The Schwa Was Here

“In there?” I asked. “What’s in there?”

“You’ll see.”

“You’re a

“Not for much longer.”

I stepped in, against my survival instinct. The building was no warmer than the street outside, and it smelled like some­thing died in there from smelling something else that died in there. That mixed with some weird solvent fumes made me gag.

I heard the scurry of rats, which I hoped were cats, and tin- flutter of bats, which I hoped were pigeons. I was just glad it was too dark to tell. The Schwa pressed a tiny flashlight on his key chain and led me up a staircase littered with wood chips and broken glass.

“The elevator doesn’t work,” the Schwa said. “And even if it did, I wouldn’t trust it.”

I tried to imagine what he could possibly be up to here, and none of it was good. I just let him lead me, hoping that I would eventually understand.

He pushed open the seventh-floor door to reveal a huge con­crete expanse with nothing breaking up the space except peel­ing pillars holding up the ceiling above. The rot-and-solvent smell was gone, but the mustiness of the place caught in the back of my throat, making my mouth taste bitter, like juice after toothpaste.

The Schwa walked around the huge place, his arms spread wide like it was something to show off. “So what do you think?”

“I think a room just opened up for you at Bellevue’s mental ward,” I told him. “Do you want me to call or fax in your reser­vation?”

“Okay, so maybe it’s not such a great place, but you can’t beat the view.”

He led me over to one of the broken windows. I looked out. To the left I could see the spires of Manhattan, and below was a stretch of the expressway, which ran right past the building. There were a couple of crumbling industrial streets, and past that, Greenwood Cemetery, the size of a small city itself.

“What am I supposed to see?”

The Schwa looked out of the window. The sun was already beneath the horizon, and the twilight was quickly becoming night.

“Shh,” said the Schwa. “Any second now.”

Those few minutes of waiting made me worry even more. I started to babble. “Schwa, I don’t know what you think you’re doing here, but whatever it is, things aren’t so bad, right?”

“Here it comes,” he said. “Watch this.”

I pulled him back from the window, afraid he might be preparing to jump, but he shook me off.

My heart was pounding a hip-hop beat in my chest as I stared out of the window. That’s when the streetlights began to flicker on.

“They never come on exactly at sunset,” the Schwa said. “You’d think they’d figure out that the time of sunset is differ­ent every day, but they never seem to change the streetlights until daylight savings.”

More and more lights came on, then spotlights came on, lighting up the billboards overlooking the expressway. One giant billboard advertised a Spanish TV station. A second one advertised an expensive car, and a third one had a big smiling Schwa face staring out at us.

“Oh, wow!”

There was no question about it. The huge billboard was cov­ered in Schwa. His face was the size of a hot-air balloon loom­ing over the expressway, and next to his picture were words in red block letters:

“Oh, wow,” I said again. He was right; the view from the sev­enth floor was wild.

“I will be seen,” he proclaimed. “Nobody can make that dis­appear. I’ve rented it for a whole month!”

“It must have cost a fortune!”

“Half a fortune,” he told me. “The company rented me the billboard at half the usual rate. They were really nice about it.”

“It still must have been a lot.”

The Schwa shrugged like it didn’t matter. “My dad had money put aside for me. A college fund.”

“You blew your college fund?I” I didn’t like the sound of this at all, but he still acted like it didn’t matter. “Weren’t they suspi­cious about a kid renting a billboard?”

“They never knew! I did the whole thing online!” The Schwa told me how he had done it. First he set up a fake website that made it look like he ran a publicity company, then he hired an advertising agency—again online—telling them his company was promoting a new child star, Calvin Schwa. “They never questioned anything, because they got the money up front,” he said. “And money talks.”

I looked again at the billboard. With the streetlights on, and all the billboards lit up, the sky suddenly seemed dark. So did the expressway. In fact, the expressway seemed very dark. Then a nasty realization began to dawn on me with the slow but in­escapable pain of a swift kick to Middle Earth, if you know what I mean. Something was very wrong with this picture. Not the Schwa’s massive billboard picture, but the bigger picture. I swallowed hard, and my heart started hip-hopping again. I wondered how long it would take the Schwa to notice. He seemed so thrilled as he stared at his own unavoidable face, I wondered if he ever would. I thought about how you’re not supposed to wake sleepwalkers, and wondered if bursting a friend’s bubble was the same thing. Then I realized that I didn’t want to. Let him have his dream. Let him be like his father just this once, and happily sleepwalk through this.

“It’s getting late—we’d better go,” I told him, trying to lure him away from that window.

“In a few minutes,” he said, still marveling at the billboard. “Do you know how many thousands of people pass this spot every day?”

I tried to tug him away from the window. “Yeah, yeah. Let’s just go!”

“Do you have any idea how many cars are going to drive by and—” That’s where he stopped, and I knew it was all over. His bubble didn’t just burst, it detonated.

“Where ... are ... the cars?” He said it slowly. Just like some­one who really was waking up out of a dream.

“Forget it, Schwa. Let’s just go.”

I grabbed him and he shook me off. He stuck his whole head so far out of the broken window, I was afraid his throat would get slit on the broken glass.

He looked to the left, looked to the right, then pulled his head back in and looked at me.

“Where are all the cars, Antsy?”

I sighed. “There aren’t any.”

“What do you mean ’there aren’t any’?”

“The Gowanus Expressway is closed for construction.”

The Schwa gave me an expression so blank, I swear I really could see right through him. “Construction.. .” he echoed.

We both looked out of the window again. There were no bright pinpoints of headlights rolling toward us, no dim red glow of taillights moving away. There were no cars on the Gowanus Expressway. Not one. It was the reason the street below the expressway was so gridlocked. It was also probably the reason those bastards had rented Schwa the billboard for half price.

“But . . . but people will see!” the Schwa insisted. “They’ll see. All the buildings around here. People will look out of the buildings!”

I nodded. I didn’t say what I was thinking. That this whole area was abandoned. Looking out of the window, I saw no lights in any of the other windows around us, and certainly no one looking from Greenwood Cemetery. The Schwa could see that for himself.

“Schwa, I’m sorry.”

He took a deep breath, then another, then another. Then he said, “It’s okay, Antsy. It’s okay. Not a problem.”

We went down the stairs in silence, no sounds but the shards of glass crunching beneath our feet and the impatient honks of horns coming from the traffic-packed street below the expressway. It was still bumper-to-bumper when we got out into the street.

“Bus?” I asked him.

“Later,” he answered.

I followed him five blocks to a ramp that led up to the ele­vated roadway. It was blocked by a barricade and lined with yellow caution flashers. He squeezed through, and I went up with him.