They Never Heal

Week 41: Written October 13, 2016

Carrie stepped out of the subway and wrapped her scarf tightly around her face. It was cold out. Having just flown in from Florida, it was very cold out. She had her winter coat, a sweater, a wool knit hat, and a scarf, but even with all the extra layers she had packed inside her tiny suitcase, Carrie still felt unprepared.

Dina, however, was right at home.

“God, I love the winters in New York.”

Dina was from Minnesota, so to her, it wasn’t cold out. It was a little chilly. Perfect.

She walked with her coat open while Carrie kept her close to her chest, like a timid boxer. That made it hard for her to navigate her rolling luggage through the crowded city streets. They were somewhere up in the 50’s, she thought, somewhere near Rockefeller Center. That explained the crowds.

“Hurry up,” Dina called back. She was at the corner, standing beneath a blinking hand. “Hotel’s right across the street.”

“Oh thank God,” Carrie thought — and probably said out loud, too.

They strode past two hotels, actually, on the way to theirs: a fancy, modern-looking skyscraper called Drone and a classic, yet expensive, place that reminded her of what they referred to in the south as “old money.” Their hotel, the Excelsior, was completely different.

There were planks of wood covering the ground floor windows of the hotel, which was about two rooms wide and four stories high. No door man, no bag dude, hardly even a lobby. Anyone on the street would probably glance at it and think it was just another slummy apartment building. Back home, Carrie could’ve gotten a penthouse suite for the money they were paying. In Midtown Manhattan, though, $150 equalled “dumpster.”

Carrie didn’t have to say anything. Dina could read her mind.

“It’s fine. I’ve been here before, remember?”

Carrie remembered. What she couldn’t remember was why she kept taking trips with Dina when they were so horribly, horribly different?

They were best friends, sure, but maybe just because of that old saying: opposites attract.

Dina went out every night of the week. She sacrificed comfort at home so she could spend her money elsewhere: on clothes, on food, on traveling. Her only reason for working was to fund her wild escapades, which she documented for her ten thousand followers on Instagram. Tons of selfies, food pics, and drink pics — all heavily filtered.

Carrie, meanwhile, was a homebody. Granted, she felt bad about that. She wanted to get out more, wanted to meet more people, but rarely had the energy to do so. That was why she followed Dina around so much in college. Dina kept her in the loop. Without her, Carrie sometimes feared she’d vanish completely, a wallflower in the Fall, dead. A fallflower.

Carrie balanced Dina out, too, helping her graduate college by keeping her grounded. Part of the time. Dina even grew to appreciate quiet nights in watching movies or reading a good book. She still entertained such nights — maybe once every six months.

This give and take was fine in day to day life, but Carrie always wound up caught in Dina’s never ending engine whenever they went on trips together. Dina might accept a night in during a weeknight, but on vacation, she was 100% wild child, not wanting to waste a single minute in the hotel room.

That was why they were at The Excelsior: small, cheap, close to the action. And, at least based on prior experience, no roaches. Dina hated roaches.

Carrie dreamed of the NYC she saw in movies and books, with spacious penthouses overlooking Central Park where you could read a book and drink champagne on the terrace while some French dude cooked you dinner in your giant kitchen. She didn’t need to visit all the hotspots. She’d be fine visiting the Statue of Liberty during the day and spending the night at home, watching the sunset behind a sea of skyscrapers.

“Watch out for the homeless guy,” Dina said, breaking Carrie from her happy, but impossible, daydream. “Ew, he’s bleeding.”

The man on the steps of The Excelsior looked like dirt personified. His clothes, skin, and hair all shared the same dart shade of grayish brown, the only exception a bright red streak seeping through a tear in the left leg of his pants. It was so bright and moist, Carrie figured it had to be a fresh wound, but the puddle beneath his leg said otherwise. There was a dark, nearly black, stain that ran from his leg all the way down the steps to the sidewalk. The stain looked nearly as old as he did.

The man looked up, as if at death’s door, and groaned.

“He’s harmless! Ignore him,” Dina said. “He was here the last time.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes! In fact, I think he still had that same cut, too.”

Carrie walked around the man cautiously, stumbling up the stairs with her luggage, afraid to take her eyes off him.

Their “mini-suite,” if you could call it that, was in the back of the building and overlooked a sliver of alleyway that featured NSFW graffiti and a series of overflowing dumpsters. Optimistic Carrie saw it as a glimpse of where they could be spending the night, had they settled for a $75 a night room instead. By comparison, The Excelsior room looked mildly cozy: two twin beds, a bathroom, a love seat, old carpeting and sheets but no suspicious stains (at least none that the naked eye could see). Carrie was content not to investigate any further and for once she was glad when Dina demanded they leave immediately and hit the town.

“Have you ever been to Webster Hall?” Dina somehow spoke perfectly, even though she was painting bright red gloss onto her pouting lips.

