Chapter Seventeen
The Tour
Wednesday Afternoon
And there he was. Looking natty in jeans, chambray shirt, and lightweight summer blazer. And carrying two helmets.
“First, I have to tell you—I’ve made some arrangements. I know your sister has been kind of neglected, what with you being the center of everyone’s attention. Which can’t be much fun for her. So here’s what I’m suggesting.” And he told her his plan for keeping Liz busy for the rest of the day and evening. He tried to look innocent, but she saw the mischief in his eyes and she had to laugh.
“You sly dog,” she said. “Liz will see right through you. But if I’m willing, she will be, too. I know she’ll be glad of some attention just for her. Especially if she gets to see a Broadway show. I know she wanted to. It will be a treat for her.” She was already getting her phone out of her bag. “I’ll call and let her know.” When Liz answered her call, she said, “Listen, honey. The sergeant and his partner have a great surprise for you—” and she explained the plan. “And they’ll pick you up at the hotel at four o’clock. His partner is Max Wozinski and Max’s wife is Chloe. Chloe Watkins. Nice people. You’ll like them. And stay out as late as you like. No need to rush home.”
She listened for a moment as Liz took it all in, then said “Bye bye. See you tonight. Love you,” and dropped the phone into her bag.
“There. She loves the plan. She says thanks for arranging this. It’ll be fun and she’s looking forward to meeting Max and his wife.”
She didn’t add that Liz had also whispered into the phone, “And don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to, honey. Just be careful, you hear me?”
“So we’re all set,” Bart said as they crossed the lobby. “I’m your tour guide from here on. You have any questions, just ask.” They passed through the revolving doors and out onto the sunbaked street. “I left the bike parked uptown because I want your tour to start with the subway, so first we’ll ride up and get it.” He guided her up the street toward the corner.
“The subway? You’re sure it’s safe?” There were, after all, all those stories she’d heard.
Bart beamed at her. He put an arm around her shoulder, a reassuring gesture.
“Of course it’s safe. And you’re with me. I wouldn’t let anything bad happen to you.”
And then, at the subway entrance, he stopped her.
“But first, before we go down there,” he said, “there’s something I want to take care of.”
And right there, with crowds hurrying around them, Bart broke the first law of street etiquette: he blocked the flow of the surrounding pedestrians, getting in their way, becoming a roadblock in the stream of people in and out of the subway entrance.
“We got interrupted last night,” he said quietly, “and we left something unfinished.”
And before she could say anything, on a teeming city sidewalk in the middle of Times Square, with hurrying crowds and the city’s racket swirling around them, he turned her to face him. He slipped his hand down her back and drew her close to him.
His kiss was casual and familiar, as though they’d been kissing like this for years, like a husband saying, “Hi, honey. I’m home.”
And Annie, totally surprised, didn’t know or care that passersby were glancing at them, some of them irritated and others smiling, as they hurried on.
He absolutely takes my breath away.
Bart stepped back, holding her at arm’s length, and his smile said he knew he’d surprised her and that he’d meant to.
“Now let’s take that tour, Annie. You’re going to have a good look at my city.”
And so they joined the stream of people flowing down into the underground labyrinth that is the Times Square subway station.
And in that great rushing mass of humanity, who would have paid attention to the little cluster of three furtive-looking types who had been keeping pace with them, always at a careful distance behind them, three men, unobtrusive, unremarkable, quite unnoticeable in the diverse and utterly ordinary throng of subway riders? Three men who, being unfamiliar with the subway system, didn’t know about Metrocards, got themselves tangled up at the turnstiles, and with much confusion and blaming of each other, watched helplessly as Annie and Bart disappeared down another level where the arriving train opened its doors, took them in, and carried them, all unaware, far away from their baffled stalkers.
Midday on the subway and every seat was taken. Annie wasn’t accustomed to the train’s motion, rocking erratically, clattering along at what felt like a dangerous speed, and she was unsteady on her feet and clung hard to the metal pole she shared with three other riders. She also wasn’t accustomed to the bodies of so many strangers so close around her. So intimately close, and yet each person seemed to be surrounded by a zone of privacy that protected them from intrusion.
How do they do it? How do they keep themselves so separate from each other? Like a school of fish. Without getting in each other’s way.
And the racket. You could yell at full decibel level in here and still not be heard.
On the seat in front of her was a woman with a little boy next to her. The child was sleeping, snuggled up to his mommy.
