Chapter 9
Bondage Breaker – December 10, 1999, The New Yorker
The rush hour wave had almost subsided, and yet the subway train felt packed when I stepped in. I negotiated my way through the crowd, trying to dig out a square of empty space. There were free seats here and there, but I couldn’t get myself to pick one. I had set my mind on standing when a woman looked up from her book and brushed her eyes on me for a split moment.
I sat in front of her.
For a while she ignored my presence, the subway, anything beyond the black and white world of words elating from her book. But when the train came to a halt at the next station, brakes squeaking loudly, she noticed me again.
“I should get myself a novel like yours”, I said
What did I expect? Only deranged people interact on subway trains. And yet something in her ways had created a shift in the set of rules. I sensed she would not pull back.
She wanted to know what brought me to New York, and I wondered what made my lack of belonging to the city so blatantly clear.
I told her I was taking a break, she smiled at my generic answer and said, “Seems like you are seeking some answers around here”
She knew so much already, so why not tell her everything?
“I’ve created lethanol”, I said
She couldn’t know about lethanol, but I thought I’d lost my mind to talk about this. When she nodded as if I were telling her I was a math teacher in junior high I relaxed.
Of course the name hadn’t rang a bell. Or had it?
“The economic value of this molecule is huge, there has been a time when I was proud of my creation. But not anymore”, I continued, unable to stop
How so, she asked, and I explained what I figured lethanol could do to ecosystems and people. Anxiousness was starting to foam within me when she shrugged and told me, mistakes happen.
“But I can’t let myself be responsible for a massive disaster”, I fought back, my tone pitching, as if winning this argument could change the facts
Then don’t, was her calm reply.
“I communicated the risks. My company knows, but profit rules. They want lethanol. I thought about ingesting the bloody stuff to reach the public. If I die somebody will have to ask questions”, I replied, the high pitch escalating in my tone
Few people turned my way before for the briefest instant, their irritated indifference echoing my feeling of impotence.
Is dying the only solution?, she wanted to know, the calmness in her tone unaltered. This woman had faith, or maybe what I saw was my own faith, reflected in her empathetic eyes.
I shook my head no. No, dying is not the only solution. Not for now, at least.
A man with a black trench coat hunched on his newspaper glanced my way. The glance was brief, but he was not irritated and he was not indifferent.
The woman looked at him strangely, and was silent for a moment.
I looked at him too. He was now engrossed in the black symbols populating his newspaper, and all of a sudden it dawned on me. How simple.
“Of course”, I said
“Of course”, the woman repeated, “I know about lethanol and that man over there might have overheard our conversation about it too, who knows. There are people who might want to listen, all you have to do is reach out and find them”
I grinned. She smiled, and asked my name.
I am Meyer Stevenson, and now you know about my story too. From now on I’ll keep telling it to whoever cares to hear it. You can broadcast it or forget it.
What you do with it is up to you, but bear this in mind.
- They can only have you if you let them, and I won’t.
Iris Dawson