“Never know where you stand, do you? Not that it matters, that’s all gone now . . .”

  “Plus, the princess thing and shit. Another layer of just . . . what?”

  “Nobody in my real life knows about that. I had entirely new papers made up when I left ‘home,’ the works, right, nobody knows. My first name is as much as I kept. Nobody knows—no one. Or so I had thought. Obviously, I was dead wrong.” She shakes her head. “But this is not a subject I’ll discuss further, especially with a bloody CIA man. Good God.”

  I’m looking at her. Wondering how much she knows about her situation here. Figure it’s not my place to pry, right? But I do say, “For real, girl. Don’t you know the rest of the world is in the business of trying to kill you people? Or at the very least rip you off?” Snap fresh gloves on. “Or if they ain’t, they should be.”

  Haifa bobbing her head. “I am not my family.”

  “So you say.”

  “They cast me out. I owe them nothing.”

  “Huh. What did you do, get caught trying to learn how to read?”

  She laughs. Acerbic. “I loved a boy. I loved the wrong boy. And that’s all.”

  “Yeah?”

  “And he disappeared. If you understand what I mean.”

  “Ho shit. Your family don’t play. But this, I knew already.”

  “I wanted to do more with my mind—with my life—than serve the fat pervert they would have me marry. Give him bloody children. No.”

  At the mention of children I instinctively bust out the PurrellTM.

  Khalid isn’t getting up soon, but he attempts to touch Haifa’s foot, saying weakly, “Sister . . . you say far too much to this heathen, please be discreet and cautious . . .”

  Haifa picks at her nails. “Oh please, Khalid, what are you like? You’ve got some nerve, trying to lecture me on anything,” she says without looking at him.

  I pick it up right where we left it: “So you cut out for the UK.”

  “At fourteen. Why am I telling you this? You reveal nothing of yourself, that’s all you get out of me. Who did that to you, your cheek?”

  “Took a tumble down our grand bloody ridiculous stairwell. You know, solid marble. Crack. Totally my error.”

  I grunt, shrug, wringing my mitts.

  “Oi. What’s this ritual you do with your hands?” she asks.

  Taken aback, won’t lie. Nobody raises this subject. Hear myself saying, “I’m cleaning them, obviously, disinfecting the hands. It’s necessary, it’s protocol . . . I just touched your brother, he just came off a ship . . . so . . .”

  “Yeah? And you were wearing surgical gloves. So I’m not following why . . .”

  Me sounding tight and defensive, I continue, “It’s not a ritual, damn. Fucked-up word. Make it sound Catholic. Devil worship or some shit. Just trying to keep it clean, it’s a filthy fucking scene up in here. You want some PurellTM?”

  “Do you feel compelled to do it very often?”

  A gaggle of choppers come low, down what sounds like the canyon of Park Avenue. It’s loud and gives me a moment to recover cause I’m starting to feel a bit short of breath. I don’t appreciate being quizzed. I want her to drop it pronto. Plus, we can’t skulk around this shit-ass garage forever.

  Get my guns out one at a time, checking their magazines, really just something to do with myself. “Ha. Well, sugar cookie, if you’re gonna sweat me about every little thing—”

  “Don’t call me sugar cookie, you cunt. I’m not some slag, I’m still a bloody princess in the Royal House of Saud.”

  I give a half-bow. “Begging your pardon. Your Royal Fly-ness.”

  Lady can’t help but smile. “There, that’s more bloody like it. Oi. Remember what we’re saying. Your head on a platter. I just need to snap my fingers, and that’s it, yeah?”

  Clear my throat. Thinking she might be serious, but then the princess winks.

  “It’s not that I don’t like to have the occasional laugh, I do.” Girl cracks a grin there. She’s all right, Haifa. But then she’s right back harping on it, saying, “No, really, with the hands, yeah? Just that I’ve noticed you’ve now done this cleansing ritual four times since we’ve been with you, and that’s just the occasions I’ve seen personally.”

  Ignoring this. Harder than necessary I slam the mag into my H+K, limp over to Khalid. Squat near his head. I do a little whistle birdcall thing. His peepers track me, but honeybun is pretty much incapacitated. Lay a gloved hand on his chest. Get intimate with the man.

