Chapter 25 - Carousel With Phoebe

I didn’t no where to go when I left. I didn’t want to go and spend more of Phoebes dough so I went down to Grand Central Station and spent the night on a bench. I didn’t sleep a lot because a million people kept coming in and out of the waiting room. I had a headache and I kept getting worse. I was really depressed and I think I was more depressed than I ever was in my whole life.

I had nothing else to do, and nowhere to go so I thought I would take a walk down Fifth Avenue. All the stores were open so it wouldn’t be too bad. It looked all Christmassy and there were Santa Clause’s on all the corners. I wished old Phoebe was there, she really enjoys it at Christmas. The Christmas before last I took her down to Bloomingdales with me. I was great, we had a helluva time.

I carried on walking all the way down and all of a sudden something spook happened to me. Every time I came to the end of a block and stepped of the goddam curb, I had this feeling that I’d never get to the other side of the street. I though I’d just go down, down, down, and nobody’d ever seen me again. I started begging Allie to help me to the other side of the street, I was shouting “Please Allie please! Don’t let me disappear.”

I decided I would leave New York forever. I would bum a ride and the another and start hitchhiking out West where it was very pretty and sunny an nobody would no me. I figured I could get a job at a filling station. I could pretend to be one of those deaf mutes, that was I would never have to have another conversation for the rest of me life. And if people wanted to speak to me, they would have to write it down on a piece of paper for me to read. I would marry another mute and thing would be pretty quiet all the time.

I got excited as hell about it all, but I would have to tell Phoebe about it. So I went to her school and wrote her a note for he teacher to give her telling her to meet me at the Museum of Art so I could give her the money back that she lent me because I wasn’t sticking around. I knew where her school was because I went there myself when I was young. But when I looked round I saw that some cold hearted bastard has wrote “Fuck you” on the walls. It drove me crazy how Phoebe and all the other children would have to see that at least once a day and wonder what the hell it meant.

I walked over to the Museum, there wasn’t anywhere else to go. I thought I might stop and give Jane a buzz before I started bumming my way west, but I wasn’t in the mood. I showed these two little kids around the mummies exhibition while I was waiting. When came out I had to go to the bathroom because I sort of had diarrhea. On the way out I sort of passed out, I was lucky really because I could have killed myself when I hit the floor, but I landed on my side.

Finally Phoebe arrived, I knew it was her because she had my goddam crazy hunting hat on. She had my old suitcase with her, I told her I wasn’t taking anything with my, but they wasn’t for me, they were for her. She begged me and begged me to let her come with me. I told her there was no way she could some with me. She started getting really annoyed with me.

I told her I changed my mind about going and that I would stick around, I said I’d take her back to school but she wouldn’t go. I bribed her with the zoo, she said she would go back to school the next days if I let her stay with me the rest of the afternoon and we went to the zoo.

So, we walked down to the zoo, me on one side of the road and old Phoeb on the other. When we got to the zoo I shouted to her that I was going in. I started walking down the steps and I looked back and she was crossing over and following behind me. She still wasn’t talking to me, but she was stood with me. We looked at a few animals then we came to a carousel. Old Phoebe loved them. It was playing “Oh, Marie.” I gave her some money to ride it. She wanted me to go with her but I didn’t.

I sat down a bench and watched her go round and round. When she got off she came over to me and wanted me to go on this time with her. She said she wasn’t made at me anymore. I still didn’t ride it thought but I gave her some more money so she could go again.

It started to rain like a bastard. Everybody rushed under the roof of the carousel, but not me. I stuck around o the bench for a while. I got soaking wet. I had my hunting hat on and it gave me a lot of protection, but I got soaked anyway. All of a sudden I started to fell really happy, the way old Phoebe kept going round and around. I was nearly bawling I was so goddam happy. God, I wish you could’ve been there.