“Yeah, well, somebody forgot to tell those assholes who looted the stores under the plaza. A few hours after the buildings come down, they’re scooping up Rolexes and cameras within sniffing distance of the rubble.”
Corrine had heard about that, but already it was clear that these stories weren’t going to be part of the narrative of heroic acts, random acts of kindness, last words to loved ones on cell phones, bizarre coincidences, missed planes and buses that, had they been caught, would’ve carried the passengers to certain death, as well as the obverse—the last-minute shift changes and uncharacteristically early arrivals at the office. Such as Luke’s phone call postponing breakfast at Windows on the World. What would he make of this miracle? Would it change his life? Persuade him to marry his secretary? Travel to India to find a guru? Move back home, down south, to care for a dying relative?
Corrine was showing him how to use the coffee machine just as a wave of National Guardsmen descended, so she let him handle pouring while she moved to the warming trays to dispense the ziti that had arrived from a restaurant on Mott Street. The upstate reservists—polite, close-shorn, burly men from Buffalo and Rochester and Utica, wearing stiff new camo uniforms—sat at the two picnic tables or stood inside the tent, blowing at their paper cups and plates, nodding deferentially to the cops, who, in turn, lowered their voices and made room for the silent crew of ironworkers that came through shortly after three, begrimed and beatific in their exhaustion.
It was after four in the morning when the tent finally emptied out. Jerry sent the three young women from Ralph Lauren home, enlisting Spinetti to drive them uptown. Luke declined the ride and lingered on with Corrine, cleaning up after the big rush.
Eventually, they joined the boys outside at the picnic table. The heat of the day had dissipated hours ago and the air was cool; it might have passed for a beautiful night if not for the acrid stench of the smoke churning the sky to the north.
“Back on the night shift,” Jerry was saying. “After wasting my working life in bars and clubs, I finally get a civilian job, and here I am on dawn patrol again. In the winter, I never saw daylight. The last club—I never actually met my boss, the owner of record, but I talked to him once a week on the phone from Attica, where he was a guest of the state. The most important duty was delivering a bag of cash to Brooklyn on Wednesday and Saturday nights. After I closed up the club around five, I drive the cash to a restaurant in Flatbush with a loaded nine-millimeter Sig-Sauer in the glove compartment. I leave the Sig in the car, knock on the back door, and usually it’s opened by my friend Dino, who’s like five three in his lifts and missing a piece of his ear. We might drink a sambuca or two and discuss the Knicks or the Mets. Sometimes I leave the place at dawn with a new suit or a car stereo—swag from the latest truck hijack or cargo interdiction at JFK. And one night, the performance bonus is—excuse me, Corrine—a complimentary blow job from the chippie occupying the seat next to Dino.”
Corrine wasn’t offended—although she preferred not to dwell on this image.
“I’d worked in the clubs for fifteen years and finally decided I had to get the fuck out. It’s crazy. It’s no life. I wanted to be a civilian. I had experience as a carpenter, but I didn’t want to do the four-year apprenticeship for the union, so I went to Dino and he took care of it. Got my union card as a master carpenter and started out at twenty-eight an hour, as opposed to fourteen.”
“Nice of Dino,” Corrine said.
“He owed me,” Jerry said. “They all owed me.” He suddenly leaned over the picnic table and asked, looking at her plaintively, “Do you think things balance out? I mean, can a good deed—deeds—compensate for a bad one? You know—that karma thing.”
She glanced over at Luke to see if she’d missed something.
“I lied for them, perjured myself. Some poor fucker, black guy, got the shit kicked out of him by my bouncers, he was in the hospital for two months last year, and as far as I know he’s still doing physical therapy. White. Darin White. Bad enough going through life called White when your skin’s the color of burnt toast. I testified, said I saw it happen, saw him go off on my guys, that he was crazy on PCP or something and started the whole thing, even though I was busy in the office at the time with a stripper and it was my boy Tiny who was cranked up and went crazy on the kid for no reason and the others jumped in and just started whaling on him. I came out just in time to see the last kick. We dumped him in front of the ER at Beth Israel half-dead.”
