His phone distilled the day’s events: crown moldings, placards for Maulbertsch, hazy steins of beer. The last picture showed him and Cullen. They were seated in a velour booth, faces jaundiced by a bromidic candelabra. Terry wore an azure turtleneck, Cullen—an oxford button-down.

The subway jostled, and Terry adjusted his feet. He was scrolling through more photos: cloudy beaches, nose pimples, bar menus, screenshots from X….

Stand clear of the closing doors, please

“Where the hell does this water even come from?” Terry had asked.

Cullen was walking north. Terry followed. Train cars rattled by them, throbbing like giant, urban polyps. Under the track, rats swerved between clouds of drizzling sewage. They reached the end of the platform, and Cullen stood, hands clasped behind his back. Terry hunched over his phone. Across the catacombs, there was a soft silence. It was that nadir of sound that comes just before a sneeze. Then they heard it—the shuffling, laceless shoes. Terry turned, and a cantankerous voice called out, “Gaht the time?!”

Through the darkness he could barely make out a figure, but he shouted back, “dunno!” “Wachu mean? I’m finna know the time!” the voice cried again.

Terry shouted louder, “Dunno!”

Damp footfall, like cloth hoofs galloping in sewage, echoed across the tunnel. Then, a creature emerged. Its filthy talons were pointing at the bezel on Cullen’s wrist. “Just gimme the time, niggas.” Cullen turned like a trap door; “I don’t have it,” he replied.

The creature’s bloodshot eyes widened. “The fuck you say to me?”

Lingering in the air now was a malodorous scent. It was postcoital—a by-product of fornicating with garbage. Terry tucked his nose into his turtle neck. Cullen stepped forward. “I said, I don’t have the time, nigga.”

Instantly, the creature bolted toward them. Terry backpedaled and slunk behind a broken information panel. He jabbed numbers into the phone’s receiver, but there was no signal. Fuck. He turned to Cullen. Cullen was still rooted to the concrete, and the creature was closing in fast. Terry’s eyes shot back to the phone. He stared in the righthand corner, praying for a dial tone, when suddenly, a raspy guffaw erupted across the platform.

“I’m just fuckin’ witcha!” the creature cried.

Terry looked up. Swarthy hands were a few inches from Cullen’s face. They were reaching out in offering.

“You niggas smoke?” the creature asked.

“Sometimes,” Cullen smirked.

An ashy fist unveiled a cigarette.

“Lemme get a lighter then.”

Cullen handed over his Bic, and a spark illuminated the creature’s canary sclera. Slowly, an ebullient grin curled across its face. Through crags of its brackish teeth, noxious clouds floated toward the ceiling.

“The time” Cullen finally said, “is 10:04.”

The next stop is 42nd Street, Bryant Park.

Terry continued sifting through more photos of him and Cullen: cherubish cheeks, baggy suits, damp pits. The two had been friends for as long as digital cameras had served as a history of human life. They were blurry, out of focus, red-eyed.

Terry’s finger danced across the screen, and a flickering blue line stared back at him. He tossed around platitudes in his mind, unsure what to say. As he cogitated, a rotund Yucatec meandered through the train car. Behind her, toddlers balanced boxes of candy in their frail arms. On her back, an infant slept in a make-shift sling.

The next stop is 34th Street, Herald Square.

That evening, Terry had told Cullen “a story was just a meal made of complementary information.” It was an offhand remark, an anxious throwaway that follows the real conclusion. The real conclusion was that Terry could be a writer if he wanted. The only caveat was that Terry didn’t want to write, mostly because he didn’t care to dedicate the time or effort.

“I don’t know.” Cullen replied.

“I’m serious. I’ve read enough to know how to muster up a decent novel.”

“But what would you even write about?”

“I’d write a space opera or some kind of high fantasy series. I’d likely work in my own code of

ethics, too.”

Cullen smirked. Terry’s bibliography mostly consisted of RoboTech and George R.R. Martin, and his only impressive scholastic accomplishment came in highschool when he read unassigned portions of A People’s History of the United States.

“Well, what would those morals be, exactly?”

“Probably that things should be more equitable.” Cullen chuckled. “That sure sounds like a fantasy to me.” “Well, then what would you suggest?” Terry whined.

