Now it was dark. The plane was going to be late: They had been hours behind schedule leaving London, there were thunderstorms down in Spain and the airlines’ plans were hopelessly mixed up, connections canceled, flights unable to leave because the necessary aircraft was still in transit, hundreds of miles away and thousands of feet up in the air. Stephanie had been caught in the backup, stuck inside the terminal, with its rank smell of industrial carpeting and artificial butter. And then suddenly there were dozens of arrivals, airline employees announcing updates and requests for patience over the din of people talking, finishing up their phone calls, collecting their things; and then all at once the planes were filled in a huge mad jam that resulted in her being upgraded to business class, where she found herself sitting in a wide, soft window seat with her head back and her eyes closed, while the echoless murmur of her fellow passengers washed over her, and the plane was shunted onto spurs and access roads—a pause—and then they were airborne, the entire cabin sighing, as if they had finally been freed, though of what no one could say: the airport, or the day, or the burden of gravity and the waste of motionlessness.
The pilot came on the public address system and admitted that he wouldn’t be able to make up the time they had lost, and they would be arriving in New York at least two hours late. He apologized, and the man in the next seat made a soft, disapproving sound. The flight attendant came by with a glass of champagne, which Stephanie used to swallow a pill that was supposed to calm her nerves. She dozed and woke, dozed again, and came to in the darkened cabin. She looked at the man in the seat beside her, a dark-haired businessman in his mid-fifties who was still wearing his suit jacket, though she herself had settled in so completely that she was wondering where exactly her shoes were. She pulled up her feet and peered down at the floor, spotting her ankle boots upturned beneath the seat in front of her, and she touched them with her toes while she tried to decide whether or not to put them on again. How long was I asleep? she asked the businessman.
He drained the last of his drink and spoke without looking at her, though not rudely. Pretty much the whole way, he said. The captain said they were starting their initial descent, and the sound of New York was so strong in the businessman’s voice that for a moment she thought he was joking. He shot his cuffs casually and looked at his watch, and then busied himself with resetting it. Staring frankly, still half-asleep, Stephanie noticed that he’d miscalculated the time difference, but she decided not to point it out. She slipped her shoes back on her feet and raised the window shade, but the only thing visible outside was the stately blinking light on the far end of the wing. The businessman pulled a briefcase from under the seat in front of him and placed it on his lap, and she shifted her gaze without moving her head, and watched him release the catches with a soft clunk, a sound she had always loved, brass freeing itself and striking leather. As he bent over it, she noticed that the back of his neck was unshaven; either he was unmarried, or he’d been away from home for a few weeks. He lifted the lid and she smiled to herself as he revealed, in place of the papers she’d expected, a set of children’s toys made of brightly colored plastic: a yellow elephant, a sky blue baby rattle, a red camera. He drew out a pair of oversize white dice and held them studiously in the palm of his hand, as if he were trying to read some occult riddle. Surely the world never grew more familiar, nor other people any easier to understand.
She started to fall asleep again, but the flight attendant came through and asked her to pass up the glass that had been sitting empty on her tray table since she had fallen asleep. She was hungry, but it was too late to ask for anything; she wouldn’t have a chance to eat until tomorrow. Which was when? She stretched. It was almost midnight—no it wasn’t, it was almost one, the businessman had set his watch correctly after all. The plane began to sink through the atmosphere, and time went every which way: forwards as they traveled down the Connecticut coast and across Queens, backwards against the earth’s rotation, up and out like a fountain, casting uncountable droplets down on the city that had cradled her.
Below there were widely scattered clumps of faint orange lights; when she looked forward she could see them thicken as the plane neared the airport and the suburbs grew denser. The flight attendant was explaining something to a woman a few rows down, and the man in the seat beside her was reading a business magazine. Out her window she could make out the towers of housing projects, that familiar landscape, shadowless and monochrome, like looking through night-vision goggles, though there was nothing much to see: empty streets and dark windows, while metal airships passed overhead, filled with otherworldly witnesses.