“I’ve never been to New York, remember?”

“Right! Sorry. You’ll love it.”

“Is it a history museum or something?”

Dina laughed. “Of course not! Would I take you to a museum your first night here?”

Carrie shook her head. If Dina had her way, she probably wouldn’t take her to a museum at all.

No, Webster Hall wasn’t a museum. It was a nightclub, a venue, one just like every other venue Dina liked to visit. It was dark, loud, and super crowded. A line ran out the door and stretched around the block.

Carrie suffered through it, turning off as many guys as possible with her patented “crazy eyes.” Scarier than that, though, were the guys who seemed to get turned ON by it. Mercifully, at half-past 12, Dina put Carrie out of her misery and dragged her back to the hotel. This was another instance where Carrie found The Excelsior to be an absolute joy when compared to the alternative.

The only weird thing was the homeless man. He was still there, still bleeding, still moaning.

“He was here the last time,” Dina had said, which sounded ridiculous at the time. Yet here he was, hours later, in the exact same spot. And his wound, as it was when the girls originally arrived, looked brand new.

Dina didn’t give him a second glance, hopping up the stairs like a 10 year old, two steps at a time. She skipped to the elevator bank and waited, impatiently, for Carrie to follow. But her focus remained on the hobo, on his shiny, bleeding wound.

“Today, Carrie!” Dina yelled back. “I have to pee!”

Carrie rolled her eyed. The hobo moaned. She wanted to do something, but instead ran inside after her friend. What could she do, anyway? The man was a living miracle, if what Dina said was actually true, that he’d been in that very same spot for months, bleeding from the same wound constantly.

The bed was softer and more comfortable than Carrie expected, but she still couldn’t sleep. Not just because Dina snored like an elephant, either. She heard noises outside, from the alleyway below. The sound of people, maybe even a whole horde of them, digging.

She climbed out of bed and walked to the window.

It was like watching ants surrounding a fallen crumb. Homeless people were lined up to the giant, overfilled dumpsters, reaching in wildly, frantically searching for something edible. There was a restaurant nearby, so one dumpster in particular was most popular, but those that could squeeze their hands into that one foraged in the adjacent heaps, hoping to strike gold.

At least, that’s what Carrie figured they were doing.

She looked, hopefully, for the hobo from the front steps. Maybe he was there with the others, finding his midnight snack. If nothing else, it would prove he was more fit and able than his appearance implied. But the man wasn’t there. No, Carrie knew where to find him if she wished. He’d still be out front, in the very same spot, doing the very same thing. Moaning. And bleeding.

For some strange reason, she had to be sure.

Carrie threw on some clothes — a lot, in fact, considering how cold it was at night — and took the elevator to the first floor. She wanted to see the hobo one more time, just to see if he was alive. He didn’t have to be jumping up and down alive, just…alive. If she found him just sitting there moaning, as usual, she’d feel relieved.

When she got off the elevator, she saw him. And another man. A dark, dark man.

She didn’t know what was happening at first, but when she took a few steps towards the door, she knew, and it made her ill.

The dark man was kneeling next to him, his mouth on the hobo’s leg. He was biting into his leg, into the wound, and drinking the blood that flowed out.

The hobo was helpless. He groaned, but it was hardly any different from the sound he’d been making all day. And Carrie saw, in the foggy glow of the street lights, a reflection in his eyes and told her he was blind. She wasn’t sure he knew what the hell was going on anymore. Maybe in the beginning, but not anymore.

She spent the night tossing and turning in bed. Spent every night that way, in fact, obsessed with what she’d seen that first night. And each night thereafter, after Dina tired of bar hopping and they both went to bed, Carrie wondered if that same strange man came to feast on the homeless man’s leg, like a…

What? A vampire?

It couldn’t be.

Carrie convinced herself it was just another New York City nut job, another hobo who ran around drinking other hobos’ blood. It didn’t make any sense, but no explanation made sense, so she went with the one that didn’t require a belief in the supernatural. Somehow, that made her feel better.

A few days passed and their trip was over. Carrie dragged her luggage downstairs and reminded herself, as she always did, not to travel with Dina anymore. Dina, however, mourned that they had to leave the city so soon.

“I’m going to live here someday,” she pledged. “And then I’ll party every single night!”

As if that wasn’t the case already, Carrie thought.

They went outside to wave down a cab and saw the homeless man, same as always. He reached out and moaned, grabbing at the air in a manor that, were it sped up as if in fast forward, would’ve looked like an act of desperation. Instead, it looked like a weak plea for spare change, or booze, or food, anything.

“My God,” Dina said, noticing his gaping wound again. It was, not surprisingly, moist and shiny. She laughed a little. “I guess the homeless don’t heal.”

Carrie nodded. Dina meant it as a joke, but Carrie knew it to be true — and even worse, she knew why.