you.”
“Those snowflakes were an eternity ago, and I never wrote you back. Why’d you call again?”
“I saw you from a bus. You were with some blond guy in the Village.”
I glanced out the window, half expecting to catch the glint of a distant telescope. I yanked the curtain.
“Then you knew I was here.”
“I figured you were visiting—I wanted to catch you before you left.”
I was going to be firm about this. Turn him down flat. I’d go back. I’d have to, it was all of a part, like a search-and-destroy
mission. But not this way. Not with a witness. Or an escort. Certainly not someone who him self might have been part of the
problem. But what he was saying now threw me. Random coincidence? I didn’t believe in random coincidence.
“No,” I said.
He didn’t answer right away. From outside my curtain came the shouts of children, car horns, the rumble of the BMT. The return
address on his letter had been Pearl Street. Chinatown. But the silence at his end of the phone was deafening. There was no
silence in Chinatown. Not that I remembered.
“Meet me,” he said. “Do me that favor.”
I closed my eyes but failed to conjure his face.
“This afternoon,” he said.
“I’m busy.
“Where you going to be?”
I had only the vaguest of plans to visit my Thirty-fourth Street discounter. “Midtown.”
“Empire State Building at two?”
“I’m afraid of heights. Besides, it’s for tourists.”
“One of my favorite places, too. And it’s a cloudy day. I’ll meet you
at the elevator, we can ride up together.”
I could have been more creative about my afternoon agenda, or said I don’t grant favors to men I don’t know. I could have
stood him up. Instead, I arrived early to meet this old neighbor turned stranger who’d invited me to the top of a skyscraper
on a day with zero visibility.
The lobby echoed with the shuffle of feet, the gossip of idle ticket takers. Plush ropes striped the empty space in front
of huge gleaming elevators. When I was six, my mother brought me here one morning on the way up to her gallery. The elevators
seemed as big as monsters then, and the wind on the observation platform made me cry.
Today I waited five minutes, then turned back through the revolving doors, out to the grim June murk—and a pair of dazzling,
platter blue eyes. He had a smile the width of the whole back forty. “Excuse me, ma’am.” A perfect summertime drawl.
He brushed my elbow in his haste to follow a barrel-chested Japanese woman wearing flip-up sunglasses. They disappeared into
the Greek deli across the street.
“I’m sorry, Maibelle.”
A shadow fell and the weight lifted from my arms.
This one was about six feet tall. His eyebrows, all bunched together, looked as if they’d been painted with lacquer.
“There was a fire in the subway tunnel.”
The eyes, like gleaming black glass, and the rounded slope of his forehead—a Buddha’s bulge, the kids used to call it. And
the liquid voice.
“It’s all right.” But it wasn’t. He alarmed me. All the men I’d mistaken for him, and every one of them wrong. He was twice
the size and stronger, sadder. Yet when he smiled, two dimples drilled holes in his cheeks. I thought, those eyebrows must
fly apart like wings when he laughs.
“Still have time to go up?”
“Do I have a choice?”
He clutched my bags of photo supplies like hostages—"No"—and stepped into the revolving doors.
The observation platform was empty and gray with a cool, driving wind. The only suggestion of the city below was an occasional
spire. Downtown the Twin Towers poked up like a giant’s building blocks through the soft, rolling clouds. I imagined going
with the wind, leaping the steel barrier that might not hold anyway, out into that endless softness. The pressure joined the
magnetic sensation of the edge, drawing me forward and down, as if the floor were tipped outward.
I backed into a seat against the
“Those snowflakes were an eternity ago, and I never wrote you back. Why’d you call again?”
“I saw you from a bus. You were with some blond guy in the Village.”
I glanced out the window, half expecting to catch the glint of a distant telescope. I yanked the curtain.
“Then you knew I was here.”
“I figured you were visiting—I wanted to catch you before you left.”
I was going to be firm about this. Turn him down flat. I’d go back. I’d have to, it was all of a part, like a search-and-destroy
mission. But not this way. Not with a witness. Or an escort. Certainly not someone who him self might have been part of the
problem. But what he was saying now threw me. Random coincidence? I didn’t believe in random coincidence.
“No,” I said.
He didn’t answer right away. From outside my curtain came the shouts of children, car horns, the rumble of the BMT. The return
address on his letter had been Pearl Street. Chinatown. But the silence at his end of the phone was deafening. There was no
silence in Chinatown. Not that I remembered.
“Meet me,” he said. “Do me that favor.”
I closed my eyes but failed to conjure his face.
“This afternoon,” he said.
“I’m busy.
“Where you going to be?”
I had only the vaguest of plans to visit my Thirty-fourth Street discounter. “Midtown.”
“Empire State Building at two?”
“I’m afraid of heights. Besides, it’s for tourists.”
“One of my favorite places, too. And it’s a cloudy day. I’ll meet you
at the elevator, we can ride up together.”
I could have been more creative about my afternoon agenda, or said I don’t grant favors to men I don’t know. I could have
stood him up. Instead, I arrived early to meet this old neighbor turned stranger who’d invited me to the top of a skyscraper
on a day with zero visibility.
The lobby echoed with the shuffle of feet, the gossip of idle ticket takers. Plush ropes striped the empty space in front
of huge gleaming elevators. When I was six, my mother brought me here one morning on the way up to her gallery. The elevators
seemed as big as monsters then, and the wind on the observation platform made me cry.
Today I waited five minutes, then turned back through the revolving doors, out to the grim June murk—and a pair of dazzling,
platter blue eyes. He had a smile the width of the whole back forty. “Excuse me, ma’am.” A perfect summertime drawl.
He brushed my elbow in his haste to follow a barrel-chested Japanese woman wearing flip-up sunglasses. They disappeared into
the Greek deli across the street.
“I’m sorry, Maibelle.”
A shadow fell and the weight lifted from my arms.
This one was about six feet tall. His eyebrows, all bunched together, looked as if they’d been painted with lacquer.
“There was a fire in the subway tunnel.”
The eyes, like gleaming black glass, and the rounded slope of his forehead—a Buddha’s bulge, the kids used to call it. And
the liquid voice.
“It’s all right.” But it wasn’t. He alarmed me. All the men I’d mistaken for him, and every one of them wrong. He was twice
the size and stronger, sadder. Yet when he smiled, two dimples drilled holes in his cheeks. I thought, those eyebrows must
fly apart like wings when he laughs.
“Still have time to go up?”
“Do I have a choice?”
He clutched my bags of photo supplies like hostages—"No"—and stepped into the revolving doors.
The observation platform was empty and gray with a cool, driving wind. The only suggestion of the city below was an occasional
spire. Downtown the Twin Towers poked up like a giant’s building blocks through the soft, rolling clouds. I imagined going
with the wind, leaping the steel barrier that might not hold anyway, out into that endless softness. The pressure joined the
magnetic sensation of the edge, drawing me forward and down, as if the floor were tipped outward.
I backed into a seat against the
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