She hoped it wouldn’t be too cold when they landed. It was only September, but you never knew. Freezing weather, one more thing she was going to experience again. London never was so cold. Somewhere down there in Queens, perhaps in one of those repeating warehouses, buildings too bland to bear any description at all, she had a few boxes of things, among them clothes for a harder winter. She had missed that: really bundling up, the layers and mixtures of fabric and fragrance—cotton, wool, breath, silk, skin, cashmere—and buttons and laces, and the unbinding upon coming indoors. One of those gratuitous complications that made life more pleasant, not a bother but a ritual. A bay passed by below, and then they were over land again, they descended quickly, here was tarmac, the lights of the airport depots streaking past, and they hit the runway with a gentle bump, stateside.
There was that bustle when the airplane pulled to a stop at the gate, three hundred people who’d been sitting for hours, all rising to their feet, stretching, reaching up for their bags, turning on their cell phones, and trucks and carts were approaching the plane, lights flashing, and beyond them, signs and more lights. The engines of the plane shut down. The businessman had already taken his carry-on down from the overhead compartment; he looked down at her briefly and smiled, while she sat patiently in her seat. — I know what you mean, he said. Sometimes I just don’t want to get off the plane. She smiled a little. Coming home? he said.
Yes, she said.
I always think it’s not going to be there, he said. The city. The passengers ahead of them had started shuffling toward the exit, and he looked up, shrugged, and started forward. She rose to her feet.
Her bags appeared on the carousel almost immediately, and it took only a few minutes to get through customs, and then she was passing through the doors into the terminal, pulling both bags behind her, the duffel bag resting on top of the one with wheels, and there were a thousand people waiting out there under the shabby fluorescent lights. All those faces, enamel and caramel, some of them as brown as Indians, some of them pink as Swedes, some of them black as Sudanese, including one woman with her hair dyed yellow-blond. Everyone looked tired. Beyond the barrier, limousine drivers held up signs with names written on them. Then there was a small, middle-aged woman in front of her saying, Are you Stephanie?
She had to think, but only briefly. Then, — Hi! she said. Yes!
I figured you must be, the woman said, although she didn’t explain how. I’m Emily Coster, the woman said, and when Stephanie answered with a blank look: I’m Roger’s wife. From the Carrier Institute?
Oh, of course, said Stephanie. I hope you got my message. I’m sorry about the delay.
Don’t worry about it, the woman said. Not a bit. Come. She looked around. Let’s get you a porter or something.
No need, said Stephanie, tugging slightly at the handle of her suitcase. It’s all on wheels.
Can I help?
It’s all right, said Stephanie. It just rolls.
Well, Roger should be close by, Emily Coster said. He’s been circling and he sent me in to find you.
Oh, said Stephanie. How long has he been out there?
Not long, said Emily Coster. Not long at all. We called the airline a few hours ago and they told us you’d be late.
The woman was wrapped in a plush black overcoat that reached down almost to her ankles, the sort of extravagant thing a woman would wear only if it was either all she had or one of many. A pair of shiny black pumps encased her small, delicate feet. She was in her mid-fifties or, if she was especially fortunate or diligent, a few years older, and she was tiny, but not delicate-looking. She wore her hair cropped short, the way only youthful and mature women did, the first out of daring and the second for convenience; it was difficult to tell whether she was hanging on to the first or anticipating the last. Wealth will do that, too, Stephanie thought: all those accoutrements, they make a young woman seem older and an older woman seem young.
Outside the terminal there was a cold, dark wind blowing, and people being carried by, strung on a ragged line, piling up along the way. Limousine, limousine, radio car, a chorus like so many burly blackbirds. A few people were standing off to one side, huddled slightly and smoking; grimy airport shuttles were idling on the approach road, along with a dozen or so town cars, and on the other side there was a concrete island, where a long line of travelers was being fed into an even longer line of yellow cabs; and then, on the other side of the island, more traffic, more limos and more shuttles, more lights, and horns, and everywhere there were the well-heeled, the cousins, the customers, and tired people wanting to get home. Emily Coster had walked to the curb and was scanning the approach road with a frown, and Stephanie followed. What are we looking for? she said.
