They get off at Fourth and Washington Square, changing to a B. There’s a panhandler in a flat cap in their carriage; Nomi waves him off, finds them both clean seats. But she’s also apparently been watching Simon’s eyes flick around.
“You don’t ride the subway much, huh?”
He’s ridden the subway exactly four times, including the time he traveled from Penn Station to the West Side on the day he arrived in the city. It took one train trip for him to figure out he had a problem with it. Now he only uses the train out of absolute necessity.
“I don’t like being underground,” he admits.
“Claustrophobia, as well as amnesia?”
“Not normally. Just on the subway.” He winces. “I really need to buy a bike.”
“Bummer about the subway. The train’s the best way to get to know New York.” Her mouth twitches in an almost-smile as she lifts her chin at clumps of other passengers farther down. “You get the whole smorgasbord on the train—goths, geeks, gays, punks, New Romantics, New Wavers, homeys, rappers ... It’s a cliché, but NYC really is a melting pot.”
Not as homogeneous as Flores thought.Although there’s a kind of homogeneity in everybody dressing in their group’s fashion to show their individuality. So are Americans more loyal than individualist? Simon doesn’t know, and it’s disturbing because he’s supposed to be one of them.
“I can only compare it to New Orleans,” he says.
“You came in through New Orleans?”
“By way of the Gulf of Mexico. I spent three weeks on a fishing boat from Ciudad del Carmen.” It’s not a wholly pleasant memory. But Felipe Brava was a patient man, standing on deck to smoke his endlesssupply of Flor Morada tobacco and talk about what Simon should do once they arrived in the USA. “The boat captain was connected to Sofia Rosa—she keeps the top floor room open for new arrivals. I had my paperwork already, from a contact in Mexico.”
“So checking your fingerprints might be complicated.” Sallow flashes slide across Nomi’s face from the fluorescent droplights outside as they pass through a station.
“I’d like to exhaust other ways of figuring out my identity before we start trying fingerprints and rap sheets,” he concedes. “I want to stay under the radar, if possible.”
“It’s possible. Tough, but possible. You said you’d been in America seven weeks?”
“Yeah. Six weeks on the West Side, plus it took me five days to get from New Orleans to New York.” Simon glances at a kid, probably about twelve, sleeping on a seat across the aisle. “I was down to my last dollar when I got the job at Gennaro’s.”
“They’re always looking for staff—high turnover.” Her gaze sweeps over him, taking in details. “I think I’m going to start with missing persons from the US East Coast, from November 1982.”
“Why the East Coast?” Just as he asks, the sun returns at last as the train emerges from the tunnels at the opencut Prospect Park station. He can breathe slightly better now.
Nomi shrugs. “I don’t look at you and think California or West Coast.”
This he finds intriguing. She’s more well versed in the homogenous groups of this country, in the same way he could probably explain to her the difference between a Guatemalan cardamom farmer and an ORPA fighter, if she cared to ask. “How can you tell?”
“You have a kind of European look. Did you pick those clothes?”
“Yeah, from Goodwill. Why?”
“Your style seems east. Not west, not flyover states. And your skin’s very pale. Is that your natural hair color?”
He touches his nape without thinking. “I guess. Flores shaved my head for surgery, and this is how it grew back. Is it important?”
“Well, with your coloring, and if you dress like that instinctively, it makes me think East Coast. Maybe even New England.” She glances out the window before standing up. “It’s someplace to start anyway. Okay, this is our stop.”
They’ve emerged at Church Avenue, near Prospect Park, and there’s a ton of traffic in the street, a lot of trash on the sidewalk. Nomi leads a winding path past locksmiths, T-shirt sellers, hair braiding stores, down one side street, then another.
Steam rises from the drains, and the sun that Simon appreciated on the train is now making him sweat. “Who’s this guy you’re going to see?”
She throws him a look. “Weren’t you going to go back to Manhattan?”
“I’m avoiding getting back on the train. I promise I’ll stay out of your way.”
“Right,” she mutters.
“Seriously, I can behave. So who is he?”
