The List

I found it on the subway platform at 116th Street. A piece of paper torn from another, larger piece of paper. There were items scrawled on it, numbered one through seven. The scrap was resting on the ledge, about to topple down to the rats. To that other zone, where The City’s waxy smut cakes on ancient metal and puddles of oil catch the light, reflecting a putrid psychedelia. That’s one of the things about The City. You’re always just across the vale, one step from another world. But the list didn’t cross over. I rescued it. I gave it a new life.

“Look at this,” I said to Florence when I got back. She was sitting at the wooden table that took up half the apartment’s common area, typing at her silver laptop. Nonprofiting, even on the weekend. I set the list down in front of her.

“What is it?” she asked, her eyes still fixed on the screen.

“It’s a list,” I said. “I found it in the subway station.” Florence’s eyes darted to the seven items on the list. She smirked.

“What kind of list is that?” she asked. She wore a long T-shirt over sweatpants. Curls of her black hair sprung from a loose bun. I still wasn’t used to it. For years, I’d seen her in classes at the university or at bars. I’d run into her at protests. She’d always dressed tightly, like a motorcyclist or assassin. But now that I was crashing on her couch, I saw her frayed edges.

“Right? It’s bizarre,” I said. I took a step closer to her humming laptop. “What are you doing?”

“I have to get these emails out.”

“On a Sunday?” I asked. I’d been staying there only for a couple of weeks, but already we’d developed roles in our society of two. Florence worked and I said things like Really? You’re still working? Florence paid rent and I said things like They don’t own you, you know.

“Yeah,” Florence said, her nails diligently clicking keys. “They said that we shouldn’t even come into the office tomorrow. That the power will probably go out. So I’m just going to send them today.”

“Okay, if you must,” I said. I hoped they were right. That the snowstorm would shutter offices, cut the power. It would be good for Florence. Good for our society of two. Our society of millions, billions, The City, the Earth. We all needed a snow day.

“At least come have a smoke with me,” I said.

We contorted ourselves to climb out on the fire escape. That was the rule. No smoking inside. Florence liked rules. She only shopped at Zabar’s. She only made coffee using a pour-over Chemex with unbleached filters. She only smoked Winstons. I smoked Winstons too, but not as a rule. I smoked Winstons because Florence bummed them to me.

The sky was blue, selling a lie. The cold air pulled at my cheeks, like it was hungry for the coming storm. There was an electric anticipation on the street below. I lit Florence’s Winston for her, then my own.

“Seriously, who makes a list like this?” I asked, holding it up for both of us to see. Florence shrugged. She was still worried about the emails, I could tell. It wasn’t that I didn’t worry about my own emails, metaphorically speaking. Oh, I had emails. I had so many emails that I’d lost all will to participate in the email-industrial complex. I’d moved beyond emails into a sort of absurdist comedy where I saw how long I could rely purely on the goodwill of my friends.

“We should do it,” I said.

“Do what?” she asked.

“The list. We should do the list.”

“What do you mean do the list?”

“We should complete it. Get all seven things!” I said. She laughed at me. “I’m serious!”

“Umm, it’s not exactly a grocery list,” she said, a hint of flirtiness in her skepticism. “I mean, how are we supposed to—”

“C’mon!” I said, bobbing my head assertively.

“I have to write—”

“Let’s do it!” I said jubilantly. This was part of my role. I didn’t just tell Florence that white guilt-driven nonprofit workers still have the right to unionize. I also suggested spontaneous and whimsical activities to remind her that there was more to life than grant applications.

“Go finish the email you’re working on, then let’s do the list before the storm hits,” I proposed. Florence glanced at me sideways and twisted her lips. She did this thing with her mouth sometimes. Like her own tongue was a lollipop that she was sucking on. I knew there was a rule—an unspoken rule— against thinking what I was thinking just then.

“C’mon, we still have a few hours before it starts snowing,” I insisted.

“Fine, okay, I’ll do the list with you,” she said.

As we finished our Winstons, I could feel the blood surging in my chest, in my pelvic floor, in the back of my raw, raw throat. It had not been a good year for my body. Or any other part of me. There’d been the breakup, the lost apartment, the gentle suggestion that I take a step back from my community-organizing role to heal from burnout. Thank God for Florence. If it hadn’t been for her.