Roger . . . the other woman said.
Yes, said Stephanie.
He’s driving a . . . — Oh, said Emily Coster, I should just call him. She reached deep into the pocket of her overcoat, but before she could pull out the phone, a black BMW flashed its lights and pulled over, the driver leaning over the passenger seat with his head craned up solicitously. Ah, there he is, she said, as her husband awkwardly righted himself and waved a bit. He was a decade or so older than she was, and Stephanie immediately wondered if she was his second wife, and if so, what had happened to the first one. Who had been lucky here, and who had been unlucky?
Roger Coster stepped from the car. Welcome to New York, he said cheerfully. Welcome back, I suppose. Welcome home. Welcome here. He pushed a button on his key fob and the trunk lid rose gently. Let me help you with that, he said, as he met Stephanie at the rear of the car. He was about the same size as his wife, a half an inch taller at most, which made him shorter than Stephanie herself. She was a little bit surprised, as she was invariably surprised when successful men turned out to be small, and even more so when they proved to be as likeable as Coster was: he gazed amiably at her face, took her hand briefly, then reached for her duffel bag. Like his wife, he had uncommonly clear and soft skin, and his eyes were bright. A faint grey-white plume of breath streamed from his mouth; it, too, was luxurious and discreet, something he’d paid for in advance. There was no one in the world, she thought, better groomed than a certain class of New Yorker. However dirty and dross-covered the city may have been, they moved through it with perfect health and elegance, not a stitch out of place, sleek, clean, natural, composed. The Costers were the beneficiaries of a wealth that was less extreme but far more stable than a banker or industrialist or prince might amass. Any one of the latter might be at the mercy of a bad year, of history, of war, of courts or changes in fashion, but these two had been entrusted with the care of reason itself, they were the true heirs of the Gilded Age, the guardians of an invaluable commodity. They were well paid, no doubt, but more than that, their fortunes were wound deep around the base of a sturdy institution, which freed them to spend their days as they wished, dispensing patronage whenever they felt so moved.
Roger Coster quickly transferred the duffel bag into the trunk. Emily Coster said, Was the flight very bad?
Once we took off it was kind of pleasant, actually, said Stephanie. Now Roger Coster started for the suitcase with the wheels, hesitating when he got a sense of its mass and then hoisting it slowly. It wouldn’t do for her to take it from him, though she was used to carrying it, so she settled for frowning apologetically and saying, It’s very heavy . . . But by then he’d transferred it to the trunk of the car with a satisfied smile. What have you got in there? he said.
Just a lot of equipment, she said. Camera bodies, lenses, cases, a couple of lights that I never use. He was enjoying the litany, so she kept going. Let’s see . . . two laptops, a few hard drives, a bunch of other storage thingies. Some boxes of prints. He laughed quickly and guided her toward the rear door while Emily Coster circled around to the passenger side. The seat was soft and Stephanie sank so far back in it that she had the sudden sensation of the world giving way beneath her, and she struggled to sit upright again, though it meant perching forward.
Roger Coster looked down at the car’s shifter as if he’d never seen one before, reading the letters before putting it in drive and pulling into traffic. It must be quite difficult, getting through airports, he said.
It’s not so bad, said Stephanie. She paused. There were rules to these things, scruples and codes, and she had no idea: Was she about to break one? For a moment she had a vision of her residency being rescinded before it had even started. I have a press pass, that helps. A friend works at the Times, the London one, she said, staring out the window as they got onto the highway. He stole a blank one and mocked it up with my name and picture. It even has the magnetic strip. I told him I’d only use it in emergencies, she said. There was a pause, and both Roger and Emily Coster laughed. I use it all the time, she admitted. It gets me into all kinds of places that I’d never be allowed into on my own.
They started onto a cloverleaf. What would happen if someone caught you? Emily Coster asked.
