I suspect that these soldiers might be obsolete, and they just might sense this also. Perhaps that is why they have chosen to protect empty places—the San Antonio and Washington perimeters, this ruined city.
Maybe the rivalry between the United States and the USSR went on so long because both sides knew that without it the central governments were as unneeded as they were unwanted.
So much of the ferment Jim and I have seen in our travels relates to this question of centrality. Perhaps there is a limit to the size of human states, beyond which they become too inflexible and inefficient to last very long.
We arrive at the rusting toll plaza that marks the entrance to the Henry Hudson Parkway. The truck stops. A spit-and-polish MP master sergeant walks to the back, his helmet gleaming in the morning light.
“Lay ’em out, you guys.” The men start handing over their Army ID cards. The master sergeant looks at each one, comparing it to the face of the man who handed it to him.
Jim and I give him our mimeographed sheets. He studies them both. “We’ll have to verify these. Come over to the command post, please.” I feel a surge of resentment, quell it quickly. His right hand rests ever so lightly on the butt of his .45. The CP is a tiny prefabricated building just off the road.
He hands the sheets to another spit-and-polish soldier, this one a second lieutenant. “Have a seat, gentlemen,” the close-cropped boy says in a piping voice. “I’ll just make a quick phone call.” He picks up a brown telephone and speaks into it, reading off the serial numbers of our documents. After a moment more he puts the receiver down. “Now if you’ll just countersign on the first line,” he says. I sign. He spends a long time comparing my new signature with the old one. “Your S is a bit off, but I suppose it’s okay.”
He hands me my document, then checks Jim’s. His J is the source of another mild complaint. Once these documents are countersigned twice, they’re worthless—an assurance that they won’t be reused. We are allowed one entrance to the city and one exit from it, and no more.
General Briggs put it this way: “You will remain with your designated guide. You will not contact anyone else you might encounter there. For your own safety, you will not remain overnight”
We proceed. Soon we can see the George Washington Bridge looming over the sparkling Hudson, and the red tile roofs of the Cloisters. There isn’t a boat on the river, and the bridge is empty.
The only sound is the roar of our truck. I wonder about the Cloisters as we pass beneath the cliffs of Fort Tryon Park. I believe that I might have first kissed Anne in the herb garden there.
Perhaps not, but that’s where I fell in love with her. It could easily have been the innocence of her enthusiasm for the tapestries that did it. I wonder about them. Were they saved, or do they lie now in heaps on the floor, providing nesting places for rats and mice?
As soon as we pass the Cloisters, the bridge looms up on the right. I see that there are long festoons of vines, some of them scarlet with autumn, hanging from the cables and girders. The truck begins to rattle and bump along as we pass the bridge and enter the old West Side Highway. At this point Jim and I sit down on the wooden bench at the front. We hunch forward, our hands between our knees, bracing ourselves as best we can. The truck growls and stumbles on. Soon the road is pitted, cracked, and we pass over long stretches of grass. Up the side streets I can see rusting cars, long loops of wire between the buildings, and rows and rows of dark windows.
Our mission is to reach Columbus Circle, where we are to be met by a guide who is, of all things, an employee of the City of New York.
We turn off the highway at Seventy-ninth Street and take the cleared route to our destination. I realize that the streets are literally choked with abandoned vehicles of all kinds—cars, trucks, buses, and an occasional piece of the equipment standing out from the jumble. Broadway has had a central path created between the cars. There are vines everywhere, vines and shrubs and things like stinkweed and dandelions growing in every available crack. Some buildings are glutted with plants, others are empty. I realize why: certain species of potted plants grew and seeded, and expanded their dominion.
Then we pass a magnificent ruin. I recognize the Ansonia. Its copper-sheathed roof has been salvaged. There has also been a scarring fire. The Pioneer supermarket on the first floor is a blackened hole laced by flame-red vines. As we pass there is a fusillade of furious barking. It is low and aggressive and powerful. The soldiers nearest the rear of the truck finger their carbines. “No good shots,” somebody says as we pull into Columbus Circle.
“Shit.”
The Ansonia lingers in my mind. I can imagine Florenz Ziegfeld coming down the steps to his enormous Packard, afloat in champagne laughter.
There is an olive drab Chevy Consensus parked in front of the New York Coliseum. But for the lack of glass in the entrance and the grass spurting up through the sidewalk, the structure looks almost unchanged. The marquee reads, 56TH NY AUTOC 18-3. I remember the New York Auto Show.
A young woman gets out of the Consensus. We climb down from our perch in the truck. Across the street, the vast glut of Central Park roars with birds, a furious jungle just touched by autumn. The sidewalks around it are completely gone to vegetation, as are the abandoned cars choking Fifty-ninth Street. There are vines well up some of the elegant buildings that line Central Park South.
“I’m Jenny Bell,” the woman says, shielding her eyes from the bright morning sun. She wears a heavy tunic closed by a web belt.
There is what looks like a long-barreled .357 Magnum slung on her right hip. Her left hip bears a big, curved knife. She is wearing leather trousers and heavy boots. She carries a canteen, a backpack, a heavy-duty flashlight, and at least twenty feet of rope and a selection of climbing equipment. She does not smile, she offers no more words of explanation. She is simply there.
We introduce ourselves and get a quick handshake. “Let’s go,” she says. We leave our soldiers, who have instructions to pick us up here at 5:00 P.M. The Consensus is cramped. I sit in front because I can’t manipulate my pad and pencil in the back seat. Jim, with that fancy recorder of his, has to endure the confinement of the hard bench in the back.
“I understand that you’re a city employee,” I say to the young, expressionless face. The beautiful face. How old was this girl on Warday? Eighteen is my guess.
“That’s right.”
“So there’s still a city government?”
“That’s right.”
Jim shifts in his seat. “Is there any particular reason you won’t talk, or are you just being a hardass?”
The girl drives in silence, bouncing us down Broadway. A spring has opened up in the middle of the street between Fifty-seventh and Fifty-sixth. We are forced nearly to the sidewalk to avoid the bed of the little creek it has made. I see crystal water dancing among the skeletons of electrical conduit and pipe. It is young water, wearing and active. The stream goes on for blocks, finally disappearing into the gutters at the corner of Forty-fifth. I remember from some book about New York in the early days that an oak tree grew where Broadway now intersects Forty-second Street. A snatch of song echoes in my head—“those dancin’ feet…” The melody continues until we reach our first stop.
When I start to get out, the girl reaches over and locks my door. “Wait,” she says. She steps into the middle of Times Square.
Her gun is out. She holds it in both hands. It is a heavy weapon, too heavy for her to aim accurately any other way.
There is a loud click, then the pistol cracks. The report echoes off empty buildings. Pigeons rise from eaves, and a flock of guinea fowl burst out of the ruined front of Tape City, leaving feathers around a crackling poster of Paul Newman in the ’86 picture Jury of One.