As she finished her email, I rummaged around the kitchen. There were dolmas, a few cans of tuna, some sophisticated crackers. Off-limits Zabar’s stuff. So I took the forsaken protein powder from the back of the cabinet and scooped it into a half-flat Diet Coke that I’d opened the day before. It was disgusting, but living with no rules and no emails means that you have to accept what comes your way. You have to let the world have its way with you, just a little bit.

“Okay,” Florence said, flicking her laptop shut. “Just let me change.”

1. Keanu Reeves

“Finding a bootleg Keanu Reeves shouldn’t be hard. He’s everywhere these days,” I said as we wandered down 116th Street. Florence had tightened up. A long black jacket. Blundstone boots. She handed me a Winston.

“It’s the Keanu Reeves Renaissance,” said Florence. “The Reevaissance.”

“The Kean-new wave,” I said.

“The Keanu Reeve-olution,” she said.

“The Keanuclear winter,” I said. Florence looked at me like I’d gone too far, but then her expression slowly crumbled into a laugh. I giggled too, feeling a little high with all the protein powder, aspartame, and nicotine pulsing through me.

Our punchiness was at odds with The City, which was being soberly and methodically packed away, like a science-fair display. People brought in their potted plants. Store owners rolled down their grates. Yuppies walked their dogs hurriedly. NYPD patrol cars sped along the emptying avenues, sirens off. Even the street vendors who braved the swampiest of summer days had packed up for the storm, making it harder than expected to find a DVD of John Wick: Chapter 2 or The Matrix.

“We might have to find Keanu another way,” I noted. “What about the movie theaters? Maybe there’s a movie poster with Keanu Reeves on it.”

“No,” Florence said. “I want a tactile Keanu. Something I can hold. Something I can take home.” She clasped her hands together greedily. I noted that same expectant buzz in the pre-storm air that I’d felt on the fire escape. The City was closing, but the air was opening. It felt permissive, like we were in some ancient bacchanal where everything was mixed up. The lowest animal was crowned and given a feast, while the rulers had to don swine masks and walk around on all fours, kissing the muddy toes of children.

“Tactile Keanu,” I said ponderously. “I mean, where does he live?”

We looked it up. Hollywood, of course. And we weren’t the only curious fans. Apparently, his home had been the scene of multiple break-ins. One of the trespassers tried to get a DNA sample from Reeves to prove that they were related. Another was found swimming in his pool. The article I was reading had this picture of Keanu sitting on his motorcycle. Palm trees in the background. The expression on his tilted head was endearingly blank.

“We’ll just have to print him out,” I said.

We walked four blocks to a little office-supply store that was, miraculously, still open. I printed out the photo of Keanu on the Motorcycle in full color. I handed him to Florence and she gave him a kiss. I took out the list and crossed off Keanu Reeves with a ballpoint pen that was sitting on the store counter. I pocketed the pen.

2. Bodega Cheese

The list was written in a slanted, garbled, over-swooped script with a faded pencil, making it hard to read. It could have said Bologna Cleanse or Beluga Chess. But Bodega Cheese felt right and it was eminently achievable. Florence and I walked to the nearest corner.

“Hello,” said the man behind the thick fiberglass screen.

“Hi,” I said, giving the man an awkward nod. Bodegas made me feel my whiteness like it was ill-fitting underwear.

“It’s Clive Owen,” said the man, nodding at Florence, who still had the picture of Keanu in her hand. The man spoke with a heavy accent that I couldn’t place. Yemeni, maybe. He had a beautiful gray beard and a commanding but benevolent stare.

“No, it’s Keanu Reeves,” Florence retorted.

“No, it’s Clive Owen,” said the man. It was a normal thing to mix up celebrities. But he was doubling down. “Greenfingers,” he added. “Greenfingers, you know?”

Florence shook her head and went to order slices of Boar’s Head cheese from the guy at the deli. But I wanted to set the record straight.

“I’m pretty sure it’s Keanu Reeves,” I said.

