Chapter 25

I didn’t no where to go when I left. I went down to Grand Central Station and spent the night on a bench. I didn’t sleep too hot because a million people kept coming in and out of the waiting room. I had a headache. I was really depressed and I think I was more depressed than I ever was in my whole life.

I thought I would take a walk down Fifth Avenue. All the stores were open so it wouldn’t be too bad. It looked all Christmassy. I wished old Phoebe was there, she really enjoys it. The Christmas before last I took her down to Bloomingdales with me. It was great, we had a helluva time.

I carried on walking all the way down and all of a sudden something spook happened to me. Every time I came to the end of a block and stepped of the goddam curb, I had this feeling that I’d never get to the other side of the street. I thought I’d just go down, down, down, and nobody’d ever seen me again. I started begging Allie to help me to the other side of the street, I was shouting “Please Allie please! Don’t let me disappear.”

I decided I would leave New York forever. Start hitchhiking out West where it was very pretty and sunny an nobody would no me. I figured I could get a job at a filling station. I could pretend to be one of those deaf mutes. And if people wanted to speak to me, they would have to write it down on a piece of paper for me to read. I would marry another mute.

I got excited as hell about it all, but I would have to tell Phoebe. So I went to her school and wrote her a note for the teacher to give her, telling her to meet me at the Museum of Art so I could give her the money back that she lent me. I knew where her school was because I went there myself when I was young. I looked round I saw that some cold hearted bastard has wrote “Fuck you” on the walls in the school. It drove me crazy how Phoebe and all the other children would have to see that and wonder what the hell it meant.

I walked over to the Museum. I thought I might stop and give Jane a buzz before I started bumming my way west, but I wasn’t in the mood. I showed these two little kids around the mummies exhibition while I was waiting. When came out I had to go to the bathroom because I had diarrhoea. On the way out I sort of passed out, I was lucky really because I could have killed myself when I hit the floor.

Finally Phoebe arrived, I knew it was her because she had my hunting hat on. She had my old suitcase with her, I told her I wasn’t taking anything with me, but she told me it was for her. She begged me and begged me to let her come with me. I told her there was no way. She started getting really annoyed with me.

I told her I changed my mind about going and that I would stick around, I said I’d take her back to school but she wouldn’t go. She said she would go back to school the next day if I let her stay with me the rest of the afternoon so we went to the zoo.

We walked down to the zoo on opposite sides of the road because phoebe was still sulking. When we got to the zoo I shouted to her that I was going in. I started walking down the steps and I looked back and she was following me. She wasn’t talking to me, but was stood with me. We looked at a few animals then we came to the carousel. Old Phoebe loved them. It was playing “Oh, Marie.” I gave her some money to go on. She wanted me to go with her but I didn’t.

I sat down a bench and watched her go round and round. When she got off she came over to me and asked me to go on. She said she wasn’t mad at me anymore. I still didn’t ride it, but I gave her some more money so she could go again.

It started to rain like a bastard. Everybody rushed under the roof of the carousel, but not me. I stuck around on the bench for a while. I got soaking wet. I had my hunting hat on, but I got soaked anyway. All of a sudden I started to feel really happy, the way old Phoebe kept going round and round. I was nearly bawling I was so goddam happy. God, I wish you could’ve been there.