“She uses her maiden name now. It’s...”
“Besides, I finally found the slip of paper.”
“Well, in case you lose it again, her name’s...”
“I’ve already written it in my book.”
A National Park Service ranger wearing olive drab trousers, a tannish-green shirt and a Smokey the Bear hat was waving tourists onto one or another line on either side of the center doors leading into the base. He was a tall, burly man with blue eyes and a reddish-brown mustache, and he kept chanting, “Admission is to the right or left. No admission through the center doors. Admission is to the right or left, depending where you want to go.”
“Excuse me,” Sonny said.
“Yeah?” the ranger said, and then immediately to the approaching crowd, “Admission is to the right or left, depending where you want to go. No admission through the center doors. Yeah?” he said again.
“How do we know which line to get on?” Sonny asked.
There was a National Park Service patch sewn to the ranger’s shirt over his left pectoral. A little brass National Park Service shield was pinned over the pectoral on the right. Below the shield was a narrow brass rectangle with the ranger’s name stamped onto it: ALVIN RHODES.
“Where do you want to go?” he asked.
“Well, until we know which line goes where,” Sonny said, “how can we...?”
“The line on the left is for people who don’t know where they’re going,” the ranger snapped, and then began chanting again, “Admission is to the right or left, depending where you want to go. No admission through the...”
As it turned out, the line on the left wasn’t for people who didn’t know where they were going, but was instead for people who wanted to climb the stairs going up to the crown. A girl tending the rope at the head of the line told Sonny they were looking at a twenty-two-story climb...
“That’s three hundred and fifty-four steps,” she said.
... and maybe a wait of two to three hours. If they wanted her advice, they’d get on the other line and take the elevator up to the pedestal.
“Get a good view of the harbor all around that way, save yourself a lot of sweat and strain. Here’s a plan, shows you where the pedestal is,” she said, and handed him a printed drawing of the “Planning Your Visit” sign he’d photographed on the mainland:
“What do you think?” he asked Elita.
“Sounds good to me,” she said.
“I’ll let you through,” the girl said. “Just cross over to the other line.”
“Thank you,” Sonny said.
He was thinking he would remember Alvin Rhodes. He was thinking, I hope you’re here on the Fourth, Alvin.
They were in the open space where Liberty’s original torch was now displayed, a large rectangle surrounded by an upper level, which he guessed was the Second Level indicated on the Planning Your Visit sketch. As they walked toward the people waiting on line for the elevator, Sonny looked up and saw signs indicating there were restrooms upstairs. He spotted a staircase, took Elita’s elbow, said, “There are restrooms up there,” and led her toward the steps. She wondered if he had read her mind.
The men’s room was on one side of the open rectangle, the ladies’ room on the other. Again, their agendas were different. Elita simply had to pee. Sonny was looking for a likely lay-in spot, should the plan call for one. An open wooden door led into an angled alcove that shielded the men’s room from the corridor outside. He ran his palm over the door, seemingly studying the paint job, while actually checking out the lock. A man passing by looked at him curiously, and Sonny said, as if commenting admiringly, “They painted it to look like bronze,” which in fact they had. The man nodded in vague agreement and hurried into one of the stalls. The lock on the door was a spring latch, fitted with a keyway on the outside. A wooden wedge held the door open. Sonny glanced behind the door and saw a push bar on the inside. Mickey Mouse time.
There was another door in the little alcove, painted grey and right-angled to the entrance door. Someone had left it either accidentally or deliberately ajar, open perhaps some eight to ten inches. As Sonny passed it, he glanced into the darkened room beyond and saw a pail with a mop in it. The room was a utility closet. The outside of the door was fitted with a circular keyway. He walked past at once, hurrying through into the main section of the restroom. There were the requisite number of urinals, stalls and sinks. You could lay in overnight in a stall, but if a cleaning man came in to mop up—
The man who’d agreed with him about the imitation bronze door was coming out of the closest stall. He washed his hands at one of the sinks, glanced sourly at the blowers attached to the wall, dried his hands on his handkerchief instead, and left the room. Sonny took a position at the end of the row of urinals. A man at the other end was taking forever to pee. Sonny waited for him to finish, waited for him to leave the room — without washing his hands — and then zipped up his fly. He went to the sinks, quickly washed his hands, dried them inadequately on one of the wall blowers, and moved immediately to the grey utility closet door. He yanked the door all the way open, checked its inside surface in an instant. A thumb latch. Nothing else. No knob on the door, no push bar. Just the latch, designed to spring the lock in case someone accidentally trapped himself inside. He feigned elaborate surprise at having entered a closet. But there was no one in sight as he backed out into the alcove again; his little act hadn’t been necessary at all.
Elita was waiting for him in the corridor. He glanced over the railing, said, “That elevator line looks long,” and suggested that they walk up to the pedestal.
It turned out there was no way they could walk all the way up. But the steps at the far end of the corridor went up to a landing and then another flight of stairs, ten steps in each flight, and then to a level with some kind of telephone exhibit that was out of order at the moment...
Out of order, he thought. Yes. Good.
... and then two shorter flights of steps leading up to three pairs of exit doors fashioned of thick plate glass framed in bronze — real bronze this time. Deadbolts on all of them, inside and out. He pushed open one of the doors in the middle set, and allowed Elita to precede him outside, where he took a picture of her standing beside a stanchioned sign that read STAIRS TO GROUND LEVEL, with an arrow pointing toward the doors they’d just come through.
They walked all around the star-shaped level; this was where the old fort had stood. Actually the shape was less a star than a square with a series of angular bastions protruding from it, two on each side except for the one facing the harbor channel, where a larger bastion jutted out. Standing at the point of this larger abutment, looking up directly into the statue’s face some hundred or more feet above, it was easy to see why the sculptor had oriented the front of his statue in this direction, at the mouth of the Hudson, and visible to any vessel passing through the Narrows.
It was also easy to determine that here was where the President would give his Independence Day speech. Here where the television cameras could pan up and away from Bush’s solemn, sincere, candidate’s face to the great impassive face of the lady in the bay. Whether they set up the speaker’s stand and microphones on this level... or the level above... or the one above that...
“Let’s see if there are any more stairs going up,” Sonny suggested.
“This is fun, isn’t it?” Elita said, and squeezed his hand.
She stood virtually naked in her mother’s bedroom, the room cool and dim now that sunshine had abandoned the Park Avenue side of the building, Sonny standing behind her, his hands on her breasts as they faced the vanity mirror. She could feel him stiff against her, erect between her cheeks, watching herself in the mirror, watching them both in her mother’s mirror.