And that’s that. Even Manny is amazed at how well this strange power works as he hangs on to the door handle and the ancient lap-only seat belt and tries not to look alarmed by her driving. He has some inkling of why it works. Money talks and bullshit walks in New York. In a lot of cities, probably—but here, the nation’s shrine to unrestricted predatory capitalism, money has nearly talismanic power. Which means that he can use it as a talisman.
The traffic lights miraculously stay in their favor for several blocks, which is fortunate because the young woman is likely to break the sound barrier at this rate. Then she curses and slams on the brakes as a light ahead makes a fast switch to red. Too fast; amazing that she doesn’t run the light. He smells a waft of burnt rubber through the open window as he leans forward to squint at the light. “Busted light?”
“Must be,” she says, tapping her fingertips rapidly on the wheel. This, Manny knows, is a gesture required by the ritual of hurry-up-damn-it, but it doesn’t work, because that ritual never works. “They usually line up better than this. Just one light out of sequence can start a traffic jam.”
Manny presses his hand against the cold, spreading ache in his side that is beginning to throb again. Something about the traffic light has pinged his new sense of wrongness—and the wrongness is enough to erode whatever anesthetic effect he’s managed to summon. He opens his mouth to suggest that she run the light, which is risky. The wrongness has probably weakened his influence on her, too, and now there’s nothing to stop her from thinking twice about the strange Black dude in her antique cab. But whatever is happening on the east side of the island—FDR Drive—is growing urgent. He can’t risk getting kicked out of the cab until he gets there.
Before Manny can speak, however, a BMW passes through the intersection ahead. There are long, feathery white tendrils growing from its wheel wells.
He watches it go past in utter shock. The driver sees it, too; her mouth falls open. Feathery doesn’t quite fit what they’re seeing. It’s more like an anemone’s fronds, or the tendrils of certain jellyfish. As the car rolls by, gliding along behind a slower driver, they see one of the tendrils seem to… inhale. It opens itself out a little, revealing a thickened stalk that tapers as it stretches away from the wheels, up to slightly darkened tips. All of it is translucent. Not all of it is here—in this world, that is. Manny sees at once that it is like the dual city: here, but also in that other place where the sky is wild and people are a never-thought.
All of that is academic, though, because in the next moment, Manny notices something that makes the little hairs on the back of his neck stand up. The tendrils twitch as the BMW thumps over a pothole—but it’s not the pothole that they’re reacting to. They’re longer, see. Turning, like some kind of wiggly, wormlike radio antennas. Stretching toward the Checker cab as if they sense Manny inside, and smell his fear.
After the BMW moves on, its driver apparently oblivious, it takes a moment for Manny’s skin to stop crawling.
“So, you saw that, too, right?” asks the driver. The traffic light has finally changed; they speed toward FDR again. “Nobody else was staring, but you…” Her eyes meet his in the rearview.
“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I saw it. I don’t… yeah.” It occurs to him, belatedly, that she might need more explanation than this, if he doesn’t want to get kicked out of the cab. “You’re not crazy. Or at least, if you are, you’re not the only one.”
“Oh, well, that’s comforting.” She licks her lips. “Why couldn’t anyone else see it?”
“I wish I knew.” But when she shakes her head, he feels compelled to add, “We’re going to destroy the thing that’s causing it.” He means it to reassure, but he also realizes, as he says it, that it’s true. He doesn’t let himself think further about how he knows it’s true. He doesn’t ask whom the we in his statement refers to. They’re too far into this now. If he starts doubting himself here, that will weaken the power—and, more importantly, he’ll start questioning his own sanity. Then they’re back to involuntary commitment.
“Destroy… what?” She’s frowning as she looks at him in the rearview this time.
He doesn’t want to admit that he doesn’t know. “Just get me to FDR, and I’ll handle it.”
Much to his relief, she relaxes and flashes a lopsided smile over her shoulder. “Weird, but okay. The grandkids are gonna love this story. If I, you know, have grandkids.” She drives on.
Then at last they’re on FDR, moving faster toward that vague-but-rapidly-sharpening sense of wrongness. Manny is clinging to the old-fashioned leather handle sewn into the seat back before him because she’s still doing the race-car-driver act, whipping around slower cars and cresting hills with enough speed that it feels a little like riding
the Cyclone? what is
a roller coaster. But they’re getting closer to the source of all the trouble. There’s a knot of small aircraft over and boats crowding along the nearby East River, all of them generally centering on something farther south. All Manny can see from here is smoke. Maybe it has to do with that bridge incident he heard about on the train? Must be; they’ve begun to pass signs warning of delays, detours, and police activity below Houston Street.
But it’s also clear that they’re much closer to the wrongness than to the bridge disaster. Now they’re passing more cars, over on the uptown side of FDR, that seem to be infested with the weird white tendrils. Most are growing from the wheels, same as on the Beemer they saw before. It’s as if the cars have rolled over something noxious that’s allowed a kind of metaphysically opportunistic infection at the site of the damage. A few vehicles have it in their front grilles or curling up from their undercarriages. One car, a newish Beetle, has the tendrils in a spray up one door and crawling over the driver’s window. The driver doesn’t notice. What will happen if it touches her when she opens the door? Nothing good.
Then the traffic slows sharply… and the city’s second, unseen disaster comes into range.
His first thought is that it’s like an explosion, kind of. Imagine a fountain bursting up from the asphalt and flaring twenty or thirty feet into the sky, and wiggling. In lieu of water, the fountain flares with tendrils—dozens of them, anemoneic and enormous. Some writhe together in a way that is both mesmerizing and vaguely phallic as they tower above the roofs of the cars. Manny can tell that the root of the… growth… is located somewhere up ahead on the downtown side, probably in the fast lane, which must be how it’s getting so many cars on the uptown-going side despite the median barrier. He sees a shiny new SUV with Pennsylvania plates pass that is so covered in the tendrils that it looks like a spectral hedgehog. Good thing the driver can’t see them, or his vision would be too occluded to allow driving. But an ancient, rusty Ford Escort with missing hubcaps and peeling paint comes right behind it, and the tendrils haven’t touched it at all. What’s the pattern? He can’t begin to guess.
This explosion of ick is what’s causing the traffic jam, Manny sees, as the flow of cars slows to a crawl and the Checker comes to a near halt. Although most people can’t see the flare of tendrils, they’re still somehow reacting to its presence. Drivers in the fast lane keep trying to pull into the middle lane to get around the thing, drivers in the middle are trying to get into the right-hand lane to get around them, and drivers in the right-hand lane aren’t budging. It’s as if there’s an invisible accident up ahead that everyone’s trying to avoid. Thank God it’s not rush hour or the traffic wouldn’t be moving at all.