Something else has changed since the eighties: back then, New Yorkers said “Hi”; now, they say, “Hey, what’s up?” The way they say hello is less subtle, more surprised. I remember “Hi” as a greeting that was smiling, polite, happy to see you. “Hey” sounds different since the tragedy. I hear it as a “Hey, what are you doing here? Good for you, you’re still alive.” But it’s probably just my paranoia again. I circle the building like a vulture in search of corpses. I wander the vertical streets breathing in fresh calamity. A writer is a jackal, a coyote, a hyena. Give me my dose of desolation, I’m looking for a tragedy, don’t suppose you’ve got some little atrocity to hand? I chew on Bubble Yum and the heartache of orphans.
Some critics claim cinema is a “window on the world.” Others say the novel is. Art is a window on the world. Like the tinted windows of the glass towers in which I can see my reflection, a tall, stooped silhouette in a black coat, a heron with glasses walking with enormous strides. Fleeing the image I walk faster, but it follows me like a bird of prey. Writing an autobiographical novel not to reveal oneself, but to melt away. A novel is a two-way mirror behind which I hide so I can see and not be seen. The mirror in which I see myself, in the end, I give to others.
When one cannot answer the question “Why?” one must at least attempt to answer the question “How?”
Grief does not prevent wealthy old women from walking their dogs on Madison Avenue nor street hawkers from displaying their fake Gucci bags on the sidewalk a block from the real Gucci store. There are gallery openings still where everyone dresses in black; there are clubs still where you have to be on the guest list; there are hotels still where everything—from the guests to the decor—is beautiful. At 9:50, in a further attempt to go back in time, I step into 95 Wall Street, the building where I worked during the eighties, to see whether it will trigger some Proustian memory within me. There is still a CRéDIT LYONNAIS logo on the lobby wall but the receptionist explains that the French bank moved up to midtown some time ago. From Proust to Modiano in ten seconds. The deserted lobby. The doorman’s suspicious look. The tight-lipped security guards. The mysterious businessmen. The hazy memory. Did I really spend every day here? There’s no point hanging around, nothing is coming back to me.
“Sir, you can’t stay here.”
The stocky uniformed guy comes over to me slowly.
“But I worked here a long time ago…”
I put on my Spanish accent, but there’s nothing doing. I’m evicted by my past. My past wants nothing to do with me. My past accompanies me through the revolving door. I’m forced to turn my back on it once again.