How can he sleep, with all this noise?
Farther down the car, she saw another sleeping child, this one a baby in a stroller. A stroller, somehow making room for itself in the midst of the press of people. No one caring at all.
I guess they grow up with so much noise around them, so much stimulation, it becomes ordinary.
The train lurched and she was jostled up against Bart. He smiled at her as she clutched at his arm. She smiled back, a little embarrassed.
“You’ll get used to it,” he said.
She looked around her and knew he was right. Though she was very much aware that she was hurtling along at high speed, underground, inside the bedrock of a great city, along with hundreds of others, none of those others seemed the least bit impressed by the enormity of what they were doing. She took a good look at her fellow travelers. Most were occupied in some way, some attached by wires to a device, listening to music, or playing a game on their smart phones, or reading a book or a folded-up newspaper. Two kids, heads bent together over their books, busy with their pencils, were doing their homework. A few riders were just resting, alone with their thoughts, staring empty-eyed into space. Here and there, a man or a woman asleep, catching a few zzz’s on the way home or on to their next activity of the day.
And the diversity! From all over the world, there seemed to be representatives here in this one subway car, of every color of skin, every style of dress, including hijabs and saris, Sikh turbans and African headwraps, and—from the newspapers she could see—every language. A veritable United Nations, right around her. And no one was paying the least bit of attention to anyone else. Back home, people would be staring. Here, no one was even interested.
No wonder Bart wanted her to see this. These few minutes on the subway were worth hours of lectures.
And it was only minutes, fifteen, perhaps, and they were in Harlem.
“This is our stop,” Bart said. Along with the multitude, they left the subway and came out onto a wide, sun-filled boulevard, where his bike was parked at the corner, waiting for them.
And they were off, slipping through the buses, the taxis and trucks, the autos, making a big turn onto 125th Street, riding past the Apollo Theatre—yes, that Apollo Theatre!—on to a zigzag tour through Harlem, with a stop for lunch on Lenox Avenue, enjoying the early afternoon sunlight outside at a landmark restaurant where she burned her tongue on hot “wild” chicken wings and soothed it with cornbread and a bowl of the best New England – style chowder she’d ever eaten. From there it was back on the bike and uptown to the Dyckman House (“This is a farmhouse, the oldest one still in Manhattan—a museum now,” Bart explained), then downtown to the 79th Street marina, where people really live on their houseboats. Then over to the East River, a slow pass around Gracie Mansion (“Our mayor lives here”) and finally down the FDR Drive toward the Financial District.
By then, she must have racked up a hundred pics on her cell phone.
“I want you to see this,” Bart said, parking the bike and taking off his helmet. “There’s a spot here where you can almost feel the beginnings of this city, where the streets must have been just dirt paths. And look at what’s grown up on those dirt paths.” They stood at an intersection where narrow streets twisted away from them, seemingly at random, unlike the regular grid of the streets farther uptown. On these very narrow, very irregular streets, enormous skyscraper office buildings rose into the perfectly clear blue sky, packed so tightly together, so towering, they seemed ready to fall around them.
His arm was around her and his face was turned up toward the soaring buildings, and she felt his pleasure in showing this all to her, like a kid sharing his treasured secrets with a very special new friend.
“I understand what you mean,” she said, seeing the winding, narrow streets connecting and curving away from her. “Here’s the financial center of the world grown up on top of these very streets that were once farm roads and dirt paths. It’s like a time-lapse film happening right in front of your eyes.”
“Right!” he said. “That’s it, exactly. See how they didn’t even straighten out the streets, or make them wider. Just let this financial giant of a city grow up right on top of those dirt paths. I always get a kick out of standing here, thinking about those centuries, and imagining cows and Dutch farmers walking around me and I want to go up to them and whisper in their ears, ‘Look! Look what’s coming! Look what you’re starting here.’ Behind all those windows, in all those buildings, thousands of people are churning out the deals and the plans and the schemes that make this world go round.”
His pride in being a citizen of the very center of the universe and his pleasure in showing it to her were evident. Annie hadn’t the heart to remind him there was a wide and very effective world functioning well beyond the city limits.
But some day, if I get to know him better—
“It’s only three thirty.” Bart was checking his watch. “We’re going across the bridge now. You haven’t seen New York if you haven’t seen Brooklyn. And I want to show you where I grew up.”