  “Hey, son. Real sorry about that just now. Was like a reflex, you know. Get nervous when folks point a gun at me. I’m a vet, man, got these automatic-like reflexes . . .”

  Haifa nodding rapidly, like this somehow explains everything. “Ahh, right, and of course you would be former military. Since you’re an American, I assume you saw combat somewhere . . .”

  Speaking to Khalid, who eyes me woefully: “Your sister the princess seems to dig playing amateur shrink. She drop this on you too? Regarding your love life?”

  “Oi. You,” says Haifa. “I was this close to completing my postgrad studies in neuroscience up at Oxford. I hold a bachelor’s degree in psychology. Bloody useless now, I suppose . . . but I’m not exactly what you might call an amateur, am I?”

  “You know what I reckon? Y’all have much more to be concerned about than my freakin modus operandi. Though I’m flattered. And you know you should be concerned about important shit like hand hygiene. Especially when traveling. Especially when traveling by sea.”

  Shudder inwardly. The thought of a luxury liner in the middle of the Atlantic, bacteria, viral mingling, food-borne business . . . cast this off.

  “But what y’all need to be thinking about now is where exactly you wanna go from here.”

  Haifa is looking at her brother. And I’m looking at her. Damn, she is something.

  “Anywhere they won’t find us, full stop,” she says flatly, then turns to me, eyes big.

  Me saying, all business: “And yo, what I’m trying to figure out is who the fuck is they?”

  The choppers are doubling back, up the concrete river.

  “They’ll be wondering where we’ve gone off to,” she says.

  “If by they we’re talking about everybody, that’s a bet.”

  “But you, mate. I haven’t the faintest who you are and what you’re all about. Save a practitioner of extreme hygiene,” says the princess. Then: “Can we trust you?”

  It’s a simple question. Haifa’s face is open, guileless. Despite her girl-in-distress status. Me saying, “Écoute. These motherfuckers are shooting at me too. So until I have a little more information, my two priorities are keeping you kids standing, and protecting my own shit. Lucky for y’all, I get the vibe like the two aren’t mutually exclusive. ”

  “But can we trust you?”

  “What did I just fucking say? And from where I’m leaning, y’all don’t have much choice.”

  A short half-assed stare-down ensues, but the woman knows she’s got no other moves. Blows a lock of hair out of her eyes, nods.

  We get Khalid standing.

  A couple of choppers run the length of 49th Street. The buzzards circling. Time to fucking move. Me saying, “What’s it gonna be, kids? Cause this party? Bout to come to a painful fucking stop.”

  Haifa nods. “Take us anywhere. We’re tourists. Anywhere but that awful bloody boat.”

  _________________

  Stay left. Stay left.

  The Nissan Leaf, as it turns out, is an absolute breeze to hot-wire, the kind of design oversight that makes sense considering the hippies who created it, with visions of wind farms and rooftop farming clouding the realities of the day.

  So much the better for a brother in a hurry, like myself.

  Ten nineteen a.m. Forty-one minutes remain and I’ll be able to enjoy more navigational options. But for the moment it’s nothing but lefts.

  Which is no problem, screaming eastward out of the garage onto 49th Street in a ragged Port Authority cop car. Rain has picked up again and it slaps the windshield angrily. Figure I’ll show ’em what’s left of the landmarks. No other destination presents itself.

  The royals are comfortably ensconced in the passenger wheel well, under a white plastic tarp bearing the Waldorf Astoria logo.

  Boom up and over a welt in the road, my head hitting the ceiling of the car. Trying to find the wipers, I slow up a smidge . . . there. Need to spit, tiny granules scraping my inner cheeks—but try to dry-swallow that spook urge and stay present.

  Speed up into the intersection. Park Avenue, gunmen on foot a couple blocks north. Uniforms a mishmash. An army hummer straddles the median of Park, a glance south at the MetLife, its top floor obscured by the overhang. A handful of helicopters make lazy circles.

  Nobody clocking us, me with my mask up and welding goggles on, only slightly sweating it. Don’t look around too much.

  Always working my second Plan A. Don’t do Plan Bs, that’s a defeatist mode of thinking. Have multiple Plan As and something is bound to pan out, with God’s guidance.