I don’t know, said Stephanie thoughtlessly. I doubt they’d do anything, really, except confiscate it and give me a warning. There must be scores of those things floating around; it’s a wonder anyone pays any attention to them at all.
But they do, apparently, said Roger Coster. I’ve always found the trappings of authority fascinating. Badges and identity cards and things. Credentials, certificates, scepters, wax stamps.
It’s true, said Emily Coster. The first thing he did when he was appointed director was, he redesigned the IDs.
Roger Coster looked at her in the rearview mirror, his eyes compressed in a smile. I wanted to go fully biometric: chip implants or a database of retinal scans, neural images, that sort of thing. I looked into it. Amazing how many unique identifiers we have. Everything from your gait to the smell of your breath. He paused for her reaction, and she was dismayed to discover that she was trying not to exhale. Of course, he continued, everyone objected. As I wanted them to. If they hadn’t, I would’ve had to fire them all.
He can’t fire them all, said Emily Coster. Just so you know.
I should be able to, he said, but I can’t. Anyway, we ended up going with something more traditional. Stephanie could hear the rhythmic thumping of the seams in the highway, the familiar lullaby of collapsing New York. — It would take a twelve-year-old about ninety seconds to forge one, he finished.
Stephanie went back to staring out the window, now with a new affection for these people, who had given her so much and asked for so little in return—only to be amused. She was still a little unclear on how they’d found her. Her phone had rung one late afternoon in London, just as she’d reached the end of Camden High Street with a bag of groceries. It was Roger Coster’s assistant, asking if she could talk, and when she said she could, she was put on hold, and a moment later the man himself was on the line. She hadn’t heard of him—she’d had to ask him to repeat his name—but she knew the Institute, she knew the main building, anyway, a large Beaux Arts palais, set back on a leafy campus a block from the East River. It had been established almost a century earlier to serve as a research facility of the most elegant and rarified kind, where physics was done on whiteboards, and data sets were converted into laureate economics. She’d found a bench and sat down, and listened as he explained: They had inaugurated an artists-in-residence program a few years back, perhaps she had heard of it? She made a noise that could have meant yes or could have meant no. Well, he went on, starting very recently we’ve been inviting artists, preferably those without any other institutional affiliation, to come spend a year with us. You’ll have your own office, along with a small apartment in one of our buildings, access to our libraries and so on, the company of our other Fellows, and a stipend to keep you comfortable for the year. You’d have no responsibilities, though if you like you can give a small lecture series at the end.
He moved so swiftly from describing the program to offering her a position that she almost missed it. It sounds lovely, she said. In fact it sounded not quite real, and she wondered if one of her friends was having her on.
We do our best, said Roger Coster. Will you think about it?
She didn’t know what to say. Of course, she said.
Let me overnight you some materials, said Roger Coster, and now she was uncertain whether she’d just agreed to the year or not. Thank you, she said. There was a pause; she could hear him smiling. She wondered how she’d come to his attention, if a committee had recommended her or if he’d seen her work, and if he’d seen it, what had appealed to him in it. But he never mentioned it and she never asked. Moreover, she couldn’t remember having officially said yes, though she must have, if not on the phone that day, then afterwards. She must have filled out the forms, she must have packed up her apartment, they must have sent her a plane ticket. She must have said goodbye, she must have wept in her hotel room, and here was New York. The car was silent. The dashboard glowed with glamorous information. You’re from here, Roger Coster said. Isn’t that right?
Stephanie nodded, and then when she realized they couldn’t see her, she said, Yes, that’s right. Upper East Side.
A Rikers bus pulled up and ran side by side with the car for a few hundred yards before curving off at an exit ramp. Take my hand and walk me home. When she was a child, her father sang her to sleep at bedtime, and that was her favorite song; she’d never heard it sung by anyone else. Back then we were poor as mice, her mother used to say. You probably don’t remember that tiny little apartment we lived in, up there in the Bronx. And indeed, the only thing Stephanie could picture about the place was a small wooden bedside table that her father had painted navy blue. Soon after, his furniture-importing business had struck the perfect moment, they moved to Manhattan and she was in a private school. Take my hand, little honey. And then just as suddenly her father had died. She was twelve then, and when she was nineteen her mother had followed him. She was thirty-two when she moved away.
