Read Commuters for Free Online

jittering with energy—Avery would get off too, ready to roam. But then up from underground the first thing that he’d see would be some huge Starbucks. Or a Barnes and Noble. Or a Kmart—no shit! Astor Place had all three on one corner, and it all proved too much for Avery, skater kids notwithstanding. He’d turned right around and glumly re-descended. He hadn’t come to New York-fucking-City for Kmart.
    Central Park was okay. Loaded with hot moms pushing double strollers that were bigger than the crappy Honda he’d sold before coming out here. But the hot moms were too busy with thestroller occupants to pay any attention to Avery, wandering here and there, checking it all out, the passing scene. One afternoon some loud-talking woman stopped dead in her stilettos to size him up, and then went on to ask a series of questions he’d heard before and wasn’t particularly interested in. She’d handed him a card—VIP TalentBooking something something—and strode away. Avery flipped the card around for a while and then stuck it, with a handful of change, into a raggedy coffee cup loosely held by the nodded-off bum sitting next to him on the bench. (Last time this happened he’d been waiting on line outside Schuba’s Tavern, on Southport, and his friends’ reactions had been ferocious and unremitting. They’d howled and yanked away the business card, everyone calling the agent’s cell again and again, in between shots of whiskey, over the course of a long night. Poor guy. Yeah, hi, this is Avery Trevis? I’d like to model your smallest nut huggers? And I’d like to shave my —Give it back, Smitty! It’s still my turn!)
    Museums were another way to go, but after an hour or so in the new MoMA, Avery was still thinking about the twenty bucks it had cost to get in.
    One afternoon he had joined the long lines to view where the World Trade Center had stood. People stood on a platform and shuffled respectfully past that canyon. There were long lists of names, boards with reprinted photos, flowers and notes twisted through the wire fence. There were vendors with makeshift carts full of merchandise—pins and baseball caps that said, 9/11, always in our hearts, under logos of flags or eagles. So many men were wearing official-looking NYPD or Fire Department T-shirts that at first Avery was moved, thinking they had all come to mourn lost comrades. But then he realized that these shirts, hats, were alsofor sale. He hadn’t known it was—what?—legitimate to dress like a police officer if you weren’t one.
    He avoided the indie culture. He stayed clear of Tompkins Square Park, Avenues A through D, Orchard Street—anywhere he’d heard was DIY, was punk, was cool. He couldn’t afford cool. He couldn’t afford to start longing for that scene, the loners and artists and hackers and freaks that he’d torn himself away from in Wicker Park. He was exiled from cool, an alt-dot fugitive, at twenty years old. Avery knew it was a rehab cliché, and he wasn’t even sure how entirely he bought it, that whole “change your friends” rule. But as of now, he was staying clear of the whole scene, just in case.
    Only once had he broken this self-imposed restriction, and it had been yesterday afternoon. The memory goosed a shot of pure adrenaline through Avery now, still sitting alone at a table in the Waugatuck Tennis Club.
    Thompson Street, below Houston. The screeching music drew his attention first, speakers blaring that Japanese girl group who covered “Freebird” in wild, broken English and thundering bass lines. silkworm, read the sign, set askew over the open door in a tiny storefront. Boutique shoe store, was Avery’s first guess. But then he saw the Ramones poster, and the retro-style barber chairs, three of them, jammed tight in one line. Three or four pale, skinny dudes clustered inside, talking loudly over the music, ignoring Avery, who was now just inside the door. They all had Mohawks of varying lengths and color,