The Man Behind It

I knew I was in love with him from the moment I saw the spray paint on the pedestrian bridge last month. And now, with my hand an inch away from opening the door I wondered for the first time if he would feel the same.

It had been a hot morning in winter, a freak afternoon sun that lioned its way over the horizon and burned the moon's flesh red. I was inching my way to campus, my coffee sloshing untouched in one hand, biology texts shoved into my armpit. Seagulls circled above the grease river. Everything was bland and boiled and boring. I could see my life flash before my eyes, a blur of loans and letter grades and long term career goals and grinding commutes but what the hell, that's as good as it could get for a middle class gal like me. That's when I saw the grafitti.

Vandalism has always enchanted me, that' s one thing I keep to myself though. My father was a man of law and order and I remember walking home from school with him on mildew afternoons, him jingling the house keys even though home was still blocks away, me swishing my pig tails to keep cool.

Once in awhile, he would pause, point his keys at a broken street lamp, an urban mural, and tap my shoulder and say in his gruff voice, "Martha, that right there is what's wrong with our society, that people can't keep from ruining the things they depend on! Think someone else is goanna clean up their mess, do they? Well, the City won't always replace these lights, you know. I wouldn't be surprised if they decide to just take um out altogether. Look at this! Glass all over the walk! Let's go to the other side of the street, come on."

And we would cross at the zebra walk and if I turned my head to admire the way the jagged glass glimmered like sun spots on the concrete, Father would jab me with his keys and tell me to look where I was walking and my face would snap around and my pig tails would swish into place and I would look at my feet, at the orderly squares of grey that I walked on, and wonder what it was about the squares that my father admired so very much.

The words on the bridge were painted in red and black, letters as big as my body. I counted their meanings as my feet stepped on them. A-N-D-T-H-I-S T-O-O-S-H-A-L-L F-A-L-L. I was late for class, but I walked slow, soaking up those letters. This Too Shall Fall. This what? This bridge? This order? These cement squares? This city? On the bank, I waited for a pause in the traffic then dashed across the road. The world was meloncoly, clear cut, clean, grey-white. The sidewalk was barren.

I fell asleep in class that day, and dreamed about dragons that were rampaging through town, breathing spray paint on city hall. My teacher woke me up because I had started to snore. I left the room, sold my textbooks back to the student store down near the amphetheator, and began my search for the people who paint the world.

It was my father, ironically, who introduced me to Tyler. I was eating dinner with Dad that night at a cafe that neither of us likes all that much and he was complaining about how some hooligans had stolen a stop sign on the corner of Bridge and Mission. I was thinking that the hooligans were probably middle school kids who were sick of adults telling them to stop doing everything. Then, Father mentioned the bridge.

My ears perked up. "What did you say?"

He lifted his brows, as if surprised that I was showing interest in the conversation. "New vandal in town. Been writing the same thing everywhere, he's cost buisnesses hundreds in new paint jobs and now he's started carving his damn slogan into windows, walls, when we catch up with him I hope he's got deep pockets."

"What has he been writing?"

"Oh who cares about that. The street kids call him Tyler Cross, probably a psyeudonym. How's school going these days?"

"And this too shall fall? Is that it? Is he the one who wrote that on the bridge?"

"Sounds right. Disgusting and disrespectful brat. Let's order dessert."

That night, back at my dirt cheap and spotless clean studio, after my room mate had passed out on her calculus homework, I got on google and searched Tyler Cross. An old news story told me about a man by that name from the other side of America who had apparently been behind a series of arson attacks that led to the bankruptcy of a large corporation known to endorse vivisection.

A trip across town the next morning, (on the side of every city bus, purple and green letters two miles high, AND THIS TOO SHALL FALL, AND THIS TOO SHALL FALL, AND THIS TOO SHALL FALL, at every stop light and street corner they paused there, these toxic words, these venomous, taboo ideas, tattooed onto the side of daily life,) allowed me to attack the newspapers kept at the public library. I was missing my classes, my grades would start slipping, my father would yell. I found a story about a series of vandalisms that occurred in the midwest, windows broken, over and over again.

