Summer Song Challenge, Day 30: Nate

Prompt: "A song that fades out"

Selected by Nate

"Mo Money Mo Problems"

The Notorious B.I.G.

Life After Death, 1997

After the call I snapped the phone in half. Didn't even bother to hang up. Sweat began to run down the back of my head, and I couldn't slow my breathing down. My shirt felt too tight, my skin felt too tight across my chest. I felt like running into the street, like laying down on the bench and closing my eyes, like calling an ambulance, like calling my dead mother, but all I could do was sit in the park, look at my hands, and gasp for air like a fish on a dock, suffocating in the heat of the conversation I just had. I tried to tell myself outloud "this is a panic attack," to say the words in the hope that their utterance would hold power, would help me calm down, but what came out was a whisper, a mockery of language, the words dying in the thickening muscles and tissue of my rapidly closing throat.

Despite my every impulse to flee, I somehow stayed glued to the bench, slowly gulping air and burning time that I didn't have. I needed to run now, to really run, to do what Colleen's note suggested and leave town in such a way that I could not be traced. Doing that in a panic would be impossible. It was already impossible, but with anything less than a level head I was a dead man, for sure. I needed to wait for this to pass, then I had to act.

It occurred to me, sitting there in the sun as life unaffected continued to pass around me, that in all my years of acting as security for Colleen—all the alleys, all the penthouses, all the diners, all the parking lots, all the late nights and early mornings, all the posturing and participants and users and junkies—that I rarely felt like I was in real, life-ending danger. I could count on one hand the number of times that the stakes felt that real, as real as they were to me now. Maybe the mid-day handoff in Union Square a few years ago in the stop-and-frisk era, since we'd taken the Q to the deal and had been carrying heavy weight. Maybe the late-night truck stop off 80 somewhere between Easton and Bethlehem, a corridor of heavy drug trafficking which added to the danger of the deal. 

In the same vein, even if I thought I was in danger, it never really occurred to me that anything would ever happen to Colleen. She was so in control at all times, so effortless, that even if I had been beaten to death by truckers at a Trexler, or thrown into Rikers on a routine stop, she would escape, bulletproof, onto the next score, the next deal. She was among but above it all, or so I had told myself. Now, after that call? I had to assume she was dead. 

That thought brought a tidal wave of emotion, threatening to crash down on my already friend and misfiring nervous system, but my own self-interest and survival impulse were beginning to kick in. Mourning her, mourning our complicated relationship, was going to have to wait. Air was returning to my lungs, and I needed to think, to make a plan for myself. First step, get off the street, get underground. I got up from the bench, jogged toward the subway with my head down. A few things were important now, more than anything else: keep my face off cameras, don't make eye contact with anyone, be as forgettable, if not invisible, as possible. I had cash on me, which would help, maybe even get me off the island, but I couldn't think beyond that, not only not to count my chickens, but because where could I go where I could not be reached, could not be touched? Get to that later, first get underground.

I threw my metrocard into the trash, bought a new one with cash. I didn't notice any cameras in the platform but that didn't mean there weren't any. It was about 4 p.m., and the cool stink of the musty platform felt welcome against my skin, welcoming flowing into my lungs as I gasped from running, from panic. I glanced at the map, tried to consider the fastest way out of New York. Renting a car in cash seemed possible, but likely raising more red flags than I could risk. Ferry to Staten Island was a pretty straight shot, but then what? Less eyes on Staten Island, but only one way off and no working knowledge of the ground. East felt dead. North into the Bronx was too close to home, where men had already been and where Reed's guys would be by now, and besides they probably had me at Fordham yesterday by now, so North felt dead. Penn Station or Port Authority made the most sense, and seemed to offer the best chance. Maybe blend in with the crowd, get a regional rail ticket either south or west, maybe get on a Greyhound or a Bolt bus to anywhere. If I could make it there, it felt like I could survive.