“Because it's true. I know it is.”
“Did Jimmy tell you that?”
“Jimmy's dead.”
She couldn't think why she'd said that. Tom knew. Everyone knew, everyone in New York, even people who had never known Jimmy, everyone knew he was dead. They had all mourned him as they had mourned all the heroes, until Harry Randall told them Jimmy was not a hero, and broke everyone's heart, and her heart all over again.
“Marian. Back then. What did Jimmy say?”
Tom was leaning toward her. Suddenly she was irritated with him. “Jimmy never said anything. You knew him. He'd never say anything.” She pulled her hand from Tom's. She found her new wine arriving, which was a good thing, because her mouth was dry and her face felt hot. The waitress took her other glass away. But she had emptied it anyhow, there was nothing there anymore, who cared? She reached for the new one and took a luxurious swallow, nothing to do with Marian Gallagher's sensible, moderate ways.
More beer had been delivered for Tom, too. He picked it up, drank, and put it down. Blue eyes steady, straight at her, the way he used to look at them, at each of them and all of them, ever since they were kids.
In Marian's experience (and her experience was vast: meetings were her medium, conversation her metier) most people, if regarding you in extended silence, were not seeing you at all. Their minds wrestled with whatever concerned them, their eyes did not focus, you were not really there to them. But not Tom. Whatever he was concentrating on, if he looked at you he saw you, he considered you and measured you and worked you into his plan. Across the table from Marian he sat now like that, as he had so many times in their childhood, Tom thinking something up, how to get out of something or get into something and the rest of them sitting quietly, waiting for it, waiting to be told their parts.
But the world had changed, and Flanagan's had changed. The noise of the crowd was setting Marian's nerves on edge, and she didn't want to sit and wait, not now. “Jimmy was there that night, wasn't he?” she asked Tom, thinking it might be easier for him to answer that, thinking maybe, maybe, he could tell her that wasn't true and then the other thing wouldn't be true, either.
“Jesus, Marian.” Tom rubbed his mouth. He looked around, at the strangers, at the walls. His gaze traveled as though he were searching for the mirrors that were gone. He brought his eyes back to her. How blue they were. “Jesus, Marian. We were all there.”
LAURA'S STORY
Chapter 10
Earlier, on Staten Island, Laura had caught a cab. Now she found the cab stand deserted and dashed impatiently to the train. She jumped aboard as the bell rang, yanking her shoulder bag through doors determined to squash it.
Laura peered at the map, counted the stations to her destination, and swung onto a seat as the train lurched through a curve. Gazing around, she realized she knew these benches, this lighting, and these floors. The Staten Island train, it seemed, used the same cars as the subway, was in all respects identical (turnstiles and fare, ads and announcements).
But no: not identical. On Staten Island the tracks ran on elevated trestles or through open cuts, no tunnels. The rhythm of dark-while-moving, bright-when-stopped was replaced, first by a disorienting view of rooftops; then quickly and even more disconcertingly by the blank plane of endless concrete wall.
The same yet different. One more thing.
At the Pleasant Hills stop Laura climbed up out of the train and cut to a busy street of one- and two-story shops. Fitzgerald Drive was a hike from the train station, but she welcomed the walk. Already—and this was only her third trip—the ferry ride across the harbor was beginning to weary her. Harry's absence, the towers' absence, the smoke and dust lifting into the sky; the hush, and the pointing. Maybe when she went back tonight, Laura thought, she'd ride inside, on the lowest level, where she and Harry had never sat. She'd review her tapes or read over her notes or stare into space and not know anything until it was time to get off.
She stopped for coffee at a chrome-sided Main Street diner with cardboard black cats in the windows. Harry would have said it looked like it had been there since the Flood. (She could hear him say it, see the rueful smile adding that he recognized it from then.) She shook her head as a dog shakes off a rainstorm and concentrated on finding her way through Pleasant Hills. She was working.
Leaving the business strip, Laura made the required lefts and rights. At Fitzgerald Drive she crumpled her coffee cup into a trash can and followed the street's suburban curve to a three-story clutch of white-stuccoed condos. Third building, top floor, “Zannoni” on the bell, and apparently Zannoni on the balcony: a balding fleshy man, dressed in a white polo shirt and jeans, called down, “You Miss Stone?” and when, squinting past a streetlight, she told him she was, he disappeared inside and buzzed the door open.
He was waiting at the top of the stairs. His lined face and the slack skin of his arms told her he was over sixty, but he greeted her with a firm handshake. So many men shook a thin woman's hand gingerly, as though afraid to break her (though Laura had always detected a certain macho posturing in that, the message of “I could hurt you if I'm not careful” translating easily into “if
She stared over shadowed rooftops and breeze-blown trees. Beyond, the lights of the Verrazano arched over the sparkling Narrows. On the far shore the buildings of Brooklyn crowded their waterfront, windows lit.
“Not bad, huh?” Zannoni stood beside her, looking over the vista with satisfied pride, as though he owned it. “Bought the place for the view. You want some tea?” He waved his hand in the table's direction.
Laura left with regret the sight of so much glittering dark water, such promised distances. She sat in a canvas chair and turned down the offer of tea.
