man.â
âSo what do you want me to do?â
âI suppose Iâll have to see Edgar. Would you arrange it? And can we do it somewhere safe? Iâm very afraid of him.â
âIâll arrange a meeting at my office in Manhattan. Would that be okay?â
She nodded.
He stood up and shook her hand. âYou have my number on my card. Why donât you call me when youâre ready to meet?â
âYouâre very kind. Iâll call you in a day or so.â
Andy drove him back to the city. Lowell didnât turn on his visual playground, but sat looking out at the gray world.
Chapter Eight
When they got back to Manhattan, Lowell decided to take a walk. The clouds had lifted, but it wasnât sunny, just a brighter shade of hot gray. Weather conducive to deep thought.
âAndy, drop me on Fourteenth Street. Iâm going to stroll through the Village.â
Andy took the FDR to the Twenty-third Street exit and went down Second Avenue. At Fourteenth Street he pulled over and Lowell got out. It was good to stretch his legs. Perhaps heâd become too complacent lately, relying on Andy too much. He was going to see Katherine soon. That thought made him nervous, like a sixteen-year-old kid anticipating a first date.
He walked down Second Avenue, turned right onto Tenth Street, and headed west. He noticed subtle changes each time he come downtown, regretting the modernization that had slowly crept into this mostly unaltered district. But he knew this area was soon going to be massively redefined. NYU was about to gobble up huge chunks in a land grab unprecedented in this city since the heyday of Robert Moses who, two generations before had ripped entire communities from their homes and tore down neighborhood after neighborhood in the name of progress. Some of it was a necessary pruning for legitimate expansion and growth. But some was just wanton ego-fueled destruction.
Something was bothering Lowell. Like eyes, unseen, glaring at the back of his head. He turned around quickly, but nobody seemed to be watching him. A woman was looking in a dress shop window. A homeless man sat outside a deli with a large plastic container hoping for donations. Otherwise the street was very quiet on this hot and muggy day. It wasnât like him to be jittery. But despite a lack of supporting evidence he remained unnerved.
He walked past the Albert on University and Tenth Street. Originally built in the late nineteenth century as the Albert Hotel, it was now a residential apartment building, but was once a meeting center for important writers and artists of their day. Some of its famous guests included Robert Louis Stevenson, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Anais Nin, Jackson Pollack, and many others.
He crossed Fifth Avenue and went down to Bleecker Street. Of course this was no longer the center of bohemian music, literature, and politics it had once been. The days of starving artists living in cheap walk-ups while writing novels or perfecting their jazz were gone. The rise in housing prices had long ago pushed them out. Now it was another upper-middle-class paragon, with its romantic winding streets and hidden alleys, and rents in the thousands.
If not for the tireless efforts of Jane Jacobs, a woman with a mission, determined to stop Mosesâ relentless destruction and renovation, the West Village, with its hundred-year-old buildings and its old European-style charm would have been decimated by the wreckerâs ball and replaced by the massive Lower Manhattan Expressway Moses had planned. The Isaacs-Hendrix House built in 1799 still stood at 77 Bedford Street. The Greek revival rowhouses that still lined the north side of Washington Square were built around 1832. They all would have been demolished if Robert Moses had had his way.
In the Fifties this area was home to Jack Kerouac, James Baldwin, Truman Capote, and so many other writers of that era. Dylan Thomas, who collapsed at the Chelsea
âSo what do you want me to do?â
âI suppose Iâll have to see Edgar. Would you arrange it? And can we do it somewhere safe? Iâm very afraid of him.â
âIâll arrange a meeting at my office in Manhattan. Would that be okay?â
She nodded.
He stood up and shook her hand. âYou have my number on my card. Why donât you call me when youâre ready to meet?â
âYouâre very kind. Iâll call you in a day or so.â
Andy drove him back to the city. Lowell didnât turn on his visual playground, but sat looking out at the gray world.
Chapter Eight
When they got back to Manhattan, Lowell decided to take a walk. The clouds had lifted, but it wasnât sunny, just a brighter shade of hot gray. Weather conducive to deep thought.
âAndy, drop me on Fourteenth Street. Iâm going to stroll through the Village.â
Andy took the FDR to the Twenty-third Street exit and went down Second Avenue. At Fourteenth Street he pulled over and Lowell got out. It was good to stretch his legs. Perhaps heâd become too complacent lately, relying on Andy too much. He was going to see Katherine soon. That thought made him nervous, like a sixteen-year-old kid anticipating a first date.
He walked down Second Avenue, turned right onto Tenth Street, and headed west. He noticed subtle changes each time he come downtown, regretting the modernization that had slowly crept into this mostly unaltered district. But he knew this area was soon going to be massively redefined. NYU was about to gobble up huge chunks in a land grab unprecedented in this city since the heyday of Robert Moses who, two generations before had ripped entire communities from their homes and tore down neighborhood after neighborhood in the name of progress. Some of it was a necessary pruning for legitimate expansion and growth. But some was just wanton ego-fueled destruction.
Something was bothering Lowell. Like eyes, unseen, glaring at the back of his head. He turned around quickly, but nobody seemed to be watching him. A woman was looking in a dress shop window. A homeless man sat outside a deli with a large plastic container hoping for donations. Otherwise the street was very quiet on this hot and muggy day. It wasnât like him to be jittery. But despite a lack of supporting evidence he remained unnerved.
He walked past the Albert on University and Tenth Street. Originally built in the late nineteenth century as the Albert Hotel, it was now a residential apartment building, but was once a meeting center for important writers and artists of their day. Some of its famous guests included Robert Louis Stevenson, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Anais Nin, Jackson Pollack, and many others.
He crossed Fifth Avenue and went down to Bleecker Street. Of course this was no longer the center of bohemian music, literature, and politics it had once been. The days of starving artists living in cheap walk-ups while writing novels or perfecting their jazz were gone. The rise in housing prices had long ago pushed them out. Now it was another upper-middle-class paragon, with its romantic winding streets and hidden alleys, and rents in the thousands.
If not for the tireless efforts of Jane Jacobs, a woman with a mission, determined to stop Mosesâ relentless destruction and renovation, the West Village, with its hundred-year-old buildings and its old European-style charm would have been decimated by the wreckerâs ball and replaced by the massive Lower Manhattan Expressway Moses had planned. The Isaacs-Hendrix House built in 1799 still stood at 77 Bedford Street. The Greek revival rowhouses that still lined the north side of Washington Square were built around 1832. They all would have been demolished if Robert Moses had had his way.
In the Fifties this area was home to Jack Kerouac, James Baldwin, Truman Capote, and so many other writers of that era. Dylan Thomas, who collapsed at the Chelsea
Similar Books
