They
found an alligator in Brooklyn; a boy died on the Williamsburg Bridge; I drank
an oat milk latte and listened to my friend plan out the stretch and scope of
her life. We were walking in Prospect Park and she was saying things like, the
commute isn’t that bad, Long Beach is filled with guidos, our leases are on the
same timeline.
The
alligator was pulled out of the lake in Prospect Park. There was apparently a
man sitting in a lawn chair when the alligator was drawn out into the world. He
said the alligator made him sad. He said: Animals are like people, you know? He
gave his name as Moses and nothing else. The alligator was four feet long and
lethargic. The picture I saw first made it seem so much larger than it was,
like it was a great hulking monster lurking at the bottom of the lake. It was
only four feet long. I saw photos of it curled in a crate, on a towel. It was
cold shocked. They think it was raised as a pet and then dumped in the lake.
We
mentioned the alligator casually on the walk, like it was something that would
affect us, like we would see another one on our loop around Grand Army Plaza
and Park Slope. We were walking a dog that wasn’t ours, some kind of purebred
dog that belonged to a New Yorker writer and chef. My friend was dog sitting. The
dog’s name was Fiver, a reference to something I pretended to know.
My
friend is in love, the kind of love that is matter of fact. We will move in
together, we will move to Long Island one day, we will be happy forever,
nothing bad will happen. Everything is we and will. She does hot
yoga three times a week and her apartment is clean and bright.
She
is happy, a kind of even-keel happy I think I’ve only ever experienced once or
twice in my life. She has a family group chat. Someone sent an article about the
alligator and her brother responded with single alligator emoji.
She
asked me what I was thinking of doing for the next year. I said, I want to stay
in my apartment for another year. If I can’t, I am getting a storage unit and
moving to Spain. She said she respected how free I am.
We
spent five dollars each on oat milk lattes even though I don’t like oat milk
very much. It was easier to just order two of the same thing, and I drank it
slowly. It was a warm day in February, and she said it felt like an early
spring day. I said it felt like October to me.
When
I got home, I looked up alligators. They are cold blooded and depend on natural
heat to stay warm. I searched alligator and Brooklyn on Twitter. I
fell asleep dreaming of this too-cold alligator who seemed, to me, amazed that
it was alive in every picture I saw.
In
my dreams, the alligator never appeared. It was around the corner, in the background
of every thought. I was haunted by it.
I
woke up sweating. The heat was turned on too high for my building, and I was
still sleeping on my flannel sheets I have for the winter. I took my shirt off,
then my pants, kicked the duvet down to the end of the bed. I let myself sweat
for a moment. I could feel beads of condensation pool at the base of my
hairline and in the sharp-steep curves of my breasts to my waist and my waist to my hips and in
the fold of my knees. I pretended like I was cold. I remembered when I was 11,
my father volunteered my sister and me to do yard work for an elderly neighbor
for $20 a day. He wanted us to learn how to use our hands. He bought us
gardening gloves and we pulled ivy off trees in her backyard. It was summer,
and we were hot, and we asked our neighbor to go inside to cool down. For some
reason she never let us, and would instead bring out glasses of water with ice.
She taught us to drink the water and then pluck the ice cubes out of the glasses
and hold them to our wrists and behind our ears. Original air conditioning, she
said. Tricks our brains into thinking we’re cold. It didn’t work for me, but I
still try every time I get overheated. I pretend I am a cold-blooded mammal.
I
got up eventually, put on a button-down shirt and treaded into my kitchen. The
oven clock said it was 4:45 AM. I got a cup and turned the water on cold, let
it fill to the rim. I drank it quickly, greedily, and then I opened the freezer and found the
ice tray. I put three in my cup, filled it with water, and took out a fourth
ice cube, ran it over my wrists and behind my ears, dragged it down to my
collar bone. It didn’t cool me down. I put it in my mouth and let it
melt against my hot tongue. I drank the second cup of water and tipped the ice
cubes out and into the drain. I walked back to my room and stood in the doorway
for a second and felt the heat sitting stiff and heavy in my room.
I
crawled back into bed and imagined myself as the lethargic, half-frozen alligator
they dragged out of the lake. It didn’t work, so I turned over and unlocked my
phone.
I
opened Citizen, the app designed to make you feel like you will be robbed
at gunpoint and tortured at every available turn of events. It tells you when
they are crimes happening in your area, and they are kind enough to let you
know how far away the crime happened or is happening in feet and meters. It
then tries to get you to pay them $16 a month so you will not be a victim of
the aforementioned crimes happening 26 feet away from you at any given time of
the day. I was wondering if they had news of the alligator. They did not. What
there was news of was a 15-year-old boy who was killed by subway surfing on a Manhattan-bound
J train.
The
app gives you real time footage and reports. There were videos of people stuck
on the train and being hustled through the cars away from the dead boy, the flashing
lights of the ambulances and cop cars as they came to collect the remains of a
child.
I
Googled what happened. I searched, Williamsburg Bridge and subway and dead. There was an article. At or around 6:40 PM, the J train was crossing
the Williamsburg Bridge. It was due at Delancey-Essex. The boy was riding on
top of the train, “subway surfing.” It was a teen challenge of sorts, apparently.
That’s how they phrased it: teen challenge. He was struck by a pole and killed
probably instantly. So it goes, as Vonnegut would say. There were other reports
of other 15-year-olds killed in the last year or so in similar ways. Struck by
poles, fell off, hit the third rail on the way down. Dead, dead, dead. I wondered
if he was mangled, when they found him, or if he was perfect, an angelic dead boy
spread out on the bridge above the water and lights of New York City. I hoped he
was beautiful when they found him, for his sake. I hoped he was perfectly kept together,
that death was gentle to him, that his family could see his face one last time.
I am old enough now that 15 seems barely sentient. I did not know death or pain
when I was 15. I was planning on being happy forever, that I would find a love
and hold it tight, that I would grow up and be beautiful and dazzling and have
a house and talk about the commute to work and host barbecues and laugh with my
neighbors as the kids played, that I would say we and will when
talking about the future, not maybe or if or when.
I
put my phone down. I felt vaguely nauseous about the dead boy and the cold-shocked
alligator, and in the humid-hot climate of my flannel bed, I imagined them as an
intertwined entity, a haunted dyad stretched out under the Brooklyn sky far from
where they belonged.
It
felt overly intimate to know about them, to pull up photos and news stories of
what happened to them; the death and near-death of two adolescents. I turned over and looked at my ceiling. I
could hear the fan rotating and I thought about the dead boy on the bridge. I let
myself think of how shocking it would be to learn in the last moments of your
life that you are capable of dying.
I thought about the dead boy like his death was
something that would affect me, a stranger in a strange bed. I thought about
the alligator in the lake, I thought about the oat milk lattes and the dog that
belonged to a New Yorker writer who I would never meet but knew, sort of. I
thought about how February felt like fall to me and spring to my friend, and maybe
that summed up the differences between us quite nicely and routinely. I thought
about how I can learn about the death of an unnamed boy and make it about me
and my day.
I closed my eyes and I thought of how the ice cube
felt against my wrist and my neck. I let myself fall asleep as I pretended to
be cold. I let myself dream that the alligator was happy there in Prospect Park,
that the boy never got on the train, that the shape and scope of my life is knowable.
I let myself dream of a faceless and nameless boy, and I let myself say: I love
you. I’m sorry. I hope your life is always spring, that you’ll see love and
know it for what it is. I’ll miss you when you’re gone.