“I remember that case,” Luke said.
“Fucking tabloid circus. Al Sharpton all over the shit. They told me to disappear until they came up with a plan, so I hid out in this basement office, a secret wine cellar from Prohibition days. The cops searched the premises while I smoked weed and watched videos behind three feet of stone and the tabloids ran pictures of Darin White in traction, looking like a fucking mummy in those bandages. So what about you, Luke? Why’d you quit your job? You get tired of busting pension funds and throwing the little people out of work? Isn’t that how you LBO guys make the big bucks?”
Luke smiled. “It’s not as glamorous as it sounds.”
“But why’d you quit?”
“It stopped being fun,” he said almost interrogatively. “Ten years ago, we were like cowboys, making it up as we went along, riding in with guns blazing. Eventually, it became, I don’t know, business as usual.”
“So,” Jerry said, “did you put away enough to stay retired?”
“Depends what you think is enough. My wife thinks you need a jet. I have a friend who says you need a hundred million to be a player.”
“Are you a player?”
“Jesus, Jerry,” Corrine protested.
Luke shook his head. “Afraid not. Tell you what, though, there’ll be fewer players after the markets reopen in a few hours.”
“You really think it’s going to be bad?” Corrine asked.
“A bloodbath.”
“No, that was last week,” Jerry said bitterly. “Let’s not confuse fucking red ink with the real thing.”
Corrine found Jerry’s anger a tonic. Just beneath the surface of his altruistic pragmatism was an undercurrent of rage—not an inappropriate state of mind just now. She sensed that if he hadn’t been able to throw himself into relief work, his energies could easily have turned violent.
Davies emerged from his van and waddled over to join them, clanking like the Tin Man, taking a seat at the table and accepting a cigarette from Luke.
They sat in silence as the darkness began to seep away, watching as the silhouettes of office buildings emerged against the dingy backdrop of the predawn sky. Corrine registered a moment of perfect stillness, a silent pause marking the transition from night to day, which was punctuated by the distant, rising growl of diesel engines and the percussion of steel on steel, the relentless work resuming.
This morning would carry a different sound, a distant rumbling underground from the subway tunnels on either side of the park, followed by the faint, swelling tattoo of leather soles and heels on concrete stairs as the first wave of office workers surged up and spilled out onto Broadway. Men and women with briefcases, backpacks, and portfolios, early risers come to restart the great wounded machine of Wall Street. Receptionists and hedge-fund managers, retail brokers and risk and liability managers, systems analysts and janitors. And suddenly the spell would be broken, the sense that nothing existed outside this sacred, ravaged place.
“I can’t imagine going into the office today,” Luke said, “or tomorrow or the next day. But then again, I can’t imagine what I should be doing. What are we supposed to do now?”
She knew exactly what he meant, and was reluctant to leave Bowling Green, but, in fact, the answer in her case at this very minute was that she had to go home and get her kids ready for school.
“Look at them,” Jerry said. “It’s like nothing happened.”
“They’re doing what they have to do,” Davies told him. “It’s a good thing.”
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Jerry shook his head. “Well, they should show a little goddamn respect.”
“Hey, life goes on. That’s the object, isn’t it? Showing the bastards they haven’t crippled us.”
“A little respect is all I’m saying.”
At that moment, a man emerged from the mouth of the subway entrance, a briefcase in one hand and an American flag in the other, holding it aloft as he took his place in the silent parade of commerce.
9
The smell of bacon wafted into the kids’ bedroom, making Corrine faintly nauseated. She tried to get them to eat fruit in the morning, which was hard enough without Russell frying up crispy strips of salted pig fat.
Storey wouldn’t budge. She wanted to wear her gray flannel Jacadi jumper, the one Casey had bought for her birthday, which was at the bottom of the laundry hamper.