Why?

The paper didn't say, but the corporation under siege was a chain of coffee houses. I did some research. Apparently, the local coffee houses that were integral meeting places for artists, musicians and activists were being bought out and bullied by this larger and richer version. Their business had slumped. And so, I wondered, had someone decided to bully the bully back?

A week passed.

I got dirt under my nails, scouring the internet for information. When I hit a wall, I hit the street. Who would know where to find Cross? I had an image in my head of the kind of people that painted subway stations and bathroom stalls. My image included peircings and mohawks. I remembered the coffee shops in the news article and found a place called Cat in the Dark Coffee. It was near campus. Red walls and sunken armchairs. The customers all had lip rings. At first I wasn't sure how to strike up conersations, but soon I learned that it was simple.

"You go to the college? I was walking to class the other day and did you see on the bridge-"

"Got a light? Well, actually I don't smoke but you've never heard of a man named..."

"Nice shirt, nice book, great hair, good shoes, by the way..."

Most of the people I talked to were high school junkies, penniless bums, vagabonds, macho motorcycle men, witless, occasional rockstar wanna be's. But finally-

He was lounging on the front porch, smoking. I had been interrogating a young attractive hipster, trying to trade my phone number for useful information, when he beckoned me over. "Why are you looking for Tyler?"

Why?

Someone had repainted every major billboard in town during the night. Whitewashed the lot of them and in two story letters there it was, the promise. AND THIS TOO SHALL FALL. This billboard, this media, this road, this car that is driving by, this sidewalk, this street lamp, this window, this glass.

"Because I want to walk amoung the ruins."

Apparently, that was the right answer.

I won't bother with the details, but it suffices to say that my hand is hovering now, above the door knob, nervous. I look at the slip of paper between my fingers one more time. 2218 North Avenue, Apt 7. The man who gave me this paper, a middle aged punk with tattooed wrists, told me as he scribbled the numbers, "The ruins won't sparkle, but at least they will be more interesting than what's still standing."

I didn't want to argue because my heart was thudding with each pen scratch. But in my mind I saw those sun spots on the sidewalk and imagined what a window would look like if exploded by a rock. Fire works. Tyler Cross. The man who threw the stones. What my father would give to know his address. I twisted the knob.

The apartment was dark, pungent with books and cobweb perfume. The floor was covered with overlapping curly cue rugs in burgandy. The windows were curtained in purple. The sillouette was in front of the window, between the curtains. The window was open. The breeze ruffled the curtains, ruffled the sillouette.

"Mr. Cross?"

My voice cracked when the sillouette waved me forward. This was the man who held the spray cans and fought the order of the sidewalks, who declared that the bridge would fall and the river would race unfettered. This was the man who called street lamps into question. Tyler Cross.

I inched the door shut until it clicked. Tyler turned to me. And in that moment, I felt my heart break. ...The street kids call him Tyler Cross, probably a psyeudonym.

The woman held out a pale hand to me, smiled, beamed. "My friends say you're looking for change. My name is Tyler..." She laughed, "Sort of. It may as well be at this point. And you are?"

That was the only time in my life I have ever seriously considered becoming a lesbian. The moment passed. I sighed heavily. My morose expression must have seemed odd, but the thrill of meeting the... woman, whose work I admired so much couldn't be completely suffused. "Martha."

She shook my hand then pulled me to the window. Outside was the city, sky scrapers and sidewalks sprawled to the horizon. There was no tree in sight. The sky was grimy with smog. Sirens blared. Two stories below a homeless man slept in rags next to some trash cans. A raccoon foraged in the refuse.

"Martha, that right there is what's wrong with our society, that people can't keep from ruining the things they depend on! Think someone else is goanna clean up their mess, do they? Well, the Earth won't always stand for this, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if she didn't get rid of it altogether. Look at this! Pavement all over the world!" She disappeared into a doorway and emerged with two cans of spray paint. "Let's go to the other side of the street," she tossed me a can, walked to the door. When I hesitated, turning the blasphemous object over and over in my fingers, she raised her eyebrows a little. "Come on."