House of Acerbi

Closing the door, the conductor turned toward the breathless young woman and looked down at the gold pocket watch in his hand. “You just made it, Sarah.”

Sarah grinned as she tossed a strand of long, blonde hair back over her shoulder. “The cops are running radar again on the road from my house. One more speeding ticket and I’ll lose my license for the rest of the year.”

“I saw your little green Mini Cooper squeal into the parking lot, so I radioed the engineer.” The conductor’s eyes narrowed. “We held the train an extra minute, and you are now personally responsible for tarnishing the Long Island Railway’s proud record of being ninety-five percent on time.”

Sarah’s blue eyes blinked back at him. “Really?”

“No … we’ll make up the time at the next stop. Besides, I reserve the right to hold the train so important women like you won’t be late for work.” The gray-haired conductor winked. It was a ritual they played out every morning.

Sarah giggled to herself as she made her way forward past the familiar faces of the regular commuters. Most were peering into the screens of their laptops, while some of the older passengers were still clinging to the time- honored tradition of reading an actual newspaper. It seemed to be a point of pride to them-an act of generational rebellion proving to the world that they didn’t have to be tied to a battery-powered screen for instant communication. Any news worth having would be in the paper, they told themselves, the rest could wait.

Breathing more slowly now, Sarah slid into an empty seat and leaned her head against the glass just as the station disappeared behind them and the train gathered speed. She looked back inside the car at her fellow passengers, none of whom seemed at all interested in what was happening outside. It was obvious to her that the scenery had become too familiar to them, as if anything beyond the train’s windows was merely a rotating tableau of color played on an endless loop, the same old backdrop that had become almost soothing to them in its regularity.

Turning her attention back outside, Sarah eschewed joining her traveling brethren as they immersed themselves in their virtual offices or blackened their fingers with the ink of day-old news. Hers was a creative profession, and like others who were successful at inspired pursuits, she had learned over time that daydreaming, combined with the power of observation, was actually a mechanism whereby the trained observer could harvest ideas. Like the farmers back in Texas who stared at their bare fields, waiting for signs of life in the spring, Sarah waited for the tiny sprouts of ideas to spring forth in her imagination. One fleeting image, a single inspired idea, could be the beginning of an entire advertising campaign that would generate millions of dollars in revenue for her firm.

The rhythmic sway of the blue and silver train lulled Sarah into a state of sleepy detachment from her travelling companions as it continued on through the countryside, making several stops along the way, until soon, the scenery began to change as the speeding train crossed an invisible border that delineated the rural world of greenery from the urban grayness that heralded the train’s arrival on the outskirts of the fabled city.

Tall buildings loomed overhead as the train reached the East River and made a final downward plunge into the tunnel that ran beneath its dark, frigid water. From the openness of the countryside into the claustrophobic dinginess of the underground world beneath the city, the train began to slow as it clattered toward mid-town Manhattan and finally screeched to a stop alongside a brightly-lit platform in one of the busiest rail stations in the world-New York’s Penn Station.

Located below Madison Square Garden, beneath the uninspired and unimaginative glass and steel office tower known as Pennsylvania Plaza, Penn Station was a gigantic subterranean railway hub that connected with the New York City subway system and served almost 600,000 passengers a day at a rate of up to a thousand every 90 seconds. These incredible numbers made Penn Station the single busiest passenger transportation facility in North America.

Amid the din of constant arrivals and departures, Sarah exited her train and walked down a flight of grimy concrete stairs to the subway platform below. There, she would wait for the subway train that would whisk her to her final stop fifteen blocks away.

As a casual observer of all things beautiful, Sarah winced as she looked around at her drab surroundings. Closing her eyes, she thought back to what had happened here in the past. She knew that this space had once been the site of one of the most beautiful buildings in the world, and that its senseless destruction fifty years earlier had been the catalyst for the entire architectural preservation movement that had sprung up all across America.

Before the present, modernist-inspired station was built in the 1960’s, this space had once been home to a much grander Pennsylvania Station. The original structure had been a masterpiece of the Beaux-Arts style of architecture and had been heralded around the world as one of the most beautiful buildings ever created. Built in 1910 of pink granite and surrounded by a colonnade of Corinthian columns, the spectacular building was a breathtaking, monumental entrance to New York City.

Its massive waiting area was approximately the same size as the nave in Saint Peter’s Basilica and was inspired by the ancient Roman Baths of Caracalla. The grand station encompassed one of the largest public spaces in the world, covering more than 7 acres, and to build such a magnificent structure today would cost in excess of 2.5 billion dollars.

Of course, in all its corporate wisdom, the Pennsylvania Railroad decided that, in an effort to save money on upkeep and thus make more profit, the stunning fifty-year-old building, designed by some of the most famous architects in the world, should be torn down and replaced with a more modern structure. When it finally fell to the wrecker’s ball in 1963 amid widespread international protest, the public labeled its demise as a monumental act of corporate vandalism. With the knowledge that something irreplaceable had vanished from the land, a revolted nation was quickly united into action against the demolition of other historic structures throughout the country.

Sarah was at least buoyed by the fact that the horrific destruction of the old Penn Station had stopped the demolition of another beautiful New York City landmark, Grand Central Station, but it had taken a huge court battle against a major corporation to accomplish it. Just like the stunning Baths of Caracalla that had stood for over four centuries before being destroyed by the Barbarians, modern corporate barbarians had erased one of the most beautiful buildings on earth only fifty years after it had been built-a fact not lost on modern New Yorkers and others across America who were watching their architectural history collapse into piles of rubble on a daily basis.

Bringing her thoughts back to the present, Sarah positioned herself next to a blue and white graffiti-covered pillar and watched her fellow commuters as they began filling the concrete platform. Scanning the growing crowd, Sarah noticed a brightly-colored food cart advertising samples of whole wheat crackers made from organically grown wheat. Obviously, one of her advertising competitors had secured permission from the transit authority to use a public subway platform filled with commuters to introduce a new product to the public. Not a bad idea. In all likelihood, most of her fellow commuters had rushed from their homes without eating, and this location at this time of day was the perfect choice for launching a new brand to a swelling crowd of bored and hungry people.

Taking one of the samples, Sarah munched on the salty treat as her eyes drifted over the crowd and settled on a man with jerky dark eyes and a scraggly black beard. The man was wearing a wrinkled white dress shirt and gray slacks that were one size too large, making it necessary for him to cinch them up with a thin, black, patent leather belt. His nervous demeanor, along with his just-off-the-boat choice of clothing, marked him as a recent immigrant-except for the shoes.

Sarah’s advertising firm had just finished doing an ad campaign for a famous designer brand of Italian leather dress shoes. Sarah had even purchased a pair for her father as a birthday present, and she knew they weren’t cheap. As she stood next to the pillar, munching on a cracker and wondering how a man who dressed so poorly could afford to buy a pair of shoes like that, she noticed that he was standing right against the yellow line painted at the edge of the platform. Looking closer, she noticed that his eyes were darting quickly back and forth as he kept looking up and down the track, then down at his watch, then back at the track.

Maybe he was just late for an appointment, Sarah thought.

The bouncing headlight of a distant train approaching from the darkness of the tunnel caused Sarah to look away for a moment before turning her attention back to the man on the platform. Right away she noticed that his dark eyes were darting about even more feverishly than before as he looked over his shoulder and scanned the crowd before inching forward past the yellow line and stepping right against the concrete edge of the platform. Oh, God … was this guy a jumper?

With the sound of the approaching train now filling the station, the man withdrew a small canister from his