snakes all connected together in constant motion.
She hungered to be with them, to try to meld into their rhythm, but she couldn’t move. She knew she wasn’t wanted, and that knowledge froze her. She sat at the table, alone, still, and in pain.
Always in pain.
Chapter Three
It’s Thursday night, and David and I have just gotten out of the theater on Fiftieth and Broadway. It’s a perfect spring night; even the air smells good. No easy trick in midtown Manhattan.
I suggest we walk back to my apartment on Sixty-fifth Street. David always likes a good walk and so do I, but tonight I have an ulterior motive. Somehow in the four weeks since I first told David about my book I’ve managed to avoid talking about the Swat and Imogene interviews. Actually it wasn’t that difficult. The subject didn’t come up because I think David was under the impression I had done all the legwork. Not that I ever told him that. He just assumed it, and I let him. Ethically I’m probably guilty of a lie by omission, but practically speaking it was a necessity. I needed the extra time to get him used to the project, relax about it, and finally accept it, which is exactly what seems to have happened. Unfortunately now I have to tell him because I’ve scheduled both interviews for next week out in San Francisco.
An added complication is David’s parents, surely the nicest, most generous people in the world, who just happen to be planning a small dinner party in our honor for—you guessed it—next Wednesday, and there’s no way I can be back in time. Swat has refused to reschedule the interviews, so I’ll be stuck in San Francisco until at least Friday. I’ve given myself from Fiftieth Street to Sixty-fifth Street to break the news.
“Do you want to stop for something to eat?” David asks me.
“No thanks, darling,” I say, “I have some cold chicken and salad for us at home. Is that OK?”
“Sure thing.”
We’re heading north on Broadway, just passing Fifty-first Street, trying to hold hands in the busy after-theater crowds.
I love to watch the transformation that overcomes Broadway when the theatergoers, still clutching their playbills, pour out into the streets and, for the brief time it takes them to get their cars out of the parking lots or themselves into a restaurant, outnumber the dudes two to one and make the white way almost great again.
By the time we reach Fifty-fifth Street it’s all starting to slip back into raunchy pumpkin once more. David stops to look in the window of the Regency Travel Agency. We still haven’t made a decision about our honeymoon. We’re torn between Ireland and the south of France, leaning toward Ireland.
“I’m going to check into that deal,” David says, pointing to a poster advertising a European vacation with a free stop in Ireland.
“That would be perfect,” I say; “we could limit Ireland to a couple of days in Dublin and then a few days in Groom with the McGuires. I’m really looking forward to seeing Helen and Seamus again.” Helen Singer McGuire is an old college roommate of mine, a passionate Zionist from Brooklyn who fell in love with the Irish cause, an easy slideover, and in her senior year took off with Seamus McGuire, a fund raiser-cum-gunrunner for the IRA. They’ve been living in this little town called Groom, about an hour outside of Shannon, doing whatever revolutionaries do from nine to five.
I’ve always been fascinated by Helen’s courage. So unlike me with my cautious, careful, well-paced life. I’ve managed not to appear quite as dull as that sounds by developing the facade of a light and merry madcap who will leap at a moment’s notice into the most foolish madness, nothing too seriously foolish, of course, because about an inch beneath all that gossamer, cast in stone, are the unyielding strictures of a minister’s daughter. Anyway, I’d love to see Helen and Seamus for a few days, drink a little Guinness with them, overdose on Irish
She hungered to be with them, to try to meld into their rhythm, but she couldn’t move. She knew she wasn’t wanted, and that knowledge froze her. She sat at the table, alone, still, and in pain.
Always in pain.
Chapter Three
It’s Thursday night, and David and I have just gotten out of the theater on Fiftieth and Broadway. It’s a perfect spring night; even the air smells good. No easy trick in midtown Manhattan.
I suggest we walk back to my apartment on Sixty-fifth Street. David always likes a good walk and so do I, but tonight I have an ulterior motive. Somehow in the four weeks since I first told David about my book I’ve managed to avoid talking about the Swat and Imogene interviews. Actually it wasn’t that difficult. The subject didn’t come up because I think David was under the impression I had done all the legwork. Not that I ever told him that. He just assumed it, and I let him. Ethically I’m probably guilty of a lie by omission, but practically speaking it was a necessity. I needed the extra time to get him used to the project, relax about it, and finally accept it, which is exactly what seems to have happened. Unfortunately now I have to tell him because I’ve scheduled both interviews for next week out in San Francisco.
An added complication is David’s parents, surely the nicest, most generous people in the world, who just happen to be planning a small dinner party in our honor for—you guessed it—next Wednesday, and there’s no way I can be back in time. Swat has refused to reschedule the interviews, so I’ll be stuck in San Francisco until at least Friday. I’ve given myself from Fiftieth Street to Sixty-fifth Street to break the news.
“Do you want to stop for something to eat?” David asks me.
“No thanks, darling,” I say, “I have some cold chicken and salad for us at home. Is that OK?”
“Sure thing.”
We’re heading north on Broadway, just passing Fifty-first Street, trying to hold hands in the busy after-theater crowds.
I love to watch the transformation that overcomes Broadway when the theatergoers, still clutching their playbills, pour out into the streets and, for the brief time it takes them to get their cars out of the parking lots or themselves into a restaurant, outnumber the dudes two to one and make the white way almost great again.
By the time we reach Fifty-fifth Street it’s all starting to slip back into raunchy pumpkin once more. David stops to look in the window of the Regency Travel Agency. We still haven’t made a decision about our honeymoon. We’re torn between Ireland and the south of France, leaning toward Ireland.
“I’m going to check into that deal,” David says, pointing to a poster advertising a European vacation with a free stop in Ireland.
“That would be perfect,” I say; “we could limit Ireland to a couple of days in Dublin and then a few days in Groom with the McGuires. I’m really looking forward to seeing Helen and Seamus again.” Helen Singer McGuire is an old college roommate of mine, a passionate Zionist from Brooklyn who fell in love with the Irish cause, an easy slideover, and in her senior year took off with Seamus McGuire, a fund raiser-cum-gunrunner for the IRA. They’ve been living in this little town called Groom, about an hour outside of Shannon, doing whatever revolutionaries do from nine to five.
I’ve always been fascinated by Helen’s courage. So unlike me with my cautious, careful, well-paced life. I’ve managed not to appear quite as dull as that sounds by developing the facade of a light and merry madcap who will leap at a moment’s notice into the most foolish madness, nothing too seriously foolish, of course, because about an inch beneath all that gossamer, cast in stone, are the unyielding strictures of a minister’s daughter. Anyway, I’d love to see Helen and Seamus for a few days, drink a little Guinness with them, overdose on Irish
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