They were approaching Queens Boulevard. Emily Coster said, How long have you been gone?
Seven years, said Stephanie. They went by a power plant, a big bristling thing, humming silently under a wash of its own light.
Seven years! You didn’t come back at all? Emily Coster asked. Not even to visit?
. . . No, said Stephanie. She waited to see if they would ask her why not, but they were merciful people. What would she have said? That she’d been too sad, she’d been too scared.
Well, we’re happy to have you, Emily Coster said.
A yellow cab swooped past them, cut across two lanes and then abruptly slowed, laid up by a panel van that was poking along in the leftmost lane. Asshole, said Roger Coster.
Which one? said Emily Coster.
Both of them, he replied.
Outside a giant stadium passed, lit like a spaceship, the mist in the air above it glowing; a few minutes went by in silence, and then there out the window was Manhattan, extending southward, ragged and alight, its clusters of enormous stalagmites rising from the floor of the island like the serpent in a Chinese New Year’s parade. Stephanie felt a tiny spark in her throat, glittering in and around her pulse and making her blink involuntarily, which in turn brought forth silent tears that refused to drop.
Roger Coster found the on-ramp for the Triborough Bridge, and in a minute they were heading south along the river. The city was no longer in the distance; they were inside and it was all around them, the music changed, none of them spoke; and they were off the highway and climbing toward the park, people on the sidewalks, people on the corners. Stephanie tensed and tried not to glance down the avenues; it was all too near. They had crossed Fifth Avenue and they were hurrying across the transverse, the car bouncing softly on its expensive suspension. What time is it for you? said Emily Coster.
Stephanie thought for a moment. 1981, she said, and Roger Coster laughed.
They were on Broadway, and the lights and cars were everywhere again. On one corner there was a market, floodlit like a movie set; outside, a Korean boy, no more than eleven or twelve years old, was arranging buckets of yellow and purple flowers while a matronly woman in a fur coat stood behind him, watching, her glossy black purse dangling down from the crook in her elbow. On the median that ran through the traffic, another woman was standing motionless, watching the cars go by as if she had no intention of ever taking her eyes from the sight. They pulled up to a red light at a crosswalk. Emily Coster was holding her hand contemplatively to her mouth; her husband peered through the window as the light turned green and he took a right, and then, a block later, a left on West End, finally coming to a stop in front of a large grey stone building with a coral-colored awning extending out halfway across the sidewalk. The two women stepped out of the car, and a doorman came out. Hector, can you give us a hand? He lifted Stephanie’s bags out of the trunk and carried them effortlessly into the vestibule as Roger Coster pulled away from the curb and disappeared back into the traffic.
He’s going to look for a parking space, Emily Coster said to Stephanie as they followed the doorman inside. I don’t know why he needs a car at all. I really don’t. But it makes him happy.
It was a prewar building in slight disrepair. There was linoleum tile on the floor of the lobby; it should have been replaced a few years earlier, but the walls had been recently painted, and the amber lights sat in polished fixtures. The doorman set the bags down at the far end with a slight grunt, and Emily Coster smiled gently. Moving, she said. Such an ordeal. She held the door while Stephanie carried one bag and used her foot to shove the other one into the elevator. — Roger and I have lived in this building for almost fifteen years now, Emily Coster continued, as the doors closed and they started up. It’s bigger than we need, but the idea of packing everything up and schlepping it across town and unpacking it again: it’s just too much. And then, of course, everything is so expensive these days. Beyond imagining. A million dollars for a studio? Incredible. She stopped herself just as they arrived at the 8th floor, aware of how unseemly her complaint must be.
Together, the two women managed to roll the suitcase down the hall to the Costers’ door with the duffle bag balanced on top of it, until they were inside the apartment, where it slid to the ground.
