This was not a window-down piece. This was a whole-train burner with windows painted over and each letter and number bigger than a man.

Moonman 157.

Ismael was sixteen, not too old and not too young, and he was determined to kill the shit of every subway artist in town.

Nobody could take him down.

And he sat there in his khaki jacket with his eyes ever moving, waiting for someone to say something that would make his day

He knew he was getting fame. He had imitators now, a couple of fairy-ass kids who tried to outking him in his own country. One of them got busted by the vandal squad, sentenced to clean graffiti from the station walls with an orange juice mixture because there's an acid in the juice that eats into paint.

Serves the chulo right for biting my style.

And he sat there with his longish face and misaligned teeth, an old man's worried head, and he studied the platform people at every stop. They reacted to the train, their heads went wow. Some shocked looks too, they're seeing hell on wheels, but mostly the eyes go yes and the faces open up. And he studied the riders as they shuffled in, carrying umbrellas, some of them, and concealed weapons, others, and gum wrappers and phone numbers and crushed Kleenex and hankies wrapped around house keys all wadded together on their mulatto bodies because the subway's where the races mix.

It made him think he was an unknown hero of the line, riding a train he'd maximum tagged. Revealing himself in a cartoon glow. Hey it's Moonman in our midst.

Once a man stood on the platform and took a picture of one of Moonman's top-to-bottoms, a foreigner by the look of him, and Ismael sidled to the open door so he could be in the picture too, unknown to the man. The man was photographing the piece and the writer both, completely unknown to himself, from someplace like Sweden he looked.

The whole point of Moonman's tag was how the letters and numbers told a story of backstreet life.

At Columbus Circle he changed to the Broadway train because he had business at the end of the line. He got on a train that was bombed inside and out by Skaty 8, a thirteen-year-old writer who frantically tagged police cars, hearses, garbage trucks, who took his Krylon satin colors into the tunnels and tagged up the walls and catwalks, he hit platforms, steps, turnstiles and benches, he'd tag your little sister if she was walking by Not a style king, no way, but a legend among writers for the energy he put forth, getting his tag seen by major millions and then two weeks ago, and a genuine regret went through Ismael as he recalled being told, he slumped and sagged all over again and felt the deepest kind of soldierly sadness-Skaty 8 hit by a train while he's walking on the tracks under downtown Brooklyn.

People moved along the car, they skated to a seat, they looked at display ads above the heads across the aisle, all without eye motion that you could detect with the most delicate device.

Ismael used to walk the tracks when he felt sorry for himself. Those were foregone times. He'd pop an emergency hatch in the sidewalk and climb down into a tunnel and just, like, go for a walk, be alone down there, keeping the third rail in sight and listening for the train and getting to know the people who lived in the cable rooms and up on the catwalks, and that's where he saw a spray-paint scrawl, maybe five years ago, down under Eighth Avenue. Bird Lives. It made him wonder about graffiti, about who took the trouble and risk to walk down this tunnel and throw a piece across the wall, and how many years have gone by since then, and who is Bird, and why does he live?

And the guy who reached around saying excuse me please.

He rode up the edge of Manhattan headed for the Bronx. There was no art in bombing platforms and walls. You have to tag the trains. The trains come roaring down the rat alleys all alike and then you hit a train and it is yours, seen everywhere in the system, and you get inside people's heads and vandalize their eyeballs.

The doors went ding dong before banging shut.

He saw a thin black male standing at the end of the car, disregard-ful, he's acting out the birth of the cool, and Ismael thought he was an undercover cop. It made him go low profile in his mental makeup, willing himself to be unnoticed in his seat, because he believed they were closing in on him. There was a big push out of City Hall to wipe out graffiti once and for all, to cork these ghetto crews and the middle-class white boys that came biting in behind them, and writers were being careful and playing safe.

He did not fear arrest, only the complications that would follow. Arrest would be good for his notoriety. It might even mean a story in the Post. But then the matter of the family begins to be important. It's not that he didn't want to be a father. He liked the idea of father and family. But there were so many things in between.

When he walked the tunnels as a kid he used to ask about Bird and he found out this was Charlie Parker. A jazz giant. He used to talk to the men who lived on the catwalks and in the unused freight tunnel under the West Side, they had beds and chairs and shopping carts, they had slippers they put on in the evening, they were mostly ordinary men, they washed the dishes and took out the garbage, and they told him about bop, bebop, and how Bird was dead at thirty-four. And one day Ismael, maybe he's thirteen, he's taking a leak against a wall and a guy comes along and stands behind him and reaches around, believe it or not, saying excuse me, and holds Ismael's dick while he pisses.

Dead at thirty-four, that was Bird, which was a ripe old age in the tunnels.

He knew he was getting fame because he had imitators, first, and because other writers did not disrespect him by spraying over his work, except some of them did, and because two women came looking for him in the Bronx.

But, see, this was the way his mind was reasoning at this particular time. Stay totally low and out of sight. Do not get your name or face in the papers. Do not get in trouble with the transit police. Because he had a woman he used to live with who was pregnant head to toe. They used to live with her mother and her mother's part-time man and it isn't that Ismael Mufioz doesn't want to be a father. It's just that this is not the time to get personally involved.

He heard they went into the superettes, two women from the galleries. They went into the bodegas, the church, the firehouse, he pictured them going into the firehouse to ask about graffiti, twenty men in rubber boots eating combination pizzas.

He sat on the Broadway train listening to the way his mind was reasoning.

People from the galleries were all over the Bronx looking for Moon-man, for Momzo Tops, for Snak-Bar and Rimester and the whole Voodoo crew.

Forget it, man. He could easily envision a case where the whole gallery scene is a scam by the police to get writers out of the tunnels and train yards and into the open, identified by name and face.

The man held his dick and eventually sucked it, whenever it was, a couple of days later, or weeks, that was the act he performed. And Ismael went down there, feeling sorry for himself, fairly often after that, going through a fence near the West Side Highway and into an opening in a grated emergency exit and down the narrow steps into the freight tunnel, where they had bookshelves, some of them, and Christmas decorations, and used half names and code names, tags like the writers would develop, and the truth of the matter is that he still goes down there for sex with men because some habits you drop and others you come to rely on.

The train went past City College, then veered east.

They did it herky-jerky in the dark. Or they went to a cable room and did it with sheets and towels. They kept pets down there arid ran clotheslines across the tunnel and stole electricity from the government.