— For the first time in my life, Sandra says, I fainted this morning.
She tells him about seeing the front page of the World in the lobby of the Lipstick Building, and coming to with men leaning over her.
— It was like someone had punched me in the heart, she says.
— Yes. I know.
— Oh, Sam, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say this is about me. Above all, it’s about Cynthia. That means it’s about you too. In a different way, a larger sense, it’s about a lot of people who never met her.
— That’s the truth, Sandra. But it is about you too.
— We have to make sure that her… work goes on.
— It will.
A waiter comes and takes a drink order. White wine for Sandra. Diet Pepsi for Sam.
— How long since you stopped drinking? she says, smiling.
— I don’t know. Years. Maybe thirteen?
— So you were drinking still, that time in Jamaica, when I got my first job as a waitress?
Sam smiles.
— I was. You did a hell of a job.
She smiles again.
— Thanks. That’s when I first met Cynthia too. That same party. And she got me to talk about books. Above all, about the pictures in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. I couldn’t even read yet.
— Books were her favorite subject.
The past tense again. Drinks arrive. She stares into her wine.
— Oh, Sam, what are we going to do?
The question hangs there. The waiter returns and takes their food orders. Shrimp for Sam, arugula salad for Sandra. Lentil soup for both. Then he remembers the slip of paper with her number, plucks it from his shirt pocket, shows it to her.
— I was going to call you when I got home.
— To tell me what?
He recites the clerical details. About the possible Mass at Old St. Patrick’s, and the burial up in Woodlawn in the Bronx, as close as possible to Herman Melville. He tells her that the library on 42nd Street would surely have a memorial service too. There’ll be a scholarship at NYU in Cynthia’s name, he says, for students of library science. This while they sip on soup.
— What about the house on Patchin Place?
He pauses.
— She told me once that she wanted it to be used by poets, from all over the world. Maybe four or five at a time. Poets who need time off, just to brood. Now—
He shrugs. Now the house is one of the most notorious murder scenes in the city. He doesn’t need to tell her that. Or that some poets might actually be inspired by the ghosts.
— And you? he says, changing the subject. How are things, otherwise?
She tells him about Myles Compton, how he left, how the FBI came to visit, how she had to get a lawyer, and how she has not heard from the man, not yet. She doesn’t know if he’s in America or Europe or Peru, doesn’t know if he’s dead or alive. He feels an unstated sadness in her voice, but says nothing.
— And you? she says.
He tells her about the death of the World, and the wake in the city room, and the website that starts Monday. She squeezes his forearm.
— Oh, Sam, what a day for you.
— You too.
From the bar he hears a burst of whiskey laughter, rising above some music. Lady Day. “Moonlight and love songs / Never out of date…” He thinks: I need to call my daughter again. I need to sleep.
6:50 p.m. Beverly Starr. Belleville restaurant, Park Slope, Brooklyn.
Almost time, she thinks. Check paid. Coffee still hot. She is at a corner table on the side of the long bistro, sitting alone on the banquette, with a view of the restaurant from one wood-paneled end to the windows on Fifth Avenue. Snow is falling. Chester Gould snow. Big fat flakes falling on Shoulders or Flattop or Mumbles. She is drawing in a small notebook, making notes. And enjoying the comforts of the familiar. The bar stacked with bottles and a few high stools. Mirrors on both sides of the long room, for tracking waiters or prospects.
She often comes here in summer, when the doors are open to the air, walking up the hill from her house, then three blocks to the left. It’s always packed with young mothers who park their Hummer-sized strollers outside and hold kids on their laps. On this night of snow, only a half dozen other tables are occupied, three of them by couples. The snow falls steadily on the parked cars.
To the right of her table, four young women from the Like Brigade are drinking margaritas. The dreaded four-letter word is fired in tremulous salvos. She wishes she could call on the exterminating angel of her graphic novel. She blinks. Blinks again.
She dials the car service on her cell.
— Hey, it’s Beverly. How about ten minutes? In front of the Belleville.
— Sure t’ing, Bev.
She slides out from behind her table, walks to the coat rack, grabs her coat and hat, and heads for the door. Then goes out into 5th Street. And stands there. The snow is clean. The snow is odorless. The snow doesn’t lie.
Under a lamp, she pauses and looks up at the snowflakes as they fall. She focuses on one, about fifteen feet above her. Separating from the others. Blinks. The flake has just been born. It sways from side to side, as if hearing soothing music. She blinks again. Then the flake hurries down to the cement of the city. She counts, and at the number two, the snowflake is gone forever.
A car horn beeps on the corner. She turns.
6:55 p.m. Josh Thompson. Fourteenth Street, Manhattan.
That Old Guy with the white beard had warned him about the snow. The Old Guy in his own wheelchair. He was outside the church when the Mexicans carried Josh down the steps. Josh looked up at the sky, which resembled water in a glass when you pour some ink in it. The Old Guy pulled up beside him. He told Josh it was coming. The snow. He said, Don’t even think about being out in the snow, soldier.
Then the Old Guy started giving Josh a short course in living in a wheelchair in New York. Those grades at the corner? the Old Guy said. We call them “cuts.” They are suppose to be one-eighth of an inch at the bottom. Surprise, surprise! Some of them are a full inch! Try to get up one! You need to use your weight! Lean forward, then move the fucking wheels like your life depends on them, which it does. Going down the cuts, lean back and lie low, go slow, don’t let your weight topple you face-first into the fucking street. For sure, some asshole driving a sanitation truck will back up and run over your head and turn the chair into an ashtray!
— When you stop somewhere to admire the view or the ass of some broad, lock the chair. So it don’t roll in any direction! Don’t go near Sixteenth Street. It’s the worst street in New York. And stay off Madison Avenue in the Sixties, where all the rich people live. They don’t want cripples in the neighborhood, so they don’t have cuts. Or they’re at an angle. And late in the day and especially at night, don’t let any young assholes offer to carry you anywheres. Or push you. They think it’s funny to race you along a block or two, then let you roll… I’d like to shoot the fuckers!
— In the snow you can’t even see the potholes so you’re goin’ along crossing the street and everything looks even and whoof! You go into a fucking hole full of snow and fall on the side and hit your head maybe, and break a fucking arm maybe, and the buses and trucks and cars, especially them Jersey drivers, are all honking and yelling, and you figure: Fuck it, I may as well die. And here in Fourteenth Street, especially with snow, don’t go over past Ninth Avenue. There’s cobblestones there and they get like glass from the snow and you slide all over the fucking place and there’s Pakistani limo drivers don’t know where they are, tryin’ to fine some restaurant in the Meatpacking District, they call it now. And shplat! They kill you too. All right now, soldier, the Old Guy says, his beard as white as the snow. Enjoy New York.