It happened while I was painting this “mural” that says “subway scholar” in huge 16-foot-by-as-high-as-I-can-reach letters. It spans an eighth-mile city block across the backs of four factory buildings, two and a half stories up, along one of the major veins of the el before it plunges into the subway downtown. So if you’re on the train, coming in from the south side, the piece is right there, butting up against the tracks. As you’re going by, you can still read some of the letters: S, U, A, Y, S, C, H.
I climbed the fire escape still wearing all white. Cloudy sky, no sign of rain. I took my all-black painting clothes out of the bags and pulled them on over the white. I strapped a respiratory mask around my face. I felt warm and I was practically invisible in the night.
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But I’ve been caught painting up here before. The police know this alley’s hot so they sometimes check it with searchlights, especially this fire escape, which is the main way writers climb up to the tracks. So every time a train comes by with all its lights on, which is every couple minutes until about 2 AM, sometimes around the curves from the south, sometimes up from the subway, the fire escape is lighted up and I have to run down and crouch out of view of the motorman. So I was up there painting the inside of the O for like half an hour. It was around midnight–I was painting this scene of this girl playing in this overgrown lot–when I was caught off guard by this worker train. The city had been doing track repairs in this area all summer, and a couple times a night a worker train would just stop up here sometimes for 20 minutes and do God-knows-what-I-never-stuck-around-to-find-out.
“There’s a body on the roof. There’s a body on the roof. There’s a dead body.”
“The fuck are you doing!” I yell.
So finally I reached a busy street, Halsted. There was bus fare in my shoe. I took the Halsted bus to 55th, then the 55th Street bus home. A lot happened on the way home, but that’s another story. Finally I got home and all I could think was whew.
“Hello,” I yawned falsely.
