Specimen Days

'Is there a rock band with lyrics like that?'

'We're checking.'

'Good.'

'The family. What family?'

'The Brady Bunch. The Mafia. IBM. You know.'

Right. She'd had one just the other day. Mild-voiced citizen who'd said he was going to start driving around the country and running down illegal immigrants, under orders from Katie Couric. They tended to like the idea of working for celebrities or international corporations.

I do,' Cat said. 'I do know.'

Pete said, 'You shoulda red-tagged it.' He wasn't nasty about it. Simple statement of fact. These things happened.

'You checked the trace?' she asked.

'Pay phone. Corner of Bowery and Second Street.'

'Ugh.'

'Bound to happen, sooner or later.' He slurped his coffee.

'I didn't think it would happen to me.'

'Go home. Tell your boyfriend to make you a drink and take you someplace nice for dinner.'

'Think he was really as young as he sounded?' 'That I couldn't tell you. Wait for forensics.' 'How would a kid get a bomb?'

'I'd say where they get all their deadly weapons. From his parents.'

'Pete.'

'Yeah?'

'Nothing. I'll see you tomorrow.'

'Right. Have a few drinks, get some sleep. Feel better.'

She went back to her cubicle, retrieved her bag. Ed Short, who had the next shift, wouldn't arrive for another half hour, but the lines were covered; she could slip away a little bit early. She hated to admit it, but now, having heard the tape, she wanted to get out of there as fast as humanly possible.

She said a few quick good-nights to coworkers who were busy at their own phones and didn't seem to notice that she was leaving before her shift was over. She clipped on down the hall. Although she didn't like to dwell on it, the division's offices might have been designed for maximum grimness. Could the cubicle dividers be the color of a three-day-old corpse? Sure. Could greenish light buzz down on everyone from milky plastic ceiling panels? Absolutely. Could the smell of burnt coffee be blown through the air-conditioning ducts? No problem.

She went down to the lobby and out through security. The evening sky over Broadway was mockingly beautiful, astral winds herding a flock of wispy pink clouds across a field of searing lavender. It was lucky, them having to locate the deterrence unit up here. Lucky that there hadn't been room down on Center Street, where it was all cops and lawyers and secretaries; where the food came from pushcarts or Chinese takeout cartons and the stores sold cheap, gaudy party wear meant to appeal to buyers so unhappy they were ready to blow a tenth of their paychecks on a sequined synthetic sweater or a pair of fake alligator pumps just to have something to show for it all. The corner of Broadway and Prince was something else. Here, what they sold was meant for actual children, fancy sneakers and jeans with more pockets and zippers than anyone conceivably needed, and T-shirts emblazoned with anarchic messages or the faces of fallen heroes, Che and Jimi and the Grateful Dead.

She glanced downtown, in the direction of the incident. It would still be cordoned off; they'd still be combing the pavement. Even now, it was impossible not to be struck by the emptiness where the towers had stood. Woolly little clouds drifted along, and a pale sliver of moon had risen, visible now with the towers gone.

That same moon would be rising over countless little towns out there, all those tree-studded, lawn-bright expanses where the citizens tended to keep their murders confined to their hearts; where the cops dozed their way through teenage crimes and the occasional domestic disturbance; where they had no need of specialists to divine the actual intentions of professed bombers, poisoners, Uzi-owning defenders of racial purity, and machete-wielding grandfathers.

And where, of course, there was no place at all for someone like Cat. Where she'd expire discreetly of loneliness and strangeness, where she'd probably become an ever-more-frequent presence on one of the bar stools at the local steak house, trying to keep her voice down, arranging her swizzle sticks in neat rows in front of her, struggling not to make lists on the cocktail napkins.

She walked up to Bond Street, turned east. The people on the streets were going about their regular business, but there was a charge in the air. Everyone was spooked by the news. The guy in front of Cat with the attache case strode along with his shoulders hunched, as if he expected a blow from above. The three Asian girls who paused at a shop window, looked at the shoes, looked at one another, and moved right along were they thinking of being showered with broken glass? The danger that had infected the air for the last few years was stirred up now; people could smell it. Today they'd been reminded, we'd been reminded, of something much of the rest of the world had known for centuries that you could easily, at any moment, make your fatal mistake. That we all humped along unharmed because no one had decided to kill us that day. That we could not know, as we hurried about our business, whether we were escaping the conflagration or rushing into it.

Cat went down Bond, past the stratospherically expensive Japanese restaurant, past the jinxed store where another optimist had put up signs announcing the imminent appearance of another boutique that would be gone in six months or so. She crossed Lafayette and went up to Fifth Street, her block, her home, what she had come to call her home, though when she'd moved there seven years ago it had been temporary, just a few dim, affordable rooms, postdivorce, until she started her real life in her real apartment. Funny how in only seven years it had metamorphosed from fallback to treasure, how people couldn't believe she'd wangled her way into a rent-controlled, lightless third-floor walk-up on a block where crackheads didn't piss in your vestibule every single night. It all kept shifting under your feet, didn't it? Maybe future generations would prize those spangled Orion sweaters from Nassau Street. Maybe things would fall so far that a pair of cardboard imitation- alligator shoes made in Taiwan would look like artifacts of a golden age.

She passed among the unnerved denizens of Fifth Street. The two Lithuanian women were out on the sidewalk in their folding aluminum lawn chairs, as always, but instead of watching the passersby with their usual regal weariness, they leaned into each other, talking animatedly in their language, shaking their heads. The punk couple with sunburst haircuts stomped along with particular fury so, people, you're fucking surprised that it's all blowing up in your goddamned fucking faces? Only the old homeless man, at his post in front of the flower shop, looked unaffected, chanting his inaudible chants, the hired mourner of the neighborhood, its own singer for the dead.

Cat let herself into her apartment. For a moment she imagined it as the boys of the bomb squad would find it if she d been blown up on the corner of Broadway and Cortlandt. Not so good. Admit it: it was the apartment of somebody who'd let things slide. There were clothes and shoes strewn around; there were dishes in the sink. The books that had long ago overflowed the bookcase (yes, boards and cinder blocks; she'd meant to replace it) were stacked everywhere. Were there spots of mold floating in the coffee cup she'd set on the book pile on one side of the sofa? Sure there were. If you ran a finger along a windowsill, would it come up coated with velvety, vaguely oily dust? You bet it would. It could have been the apartment of a slightly messier-than-usual graduate student. The oatmeal-colored sofa with the broken spring Lucy had given it to her until she got something better. That had been seven years ago.

Fuck it. She was busy. She was beat. Cleanliness was a virtue but not a sexy one.

She checked her voice mail. Simon was the first message.

Hey, you know anything about the explosion? Call me.

She called Titan. Amelia, Simon's secretary, put her straight through.

'Cat?'

'Hi.'

'What's going on? What do you know about this thing?'

'I think I talked to him. The bomber.' 'You're kidding.'

'Three days ago. We're not sure yet, but I think I talked to him.'

'You talked to him. He called you.' 'It's my job, baby. I'm the one they call.'