Cullen clasped his stein. He took a long draught. Behind him, the shadows of 86th street crawled on a window pane.

“Don’t know. Nature seems too chaotic for equity, though.”

Terry chewed the inside of his lip. “So what are you thinking for food?” he asked.

“Thinking something hearty.”

“Wish I could say the same,” Terry sighed.

“No protein, still?” Terry nodded gingerly.

“I’ve heard good things about the carrot salad.” Cullen’s thick forefinger arrowed toward the menu: Shaved carrots, raw coconut oil, apple cider vinegar.

Terry winced. “Seems too simple. I was hoping for something with non-dairy-cheese or soy.”

“Don’t think you’ll find that here, to be honest. But don’t knock simple; it’s worked for thousands of years.”

Terry’s skin tightened.

Cullen cocked his hand to call the waiter.

Attention Passengers, there is a train ahead of us. We will be moving shortly.

Terry looked up. Everyone in the car was flagging over their phones. It was a reminder of what Cullen had said earlier.

“You do it as an anxious deployment, the way philistines use the word ‘uhm’ in conversation.”

This is 34th Street, Herald Square

“So what about you? Are you writing anything these days?” Terry asked, his lips smacking with

oil.

“Nothing commercial. Don’t think people care what I have to say right now.”

“Well, if you had an audience, what would you say?”

“Something about characters. These days, I’m less of a theme or plot person and more about

characters.”

“Like what kind of characters?

“Characters like Trigger Smith.”

“Trigger?,” Terry scoffed. “That’s really a name?”

“I guess you haven’t ever heard of the Continental Bar then?”

“No, I haven’t.”

A flash streaked across the restaurant. Terry turned around and saw a gaggle of girls. They were acting out prandial movements, adjusting plates and camera angles. There came a second incandescent flurry, and Cullen lifted his hand to shield against the strobing light.

“The Continental Bar was voted the worst bar in New York City several years ago,” he began. “It was in the East Village but closed down in 2018. Before that, it had been around for roughly thirty years. The guy who owned the bar is Trigger Smith. Before he opened Continental, Trigger was friends with people in the underground music scene in New York. He hung out or worked at or did both at the CBGB club on Bowery. Back in the eighties, he had befriended a lot of bands there: the Misfits, the Dead Boys, the Fleshtones; he even met Bruce Willis, who was supposedly a bartender there before he left for Hollywood.”

Terry smirked, “Okay, but what makes Trigger a character?”

“Well, I believe it starts at CBGB,” Cullen replied, “Trigger is emblematic of counter-culture, but not in the commercial way it exists now. There was something more sincere to the punk scene in Trigger’s day.

“Like what?”

“Back then there wasn’t always a screen to intermediate the status quo, so someone like Trigger couldn’t sell his dogma for a monthly subscription fee. Instead, he drank at clubs like CBGB and watched bands spit on crowds. More than that though, he just didn’t care what he was associated with. He lived his life the way he wanted to, often against the prescriptions set out by the government or mainstream culture. In a way, he was like a pirate, and his sea was the New York underground.”

“So what was so special about Continental Bar then?”

“Well, after opening in the nineties, the bar’s success began to dwindle in the mid 2000s. To rectify it, Trigger decided to lure more customers in by placing a colossal sign above the entrance that said ‘Five shots for ten dollars. Yes, we’re serious.’”

Terry laughed, “That rocks!”

“Indeed it does. Eventually, the venue became a popular spot for college kids to get cheap booze. But even though the place was packed, NYU students would only ever order shots with complimentary cups of water to chase. The kids tipped poorly, so money got tight. In an effort to remedy this, Trigger concocted another scheme. This time, he refused to provide free water to students. The way he was able to do this was by circumventing New York regulations, which mandated that all bars provide tap water for free if they also served food. So Trigger gutted the kitchen of the Continental.”

Terry cackled. “That’s pretty funny.”

“To me, that’s not even the best part about Continental Bar. After a couple years, probably around Obama’s second term, Trigger got fed up with the NYU crowd. I guess the younger generation was more and more a reflection of the mainstream. So, he put up another sign. This one said, ‘Sorry, if you use the word literally inside Continental, you have 5 minutes to finish your drink and then you must leave. If you start a sentence with I literally you must leave immediately!!! This is the most overused, annoying word in the English language and we will not tolerate it. Stop Kardashianism now!’”

