Chapter 4
"DID YOU WASH YOUR HANDS?"
My father has asked me that question at breakfast every day since I could talk. Probably before that. He's an epidemiologist, which means he studies epidemics and spends a lot of time looking at terrifying graphs of how diseases spread. These graphs, which pretty much all look the same - like a fighter jet taking off - make him worry a lot about germs.
"Yes, I washed my hands." I try to say this in exactly the same way every morning, like a robot. But my dad doesn't get the point.
"I'm glad to hear it."
My mom offered a tiny smile, pouring me some coffee. She's a perfume designer, someone who builds complicated smells out of simple ones. Her designs wind up in stores on Fifth Avenue, and I think I once caught a whiff of one on Hillary Hyphen. Which was disturbing.
"Doing anything today, Hunter?" she asked.
"Thought I'd go to Chinatown."
"Oh, is it cool in Chinatown these days?"
Okay. My parents don't really get my job. Not at all. Like most parents, they don't get cool. In fact, they don't actually believe in cool. They think it's all a big joke, like in those old movies where some guy scratches his armpit on a dance floor and everyone follows along until armpit scratching becomes a new dance craze. Yeah, right.
My parents like to emphasize the word cool when asking me what's going on, as if saying the word in an annoying tone will help me see through its inherent shallowness. Or maybe it's just that cool is a foreign language to them both and, like rude tourists, they think that shouting will get them understood.
But they do sign the stack of release forms I leave them every week. (Because I'm a minor, they have to give permission before multinationals pick my brain.) And they seem not to mind the free clothes, phones, and other electronics that show up in the mail.
"I don't know, Mom. My guess is that some of Chinatown is cool and some isn't. I'm not hunting, just meeting a friend."
"Anyone we know?"
"Her name's Jen."
My father put down his terrifying graph and raised an eyebrow. Mom raised both eyebrows.
"She's not my girlfriend or anything," I said, making a terrible mistake.
"Oh, she's not?" Dad said, half smiling. "Why do you mention that?"
I groaned. "Because you had a look on your face."
"What kind of look?"
"I just met her yesterday."
"Wow," Mom said. "You really do like her, don't you?"
I simultaneously shrugged and rolled my eyes, sending a somewhat unclear message. I hoped Dad would chalk up any redness in my face to sudden onset of West Nile fever.
My parents and I are really close, but they have this annoying idea that I'm hiding huge swaths of my romantic life from them. Which: would be fine, if there were huge swaths to hide. Even medium-sized swaths.
They sat in patient silence as I cowered behind my coffee cup, waiting for a response from me. Catastrophically, all I managed to come up with was...
"Yeah, she's really cool."
Jen was already there, wearing non-brand, not-too-baggy jeans, the same rising-sun-laced runners as the day before, and a black T-shirt. A very classic look.
For a moment she didn't see me. Hands in pockets, leaning against a lamppost, she was checking out the street. The block of Lispenard where Mandy was meeting us was wedged between Chinatown and Tribeca, part industrial and part tourist-land. The Friday morning traffic was mostly delivery trucks. Design firms and restaurants occupied the ground floors, their signs in both Chinese and English. A few places were boarded up, and patches of cobblestones showed through the asphalt, revealing the true age of the neighborhood. These streets had first been laid down by the Dutch in the 1600s.
All the buildings around us were six stories tall. Most structures in Manhattan are six stories. Any smaller, they're not worth building. Any taller and by law you have to put in an elevator. Six-story buildings are the black T-shirt of New York architecture.
I called Jen's name when she spotted me, to which she said, "I can't believe I'm doing this."
"Doing what?"
"Coming down here as some kind of... cool maven."
I laughed. "Just say the words cool maven a couple more times and you won't have to worry about being one."
She rolled her eyes. "You know what I mean, Hunter."
"Actually, I don't know why we're down here any more than you do. Mandy was being all mysterious."
Jen looked down at the sidewalk, where an advertisement for some new bar had been spray painted. "But she wanted me along, right?"
"You were specifically mentioned."
"But I thought I messed everything up."
"Messing things up takes talent. Like I said yesterday, you've got a good eye. Mandy wants us to look at something."
"To see if it's cool?"
