“Okay. The Bird. See you there.”
The end. Click off. Rise, tell Sandra to cancel appointments. Tell Elizabeth you'll be in touch about Mrs. Johnson.
Tell yourself, at least Kevin's calling.
Phil rode the boat in his usual spot, outside, facing the Brooklyn waterfront and the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. The day was calm, but not on the ferry. (On the ferry it never was.) Wind churned up by the boat's single-minded rush for the opposite shore slapped his jacket around him. He tugged off his tie (always wear a tie in the office, always look ready) and folded it into his pocket. Clouds slipped along the sky escaping east, out to sea, away from entangling treetops and tall buildings. Poetic but inaccurate: clouds only got snagged on trees on the peaks of high mountains, where the earth reared up to stab the sky. And among buildings, few were tall enough to touch them.
The towers had been.
Phil had never been a regular at Windows on the World. The food was good, the drinks were big, but the scene at the bar was relentlessly social. Investment bankers on the make. Talkative tourists standing locals a beer. Hand-holding, starry-eyed couples glancing over each other's shoulders to the door in case something better slouched in. But once or twice, walking home at night from Battery Park after letting the ferry go, he'd looked up to find the towers' tops lost in mist. Before he thought about it, he was stepping off the huge, silent elevator and ordering a scotch. He'd turn his back on the room, on the piano trio and the strangers anxious to become his friends. He'd stand, looking out the narrow, tall panes of glass at nothing. No: at
His visits to the bar had been rare. But often, in the middle of a workday, in the course of crisscrossing Lower Manhattan—especially if the day were clear, with a breeze clipping along, and he'd just come from seeing some client in a windowless holding cell, someone who would not be free for a long, long time—Phil had hopped the elevator in the south tower to the observation deck. He'd grip the rail and just stand in the wind and the sun. From a height that extravagant you could feel the endless miles not just left and right, front and back, but above and below, too. And every now and then, leaning on the rail 110 stories up, Phil would find himself swept back to his childhood, and he'd laugh. If he stared hard enough at the towers of Manhattan below, he could see, almost, Spider-Man swinging between them. And see himself as Spider-Man, the way he had as a kid, long-limbed and skinny and bringing justice to New Yorkers threatened with all kinds of evil. Yeah, Phil, he'd think, yeah, you need a break, guy. Take a vacation, get out of town. He'd given himself that order, but he'd never obeyed it. The deck at the top of the tower had always been enough.
The boat docked. Phil went indoors, as you had to, to reach the ramp, to get back out. He took the train, quicker than a cab in the middle of the day. The car was half empty, but he didn't sit. Holding the rail, he watched out the windows. First rooftops, then the train cut, blank concrete walls racing by. This was a view of nothing, too, he thought. Different, but the same.
BOYS' OWN BOOK
Chapter 13
It's Sunday, it's Labor Day weekend, summer's turning to fall. Jimmy and Marian show up at noon at Markie and Sally's place, the apartment they rent from the O'Neills, who live upstairs. Marian's got her arms around a paper bag: franks, buns, and sauerkraut. Jimmy's hefting a couple of six-packs. Marian goes inside with Sally, to talk about potato salad and nail polish and whatever girls talk about; Jimmy roots in the garage for the basketball, bangs layups into the hoop over the driveway while Markie fires up the grill. That hoop, all the O'Neill boys played there, their little sister, too, right with them. Danny, the youngest, he's the one Mr. and Mrs. O'Neill fixed up the downstairs apartment for; but Danny went off to Vietnam, and when he came back he didn't stay long. He's in Alaska now, working on the pipeline: says he wants to be as far away from the jungle as he can get, for the rest of his life.
Smoke from the grill suddenly switches direction, trying to ambush Jimmy, but he's too smart, dribbles the ball up the driveway to get away. Markie jumps back, too, but not fast enough, coughs and wipes his eyes. Through the kitchen window, Jimmy and Markie hear the girls hooting with laughter about something.
Must be a potato escaped, Jimmy says to Markie, while the cloud of smoke swoops like a flock of pigeons and soars over the next-door fence. Potato's probably running all over your house, man, tearing up the place.
Yeah, probably, says Markie. Think we should go in and rescue the girls?
Potato rescue, says Jimmy, I'm great at that.
But they don't have to, because Marian and Sally come out the back door and down from the porch, Marian with two big bowls, Sally with Kevin. She puts Kevin in his crib on the grass, but the kid's too big for a crib and he knows it. He wails, so Jimmy goes and picks him up. Right away Kevin giggles, grabs for Jimmy's nose, looks in his baby hand to see if it's there.
Markie, man, says Jimmy, this kid's so big and good-looking, if it wasn't saying something bad about Sally, I'd just
Because he's smart, too, says Markie, knows enough to take after her side of the family. He lays the franks on the grill, grins at Kevin in Jimmy's arms.
They eat franks, cole slaw, potato salad, pop open beers, watch Kevin stomp around the tiny yard in that funny kid walk. You'd think he'd tire himself out, but he can't sit still. When he falls, his eyes get wide like he can't believe it, then he just laughs. Sally and Markie take turns jumping up and grabbing him back from crawling through the bushes, running up the driveway, chewing on sticks; he's just like Markie, Jimmy thinks, the kid'll try anything, never thinks ahead. Then laughs at himself: for Pete's sake, he's a
Marian doesn't say she got a promotion at work, so Jimmy does. Oh, Jimmy, it's no big deal, Marian protests, but Jimmy says, Come on, you've only been there two months, I mean, come on. Markie and Jimmy talk about cars: Sally tells them that Steve Fagan at the repair shop says Markie's got the best hands of any mechanic ever worked there. Jimmy tells funny stories about the firehouse. Sally says, The Chinese restaurant fire, Jimmy, I heard you
