standing behind the door, waiting for the sound of a footstep on the stairs, as if it were her fondest wish to be a prosecution witness before she departed this crime-ridden world. All day long she opened and closed the door like a bivalve drawing nutrients from the ocean. Corrine waved.
Downstairs, Roger held the door for her and smiled. "Good morning, Mrs. Calloway." Watching her pass, the doorman felt a flutter of desire that was like a shot of helium in his lungs, lifting him up, making him weightless with the exhilaration of her presence, which for one moment he shared with no one else, and when she had passed he felt sad and lumpish with desire.
Out in the air, she started to feel better. Crisp, excoriating January cold. The sky was bright and clear, having, unlike Corrine, gone to sleep at a sensible hour. Joggers passing in bright colors, damn them. Someday she intended to start exercising again. Three Pekingese inspected a fragrant crack in the sidewalk in front of a brownstone while their mistress stood patiently tethered on three leashes, blue-haired, wearing an empty plastic baggie on her free hand.
At Lexington, Corrine smelled pot; two men in suits walking ahead of her were sharing a joint. The phrase "Cola Wars" drifted back to her with the smoke: ad guys, jump-starting inspiration.
After buying the Journal outside the subway entrance, she plunged underground into the briefcase-toting army of the employed and stood jam-packed with a thousand other New Yorkers on the platform, thinking that although they looked featureless together, their inner lives seethed beneath the worsted wool—scores of them cheating on their spouses and their taxes, dreaming of murder and flight. If she were to ask she would find herself connected through friends and acquaintances with many of them; if a catastrophe were to strike they would all find themselves linked and bonded, but now they stood silent and remote. The phrase find the cure stenciled on the post beside her. How many people on the platform had it? What was that old poem Russell had written about at Oxford? "Journal in Time of Plague"? Something about light falling from the air...
She lifted her paper and disappeared into the columns of newsprint, to emerge ninety blocks downtown, borne up to the surface by the heavily bundled throngs, pumped out onto Wall Street, which marked the northern frontier of New Amsterdam and was named for the seventeenth-century log wall that had protected the Dutch settlers from the Indians and the British. Shunning the contemporary female custom of wearing running shoes between home and office, Corrine clicked along on calf pumps just outside the limits of the invisible ancient wall, high-stepping over buried ceramic pipe bowls and wine jugs, bent nails, broken glass and brick fragments, partially fossilized pig, chicken and sheep bones, and other detritus that had been regularly tossed over the wall three centuries before, her route so familiar that she was as oblivious to it as she was to what was underneath the pavement, not really seeing the towering temples to Mammon as she walked toward the one in which she toiled, reading her paper in the available light that found its way to the canyon floor.
* * *
"So, people, this could be the day. The big day, the historic day. The market's looking good, it's looking fit and ready. I think we're going to hit two thousand. The big two-oh-oh-oh. And I think we want to use this as our selling point, particularly in our cold-calling situation."
"Go, team," Corrine whispered to Duane.
"We want to say, 'Mr. John Q. Doctor, you've been missing out here, history's being made today, and your neighbors are getting rich. How about you?' "
Sitting beside her in the overheated conference room, Duane Peters involuntarily nodded in agreement, his yellow tie bobbing up and down on his chest like something meant to attract fish. These yellow ties were too much in the morning—Duane and the supervisor
Downstairs, Roger held the door for her and smiled. "Good morning, Mrs. Calloway." Watching her pass, the doorman felt a flutter of desire that was like a shot of helium in his lungs, lifting him up, making him weightless with the exhilaration of her presence, which for one moment he shared with no one else, and when she had passed he felt sad and lumpish with desire.
Out in the air, she started to feel better. Crisp, excoriating January cold. The sky was bright and clear, having, unlike Corrine, gone to sleep at a sensible hour. Joggers passing in bright colors, damn them. Someday she intended to start exercising again. Three Pekingese inspected a fragrant crack in the sidewalk in front of a brownstone while their mistress stood patiently tethered on three leashes, blue-haired, wearing an empty plastic baggie on her free hand.
At Lexington, Corrine smelled pot; two men in suits walking ahead of her were sharing a joint. The phrase "Cola Wars" drifted back to her with the smoke: ad guys, jump-starting inspiration.
After buying the Journal outside the subway entrance, she plunged underground into the briefcase-toting army of the employed and stood jam-packed with a thousand other New Yorkers on the platform, thinking that although they looked featureless together, their inner lives seethed beneath the worsted wool—scores of them cheating on their spouses and their taxes, dreaming of murder and flight. If she were to ask she would find herself connected through friends and acquaintances with many of them; if a catastrophe were to strike they would all find themselves linked and bonded, but now they stood silent and remote. The phrase find the cure stenciled on the post beside her. How many people on the platform had it? What was that old poem Russell had written about at Oxford? "Journal in Time of Plague"? Something about light falling from the air...
She lifted her paper and disappeared into the columns of newsprint, to emerge ninety blocks downtown, borne up to the surface by the heavily bundled throngs, pumped out onto Wall Street, which marked the northern frontier of New Amsterdam and was named for the seventeenth-century log wall that had protected the Dutch settlers from the Indians and the British. Shunning the contemporary female custom of wearing running shoes between home and office, Corrine clicked along on calf pumps just outside the limits of the invisible ancient wall, high-stepping over buried ceramic pipe bowls and wine jugs, bent nails, broken glass and brick fragments, partially fossilized pig, chicken and sheep bones, and other detritus that had been regularly tossed over the wall three centuries before, her route so familiar that she was as oblivious to it as she was to what was underneath the pavement, not really seeing the towering temples to Mammon as she walked toward the one in which she toiled, reading her paper in the available light that found its way to the canyon floor.
* * *
"So, people, this could be the day. The big day, the historic day. The market's looking good, it's looking fit and ready. I think we're going to hit two thousand. The big two-oh-oh-oh. And I think we want to use this as our selling point, particularly in our cold-calling situation."
"Go, team," Corrine whispered to Duane.
"We want to say, 'Mr. John Q. Doctor, you've been missing out here, history's being made today, and your neighbors are getting rich. How about you?' "
Sitting beside her in the overheated conference room, Duane Peters involuntarily nodded in agreement, his yellow tie bobbing up and down on his chest like something meant to attract fish. These yellow ties were too much in the morning—Duane and the supervisor
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