Once upstairs (the elevator and escalator rides were smooth and without incident, but the source of much teasing), we headed first for the view to the south, walking above clusters of skyscrapers on all sides. What struck me most about the absent Twin Towers was how much I missed them on this trip even though we hadn’t visited Ground Zero. They’d been your anchor walking around midtown, a compass pointing south to the tip of Manhattan at any hour of the day, in any weather.
“I never did get to tell you all the memorabilia that was in the police museum,” Matt said. “They’ve got interviews, photographs, plus Ground Zero artifacts.” Matt shook his head. You might have thought he’d been there himself, instead of men and women he considered part of his professional family. “It’s heartbreaking. You see pieces of glass and chunks of building, and burned-up respirator masks and police radio caps, flashlights, yellow harnesses . . .”
His voice trailed off, as did our minds, back to the terrible day.
Rose and I had begun our New York reunion trips when I first moved to California, long before the Twin Towers were built. The World Trade Center was an exciting new place to visit in the early seventies. We’d gone up in the sleek elevators and looked down to Staten Island on one side and up to the Bronx on the other.
Now they were gone. I felt like we’d lived through their birth and their death.
It made me feel very old—and very sad.
On Saturday morning, Lori and Craig came to see us off. Our bags were on a luggage dolly in the hotel lobby where we were saying our good-byes.
Lori was wound up about a sponsor who’d contacted her about including her documentary, Oxygen—Like Any Good Thing, Too Much or Too Little Can Ruin Your Health, in the Green Scene Festival next spring.
“They told me they’ve been wanting someone to take on the ozone issue,” she said. “Can you believe it?”
Craig beamed as she talked, adding his own excitement about the “totally cool invitation.” I sensed an excellent hookup was in the works.
Rose felt obliged to include some last-minute trivia—that New York is now known as the second home to the world, for example. Her facts overlapped Lori’s exclamations, causing a happy confusion of words to float up to the high ceiling of the lobby. “This reminds me of a Yogi Berra quote,” Matt said.
“Oh, no,” we women cried.
“Go, dude,” Craig said.
Matt smiled and prepared his throat for a performance. “ ‘It was impossible to get a conversation going; everybody was talking too much.’ ”
Everyone within earshot obliged him with a laugh.
“Did you know that all of New York City’s drinking water is treated with a fluoride compound, at a concentration of one-point-zero parts per million?”
I tuned out the groans and thought how much I would miss New York.
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Tree
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One