“No. No,” he said solemnly, pitying my stupidity. “Clive Owen,” said the man.

“Whatever,” I said, knowing that he was wrong. Though as I shuffled down the narrow aisle to the back of the store, I wondered how many times someone would have to say that it was Clive Owen before I’d start to believe them. Five. Maybe six. I could imagine a study done by social scientists that showed how you could get anyone—anyone at all—to believe that a picture of George Clooney was, in fact, Harrison Ford. All you had to do was assert it with enough conviction an average of 4.7 times. I knew I wasn’t immune to such pressures.

I grabbed a tall can of Steel Reserve from the cooler. A White Claw for Florence. She only drank bourbon, neat, and White Claw. Rules. A large blond cat sat atop the bags of Ruffles and watched me violently as I walked back to the front of the store. I can’t be a gentrifier if I don’t pay rent, I wanted to tell the cat.

“Big storm,” the man at the front said.

“That’s the word,” I said, placing the drinks on the counter next to the Boar’s Head. I grabbed one of those packets of synthetic mystery drugs from the rack as the man put our beverages in brown paper bags. “This too,” I said. The packet was labeled Hyperventilate! I’d never tried one before, but I was feeling impulsive, stormy. It was probably just a bunch of caffeine, but maybe I’d get lucky.

“Greenfingers,” the man repeated one last time as we slipped out the jingle-belled door.

Outside, I handed Florence the White Claw.

“Thanks,” she said.

“No prob.”

We both knew that I had less than one hundred dollars in my bank account. But economies are not really about numbers. They are about symbols. The White Claw was a symbolic gift offered in lieu of rent and utilities. Florence took two Winstons from her pack and handed me one.

We smoked outside the door of the bodega and watched the trailer for the 2000 movie called Greenfingers, in which Clive Owen plays an incarcerated murderer in England who starts a garden program with other prisoners and learns something about beauty and tenderness from the flowers. He falls in love. In the end, he meets Queen Elizabeth.

When I looked up from the phone, Florence was staring at me, mischief eyed, doing that thing with her tongue again. A blanket of leaden clouds had slipped over The City. I took the list from my pocket, crossed off the second item, and read the third one out loud.

3. Horses

There is only one place in The City where you can reliably find a horse.

“To Central Park!” I cried, taking off toward the park with gusto. Florence didn’t move.

“Don’t all those carriage rides begin at the south end? That’s like fifty blocks away,” she called out. The skepticism had crept back into her voice. “What about the, uh, you know,” she said, gesturing to the furious sky above with her cigarette and her White Claw.

“We’re all suited up,” I said. It was true. I had on my monster super-puffy. Waterproof boots. She even had her leather gloves. “Or we could always take the subway,” I added.

“Don’t fuck with me,” she said, eyeing me with false, coquettish fury. Riding the subway was against the rules, unless she was going to another borough. Within Manhattan, Florence had a strict pedestrian policy. Walking was good for The City, she maintained, as if The City were a dog.

“C’mon,” I said. It was starting to feel like my catchphrase. “What would Keanu do?” I asked, pointing at the picture that she’d rolled up and put in her coat pocket.

Florence took a deep sip of White Claw and then sighed. “I think you mean Clive,” she said.

“Right, Clive. Not even prison kept Clive from pursuing his dreams of growing flowers. Are we going to let a little snowstorm stop us?” I asked.

“No, you’re right. We mustn’t,” said Florence melodramatically.

“That’s right!” I said. “Maybe we’ll even get to meet the Queen.”

“Keanu and the Queen in one day?” Florence said in a posh British accent, skipping to catch up with me. “That would be simply too much.” She grabbed hold of my arm. We’d become slightly intoxicated by the list, I could tell. That’s the danger with lists. They have their own logic. As soon as you start crossing things off, you’re compromised.

We drank from our bagged beverages as we cleared the five blocks between us and the park. When we arrived at the park’s boundary, the skyline opened up. It was a terrible, mesmerizing sight. Half-empty electrified spires jutted into a swirl of kinetic gloom. The sun was smothered, its light only visible in the seams between the clouds, like the blue veins on a baby’s forehead. The park lacked its usual industry of ducks, strollers, and suited bastards on lunch. Only a few runners scraped along, fulfilling some desperate daily quota, but even they seemed ready to abandon the streets. As we crossed into The City’s rectangular nucleus, I felt the ground go soft beneath my feet.