“Sweetie, it’s dirty and wrinkled. Besides, you wore it your first day at school last Monday. Technically, that would make two days in a row, since you haven’t been back since then. You don’t want to wear the same outfit again, do you?”
“Why can’t you wash it?”
“Storey, it’s seven-thirty and we’re about to be late for school.”
She hesitated, arms folded imperiously across her Little Mermaid pajama top, weighing the arguments. While she was fetishistic in her attachment to two or three articles of clothing, including the jumper, she was also a stickler for punctuality. Her parents’ chronic tardiness was a constant source of mortification. On the other hand, the gray flannel jumper could be a cover story—an objective correlative of the general anxiety.
“Are you nervous about going to school?”
Storey tugged at the waist of her pajama top and studied the picture of Ariel.
“Do you want to talk about what happened last week?”
“Maybe I could wear the tartan skirt and the black turtleneck,” Storey said.
“Good idea.”
With an air of world-weariness, she removed her pajamas. “That means I have to wear tights.”
“I’m sure we can find a clean pair,” Corrine said, digging through Storey’s drawers. Several dirty pairs were balled up at the bottom of the underwear drawer. She smoothed one out on the bed and handed it to Storey.
“They’re dirty.”
“You didn’t seem to mind the fact that the jumper was dirty.”
She took the tights between her thumb and forefinger. “Are you going to pick us up from school?”
“Probably Jean will.”
“Probably?”
“Definitely.” More than ever, at this moment, they had to be reassured about routine, to feel secure and informed. Although Storey, thankfully, seemed more concerned about her wardrobe.
“I can pick them up.”
Corrine turned to see Hilary framed in the doorway, stretching her arms over her head, catlike. “Jean’s on duty anyway.”
“I want Aunt Hilary to pick us up.”
“We can get ice cream,” Hilary said. “Won’t that be great?”
“If you want, you can go along with Jean,” Corrine said. Not a chance in hell that Corrine would entrust the fetching of her children to her sister. If Hilary met a cute guy in the next few hours, or found some great new shop, the kids would be on their own come three o’clock. As it was, she’d nearly killed them even before they were born. Thinking about all this, Corrine could barely restrain herself from snatching Hilary’s hand from Storey’s head.
“You’ve got beautiful hair, baby.”
“Just like my mom’s.”
“Well, yes.” Hilary glanced at her sister. “It does run in the family.”
Corrine shot her a look. In the past week, there’d been a dozen similarly ambiguous references in front of the children, and Storey was a water witch in the detection of undercurrents.
“One of the Fluffies is missing,” Storey informed Hilary.
“The who?”
“The Fluffies.”
“They’re kind of like fairies,” Corrine explained.
“That’s their house,” Storey said, pointing to the dollhouse beside her bed. “They come out at night. Grown-ups can’t see them. The daddy’s missing. Like Dylan’s daddy.”
Corrine winced, inadvertently making a “Let’s not pursue the subject” face.
“I still can’t believe he’s gone,” Hilary said.
“Missing.” Corrine vigorously shook her head.
Hilary rolled her eyes.
“Quarter to eight, girls.” Russell was standing in the doorway, naked except for the towel around his waist. What the hell was that about? Showing off for Hilary? She examined his body critically—barrel chest, a few graying hairs amid the dark thicket. A hairy swelling at the waist, not quite a pot—more like a Frisbee. Not bad for a man his age, but not necessarily, if that’s what he was hoping, a body to arouse lust in a younger woman.
“Thanks for the bulletin,” she said.
“What’s a bulletin?” Storey wanted to know.
“In this case, an officious and unnecessary announcement.”
“Kind of like you want to shoot a bullet in somebody?” Storey was deeply aware of how clever she was being.
“That’s really cute, honey,” Hilary said, pinching her cheek. “You are such a smart thing.”
“Kind of like,” Corrine said, and then, seeing Storey’s reaction, she said, “No, honey, that was just a stupid little joke of Mommy’s.” Walking on fucking eggshells. “Is Jeremy ready?”
Russell nodded.
