Free This Side of Brightness by Colum McCann

topside. He can see, even from his height, that there are streaks of dried mascara on her face. She shivers in the freezing cold and pulls the fur coat tight.
    She looks so much like Dancesca.
    Moving toward the tunnel wall, near the mural of the Melting Clock, she looks around furtively, then squats and lifts the flap of her fur coat, careful not to soil it.
    Treefrog doesn’t want to watch as she pisses, so he quietly pulls down the zip of his sleeping bag and swings his feet onto the floor, careful not to step on any pellets of ratshit. He tugs on his boots, ties the laces with numb fingers. At the end of his bed, Castor stirs, and he reaches out to stroke her with both hands. Castor arches her back and nestles up close to him.
    He moves quickly through the darkness of his nest toward the catwalk, and before he swings himself down he touches the carcass of the traffic light: Take it easy, don’t crash.
    The beams are cold; he can even feel the chill through his gloves as he swings down, twenty feet in all, toward the ground. He hits the tunnel gravel with hardly a sound and looks to see the woman stand up and adjust her skirt, a puddle of steaming piss at her feet. She glances toward him and sniffs at the air, but Treefrog pulls back into the shadows.
    â€œWho’s that?” she says.
    He pulls himself deeper into the darkness.
    â€œWho the fuck is that? Elijah? That you?”
    Treefrog breathes down into his overcoat so she won’t see his breath making clouds.
    â€œDon’t play no games,” she says.
    He can almost hear his heart thump.
    â€œWho’s that?” she says again. “Elijah?”
    She rummages in her handbag, and he thinks for a moment that she might have a gun, that she may spray bullets around the tunnel, that he might end up with a hole in his head or his heart, or both, that she may even put the gun to her own head. But instead she takes out a pack of cigarettes and cocks her face sideways, lights the cigarette. Her fur coat falls open, revealing a tight shirt underneath, her nipples pointed and at attention in the cold. She takes a step and each breast jiggles minutely. How long, he thinks, since there was a woman down in the tunnels? As she pulls furiously on the cigarette he notices that the whites of her eyes are rolling around in her head. He keeps himself pinned to the dark, and when she starts to move he blows her a kiss.
    She steps from the shaft of blue light into long darkness and into light again and then into an even further blackness, where all he can see is the outline of her figure as she moves, hugged into her coat. The tunnel is like a doubtful church, letting in light at strategic points and leaving the rest in shadows. A dog barks above a grate and the woman stops, looks up, takes out a small mirror, and wipes a hand across her cheeks—she must be crying—and he imagines the mascara stains darkening her face.
    He slithers along behind her on the same side of the tracks.
    The woman walks in the hard-packed dirt. Her high heels leave tracks. Treefrog wipes his hand across a runny nose and then lifts his head at the sound of a noise. Two pinpoints of light appear in the distance: the upstate train. He darts a look at the woman ahead of him. She has her head down as she walks. Treefrog’s heart jumps. The sound of the train grows louder, and suddenly his throat feels dry.
    â€œDon’t,” he whispers. “Don’t.”
    She lifts her head and stares long and hard as the headlights bear down. She moves nearer to the tracks. The train horn blasts loud and sparks flare from the underside of the carriage and the noise is deafening and he thinks that she is going to stand in front of the train—to clutch it to her chest like a massive bullet—and he shouts, “Don’t!” but the shout is drowned by the howl of the engine. He covers his eyes, and when he looks again she is simply standing by the track, staring up at