The Brit rose last, and as he was doing so, motioned for a nun in full habit to take his place.
“I think you have us both beat,” laughed McCluskey.
“I did hesitate for a moment,” confided the old man. “I’m Church of England, after all. But in a time of crisis, one sets all religious differences aside. The name’s Leister, by the bye. John Leister.”
“Not Niles or Beverly or, um, Jeeves?”
Leister shook his head. “Just John.”
“Let’s drift,” said Selman. “Maybe we can find a nice, quiet corner for our next encampment.”
The three men meandered over to the clock, which was actually one clock with four different faces, each presenting in a different direction. The faces were opalescent, the whole unit set in a brass stand that rose from the top of the information pagoda situated right in the middle of the vast main concourse. Perched on one of the pagoda’s counters was a young woman working a crossword puzzle with the help of those lolling in front of her. “I need a five-letter word starting with L. A synonym for ‘vertical column.’” The woman spoke loudly so that anyone within projected earshot might render assistance. At least two dozen people, enlisting themselves in her challenge, cudgeled their brains, both individually and cooperatively.
A few moments later a man called out, “Lally.”
Selman turned to his cohorts. “What’s a ‘Lally’?”
“I think it’s a kind of vertical column,” answered McCluskey with a mischievous wink.
Among the sea of tourists and suburban New Yorkers set adrift by the blackout was a nice-looking, fifty-something-year-old woman with graying red hair who didn’t seem to be killing time at all. She maintained a stance that was rigid and attentive. Her look was one of obvious anxiety. She glanced up at the clock — a futile act since the electric clock’s quadruple sets of hands remained frozen in time, the great timepiece suspended in its chronometry at precisely 5:27.
The two younger men in the trio caught sight of the woman at the same time. They traded glances that bespoke sympathy but did not indicate a desire for personal involvement. However, a moment later, Leister took full notice of her himself and made an immediate, albeit cautious, approach.
“Begging your pardon, madam,” he said, “but there appears to be something troubling you. I wonder if I may be of some assistance.”
The woman smiled. Leister’s accent was disarming. “I’m fine. I’m just a fretter.”
“I don’t know when the power will be restored, but I’m nearly certain that everything is being done to make that outcome an eventuality. In the meantime, it’s heartening — don’t you think? — to see the city behaving itself so well on this most Cimmerian night.”
“This what?”
Offering his hand: “The name’s John Leister. I teach philology. Historical linguistics. Across the pond. That means the U.K.”
“Hello, Professor. I’m Carole Adams. I teach second grade. Across the plains. That means Kansas. Wichita. Although I’m actually from Grand Island. That’s in Nebraska.”
“These are my new boon companions, Messrs. McCluskey and Selman. They work in advertising.”
The two ad men shook the hand of the fretful Midwestern schoolteacher.
“May I ask,” continued Leister, “if that which is troubling you could in some way be mitigated by any or all of the three of us?”
“You’re so kind. You’re like the Three Musketeers. I’d be happy to tell you. Over a nice cold Manhattan. It’s been a very difficult few hours. But for a while longer I really feel that I can’t leave this spot.”
“And why is that?” asked Selman. “Just how long have you been standing here?”
“I got here at about five fifteen.”
Selman glanced up at the clock. “Only twelve minutes. Not a bad wait.”
McCluskey groaned.
“And why have you been standing in this spot since this afternoon, Miss — is it Miss? — Adams?” asked Leister.
“It’s Miss. I used to be a Mrs. But now, by choice, I’m back to being a Miss. I’ve been waiting for someone. It’s an involved story. It’s now become a potentially embarrassing one. I’d tell it to you, but—”
“But what?” asked McCluskey, grinning. “But we don’t have the time? Miss Adams, we have nothing but time.”
Carole Adams laughed and nodded. Her story was this: that she had met a man on a visit to New York twenty years earlier. He worked for a war orphans relief organization and was killing time in the city before steaming off for Europe. He had two days left to his Gotham sojourn. Carole had come to New York to spend a few days with an old girlfriend who was traveling secretary for a Hollywood bond tour. “Come to New York while I’m there,” the friend had written her. Carole had come, but then the tour was rerouted through New England at the last minute. Carole now found herself alone in the city, although this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing; it was nice to be on her own after a dozen years in a crowded classroom, and more importantly, a dozen years in a bleak, loveless marriage.
It was 1945. 1945 was about trains and ships and everybody on the move. It was about going places and doing things that one had never done before — taking risks, not knowing what the next day might bring.
The man’s name was Nick Gombert. Like Carole, he had also been in his mid-thirties back in 1945. Like Carole, he was also married. And like Carole, he was also unhappily married. Nick and Carole tumbled inexorably into an impetuous two-day whirlwind romance — a romance that coincidentally included a night at the movies. The movie was The Clock, a story which, though dissimilar in many respects to the story of Carole and Nick, had two things very much in common: a time-compressed love affair and a climactic rendezvous beneath a clock.
“Is this your fated rendezvous, my dear?” asked Leister, who, like the Y & R men, had been thoroughly captured by Carole’s tale.
“Well, I don’t know. I think I’m going to sit down now. I’m very tired.”
Carole’s new friends moved with her to a spot on the floor next to the information booth. The woman who had been publicly working her crossword puzzle, having now apparently completed it, sat cross-legged on the counter flipping languorously through a copy of Harper’s Bazaar. Once Carole was settled, the three men sat down in an improvised crescent in front of her.
“Our agreement was this: that if after twenty years we had been successful in detaching ourselves from our respective unbearable marriages, and if we were not attached to someone else, then we would come to New York and, like Judy Garland and Robert Walker, meet under a particular clock.”
“This clock?” asked a middle-aged woman who’d been standing within earshot nearby, and who now plopped herself down on the floor next to Carole. “Hello,” she added. “I’m Sylvia.”
“Hello, Sylvia. I’m Carole.”
“Carole lives in Kansas,” added Leister. “She’s come to see if her war beau is conveniently unattached and willing to pick up where the two of them so poignantly left off. Their very own real-life version of An Affair to Remember.”
The woman named Sylvia gasped in slow motion. “You came all the way from Kansas on the chance that he might be here waiting for you under this clock?”
“Not this clock. The one in Penn Station. That’s where they met: Judy and Robert. There was another clock where they rendezvoused later in the movie. It was at the Hotel Astor. But Nick and I — we both liked the idea of meeting under that beautiful suspended clock at Penn Station, because it’s close to where we met. At the Chock full o’Nuts only a couple of blocks away.”