Apparently it was going to be one of those days when people said that word to me a lot. I put my hands up in surrender. "She just said she needed some original thinking. That's all I know."
"Original thinking?" Jen's shoulders twitched, as if her black T-shirt had shrunk in the wash. "Don't you ever think your job is kind of weird?"
I shrugged. That's what I usually do when people ask me philosophical questions about cool hunting.
But Jen didn't buy the shrug. "You know what I mean, don't you?"
"Look, Jen, most jobs are weird. My dad studies people sneezing on each other, and my mom makes smells for a living. People get paid for writing down gossip about movie stars, or judging cat shows, or selling pork-belly futures. And I'm not even sure what pork-belly futures are."
Jen raised an eyebrow. "Aren't they an option to buy pork bellies in the future at a certain price?"
I opened my mouth and found it empty of sound. This was my stock speech, and no one had ever called me on the pork-belly-futures thing before.
"My dad's a broker," she apologized.
"So tell me: why anyone would want to buy pork bellies at all?"
"I have no idea."
Saved. "What I mean is, if people get paid for all that stuff, why shouldn't someone get paid to figure out what's cool?"
Jen spread her hands. "Shouldn't it just ...be cool?"
"Like have a special glow or something?"
"No, but if something's really cool, shouldn't people figure that out, on their own? Why should they need 'Don't Walk' ads or magazines or trend spotters to tell them?"
"Because most people aren't cool."
"How do you know?"
"Look around you."
She did. The guy walking past was wearing a shirt five sizes too big (innovated by gangbangers to hide guns in their waistbands), shorts down below his knees (innovated by surfers to keep their thighs from getting sunburned), and oversized shoes (innovated by skaters to save their feet from injury). Together all of these once-practical ideas made the guy look like he'd been hit by a shrink ray and was about to disappear into his clothes screaming, "Help me!" in an ever-tinier voice.
Jen had to grin. Saved again.
"That guy needs our help," I said softly.
"That guy will never be cool. But a lot of people are getting rich off
him trying. That's his money we made yesterday."j
I sighed, looking up at the thin slice of sky, and noticed the weathered, faded American flags that hung from the fire escapes, rippling slowly in the breeze. They'd all been hung on the same day, without any ads telling people they had to.
Jen was silent, probably thinking I was mad at her.
But I wasn't. I was contemplating 1918.
Because of my dad I know all about 1918, the year there was a really nasty flu. It swept across every country in the world. It killed more people j than World War I. A billion people got it, almost a third of everyone alive back then.
And you know what's really amazing? The virus didn't spread over the radio, and you didn't get it from watching TV or reading the side of a bus. No one was hired to spread it. Everyone who contracted the disease got it from shaking hands with, or getting sneezed on by, someone else who had it, right? So in one year just about everyone in the world had shaken hands with someone who had shaken hands with someone who had shaken hands with Patient Zero (which is what they call Innovators in the crazy world of epidemiology).
So imagine that instead of sneezing germs, all those people had been saying to each other, "Wow, this new breath mint is great! Want one?" In just a year about a billion people would be using that new breath mint without anyone ever spending a dime on advertising.
Kind of makes you think.
The uncomfortable silence stretched out for a while, and I found myself annoyed at my parents. If they hadn't been bugging me about work this morning, I wouldn't have lost my cool with Jen. She had a perfectly valid point about cool hunting - it's just that I get tired of having the same argument with my parents every day, and with other people, and with myself.
I tried to think of something to say, but all I could think about was the 1918 flu, which didn't seem like a scintillating topic of conversation. Sometimes I hate my brain.
Jen finally broke the silence.
"Maybe she's not coming."
I checked the time on my phone. Mandy was ten minutes late, which was not like Mandy. We're talking about someone who carries a clipboard.
Jen was looking down the street toward the nearest subway stop, and I got the unpleasant idea that she was thinking about leaving.
"Yeah, sorry. I'll call her." I scrolled up shugrrl and pressed send. Six rings later I got Mandy's voice mail.
"Must be on the subway," I said, about to leave a message, but Jen reached out one hand, touching me on the wrist.
"Hang up and call her again."
"What?"
"Wait a second." She watched a truck pass, then nodded at the phone. "Hang up and call again."
"Okay." I shrugged - that's Innovators for you - and pressed send.