“How come Daddy’s not dressed?” Storey asked.
“That’s a very good question. Maybe he wants everybody to check out his washboard abs, or it could be his favorite jumper’s dirty.”
“Mom!”
Russell retreated in confusion. Maybe she’d been too hard on him—maybe he just wasn’t really thinking about his state of relative undress. He’d been walking around in a daze the last week, with one of his best friends missing and presumed dead. She had to remind herself that Russell tended to internalize these things and that he’d seen everything up close—walking down Greenwich Street, glancing up to see the first plane a few hundred feet overhead just after he dropped the kids off at St. Luke’s and then returning to the loft, watching from their window the, as he put it, “not-quite-tiny-enough” figures jumping out of the tower eight blocks away, close enough to distinguish between men and women. That was what seemed to have upset him the most, though no one else was really talking about it—there was almost a news embargo on the jumpers. Russell said he stopped counting after twenty-seven….
Terrible as it might sound, she couldn’t help hoping that if nothing else, this might draw them together again by stripping away his veneer of jaded sophistication. Two decades in the city had hardened him; she missed the sensitive and insecure boy she’d met at Brown, the bookish hick from Michigan who wrote poetry, including a cycle of twenty-one sonnets to Corrine on her twenty-first birthday, who loved Dylan Thomas and Scott Fitzgerald and all the sad, doomed young men of letters, who was intimidated by the preppies and the native New Yorkers on campus.
Even as she tried to deal with the kids’ anxiety, she was worried sick about his.
When she and Storey finally emerged from the bedroom, Jeremy and Russell were curled up on the couch, watching cartoons. She would have been more impressed by Russell’s willingness to sit in front of the Cartoon Network if she hadn’t known that he enjoyed it almost as much as his son, if she thought he was making a sacrifice. She’d rather cut off her nose than watch a cartoon. It never ceased to amaze her that a man who had “Dover Beach” committed to memory and read Wittgenstein for pleasure could happily while away hours watching Daffy and Tweety and the Powerpuff Girls.
She led Storey over to the couch. “Okay, Coco Chanel here is finally ready for school.”
“Who’s Coco Chanel?”
“Right,” Russell said, rising like a zombie. “Come on, Jeremy, let’s go.”
Jeremy ran over to his mother and clutched her tightly, his eyes filling with tears as he burrowed into Corrine’s crotch. “I don’t want to go.”
“What is it, honey?”
He shook his head.
“Are you scared?”
He nodded. In fact, he had been anxious last Monday, his first day at the new school, and had often resisted preschool, clinging and crying in just this fashion. Somehow, she found it reassuring now that he’d been a reluctant schoolgoer even before the eleventh.
Storey now grew concerned for her brother’s peace of mind. “Don’t worry, Jeremy. The terrorists only attack skyscrapers. And our school is only three stories high.”
This sounded as logical as anything Corrine herself could have come up with, or as anything they had come up with so far in the way of reassurance. Storey was at her best when assuming the role of her brother’s keeper. Older by thirty seconds, she was deeply conscious of this seniority.
Corrine and Russell exchanged a look, a query of mutual helplessness.
“There’s nothing to worry about,” she said, feeling like a bald-faced liar. “It’s all over now.” Never had she felt quite as dishonest as a parent as in the last few days, trying to comfort the children, when she felt absolutely no comfort or security herself. The old certainties were pretty thoroughly discredited. What were you supposed to say—Don’t worry, be happy?
“But Dad works in a skyscraper,” Jeremy said, suddenly spotting the flaw in Storey’s earlier bromide.
“It’s a small skyscraper,” Russell said. “More like a high rise.”
Jeremy looked puzzled.
“Daddy will be extra careful,” Corrine said.
“Where are you going?” Storey demanded.
“I’m going to a restaurant to get some food and drinks for the rescue workers,” she said.
“Can I come?” Jeremy asked.
“No, you have to go to school.”
“If I can’t go with you,” he said, “then I want to stay home.”
The Good Life Page 10