“Horses,” Florence said, distantly, as we passed an outcropping of mossy black rock. “All my friends had horses.”

Both Florence and I were from the upper middle class, but the more I learned about her upbringing, the more I realized that there were vast striations within that category. Where I grew up, wealth meant gigantic automobiles, suburban homes with clean lines, and vacations to Disney World. But Florence went to something called Farm and Wilderness camp, where the children of the ruling classes learned how to pull vegetables from the loam and tie knots like peasants. Maybe that’s what made the Protestant Work Ethic stick so well.

“What does a kid do with a horse?” I asked.

Florence proceeded to tell me a story about her friend Claire, who had a horse. As she told it, she rhythmically pulled off small chunks of the bodega cheese. One for her, one for me. One for her, one for me.

The story began when they were ten. Claire was training in dressage with a very renowned teacher. Florence was jealous of her friend’s tall boots and her sleek navy-blue jacket with the coattails. But then one day Claire’s horse jumped badly and broke its leg. The bone shattered, like a vase, and couldn’t be set right. There was nothing to be done, but Claire would not let her parents put the horse down. She became hysterical. Florence had seen Claire do this before, when she would scream, rip out her own hair, weep, and even eat sand or grass until finally she got what she wanted. So her parents didn’t put the horse down, despite dire warnings from the veterinarian. The horse’s leg healed slowly, but he soon developed laminitis from putting all of his weight on three legs instead of four. Claire told Florence that laminitis meant the horse’s hooves were falling off. Eventually, they put the horse in a sling, which caused awful sores, like bedsores, that rotted and pussed. Whenever Florence went over, Claire would make her go out to the barn to see the horse. She said that the horse was her husband and that she would love him and take care of him forever. She said that when the horse died, she would die too. Claire and Florence would feed the horse wormy apples and brush his thin hair, and Claire would make them recite prayers over the horse’s head. After they said the prayers, Claire would always whisper terrible stories to Florence about these men called The Uncles. She said that The Uncles lived up in the rafters of the barn and that they came out in the night and stuck their sharp fingers into her horse and that’s why he was always bleeding. She said The Uncles would come for her too. Florence hated thinking about The Uncles and smelling the horse’s necrotic tissue, so she stopped going over to Claire’s house. Not long after, the horse died. Claire, in fact, kept living.

By the time Florence finished her long story, we had made it more than halfway across the park. In the silencing wake of her words, I took one of the Hyperventilate! pills and put it in my mouth.

“For Claire’s horse,” I said, and I swallowed the pill with the last swig of my Steel Reserve. I offered Florence the other pill. She took it and swallowed without any liquid. The White Claw was gone. So was the cheese. We were out of provisions, and there were tiny, icy snowflakes hitting our heads.

“His name was Mr. Spinach,” she said. “The horse.”

We walked arm in arm, smoking Winstons, and soon reached the spot where there were normally half a dozen horse-drawn carriages lined up. But there were no horses. Just a lone abandoned carriage in Christmas red.

“Shit,” I said. “Not one tactile horse in sight.” “Fresh out of horses,” said Florence.

“What’s a guy gotta do to get an ungulate in this town?” I said in an overwrought mobster accent. I think the pills were already working, because there was some kick in my lungs, a powerful, high-pitched cicada calling in the back of my consciousness.

“We’ll never be able to meet the Queen without a buggy,” Florence pouted in her British accent.

“Whatever shall we do?” I exclaimed, like a bourgeois dame.

“There’s only one possibility,” Florence said, looking up at me as if we were thinking the same thing.

“Yes, only one possibility!” I confirmed.

Florence and I locked eyes and simultaneously said, “We have to be the horses!”

It was impossible that we’d spoken the exact same words, but there we were. Horses. Spurred on by deep instinct, we ran to the carriage. Each of us grabbed hold of the yoke and pulled. Slowly, the craft yielded to our might and began floating forward. Together, we heaved, our foggy exhalations releasing into the air like exhaust as the carriage picked up speed. Ten, twenty, fifty feet we made it before collapsing into laughter. The carriage rolled on and hit the curb.