Jen cocked her head, then took a few steps toward the wall of plywood that surrounded a derelict building next to us. She put her hands on the wood and leaned close to it, like she was doing a psychic reading of the layers of graffiti and posters.
Again six rings.
"Uh, Mandy," I said to the voice mail, "you said this morning, right? We're here; let us know where you are."
Jen turned around, a strange look on her face.
"So, let me guess," she said. "Despite all her cool hunting, Mandy has really Top 40 taste in music."
"Uh, yeah," I said. Maybe Jen was psychic. "Mandy pretty much only listens to..." I named a certain 1970s Swedish mega-group whose name is a four-letter word, definitely both band and brand and therefore banned from this book.
"I thought so," Jen said. "Come here. And redial."
I stood next to her and pressed send yet again.
And through the shaky plywood wall we heard tinny cell-phone tones playing a certain unforgettable ditty.
"Take a chance on me...."
Chapter 5
"HELLO?" I POUNDED ON THE WOOD. "MANDY!"
We waited. No response.
I redialed once more to make sure.
"Take a chance on me..." dribbled out from behind the spray paint and advertising covering the plywood barrier.
"Okay," Jen said. "Mandy's phone is in there."
Neither of us asked the obvious question: So where was Mandy? Somewhere else altogether? Inside but unconscious? Something worse than unconscious?
Jen found a spot where two pieces of the plywood were chained together like double doors and pulled them apart as far as the fat padlock allowed. Shielding her eyes, she peered through the narrow gap.
"One more time, maestro."
I pressed send, and the little tune repeated. The refrain was starting to drive me crazy, even more than it usually did.
"There's a phone flashing in there," Jen said. "But that's all I can see."
We backed into the street, getting a better look at the derelict building. The upper-floor windows were bricked up with cinder blocks, dead gray eyes staring down at us. A coil of razor wire topped the plywood barrier around the ground floor, the fluttering remains of plastic bags collected on its spikes. An arm's length of unspooled cassette tape was caught on the wire, the light wind making it undulate and flicker in the sun.
The building must have been abandoned for months. Maybe years. I mean, cassette tape?
"No way in," I said, but found that I wasn't talking to anyone.
Jen was next door, already up the front-stoop stairs and stabbing buzzer buttons at random. The intercom popped, and a garbled voice queried her.
"Delivery," she said loudly and clearly.
The door buzzed. She opened it, stuck her foot in, and waved at me impatiently to follow.
I swallowed. This was what I got for hanging out with an Innovator.
But as I may have mentioned or implied, I'm a Trendsetter. Our purpose in life is to be second in line, to follow. I bounded up the steps and grabbed the outer door just as the buzz came again and she pushed her way inside.
At the top of the third flight of stairs a tousle-haired man was waiting, his head sticking out his door. He looked at us sleepily.
"The delivery guy's right behind us," Jen said, and kept on climbing.
A half flight up from the sixth floor we found the door to the roof. A cagelike contraption sealed us off from the last flight of stairs, the usual precaution to keep people from getting into the building from topside. Of course, the door could be opened from the inside in case of fire, but across the push bar a big red sticker was plastered:
WARNING: ALARM WILL SOUND IF OPENED
I panted, recovering from the climb, relieved that we couldn't go any j farther. Even if Jen was an Innovator, breaking into an abandoned building wasn't my idea of cool. Having thought about it for a minute, I was figuring we should call the police. Mandy must have been mugged, her phone tossed into the derelict building.
But where was she?
"You know the trick to these alarms?" Jen asked, placing one finger lightly on the push bar.
My relief faded. "There's a trick?"
"Yeah." She pushed, and an earsplitting screech filled the stairway, loud enough to be heard by everyone in Chinatown.
"They stop on their own eventually!" she shouted above the alarm, and darted through the door.
I covered my ears and looked back down the stairs, imagining annoyed tenants emerging from every door. And then I followed Jen.
The roof was tar, painted silver to keep the summer sun from boiling the people who lived on the top floor. We pounded across it, the alarm still shrieking like a huge and angry teakettle behind us.
The next building over, the one we were trying to break into (correction: that Jen was trying to break into - I was just along for the ride), stood a bit shorter, a drop of six feet or so. She sat on the edge and jumped, landing on black and ragged tar with a thump that sounded painful.
