How to Get to [Short Round]'s House

[Our week of flashbacks continues with an e-mail I sent to a young woman in 2002—names again redacted.]

How to Get to [Short Round]'s House

Praise for How to Get to [Short Round]'s House*

"This brash, knowing, massive, aggressive e-mail is to modern America what Gunter Grass's The Tin Drum is to modern Germany."

–Front page, The New York Times Book Review

"[Short Round] does what very few writers can do: he describes imaginary worlds with the most extraordinary precision and beauty."

–Gore Vidal, New York Review of Books

"Wonderful...outlandish...offbeat and inventive...deadly accurate... How to Get to [Short Round]'s House stands apart from the pack."

–Daniel Stashower, Cleveland Plain Dealer

HOW TO GET TO [SHORT ROUND]'S HOUSE

[Short Round]

HOW TO GET TO [SHORT ROUND]'S HOUSE

Illustrated by Emil Antonucci

For J—

HOW TO GET TO [SHORT ROUND]'S HOUSE

Chapter One: How to Get to [Short Round]'s House**

Stepping off of a Metro-North train from [a Northeastern city] onto a dully lit, bootbeaten platform in Grand Central, you may experience the onset of what the Portuguese call ansiedade; this is natural, and there is no cause for alarm. The bovine crowd will draw you gently along, as the surf might transport a startled gnome or sand godling, flooded from his palace of comminuted fragments and water-worn particles of rocks, wide-eyed and chattering down the coast of Maine or possibly South Africa. Allow me to clarify: water would move the godling along the South African beach, and a crowd of people would move you along the train platform. I don't want you to become confused by the imagery. There will be no more imagery.

You will find yourself in Grand Central Station's main concourse. Signs, space, and strangers will abound and affront, but you mustn't permit them to disturb your peace of mind or of body. Of admirable mind! Of admirable body! Making good and effective use of said peace, you will look around for words, engraved untold years ago into the very stone of the concourse, above a modest arch. You may expect to find the relevant words to your right, but this will depend, J—, upon the course your train takes, and over that I have little control. The specific words you seek are these: SUBWAY and SHUTTLE. If you do not see the word SHUTTLE but do see the word SUBWAY, you may settle for this without terrible harm to your purpose or person.

Eventually you will find yourself at one of several entrances to Grand Central Station's New York City subway stop, and a turnstile will confront you. Again, do not panic. [Note: never in the course of this journey need you panic. As a general rule, in fact, panicking is unnecessary and rarely advantageous to the panicker.] Do not flee or attack the turnstile. By appeasing this guardian with money or foodstuff (preferably money, in one form or another), you may gain entrance and leave to make use of the city's lightning-fast subterranean trains, which arrive regularly and with much roaring and screeching. Never fear: their bark, as one might say of a dog or of someone or something that one wishes for one reason or another to compare to a dog, is far worse than their bite. (Do, though, avoid getting into the path of the train. This angers them.)

You will be taking two of these trains, J—. First is the SHUTTLE, or the S train. You will follow signs for the S, which will feature a modest grey circle with the white letter S couched therein. The S is a simple, unambitious train that is willing to limit itself to travel between Grand Central Station and Times Square. Times Square, J—, is your intermediary destination. And to Times Square the S will take you, if you simply give it a chance!

Once in Times Square, you will speed along to another train. Yes: speed, for a young man awaits you with great eagerness and heated heart. Here in Times Square you will have a number of options, which will allow you to exercise the free will that God bestowed upon you so as to avoid growing maddeningly bored (God) while watching His creatures scurry around meaninglessly along predetermined courses. However you choose, you will want to head uptown rather than downtown. Coming from the SHUTTLE, you will almost certainly reach the staircase leading down to the relevant uptown trains before you even catch sight of the other. This is convenient, and it is my doing. Along the way you may pass people playing music or dancing with grotesque mannequins. Pay them no heed and move along. Remember the impatient young man! He does not dance with grotesque mannequins!

The uptown trains you may take, all of which will be denoted by red circles, are these:

—THE ONE (1) TRAIN, kin to lost NINE, one of a noble pair recently halved by foulest misdeeds and tragedy, which races now boldly, alone, from the Bronx's Van Cortlandt Park and through Manhattan and—where once it may have ducked down and past the World Trade Center to nest and recupe at last at the nethermost tip of Manhattan—now disturbed from its usual aim by the selfsame injury that robbed it of sibling, heads thence deep into the easterly regions of Brooklyn, almost unto Queens, at New Lots Avenue, where sushi chefs (so it is whispered) converge for cocaine and karaoke; stopping all the while, with undaunted grace and generosity, making as many stops as it can—no fewer than 57 in all. The ONE does not need your pity but appreciates your concern and will get you to 72 Street in four stops.

—THE TWO (2) TRAIN, feared by Norwegians, adored by kitchen utensils, which screams from highest Bronx to lowest Brooklyn, Wakefield to Flatbush, through famed regions graced with such illustrious names as Burke, Pelham, Freeman, Fulton, Grand Army, Streeterling Street (yes!), and Newkirk, having responded to last September's disaster by stopping somewhat more frequently along its way, but its way maintaining with furious pride. The TWO will try to seduce you, and you will rebuff it, but you will feel no ill will toward it. It will get you to 72 Street in four stops.

—THE THREE (3) TRAIN, which, chastened and shaken, no longer sets wheel or headlight South of 14 Street, but transforms instead, tip to tip, from Downtown to Uptown at that street and then slowly retreats. If only it could effect a similar retreat along the tracks of time, to its glory days, when tunnels widened at its approach and tracks did quake and quiver and passengers tread reverently upon its floor! The three is a note without an octave, but it will get you to 72 Street in only one stop.

Once you arrive at 72 Street, you will emerge from beneath the earth like a delicate blade of grass, and immediately you will be swarming with beetles. No, scratch that last part. No beetles: you will come up the stairs, pass through the turnstile, turn right, exit the station, and find yourself on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, on an "island" in a puzzling intersection of streets. Ahead of you, a mysterious, incomplete structure. To the right of you, North Fork Bank and Gray's Papaya. To the left of you, Urban Outfitters. What wonders! What temptation! You must resist the urge to withdraw some money, but a hot dog, and hide it in a pile of trendy clothing. The awaiting impatient young man impatiently awaits! You will turn left, thinking for some reason of bebedlinened ghosts, and will proceed in a westerly fashion along 72 Street. Do not be surprised if, after walking a long avenue block, you come across West End Avenue! This is perfectly natural. Do be surprised if you come across Columbus Avenue: in that case, please turn around and try again.

Perhaps you will recognize your surroundings at this point. [Short Round] lives at 3— West 72nd Street, which is on the right, or "North," side of the street. Upon arriving at the apartment building wherein he makes his home, you will push a button marked, "5C," thus alerting the elephant of your arrival. Sonnez l'elephant! Aigu aigu. Soon thereafter you will receive innumerable kisses.

Chapter Two: Printable Summation

S train to 42 Street Times Square

Uptown 1, 2, or 3 to 72 Street & Broadway

West a block and a half on 72 Street to 3— West 72 Street, Apt. 5C

About the Translator

Larissa Volokhonsky was born in Leningrad. She has translated the work of the prominent Orthodox theologians Alexander Schmemann and John Meyendorff.

* Yes, I italicize in e-mails.

** Note: this is no longer how to get to [Short Round]'s House.