As if on cue, both our phones began shivering and wailing like sick babies. It was an emergency alert. I took out my device and read: Extreme snow event imminent. Power, transit, and other services may be interrupted. Residents are advised to remain indoors.

There could have been another world. One parallel with our own, in which a question could have hung in the air between Florence and me. Would we continue our quest? That world was not our own.

4. Private Property

I held out the list for Florence to see.

“Private? Property?” She pronounced each word as if it were a name that she’d never heard before.

“Propiedad privada,” I said.

“Private! Property!” she screeched, pacing back and forth. I could feel her heat. I sensed that something had broken loose inside of her. Maybe it was the story she’d told or maybe it was the act of becoming a horse. Maybe it was just the Hyperventilate!

“Can you imagine? Can you? Taking the common bounty of this singular, divine planet and placing upon it your hands?”

“Not ideal,” I said.

“Your greedy little hands. Your shitty, pale monkey paws,” continued Florence. She was staring down at her own two hands in horror, as if she’d just murdered her kin. I’d always known she was vaguely anti-capitalist. The same way I was vaguely anti-capitalist. But this was different. This sort of thing would not fly at her nonprofit. It was not something we’d learned in our liberal arts education.

“I would say it’s not ideal,” I affirmed.

“Can you imagine? Putting your fingers around it. Around this one hallowed Earth. And saying mine. Holding so tight, as if your puny grip could ever, ever, ever stave off that fungal bloom! Ha!”

“I really cannot imagine,” I said, as Florence stumbled in her glorious fury toward the carriage.

“No, I won’t have it,” she said. She stooped down and tried to pull up one of the bricks that lined the walkway. It wouldn’t budge, but she kept trying other bricks until one wiggled loose. I watched with a stupefied smile as she galloped at the carriage with the brick in her hand.

“I won’t have it!” she howled as she let loose the brick. It hit the side of the carriage with an echoing clang. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

There was no one else there to witness the vandalism, but still we ran away. We ran through the thickening snow. We ran north past the reservoir, up a rocky escarpment, and into a bushy copse. We fell down breathless beneath a draping willow. After we caught our breath, I took out the list and crossed off Private Property with the ballpoint pen. Then I looked at the item below.

5. French kiss

Had I always known this was on the list? Had Florence known? Had we both sensed, since I first started crashing on the couch, that this was on the list?

We didn’t delay with awkward laughter or shy eyes. We were beyond that. Florence and I launched at each other urgently, tongues and hands and thighs. I tasted her Winston, her White Claw, her dehydrated, acidic spit. She took off her gloves and unclasped my belt. I slithered a hand into her pants, passing over wiry hairs, feeling around until her breathing changed. She had me in her tightening grasp. Together we squirmed. We rubbed and slid until Florence shook and moaned. Until my cum landed atop the fresh powder.

We went on kissing till my hands were numb and I could feel the snow soaking through the down of my puffy. When we finally stopped, Florence took out two Winstons. We smoked and watched the last brown leaves on the willow mix with the snowflakes. Florence reached down into her pocket, pulled out the crinkled tube of paper, and unrolled it.

“Poor tactile Keanu,” I said. “We crushed him.”

“He was too good for this world,” she said, and she gave the paper a non-French kiss.

For the first time since we began the list, I felt apprehension. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just skip the final two items and end here, with this? But, of course, we couldn’t. If we stopped now, then it would be ruined. Our whole adventure would be nothing more than a spree of broken rules, a regrettable aberration. But if we completed the list, it would justify everything. It would be like a container. A snow globe of a day that we could keep forever.

I read the next item out loud.

6. Water

We left the copse and headed toward one of the park’s minor ponds, hand in hand, gloves off. “I think this is schist,” I said to Florence as we scrambled over an outcrop of stone. “It’s like five hundred million years old.” These facts were in my head from some pamphlet, but I didn’t really know what I was talking about. Five hundred million years? What did I know about time? I couldn’t, at that moment, say whether it was 4 p.m. or 9 p.m. Besides, I was just deflecting from the nebulous sense of menace that permeated the milky pond ahead. It had grown darker, The City’s major sounds snuffed out by thick snowflakes. The pills were wearing off, and it felt suddenly possible that we wouldn’t make it out of whatever we’d gotten ourselves into.