  The shell that was Macy’s looms to our left as we rip past, I think about making a wisecrack about a two-fingered discount on handbags for my royal ducklings, but I doubt if they’d feel me. Plus, the house is all tapped out, of nigh on every little thing.

  I’d be one to know. I’m among the many of us who helped empty the joint in the very early days. When it seemed like I’d never run out of sources for a crispy suit and a well-packaged (sealed) snack. A PowerBar, a Clif Bar, what have you.

  “Macy’s,” I say.

  Fucking lefts. Wanna head uptown but find myself barreling west . . . now the former Rock Center rears up ahead, and I’m busy craning my neck like a fucking tourist, to get a look-see at where they blew up the Rainbow Room, if you can see any damage from the street, so much so that I notice the layers of police barricades too late, calmly note they’re just those low metal gates, I’m braking, we go one, two, three, four layers of aluminum tubing in before coming to a stop against a meter-high wall of sandbags.

  Put it in reverse, cause I’m not going through that. Haifa and Khalid simultaneously commence hollering, Arabic and English at once; my head is overloaded and I’m unable to make sense of either one.

  Looking right, and damn, I just waltzed straight into this one huh? Yonder comes a skinny kid in an NYPD uniform made for a man many times larger than him, limping toward us through the rain, I note idly that he’s missing both arms. Correction: he’s got one deformed baby arm clutched to his left breast, three fingers clawing a canister of pepper spray or the like.

  That’s how they do, throw up an impromptu roadblock, jack whomever slides by. Kicking my own ass for sleeping on this.

  But is he simple? A lone no-armed cop, we supposed to buy that?

  One thing’s for sure: this environment is not easy on the human appendage. Witness also Mrs. Marcia’s stump, and my kneecap and busted flipper . . .

  Confusion creases his young face as I bring the car to a mellow halt and crank down the window, manually. Kid is probably somewhere between fifteen and eighteen years old. He’s got a cheap Russian gas mask in his other hand but can’t seem to get his act together.

  Kid shimmies up to the car, pauses, unsure of my vibe. Mixed race, Asian and other spices, like myself. Working his mouth, he says, “Street closed. Street closed.” Two times, then lifts the canister and lets me have it through the driver’s-side window.

  Which doesn’t present a problem as I’m all masked up, plus the rain absorbs a fair bit of it; but I taste the spray, sure enough it’s that hot pepper. This stuff is far past its sell-by date, however, and only has the effect of misting up my eyepiece.

  Kid looks crushed when I don’t have a seizure. I wanna let him down easy. Who’s he fucking fooling, a cop with no arms?

  Not focusing on the handicapped aspect of things, but I’m reminded of an occasion when I shot a Down’s kid a couple years back. Certainly don’t want to repeat that kind of karma killer.

  “Esse,” I say, “any pepper spray you find in town is gonna have gone bad awhile back. Shit, you couldn’t have known that . . .”

  Not defeated yet, kid drops the pepper spray and starts fumbling with his belt, I wonder if he somehow got ahold of another weapon . . . He produces a walkie-talkie, which reminds me I tossed my own out back in the tunnels, didn’t I?

  Before he gets any further with that, cause I don’t want the boy making any calls, I swing the door open hard and catch him in the stomach. He makes a cartoonish “Oof” and staggers back far enough for me to step out, holding my Beretta loosely, safety engaged. His peepers go double wide at the sight of the gun, but Jah bless his heart, he doesn’t rabbit. Boy standing his ground, bracing for some shit. I dig his spunk.

  Don’t want it to vibe like he doesn’t present a challenge, so I kinda mock-wrestle a bit with the lad, breathing extra heavy like it’s a major exertion, spin him around a couple times, whoopsie daisy, and relieve him of that walkie-talkie. He’s batting at me with his shriveled hand, says, “Maricón.”

  Knock him down and put my knee on his chest, attempting to be gentle. Cheek hurting like a motherfucker even from that play-tussle. Child gets to hissing and spitting, biting at me and whatnot.

  “Hey,” I say.

  Youngblood putting up fight, fair enough. I let him do it, glancing up and down the street. Beyond the barricade there’s noise and action, but for the moment nobody’s in view. Me saying, “Okay, player, you’re all right, you’re doing good. You had me going with the cop outfit, I bought it for real. Esse, you alone out here?”