I climbed partway down, clinging to the edge, falling the least possible distance but still managing to twist my ankle.
I scowled as I limped after Jen. It was all the client's fault. A hundred pairs of shoes and they'd never sent me a sneaker optimized for urban burglary.
The roof door of the abandoned building opened with a metal screech, hanging on one hinge like a dislocated shoulder. Behind it was a dark staircase that smelled of dust and old garbage and something as sharp and nasty as the time my parents' apartment had a dead rat in the wall.
Jen looked back at me, showing a bit of hesitation for the first time.
She opened her mouth to speak, but at that moment the alarm from the next building stopped, the silence hitting us like a hammer.
Through the ringing echoes in my ears I thought I heard an annoyed voice on the roof behind us.
"Go on," I whispered.
We went down into the darkness.
Walking around New York, looking up, I often wonder what goes on behind all those windows. Especially the empty ones.
I've been to parties in squats, old buildings taken over by enterprising homesteaders who do their own repairs. And everyone knows that crack-heads and homeless people occupy abandoned buildings, inhabiting an invisible reality behind the blank windows and cinder blocks. There's this rumor that Chinatown has its own secret government, an ancient system of laws and obligations brought over from the old country, which I'd always imagined being run from inside a derelict building like this, complete with town meetings and trials and punishments meted out. Basically anything could be going on behind those blank and faceless windows.
But I never thought I'd actually be finding out for myself.
The air was difficult to breathe, baked hard by the summer sun. As Jen descended, she left dust coiling behind her in the few shafts of light. Her runners left footprints on the stairs, which made me feel better. Maybe no one ever came here. Maybe some buildings were just... empty.
Every floor down it got darker.
Jen stopped after three flights, waiting for our eyes to adjust, listening carefully to the silence. My ears were still ringing with the alarm screech, but as far as I could tell, no one had followed us from the building next door.
Who would do anything that crazy?
"Do you have any matches?" Jen said softly.
"No, but this works." I switched my phone to camera mode, careful to turn the bright screen away so I didn't blind myself. It shone like a little flashlight in the pitch blackness. It was a useful trick for fiddling with keys on late nights.
"Gee, is there anything that phone doesn't do?"
"It's no use against crackheads," I said. "Or officials of the Chinatown secret government."
"The what?"
"I'll tell you later."
We descended the last three flights, the phone scattering a weird blue light that gave our dancing shadows a ghostly pallor.
I darkened my phone when we reached the ground floor. Now that our eyes had adjusted, the sun streaming through gaps in the plywood shone like a row of spotlights. The ceiling was high, the whole floor stretching out unobstructed except for a few thick, square columns. What had once been store windows were now gaping rectangular holes in the wall, only plywood separating us from the street. Not even broken glass remained.
"Someone's using this floor," Jen said.
"What do you mean?"
She scuffed one shoe across the concrete next to a patch of light.
"No dust."
She was right. The sunlight revealed no coiling cloud around her shoe. The floor had recently been swept clean.
I ran my thumb to the familiar shape of the send button. A moment later the little multi-platinum tune played from a distant corner.
As we crossed, taking careful steps, I saw that the wall nearest to the flashing phone was lined with stacks of small boxes. Someone was in fact using the building for storage.
Jen knelt and picked up the phone, checking the floor around it.
"Nothing else here of Mandy's. Does she carry a purse?"
"Just a clipboard. If she got mugged, would they keep that?"
"Maybe they just tossed the phone in so she couldn't call for help."
"Maybe..." My voice trailed off.
Of its own accord, my hand went to the stacked boxes, pulled by magnets of familiarity and desire. I ran my fingers down the lids spaced every four inches. The boxes were a common size and shape, so familiar that I almost hadn't realized what they were at first.
Shoe boxes.
I reached up and pulled one from the top of the stack. Opened it and breathed the new-car smell of unused plastic, heard the crinkle of paper, felt plastic and rubber and string. I lifted out the pair and set them on the ground in a shaft of sunlight.
Jen gasped, and I stepped back, blinking at the sudden radiance of panels, laces, tongue, and tread. Neither of us said a word, but we both knew instantly.
They were the coolest shoes we'd ever seen.