We reached the pond. It was colder by the water. Then I saw him. A man walking out of the pale curtain, moving toward us with an unnatural quickness. He was short, stocky, white, with a black skullcap and powerful little eyes. There was a knife in his hand.

Was this the Queen?

Of course this was the Queen.

It happened fast. He was just a few feet away from us, the tip of the knife even closer. Florence and I both tightened our sweat-slicked grips, making a moist pocket between our palms.

“Give me all your stuff!” the Queen said.

But there was something about the way he said it. Kind of like the silly gangster accent that I’d affected earlier. Give me all your stuff! It was, undeniably, beyond a shadow of a doubt, hilarious. Had he done it on purpose, to cut the tension? Had he taken Hyperventilate! pills too? I caught the twinkle in Florence’s eyes as she furtively glanced over at me. That sealed the deal. We were, once again, thinking the exact same thing. We had to laugh. Even as we dug into our pockets and pulled out our wallets and Winstons, our quarters and Keanus, we had to laugh.

“Shut the fuck up,” the Queen said. This time his accent was slightly less ridiculous. We did shut up. But I couldn’t stifle my smile and neither could Florence. I think we had both expected to find something much worse at the water. What could be worse than a man with a knife? Well, there could have been a man with a gun. But that’s not it. No, I think on some level we both feared that the water might be dead. That the round turtles would be floating on their backs, poisoned by some toxic undercurrent. That we would look into the pond and see an uncanny reflection, a couple of dolls who had fundamentally misunderstood the malevolent nature of the world. That we would be punished for believing we could get away with it—a wanton walk in the snow, a little touching—for believing that we could escape the fang. I think we had both suspected that a day always carries its own shadow. That there would be, in the end, an unbearable revelation, a dog that we’d left to freeze in the car. What a relief that it was just this man. With his stupid cap! With his silly little voice and his serious little knife. If he needed our property to complete his own list, who were we to say no?

The Queen took our things from our hands, one item at a time, and stuffed it all into his jacket pockets. Then he fled away, quick footed and silent as a bunny. Florence and I watched him fade into the blizzard. It was just us again. The lights on the buildings, the trees, even the pond was blotted out by the great white destroyer.

It was just us and the one thing I hadn’t handed over.

7. Pray for God’s Forgiveness

The final item on the list was so smudged that it was nearly indecipherable. “Pay for Dad’s Forgeries?” I said, looking at the list askance.

“No,” said Florence, leaning in closer. “It says Pray for God’s Forgiveness.”

“God?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Florence. In our years of friendship we had never explicitly discussed the existence or nonexistence of a deity. In The City it was easy to assume that humans ruled above all. Humans, cockroaches, rats, noise, and maybe the liquid that leaks from the asses of AC units and falls on your head as you walk down the sidewalk.

“I don’t know any prayers,” I said.

“Too bad he took the Winstons,” said Florence. “Smoking is kind of like prayer.”

“I’d kill for a Winston,” I said.

“Don’t kill me,” Florence said.

“No, I would never.”

“I think I know one.”

“One what?”

“A prayer. One that my friend used to say for Mr. Spinach.”

“Okay,” I said. I got as close to Florence as I could. Her lips looked blue. I’d lost feeling in my fingers.

“Claire would put her hand on Mr. Spinach’s head,” Florence said, and she put her hand on my head. “It went like this. Bless bless bless.” She paused. “You say it after me,” she commanded.

“Bless bless bless,” I said.

“Put your hand on my head,” she said. I brushed the snow from her curls and put my hand on her head.

“Bless bless bless,” she said again.

“Bless bless bless,” I repeated.

“Bless bless bless.”

“Bless bless bless.”

“Bless bless bless.”

“Bless bless bless.”

“Bless bless bless.”

“Bless bless bless.”

Read more from Issue 22.2.