no insurance.” He bent and picked up an olive green bag that lay near his foot. “Messengah work pays s**t, now.” He slung it over his chest and touched his bloody ear gingerly.

    Roland glanced up at the truck again, rubbing his temple.

    The messenger followed his gaze, gestured with his head. ”War in everybody these days. You in a hurry? Seemed like.”

    Roland’s temple throbbed. “My wallet.” He couldn’t break from the messenger’s gaze. He stuck out his hand. “I’m really sorry. For hitting your bike.”

    The messenger smiled and took Roland’s hand, gripped it, and let it go. “Yes. Okay. Go. You need to go, I think.” He turned and righted his bike, inspecting it.

    Roland started moving. His body protested from several places, but it was responding. Then he saw the tall, thin man, closer now (why did he double back?), across Fulton Street heading towards the subway entrance. Surrounded by pedestrians, he strolled almost lazily; head tilted slightly back at a haughty angle. The man dipped his head down, disappearing into the subway entrance. Roland followed.

    As he descended, Roland had a moment to wonder what he might do if he actually caught the man. He couldn’t be sure beyond doubt that this was the man who took his wallet, or if indeed it had actually been stolen. He’d had his wallet, the subway car had lurched, the man had bumped him, and a minute later his wallet was gone"these were the facts. Roland could scarcely wrap his pounding head around the idea that someone might actually snatch a wallet right out of a man’s coat without being discovered. It seemed so antiquated"so romantic as to be the stuff of fiction"not of the real world. And if he caught him, what then? Politely ask if he had taken it? Hit him? The latter was not an option for Roland. He had never thrown a punch in his life, and had been hit only once. No contrivance of logic could deter him, though. He would find this man, and he would look him in the eye. Then he would know.

    On the platform, Roland spotted the man maybe forty yards down the platform. He heard the low whistle of the train before he saw its eye in the tunnel. The train screamed, brakes slowing its massive bulk as it trundled by and stopped with a final yowl, the doors opened, and the man stepped into a car. Roland followed.

Roland thought, I don’t even know what train this is. Inside, the train car seemed antique. Its metallic length was patterned with thin slats crossed at regular intervals by smooth ribs. It was like being inside a snake. No ads, no posters. No maps anywhere. I’m off the map now. He began to make his way to the back of the car. It was sparsely occupied, and its occupants seemed oddly amicable, smiling, nodding"almost as if they understood his urgency. A rumpled old man in a plaid shirt muttered through his smile, something garbled that sounded like “Shah fubeeez.”

    The cabin was hot. Roland shook his head, felt almost drowsy in the fervid atmosphere. The feeling intensified as he made his way through the cars. By the time he reached the final door, he struggled to remember how or why he’d gotten there. He strained to see through glass that seemed to curve and distort. The wild black hair, the deep red shirt--the tall, thin man was there beyond the glass. He pulled open the door. As it slid closed behind him, the train lurched, stopped and opened its doors. Cool air rushed in as though filling a vacuum. At the far side of the car, the man followed a few passengers off the train. Roland followed, and watched as he strolled along the wall away from the exit, approached what looked like a wrought iron cage. A stairwell. He reached it, swung easily over the gate and disappeared from view. Off the map.

    As the train pulled away, Roland reached the gate and pulled on it. Locked. Below him were two flights of stairs split by a landing. Dim yellow light shone on floor tiles at the bottom. He looked back down the corridor of the platform, then jumped the gate. On the landing, he stopped and listened. From above, the faint drone of the subway train echoed on the tiles. Below, silence. Go back now. Go to your office and call the credit card companies and the bank and your wife and forget about this man because something about him is not right. The thoughts were powerful, fueled by fear, and the logic of them was irrefutable. It occurred to him, then, that being here might have nothing to do with his wallet. A sound, like a single footstep, echoed up to him.
Roland hurt everywhere. His head throbbed, a dull thud in his temples. Blood ringed the tear in his pants, and his leg ached where the sprocket had torn flesh. His palms were pitted with tiny cuts. He touched the empty pocket over his heaving heart, and started down the last flight of stairs.

    At the bottom, he entered a tiled cavern. It was, or rather had been, a subway platform. For a brief moment, Roland forgot his quest and gaped at the place. A series of bare bulbs spanned its length, throwing dim orange light and mad shadows on the wall. Great thick tiled pillars grew like stalagmites from the floor. Ornamented with terra cotta designs in green and blue, they grew wider as they rose and formed a series of arches over the landing. It was like some mad, medieval church. To Roland’s right, the platform ended in pitch black, but light danced in little orange flashes on water. The train tracks were submerged in a channel of inky liquid. The smell of it filled the place, like rotting vegetation. To his left, the wall bore similar intricate tile work, but this was almost completely obscured by wild graffiti murals. An enormous question mark, fat and red with a yellow crown riding its head, was the only legible symbol. It pointed down at the platform’s sole bench. The bench was empty.