Terry’s grin was ear to ear.

“Around 2018, a Gothamist article broke news that the bar was finally going out of business. The reason was that surging rent prices were cleansing the city of its mom and pop shops. Typical story. So,

Trigger decided to throw Continental Bar a proper goodbye.” Foam slid into the hull of Terry’s stein.

“At the time of its dissolution, the Continental Bar was located beside a McDonald’s on Third

Avenue. The McDonald’s was also impacted by the rising rent prices and closed shop just before Continental. Trigger, the wiseman that he is, cocked up one final scheme—throw a go-go dancer themed party the night before the lease ends. But in order to create enough room for the go-go dancers, and because Trigger is a bit of a pirate, he tore down the conjoining wall between the Continental and the McDonald’s.”

“How was any of this legal?” Terry laughed.

Cullen shrugged. “I don’t think it was, and maybe that was the point. Anyway, the night before, Trigger and some of his buddies go into the defunct McDonald’s, clean it, set up a DJ booth and dance floor, and then send off the Continental in a final hurrah.”

“That’s amazing….”

“Certainly is. If you want, I’m sure you can ask Trigger more about it. He actually opened a new place in the Lower East Side, near your apartment. It’s not a bar per se, but they sell cheap beers and White Castle burgers and Hot Pockets—”

“I feel like I’ve seen it before!”

“I’m sure you have. You can’t miss Trigger, though. He’s extremely eclectic. He wears one of those South Asian, rice-paddy hats, the kind the Viet-Cong wear in Apocalypse Now.”

Terry winced. He realized he had encountered Trigger before. At the time, Trigger was wearing an army surplus coat, thick, Coke-bottle lenses, and a nón lá. Terry thought Trigger was mentally retarded.

“People are always wearing in costumes in New York -” Cullen continued.

After that first sighting, Terry had asked a local bartender about Trigger. The bartender cut Terry off before he could finish his question. “No, that guy isn’t retarded,” she said, “he runs a bar or whatever. It’s called, like, Two Bridges Diner or something. Sometimes they have live music or comedy.” “ …but Trigger doesn’t seem to be wearing his costume for attention.” Terry met Cullen’s stoic eyes.

“So, that’s the kind of character you would write about?” he asked.

“Yes. I love the idea of him in the world. He doesn’t need to have morals. He doesn’t even have to do anything. He just has to be a part of the big picture.”

This is 2nd Avenue

Advertisements peaked through the threshold of the subway doors: whovillian androgynes fornicating in American locales, under lime-green cacti, between velvet cushions, in cotton candy parks.

The tagline read, “Realizing you’re not dead inside.”

That evening, Terry had soured the mood after preaching his thoughts on the current year. Over topfentorte, he began with, “You know, in polite society, people shouldn’t be pursued like prey.” Cullen’s face was travertine and marble.

“I just think that treating people less predatorily wouldn’t be such a bad thing is all.”

Cullen continued to sit silently. It was a half-expected response, but it made Terry engorge with more solipsistic righteousness.

“You can be quiet all you want, but whether you care to admit it or not, there are still major problems with society. Too much power still rests with the patriarchy.”

“Let’s talk about something else.”

“All I’m saying is we eat, we sleep, we kill each other and jockey for power, and then we die. That’s what life is for us, and for women, let alone the nonbinary, it’s even worse. They get no say, no power, and the cycle continues until the next generation. And who knows what will be left for the next generation. It’s one of the reasons I don’t want kids, to be honest, because what kind of life would they live?”

“You know I don’t subscribe to misanthropy,” Cullen retorted.

“It’s not misanthropy. I’m just being a realist.”

“How can you be a realist when you look more at your phone than you do the world around you?”

“Maybe because I have morals, unlike you.”

Terry’s mood was ossifying. It was the two liters of wittbier. They stirred in his stomach with quotes from Foucault, or quotes from someone who knew Foucault.

“You know, women in ancient Greece had it worse than the helots,” he continued. “They had it worse than slaves. They couldn’t even watch the panhellenic games, a-and in the sixties, African Americans would get lynched in the South just from the perception that they may have whistled at white women. Things have changed for the better, sure, but still not enough. For instance, think about that poor unhoused man who was suffering from mental illness and got choked to death on the train just last year.

