Even by a conservative factoring of waiting times at crosswalks, crowd density, sidewalk blockages caused by incidentals like vegetable pallets, stroller phalanxes, the old and infirm, flying wedges of tourists, bike messengers, construction fencing incursions, scaffolding, dumpsters, and the insane who walk in front of you pulling ooda-loop maneuvers on the widest stretches of unpopulated pavement, telepathically predicting your every countermove, the average New York pedestrian burns five to seven minutes over the course of a twenty-block transit jagging, zigging, charting a path that consists more of diversions than adherence to any single bearing, to say nothing of the decelerations required, occasional near-dead stops (though, notably, never actually stopping, always shuffling left, right, jockeying, inching ever farther into the street at a DO NOT WALK signal, timing a gap to shoot). After all that, what could account for the point-three? Is it possible the average unencumbered, obstacle-free New Yorker actually walks an average of six miles an hour, which is in most corners of the world considered a decent pace for a jog? It’s the only possible explanation. New Yorkers, weaned on smog, tilted ever forward into the oncoming barrage of whatever, living in fear of the faster whoever coming up from behind, have developed bigger hearts than the steadfast Topekan, their sinus rhythm/leg-speed ratios increasing to the point that they’re basically running even though it looks like they’re walking.
When John Caldwell left the Apelles for Roosevelt Hospital, he knew he’d be walking. The MTA had stabled the Broadway local at the Inwood depot, silent and dark. The buses were long gone. Taxis, with the exception of the one that had nearly killed my father, had evaporated. Roosevelt was twenty blocks south, a mile.
My father, compelled by fears about his own elbows-deep relationship with whatever was going on vis-à-vis Albert Caldwell, insisted on going with John, and they agreed—first thing first, according to the law applied to a group of two or more men on an excursion of any effort and distance: establish travel time in as expedient a manner as possible—that they would be at the hospital by 1:00 a.m. Strictly speaking, it didn’t matter what time they got there. It was a hospital, after all, it wasn’t going to close. But as the unacquainted do when forced into close proximity, they had seized on that minor point of procedure with the single-minded focus of a pair of physicists on an equation binge.
Once they’d agreed that they’d be there by 1:00, they settled into silence. My father, not normally given to conversation anyway, but definitely predisposed to worrisome thoughts, was occupied by a real behemoth. He was thinking that he, of all the people in the world, he was the one who could have stopped Albert. To put it another way (the way his ghastly brain did), my father was the one who had facilitated whatever fate had befallen Albert.
And he wasn’t entirely wrong. It was his nature to stay out of the fray, but he’d known about Albert’s plan—he’d been aware of the existence of a plan, at least—and despite that natural tendency to avoid participation at all costs, he’d been instrumental in bringing Albert to the point of executing that plan. And the execution was taking a different shape than what he’d imagined. Why would he ever have thought Albert intended to go quietly? None of it made much sense—if he’d tried with pills at home, why had he called an ambulance? If he had wanted to OD at the hospital, why had he disappeared? Whatever form my father thought it would take, the reality of the old man’s suicide now fully asserted itself on his psyche. He felt as though his blood had been drained and replaced with mercury. That’s why, when John had tried to set out on his own, my father insisted on accompanying him, and had been keeping pace alongside him, a self-appointed minder charged with ensuring his safe passage.
They’d gone another two blocks when John turned to him and said, Really. If you’re doing this to keep me company, don’t.
I have my reasons, my father said—shouted, actually, over the gusting wind. They both were shouting.
This is family business.
I can go a different way if you prefer, my father said.
Suit yourself, John said.
They passed the next ten or so blocks in silence. At every cross street the wind bullied them from the sides, the snow plastering them like buckshot. My father barely noticed. At 1:01 a.m., he followed John through the revolving door at Roosevelt.
The sanitary warmth enveloped him and he set to brushing off the drifts that had piled up in his jacket’s every crevice and crystallized little arctic kingdoms in his hair, rivulets retreating around the ovoid arch of his ear and down his neck. A skirt of beaded ice clung to the lower edge of his sweater, resisting all efforts to remove it, glinting wetly, flaunting its snotty tenacity. He yanked at one wet crystal and succeeded only in ripping out a flag of gray wool.
My father was ashamed at where his thoughts had gone. Albert had made sure to protect him, hadn’t he? He’d sworn to my father’s safety, legally speaking. Hadn’t that been an essential aspect of his participation? He should have insisted on seeing the letter, but he’d taken Albert’s word.
The lobby was full
