…West 11th Street (I was staying there at my in-laws’, in the house where my wife was raised): on the corner of Sixth Avenue stood Ray’s Pizza, on the corner of Seventh stood St Vincent’s Hospital. When Elena was here both buildings were plastered with images of missing people: she read several hundred legends typed or scrawled beneath a candid face…Please call day or night if you have ANY information of ANY kind!!!!’ Elena wrote on:
The posters give us many details: this daughter has a mole beneath her left buttock, this husband has a KO tattoo on his left arm, as if they are wandering around in a daze somewhere and don’t know who they are. But they’re not. It is we who are wandering around in a daze.
And the lost will not be found. In total, three police officers, six firefighters, and eleven civilians were safely extracted from under the fused mass of the Pile, which contained approximately 2,700 dead bodies.
Chinatown
How was your trusted ex-girlfriend? asked Phoebe, drily, on the day of his return from Durham. She was well, he quietly answered. Lily was well in 1977 and she was well in 2001. They met for lunch on a Saturday in Chinatown.
Like Elena (and like Julia), Lily was an American who had spent much of her life in England. He had known her for forty years. So they talked about the past, and their marriages, and especially their children, and not just about September 11.
He had no reason to invoke that very congenial episode, up north. But he kept thinking of it while they ate. After the public event, the dinner, and the nightcaps in the hotel lounge, they went to her room and followed the dictates of muscle memory. Being faithful won’t do a damn thing for me (he’d briefly reasoned): I’ll be punished anyway…
Now they were talking about certain of their exes, and he said,
‘Remember Phoebe? I never grilled you, but what was your impression?’
‘Well I hated her at first of course because of her figure and the way she eats. But after that I took to her. She made me laugh.’
‘Really? I’m glad, because she didn’t get on that well with other women. And you’re usually wary of those men-only types.’
‘She made me laugh about your lunch with Roman Polanski. In Paris that time – when was that?’
‘It was later on. I think it was ’79. You know, Roman was born in Paris?’
‘Was he? And you found him so charming.’ Lily looked furtive and amused. ‘Did you hear what happened there?…Well, when you went to the bathroom, he slid his hand between her thighs and said, Get rid of him.’
‘…The dirty little bastard. What’d she say?’
‘She said, or she said she said, How can I get rid of him? He’s writing a huge piece about you and we’ve only been here five minutes. Then he gave her his phone number on a napkin and made her swear that she’d call him the next day.’
‘And did she?’
Lily shook her head. ‘That’s what I asked her. And I remember exactly. She said, Certainly not. He’d just jumped bail for drugging and buggering a thirteen-year-old. Perhaps I’m very old-fashioned, but I think that’s un peu trop, don’t you?’
He said, ‘You know, Polanski insisted that everyone wants to fuck young girls. The lawyers, the cops, the judge, the jury – they all want to fuck young girls. Everyone. I don’t want to fuck young girls. Any more than I want to fuck a pet rabbit or a puppy.’
‘But they do have a following, thirteen-year-olds.’
‘I suppose. No, clearly they do. Ooh, that dirty little bastard. He waits till I go to the bathroom, then he…’
Now it was Lily’s turn to go to the bathroom, and as Martin asked for the bill he thought about that breakfast in bed, at the Durham Imperial, and about the journey back by train: many hours to consider Phoebe’s past warnings and threats (Woe betide you), which never materialised. Now he paid.
‘What’s she up to these days, Phoebe?’ said Lily as they were heading out.
‘I happened to see her niece the other day. Who told me Phoebe was rich. She gave up her business for a big cheque.’
‘What was her business?’
‘I was never really clear about that. Business business. Brokering. She took early retirement. With bonuses. Business.’
‘She put the wind up me once. It was very soon after you saved my life in Durham. Phoebe gave me such a look. Like Lucrezia Borgia wondering how to flay me alive. Then she threw her head back and laughed and said, Oh never mind.’
Lily went south, and Martin walked north-west, through Chinatown and into Little Italy. The scents of a dozen different cuisines, as Elena had noted, and the sound of a dozen different languages: You can’t help thinking that the whole Taliban Council would go unnoticed walking down Canal Street…Across Houston, past NYU, up Broadway as far as the Strand Bookstore, then left to Sixth Avenue. Ray’s Pizza, no longer a would-be clearing house (no longer a kiosk thatched with photos and messages), but the locus of a neglected roadside shrine, keepsakes, scrawled farewells, and a little midden of petals, leaves, and stems.*8
Roman Polanski, like Father Gabriel – men so stirred by violation that only children would do. Now that Martin had young daughters of his own all his thoughts and feelings about Phoebe were changed, recombined utterly. He used to imagine that he had weighed it and assessed its mass: the weight of the early betrayal, the weight of what came down. But now he