He didn’t deserve to die, but the system, the way it’s set up, let him be killed.”

“I think you’re being too myopic and are failing to appreciate what it takes to make a society function.”

“Here we go! You always cling to antequatede ideas! But there can’t be misogyny and racism forever, you know. At some point we have to evolve past all the bullshit!”

“Terry, no amount of mental gymnastics can overcome nature.”

“You’re a fucking bigot!” Terry shouted. He was hunched over the table now, red in the face. His fingers flirted with the knobs of his phone. He was enivisioning summoning his digital cohort for Cullen’s auto-de-fe. It would begin with a JPG of him under the candelabra. Next would be Cullen’s address. Then, his profession. Finally, Terry would recount Cullen’s anathema.

Terry adjusted his feet in the booth. He could feel his loins stirring at the thought of the group message. In his mind’s eye, ovular avatars populated his screen—DMs from spergCyanide, Millennial Apartidetogo, and MeowTseDong. These were the girls he had become increasingly lustful for, the ones who approached critical thinking with indolent nihilism and coquettish selfies. They were the girls who talked about Basquiat. They crashed on friends couches and slept-in past noon, and they existed in the universe of technology, just a fingertip away.

The next stop is Delancey Street-Essex Street

“Sometimes I think about the past,” Cullen said.

“Like childhood?”.

“No, before that. Like before humans existed, before they had a conscience.”

“Yeah, what exactly about it?”

Terry was half focused. He turned toward the hotdog stands on Fifth Avenue. Streetlights refracted on their greasy tongs.

“I think that back then, we were like a black hole. The stars, the trees, the air, they entered our minds in monochrome—like waves through cells.” Terry slid a hand into his pocket.

“Then, one day, everything changed. A promethean atom entered our minds and caused us to produce our first output—thought.”

“Uh huh,” Terry unlocked his phone.

“And as the consumption went on, consciousness multiplied. And it multiplied, and it multiplied, and it multiplied. Until at last, it had become a great, metallic reservoir, like an omnipotent mirror.

Blue light dulled Terry’s eyes.

“In that mirror was the entire universe, with its cornucopia of smells, sounds, tastes, colors and shapes. And after humans looked upon it, their lives ended, for they had finally consumed everything, even themselves.”

This is East Broadway.

Ommatadium pixels stared at Terry: crown moldings, placards for Maulbertsch, hazy steins of beer. Behind their bluelight was a nebula of electrical impulses, binary neurons firing into the noosphere.

Stand clear of the closing doors please.

Terry stepped off the train and climbed the escalator. When he reached the surface, it was raining and the intersection was cordoned off. Past the barricades were tables and chairs, pallets and boom boxes, umbrellas and hundreds of sleek, photoshopped faces.

Terry trekked along the perimeter and then stopped below an awning. From this vista, he watched the bacchinalia of Canal Street. There were thongs on floating ribs, fishnets, face tattoos, and nipple rings. They were worn by trustfund babies and trannies and balding omnicrats, who role-played Wemair anarchists and fourth wave feminists. When they weren’t cackling about trends, the scensters slurped thirty dollar cocktails, inhaled THC, and moved flabbily, like marionnettes in a Brugel painting. Surrounding them were homeless men, who pilfered receptacles for takeout boxes and discarded cigarettes, and junkies, who overdosed in the cutouts of graffitied buildings. Below their feet, rats poured out of sewers and manholes, and above, streetlamps and neon signs lit the city’s skyline.

Suddenly, Terry felt the urge to turn around. Behind him, in the window, he saw a hand-written

sign.

“Cash only! No Apple Pay! No Crypto!”

The building seemed empty, so Terry peered inside. Below fluorescent lights were tables, a few stools, and a large arcade machine. Along the eastern wall was a wide, bleached countertop. It held napkins and condiments, small, plastic cups, and a jaundiced tip jar. Behind the counter stood a tall, tenebrous man. He wore an army surplus coat, thick, Coke-bottle lenses, and a nón lá.

A smile poured across Terry’s face. He pulled out his phone and steadied its camera. The screen flickered, and Cullen received a message. The caption read, “Trigger Smith.”