Leave it there, said Emily Coster. You must be exhausted.
No, said Stephanie. A little . . . overwhelmed, but I slept on the plane.
Emily Coster nodded. Well, anyway, someone will come by from the Institute tomorrow and move them over to your apartment.
Really? said Stephanie. Emily Coster nodded again. Thank you, said Stephanie. And thanks so much for coming to pick me up and letting me stay here tonight.
Oh, it’s our pleasure, said Emily Coster. We have people staying here all the time. We have an extra bedroom now that Matty’s moved out, and it’s just sitting there, doing nothing. It seems like such a waste. Matty’s our son.
He’s in college?
I wish, said Emily Coster. Come on in, she said, and led Stephanie into a well-appointed living room: dim, discreet lighting, framed prints on one wall, a floor-to-ceiling bookcase on another, everything well-matched, though not by obvious design: the dark green couch was relatively new, but the floor lamp beside it was decades older, and the library steps that served as a makeshift magazine rack were antique. Stephanie surveyed it quickly and sat on the couch. The air smelled slightly of neroli and pipe tobacco, though as far as she could tell, Roger Coster didn’t smoke. Emily Coster went to a hutch against the far wall, drew out three highball glasses, poured an inch of bourbon into each of them, handed one to Stephanie, left one on the coffee table, and kept the third for herself. No, Matty decided about a year and a half ago to join the Marine Corps, she said, shrugging uncomfortably. I tried to talk him out of it. Not that I don’t believe in service, but he had so many other options. There wasn’t much I could say: his mother’s brother was in the Marine Corps—his birth mother I mean, Roger’s first wife. You know how boys are, young men: idealizing things, especially if they don’t know them very well. And, of course, Roger couldn’t stop him. She took a sip of her drink and then sat in a brown leather reading chair. She sighed and then looked at Stephanie as if she’d just remembered she was there. I worry about him, she said. I worry about him all the time.
Is he stationed somewhere?
We’re not allowed to know, she said. He finished up training a year ago, and then he went through more training to become a . . . special . . . They’re called Raiders. Anyway, they don’t tell us where he is or what he’s doing. I think Roger might know, secretly. He has connections all over. But he doesn’t tell me. I’m not sure if I want to know. — Just then there was the sound of Roger returning. Do you think I ought to worry? Emily Coster said, staring straight ahead.
Stephanie said, Worrying is what mothers do, and Roger Coster stood in the living room doorframe, drew off his gloves, and said, What is?
Stephanie didn’t say anything; Emily Coster said, Worrying.
Ah, said Roger Coster, and he went to hang his coat in the hall closet, returned and stood hesitantly until Emily Coster pointed to his glass, which he scooped up and carried to a large black armchair at the other side of the coffee table. I like a little bourbon at the end of the day, he said to Stephanie. It eases the transition from vespers to nocturnes. He took a sip, and for a few seconds the three of them sat silently in the half-dark room. At length, Roger Coster sighed and shifted in his seat, and Stephanie yawned, and then apologized.
You’re tired, said Emily Coster. Roger, she’s tired.
Roger Coster said nothing, merely gazed at Stephanie pleasantly, and Stephanie, not wanting to be rude to either of them, was unsure of how to respond. Come, said Emily Coster. Let’s get you to bed. Roger Coster made a small toasting gesture with his glass to say goodnight, and Stephanie rose and thanked him, and followed her down the hall.
The bed was simple, the mattress high, and there was wallpaper on the walls, a faint blue rococo pattern on a background of pearl grey. The shades were down and the whole had an air of being untouched, a room that only the maid entered to dust every week or two. Through a door lay a tiny bathroom, and she removed what she needed from her bag, leaving the rest unpacked on the floor, where it sat, inert, untidy, looking guilty of something. It was past midnight, and the facing building was dark but for one apartment a few stories below, where a TV was playing, its light flickering through the window. The bed was broad and soft, and the night was quiet, but she didn’t fall asleep until just before dawn.