Free The Colossus of New York by Colson Whitehead Page A

his change into the rows of candy. After hiding behind secretaries and voice mail all day little interactions bring anxiety. Chalk up her swagger through crosswalk to the daily compliments about her skill-set. These laurels are awful comfy, she just might rest a bit. At lunch today they sat him at a civilian table, that’s how fast word has spread. Snakes and ladders. Why not remove his desk, bring in a treadmill, hang a carrot from the ceiling and stop all pretense already. So weary— taking credit for other people’s work all day really takes a lot out of you. Failing at everything except his fear of success. Passed over yet again. Archivist of slights. Everyone else’s good fortune is food out of your mouth or a hug you never got from someone who should have loved you better. Halfway through lunch she realized glass ceilings allow glimpses up into another person’s hell. The guys in the mailroom are out to get him, he just knows it. I want your resignation on my desk in the morning.
    PEOPLE WHO worked a little later pour over sidewalks, impending competition for seats on transportation. Wave good-night to the security guard. Electronic card keys monitor comings and goings, identifying employees not by dehumanizing numbers but cruel nicknames. Hello, Bucket Face. Surely the clients will gaze upon our lobby and appreciate that we are not messing around. Won’t they. Won’t they. Looks like marble but in fact is not. Atriums and human ebb-and-flow erode these looming cliffs. Developers plot demise, plot repeal of zoning laws vis-à-vis mandatory public space. Throw ’em a bone. Do public monies actually go to support the conception execution and installation of that hideous public art. Metal twisted into vaguely human shapes. In this autumn light hard to differentiate abstraction. Certainly their wilted postures suggest exposure to blowtorch, crippling temperatures, a variety of crucible. The elements have stripped their weatherproof coating and now they are defenseless. So we make do. Rust slowly, friends, and leave little bits of you wherever you go.
    IMPROBABLE as it may be, the day still has a few indignities left. The day waters down indignity with frustration to make it last longer. Abomination, thy name is Subway. He cannot enter. They flood through turnstiles, hips banging rods, and will not let him enter. He must get home, but it’s all he can do to get halfway in before another one charges at him. A fish out of school. Everybody knows how it works except for him. All of them from every floor are crammed into this one subway car: the makers of memos, the routers of memos, the indexers filers and shredders of memos, the always-at-their-desks and the never-around. How do they all fit. Squabbling like pigeons over stale crumbs of seats. Everyone thinks they are more deserving, everyone thinks their day has been harder than everyone else’s, and everyone is correct.
    INTO THE CATHEDRAL. Of course the Dutch were quite shocked to find Grand Central Station under that big pile of dirt. Alas the Indians and their strict no-refund-without-receipt policy. And, lo, as the earth cooled, Grand Central bubbled up through miles of magma, lodged in the crust of this island, settled here. The first immigrant. Still unassimilated. Ever indigestible. The river of skyscrapers flows around it. Travelers swim to it and cling, savoring solid handhold in roaring whitewater. Churches fill up at regular intervals, on a schedule laid out in the business plan. Like the best storms, rush hour starts out as a slight drizzle, then becomes unholy deluge.
    CITY NIGHT swallows stars. Painted constellations on the vault of the Main Concourse must suffice. Substitute universe. The Bears and Cancers and Belts up there do not move, shamed into paralysis by the stars shooting across the terminal floor in homebound trajectory. Rack ’em up. The announcer’s voice is cue stick cracking these assorted colors into ricochet, into side pockets, into