Manhattan Is My Beat

I mean.”
    “Sure, we’re going out. I mean, we aren’t going out all the time though, right? We
can
have other friends.”
    “Sure. That’s the way it has to work.”
    “Right.”
    I am absolutely going to murder Frankie Greek….
    He pushed the down button.
    Aren’t
we
in a hurry.
    “Oh, here.” He thrust the envelope at her.
    She opened it. Inside was an application to the New School, over on Fifth Avenue.
    A joke. It had to be a joke.
    “I’ve got a buddy works for admissions,” Richard explained. “He told me they’re starting this new program. Retail management. You don’t even need to get a degree. You get a certificate.”
    She felt sick. “Wait. You’re giving me career counseling?”
    “Rune, you’re so smart, you’ve got so much energy, you’re so creative…. I’m worried about you wasting your life.”
    She stared, numb, at the paper in her hand.
    Richard said, “You could work your way up in the video store business. Become a manager. Then maybe you could buy a store. Or even a chain. You could really be on a hell of a vertical track.”
    She laughed bitterly. “But … that’s not
me
, Richard. I’m not a vertical-track kind of person. Look, I’ve worked in that diner I told you about, in a bike repair shop, a deli, a shoe store. I’ve sold jewelry on the street, done paste-ups and mechanicals for a magazine, sold men’s colognes at Macy’s, and worked in a film lab. And that’s just in the couple years I’ve been here. Before I die I’m going to do a lot more than that. I’m not going to devote my life to being manager of a video store. Or any other one thing.”
    “Don’t you want a career?”
    She felt utterly betrayed. More so than if she’d found Karen and Richard in bed, an event that was probably only minutes away.
    When she didn’t answer he said, “You should think about it.”
    Rune said, “Sometimes I get this idea I should go to school. Get a degree. Law school, maybe business school like my sister. Something. But then, you know what happens? I have this image. Of myself in ten years at a cocktail party. And somebody asks me what I do. And—this is the scary part—I have an answer for them.” She smiled at him.
    “Which is …?”
    He didn’t get it. “
That’s
the point. It doesn’t matter; the scary part is that I
have
an answer. I say, ‘I’m a lawyer, an accountant, a hoosey-whatsis maker.’ Bang, there I am. Defined in one or two words. That scares the hell out of me.”
    “Why’re you so afraid of reality?”
    “My life is real. It’s just not, apparently,
your
kind of reality.”
    He said harshly, “No, it’s
not
real. Look at this game of yours …”
    “What game?”
    “Find-the-hidden-treasure.”
    “What’s wrong with that?”
    “Do you understand that a man was killed? Did it ever occur to you that it wasn’t a game to Robert Kelly? That you could get hurt? Or a friend of yours could get hurt? That
ever
occur to you?”
    “It’ll work out. You just need to believe …”
    She gasped as he took her angrily by the shoulders and led her to a window at the end of the hallway. Pointed outside. Beneath them was a mass of highways and rail sidings and rusting equipment—huge turbines and metal parts. Beyond that was a small factory, surrounded by standing yellowish water. Mud. Filth.
    “What’s that?” he asked.
    She shook her head. Not understanding.
    “What
is
it?” His voice rose.
    “What do you mean?” Her voice crackled.
    “It’s a factory, Rune. There’s shit and pollution. It makes a living for people and they pay taxes and give money to charity and buy sneakers for their children. Who grow up to be lawyers or teachers or musicians or people who work in other factories. It’s nothing more than that. It’s not a spaceship, it’s not a castle, it’s not an entrance to the underworld. It’s
a factory
.”
    She was completely still.
    “I like you a lot, Rune. But going with you is like living in some movie.”
    She wiped her nose. The cars below whined past. “What’s wrong with movies? I love movies.”
    “Nothing. As long as you remember they aren’t real. You’re going to find out I’m not a knight and that, okay, maybe there was some bank robbery money—which I think is the craziest frigging thing I’ve ever heard—but that it’s spent or stolen or lost somewhere years ago and you’ll never find it. And here you are pissing your life away in a video store, jumping from fantasy to