  Kid stops struggling, eyeballs me all fucked up.

  “Said: are you alone out here?” I repeat.

  Kid hocks one up and cuts loose with a fat globule of spew, which further sullies my goggles.

  Not mad at this boy. Quite the opposite. There’s a fair number of these rough-living strays, cast off and cut loose, discarded weak links in a chain gang. You can’t dig a ditch fast enough, you’re not worth much up in these parts. Shortsighted on the part of the companies, perhaps, but it’s a big hard world and we’re all just rats on a treadmill.

  Take junior by the trachea, right hand only, apply pressure. Raw fear spreads across this kid’s face, which is only healthy.

  Pocket the walkie. “Listen, homie, you know the big library, the one with them stone lions? Biblioteca. Behind the big garbage pits . . .”

  Kid looks sideways, nods.

  “Saying that’s my spot. So if you need a place to rest at, say it gets too cold out, you know where to look. They call me Decimal. Holler at me. I can get you some work.”

  Kid nods again, yap agape.

  Release his throat and I’m halfway back in the car. “But yo, if you get stealthy and go trying to creep on me, be advised—I sleep light. Know what I mean? Cuidado.”

  Salute him with my pistol. Slam the car into reverse.

  “What the fuck are you up to?” This from Haifa, wanting the score, leaning forward from the backseat. Startling me.

  “Girl, get back under that thing, damn.”

  Bust it up on the curb, blow past this droopy kid, his eyes, reckon he could easily be me. Had things taken a different turn.

  The princess and I lock eyes in the rearview, her vibing all What are you gonna do about it?

  “Melting under there, plastic isn’t it?” she says.

  Figure it hardly matters who sees a couple of Arab hotties and a brother in a car. People gotta know where we’re at. “Your world, ladies.” And no doubt it is indeed.

  “Where are we going?” Haifa is holding my gaze in the mirror.

  Truth is, I don’t know yet. Tell the girl to can it and let a man drive.

  “Been hearing that most of my bloody fucking life,” deadpans the princess.

  Blow past the former skate rink at Rock Center, the headless gold statue presiding over a tonnage of smoldering garbage. Ripping beyond the concourse, nearly clip an elderly man, inching a trashed Aeron office chair toward 6th Avenue. Beyond him in a heartbeat, but manage to hear him shrieking, catch a phrase in Russian: “. . . heartless baby-fucking bastards!” He could be talking to or about anyone or everyone. I consider that this man, clearly cut loose from his clan, will probably be dead within a matter of days.

  “Rockefeller Center,” I say. “Dig, we’re sightseeing.”

  The royal twins absorb these deconstructions in silence.

  _________________

  Activity at 50th and 7th Avenue, me wondering what’s all that . . . milling cops, fire truck. Oh yeah, Lehman Brothers. Keeps getting burned, that space, a move which is purely symbolic as nothing could possibly remain therein. Not like there’s been anything there anyway for years.

  Hard right at the former Winter Garden Theater. Right again up Broadway. Nine bleak blocks on and confusion at Columbus Circle. Encounter the largest and most varied assembly of people I have seen on the island since Koreatown was in full swing, before the Chinese cleared 32nd Street entirely.

  So many people, and me with not the least clue as to the rumpus.

  As I round the traffic circle once more, just to be sure I’m not completely tripping, I take a calculated risk; the joint is heavy with cops and Cyna and varied military goons, and they appear to be preparing to shut off the road . . . silhouettes of workers sitting on Peter Pan and Greyhound buses parked around the obelisk in the center of the roundabout, all apparently waiting for something. Cyna-corp JLTVs parked at odd angles, armed figures coming around toward the larger building to the west.

  But none of this is particularly special, and I’m not too concerned about my own ass, because the security types seem entirely focused on the other folks gathered here. Miss Marcia’s people? Primarily women and children, amongst them a few scattered males missing limbs. I spy a couple wheelchairs (which must be considered a luxury item at this point) . . . perhaps a hundred and fifty people, forming a human barrier, blocking the entryway into the former Time Warner center.

  “Columbus Circle,” I say.