    Roland peered around, straining his senses for some sign of the tall, thin man. There was none. The water lapped gently against the sides of the channel. Nothing moved"no rats"nothing. Then he heard to his left, from behind the graffittied wall, a low hum, like a generator. Like bees. Roland took a couple of steps, and halted, alarmed at the volume of his shoes echoing in the cavernous space. He waited, hoping for some or no reaction to his racket"he wasn’t sure which. When nothing broke the quiet, he advanced again, this time walking in little toe-heel steps. No one jumped from behind the columns, as his imagination demanded. Nothing happened. He approached the bench, a wrought iron thing, painted in glossy black and covered in dust. He sat.

    A low rumble started then. A train. It grew in volume, pierced by the scream of brakes, and stopped abruptly. Above him"it was a train stopping at the station above him, reminding him of the sane world just two flights away. He glanced back towards the stairs. I can still go. I can get up and get out of here right now.

    “Do you know me?” The voice was right in his ear. Roland jumped, fell to the floor, and gaped at the man sitting on the bench. The tall, thin man.

    “Oh Ho! I scared the be-Jesus out of you!” he looked amused at the prospect. “Take it easy, friend.”

    “What?” was all Roland could manage. He felt as though his heart had been squeezed. 

    The man crossed a leg over the other, casually. “Do-you-know-me?” He enunciated as if to a child or a foreigner. “You were following me. Hell, you’re definitely after something if you followed me here!” He smiled and gestured with an arm. His voice was accented with a mushiness that sounded vaguely European. “You won’t catch a train down here,” he smiled. “Maybe a boat!” He barked a laugh. “This station’s been closed for fifty years. They’re all over the city, you know. These places. Like Egyptian tombs. Most aren’t like this, though.” He gestured again. “Why you following me, friend?”

    He swallowed. “Did you take my wallet?”

    “Wallet? I look like I need to steal a wallet?” He snorted, spreading his arms and looking down at his shirt. He edged away to the far side of the bench and slapped it. “Sit! Sit with me and tell me why you think that.” He spread his arms again, palms out. “Look, I am harmless, unarmed. Please…” He paused then, brow stitching into a concerned furrow. “You look hurt.”

    Roland touched his head “II got hit. By a bike messenger.”

    The man raised an eyebrow at that. “Mmm. I was a messenger once. Bad job. Please, though, sit.”

    Roland squatted, then rose to his feet. He took a deep breath and touched his pants pockets. His fear had dulled a bit from the shock of surprise, but he could still feel his heart beating in his chest. “I saw you… you looked at me. You were on the subway with me. I checked my wallet. You bumped me.“

    “And you thought I took your wallet. Okay, fine.” He ran a hand through his hair, sighed. “So you don’t know me. Nick. I’m Nick.” He bent forward on the bench and held out a smooth hand.

    Roland looked at the hand for a moment. Finally, he took a step, bent and shook it. “Roland Oliver.” He edged back a step and stood again, hands on his thighs.
The man’s eyes widened. “Oliver? Roland Oliver? Ha! You aren’t by chance from Connecticut? Stratford?” He shook his head and smiled. “You are! This is fate or something, Roland Oliver. We went to school together!” He straightened up on the bench then, grinning.
    Roland had had enough. He took a step back towards the cavern’s entrance. “Look, this is crazy. I don’t know you and I think I’m gonna go.”

    “Wait, wait…” He waved a hand, smile fading into a look of concern. “Relax, please. Sit, won’t you? You’re making me nervous!” He seemed to shrink then. His shoulders were stooped inward, his chin lowered. The tall, thin man who had seemed a demon was now somehow transformed into something diminished. Watery sincerity spilled from his eyes beneath a paternally creased brow. He took out a pack of cigarettes and pulled one out. “Smoke?”

    Roland stood with one foot still turned to leave. He didn’t though"he waved away the cigarette and stood, immobile.

    The man, Nick, put the cigarette in his lips, lit it with a match. He leaned forward. “Rodent. Remember that? We called you Rodent. Sixth grade.” He spoke softly, like a condemned man to his priest. “Not very original, I grant you…” The cigarette danced on his lips as he spoke. “And I hit you.”

    Roland’s head felt a pressure, like descending in an airplane. The floor seemed remote, and his hands tingled as though asleep. This is not possible. But it was true. Kids called him “Rodent,” then. Mean kids, like that one with the jet-black hair. Nicholas Mara. Nick. “No.” Roland felt dizzy. He took steadying step.

    Nick stood and spoke quickly. “Yes. You were at the fair, the apple fair, it was. They had it every fall. I ran up and I hit you, in the ear. I ran away and you chased me,” A fire lit in the man’s eyes. “But my brother stopped you. He said fight me tomorrow at school.”

    It was all true. He looked larger again, stretched impossibly towards the shadowed arch of the ceiling. “Next day, you came to the boys room and I told you to hit me, but you didn’t"you couldn’t!” He was animated now, pointing with the glowing tip of his cigarette, enthused with his narration. “You told me you were scared of me, in front of all my friends. You ran away crying!” His voice had risen to a piping staccato that echoed down the cavernous hall. Nick dragged deeply from his cigarette, blew the smoke out of his nostrils, and eyed Roland askance. A shroud of smoke had settled around their heads, glowing in the dim like some great blue halo, connecting them.

