Lexie stared at him, amazed. “But, David, I thought you …”
He lifted his hand to silence her. “But I won’t give up the night,” he added determinedly. “I won’t give that up, ever. But as often as I can, as often as it’s right, I’ll take Lucy with me, show her what I think she needs to see.”
Lexie continued to stare at him but said nothing.
“My eyes,” Corman said. “I have a right to them. And so does she.”
Lexie studied him intently for a moment, then started to speak.
Corman put up his hand again. “That’s the bottom line,” Corman told her. “What happens now is up to you.” He added nothing else, but merely rested in the silence that drifted down upon them, felt the air around him, the whole dark envelope of the city, and waited for a blow that never came.
Lucy had already packed for the weekend by the time they got back to the apartment, and within a few minutes the three of them were standing beneath the Broadway’s battered awning, waiting for a cab. Lucy stood under Corman’s arm, nuzzling him gently while she talked to Lexie about the time she’d spent with Mrs. Donaldson. Lexie smiled, nodded, gave her every encouragement, but something in her looked ravaged.
“I’ll bring Lucy back tomorrow night,” she said to Corman after Lucy had finished her story.
“Fine.”
“Any particular time?”
“I’ll make sure I’m home before seven.”
Lucy stepped from under Corman’s arm, walked over to Lexie, and took up the same position, as if trying to balance things with absolute precision.
The cab arrived. Corman opened the door, watched as the two of them slid inside, then handed Lucy her small blue traveling case, closed the door and bent down beside the window.
It was streaked with rain, and a small layer of water formed a watery edge as Lucy rolled down the glass.
“ ’Bye, Papa,” she said.
Corman pressed nearer and kissed her lightly. “Have fun,” he said.
The cab pulled away a few seconds later. Corman returned to his apartment and dialed Pike immediately, afraid that Groton’s job had already been given to someone else.
“I’ve changed my mind, Hugo,” he said when Pike answered. “Groton’s beat. Is it still open?”
“Yeah,” Pike said. “By the skin of its teeth.”
“I’ve decided to take it.”
“Oh yeah?” Pike asked. “What brought on the change?”
“Just things.”
“Wolf at the door, am I right?”
“Close enough,” Corman said. “I’ll be there Monday morning.”
“Nine sharp,” Pike told him.
“Nine sharp,” Corman repeated, then hung up.
For a time he curled up on the sofa and tried to take a short nap. But the intensity of the last hours still lingered like a faint electrical charge in the air around him, and so, after only a few minutes, he returned to the streets, heading south, crossing the avenues at random, simply moving forward with no direction in mind. He passed down Broadway, through the swarming neon of Times Square, then down Seventh Avenue. It was nearly deserted until he reached the plant and flower district in Chelsea. The trucks were unloading everything from common ferns to the most exotic tropical flowers, and for a long time, Corman watched the whole striking process from the front booth of a small diner on 26th Street.
Before he left, an idea struck him, a series of photographs that would show how the city reprovisioned itself during the night. He would record the flower district, the meat, fish and vegetable markets, the unloading of trucks, freight cars, planes, boats, barges, how the city was fed by tubes of streets, bridges, waterways, airlanes. He would take Lucy with him, teach her the mystery of replenishment.
By dawn he’d reached the great stone ramparts of the Brooklyn Bridge, faintly blue in the chill morning air. The rain had stopped, and a heavy mist rose from the gray waters. As he looked at it, he thought of Lazar, all the photographs he’d taken of people huddled together, shrouded in the mist, waylaid by the storm, but searching through it anyway, enduring and eternal, relentless as the unrelenting rain.
A chill breeze swept up from the river. He lifted his collar against it, briefly headed back uptown, then thought better of it and turned southward again, moving out onto the bridge, walking steadily until he’d reached its towering center. The wind was cold as it blew unhindered over the river. It chilled his lungs and tore madly at his hair, but he continued to stand silently between the great gray arches, with emptiness below, he knew, and above, more emptiness.
And yet?
Standing.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1991 by Thomas H. Cook
cover design by Jason Gabbert
This edition published in 2011 by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media
180 Varick Street
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com