    “Wait. Wait a minute,” Roland was afraid, but he hadn’t abandoned the sensible, rational part of him that calculated odds. This was not possible. He took a breath. “You’re telling me that it’s a coincidence that we’re here? What, that you just happened to steal my wallet?” His words fed his courage. “You’re a liar! You… stalked me! It doesn’t even matter if you’re Nicholas from sixth grade.” Even as he said it, Roland could not escape the resemblance.

    Nick had waited patiently as he spoke, smoking and nodding as though in acquiescence. He smiled. “So. So, if I understand your thinking,” he crooked a finger beneath his nose, tapped it on his lips three times. “This meeting is the result of some deceit on my part. I am what, a stalker who chose to bring you here, then used information I had gathered to convince you that we were acquainted.”

    Roland opened his mouth, but Nick silenced him with an impatient wave.

“I’m thinking here.” He dragged from the cigarette. “Or, I am the boy from your childhood, and… what? Sought you out? Watched you all these years… just to bring you here… hmmm… “ He shook his head. “Problems. I didn’t bring you here. You followed me! I minded my own business. I think it’s you who are the stalking one, the stalker. What do you want? Revenge? Closure?” his voice calmed again. “I think, I think this is enough. Tell you what, Roland Oliver, I give up. I am not the boy you remember. I deliver your mail. I watched you on Adonna Lane, with your Cassandra and your groping, puny life. And I picked your pocket, too. Sometimes I make extra cash, picking pockets, okay? I came down here to empty it and take your money, your credit cards… wait!” He threw up his hands. “Again, problems! If this is truth, how would I know about the boy who hit you? Oh ho, and how would I know you had bees in your walls last night? I must be someone else, someone we haven’t imagined.” He stopped then, and stared, savoring the impact.

    Roland was stunned. He tried to wrap his mind around a fact, any fact that made sense. How could he have known about the dream? Cassie? He’d told her about the dream, but had he ever told her about the apple fair… about the boy, Nick? Nothing made sense. Roland believed only one thing now: this was the Nick"the Nicholas Mara from his boyhood who had hit him. Had hit him for no reason, just hit him. He erupted.     

   “Why? Why did you hit me?” Roland had abandoned rationale now. He was off the map. His fear had percolated and turned to anger. “Why the hell did you hit me?”

    The man shrugged, gave in to the inquiry. “You were meek, a meek little boy” He said simply. “I hated that. We were kids, then. Kids are kids, but it looks like you haven’t changed a bit, my friend.” He took a step forward and faced Roland on the dim platform. His eyes were narrowed now, and Roland saw the boy’s flat, hateful eyes clearly.

Nick smiled. “Don’t you see it? You don’t, do you?” He began to pace and gesture with his cigarette, like a professor giving a lecture. “You have quite a quandary here, Roland Oliver. I know who I am, and I know who you are, but you"you have no idea who either of us are.” He barked a laugh, rubbed his chin in mock thought. “Perhaps that’s best, though.” He took a last drag from the cigarette, dropped it and crushed it with a twist of a black shoe. “You’re probably happy, in your innocence, eh? In your stupidity? I wonder about Cassandra, though.”

    “Wha? Fu--“ Roland began, but was cut off.

    “Rodent. I’m trying to help you here!” He leaned forward, looming in Roland’s face. His expression now was a mockery of the concern feigned so convincingly a few moments earlier. “You were meek as a boy, but at least you had some spirit!” The last word was spit like a curse. “You chased me, and I think you would have hit me. Why? Because you were angry, just like now. But now"now you stand there just like in the boy’s room.”

    Roland’s anger blossomed. His right hand clenched at his side. He felt his teeth against his lips, his flexing calves, the balls of his feet. War. Is in you.

    “Do you see it? Now you don’t even have the nerve to act on your anger!” Nick Boomed. He bared his teeth in an impossibly huge grin. “You were more of a man as a boy.” He reached into a pants pocket then, pulled out something black. “This is your wallet,” He said, shaking it in Roland’s face, and threw it on the tiles.

Something else was stirring in Roland, sought to unclench his fist. Not thought, feeling. Peace?

    “Hey! You listening?” Nick snapped his fingers. He jerked his head aside to look at the black water of the channel, then snapped his attention back to Roland as if he were expecting a surprise attack. “Time to choose, Roland Oliver.” He stepped over the wallet, planting himself between Roland and the black lump “I’ll let you take it and leave.” Something splashed in the channel. “You can go back to your cubicle, back to sweet Cassandra and your pathetic little life. Just do one thing.” He stepped forward and spread his arms wide. He smiled. “Hit me.”

 On a Saturday evening in June, Roland sat with Cassie in the quiet of the living room. 

"How was your day?" She asked it by rote.

"Fine. I lost my wallet."