Erin lived now on Graham Avenue just south of Metropolitan, in an apartment over a deli with mint-green siding. Her roommate Thad played in Fake French Accent, Remington’s band, and wore skin-tight jeans pegged at the ankle. On the phone she’d told me he put a big furry hat on every morning and left it on for a few minutes to get his hair properly mussed before going to work. We were in her room. There was a desk with a mirror and a curling iron and some other things on it. A TV on a table at the foot of her bed.
We’d talked more or less easily on the phone. We stood in silence now. Thad was in the other room playing a Fender Mustang through an effects board. Erin smiled and nodded. I went over and hugged her. A moment later she returned my embrace.
—I’m sorry, I said again.
We went up to her roof and sat looking out at the neighborhood. She asked about Samantha. I told her the truth—there’d been a long slow phase-out and then she dumped me over the phone.
—Over the phone?
—Yes.
—What is she, in middle school?
—I don’t know. Maybe. She’s seeing someone else now.
—Because I called her and asked her.
—And she told you?
—No. She said what’s that got to do with anything.
—Which means yes.
—Exactly.
—What did you say?
—I hung up.
—Classic Bryan.
Erin had switched jobs. She now worked days at a club called Lava. She’d dated here and there, nothing serious. She was still friends with all the old gang.
—You motherfucker, she said.
—What?
—I told myself I wasn’t ever going talk to you again. I really did. I cried and was sad for a while. But then I got over it and said never again.
—Yeah but you couldn’t handle it. You thought of me constantly.
She laughed. —I really didn’t.
Then in early July my mom came to town. I met her after work at a Midtown office where she’d gone to see a venture capitalist to ask for money for Happy Hearts. We took the 6 downtown and walked to a beautiful old townhouse on Gramercy Park. It was a private club of some kind, somewhat musty inside but interesting to look at, like being in a museum. Her college friend Patricia was waiting at the bar. We ordered drinks. My mom and Patricia talked and laughed loudly in the big empty room. I nursed a gin and tonic and stood listening. Patricia talked with pride about the club. It was quite renowned, she assured us. A number of prominent actors of both stage and screen had been members over the years. She mentioned some names. She lit a cigarette. I moved away from the smoke. Actors? I didn’t get it. It was my understanding that Patricia worked for a trade magazine, something to do with textiles. My mom looked around, marveling at the interiors. Wouldn’t it be fun if I was a member, she said.
—Me?
—Yeah. Think of all the people you’d meet here, talented people. And the contacts you’d make, I mean … whoa.
I smiled tightly and looked into my drink.
—Patricia would sponsor you, wouldn’t you, Patricia?
Patricia blew smoke and smiled grimly through the haze. Someone entered the room. Patricia smiled and waved.
—Garvey darling. Come. You must meet my friends.
A man with sallow skin and white hair walked over. He was smoking. He wore a striped linen suit. They kissed on the cheek. Introductions were made. Patricia spoke of Garvey’s many achievements on the stage. He listened, chuckled dryly. He reminisced for a while in a low deep smoker’s voice. He had a faintly British accent. My mom appeared to be spellbound.
—That voice, she kept saying. —Ah.
—Isn’t it wonderful, said Patricia.
—Your voice, said my mother to Garvey.
Garvey grinned. His lips were dry, his teeth. Smoke floated up from the cigarette in his dry-looking hand. He leaned close to my mother and whispered something in her ear. She put her hand to her neck and smiled as if he’d uttered wonderful things.
—Well, she said, —my dear.
Another man came over. His name was Vonroy. Everyone began talking. Patricia suggested we get another drink and go out on the balcony, it was lovely out there. She had smoke in her mouth and her voice was thick with it and little puffs seeped out with each word.
Out on the balcony I drank another gin and tonic and stared at Gramercy Park, locked away forever behind its severe iron fence. Patricia saw me looking and said club members had access to a key. I said I’d never been inside before and maybe I could go over there now. She said she’d check and see. I heard my name. My mom grabbed my arm and pulled me over to where she was standing with Vonroy.
—My son wrote a play once. Bryan tell him about your play.
—What?
—I was talking to Vonroy and he said he’s a playwright. And I thought of that play that you wrote. What was the name of it? The one you wrote in college? The one you won a prize for? Oh come on, you know, the one where they’re in a dirty bookstore?
She turned to Vonroy.
—Oh but it’s not what you think. That’s just the setting. Trust me. My son may be warped but he is talented.
She laughed. I grinned.
—No but really, she said. —It’s a great play.
—Oh? said Vonroy.
—Oh yes. It won a prize.
She meant the undergraduate creative writing awards. I’d won the playwriting category my last year at Western. The English department held a ceremony at the top of Sprau Tower. I was given a paper certificate. My mom still talked about it as if I’d won the Pulitzer.
—Vonroy could read your play. He could give you some pointers. He could show it to some of the people he works with. Would you do that?
Vonroy hesitated. —Well. Sure.
She turned to me, smiling. —See, Bry?
—Yes.
—What’s the best way for him to get it to you?
—Here. Here is the best place. Why not send it here?
He lingered another moment before moving away. I went to the end of the balcony and stood alone, finishing my drink.
The next day my mom took a cab to the World Trade Center. We stood in the conference room looking out at the city. The office had cleared out, most people had left for the holiday. I heard the shush of feet on the carpet. Patrick came in. I introduced him to my mom and he came along on our tour. They talked about California, where they’d both grown up. We went around to the conference rooms on all four corners of the building, taking in the views. It was a clear sunny day. We could see for many miles. Through the south-facing windows was the harbor, the tall ships there for the Fourth of July.
Patrick split. My mom and I took the subway to Houston Street and headed east. We stopped at Katz’s and ordered pastrami sandwiches. As we were eating she told me again I should send my play to Vonroy.
—Mom.
—He could help you. You could be missing out on a great opportunity.
—Mom. I’m not doing it. Stop bringing it up.
A little white-haired man wearing big sunglasses came over and asked if we’d like more pickles. My mom said yes. The man called to a server, who delivered a large bowl of them. The man stood at our table gabbing, flirting with my mom. He said he was part owner of the place. He saw my disposable camera and said we could get a picture with him if we wanted. I started to say no that’s okay but my mom said sure. The man pulled us from our seats and spoke to another server, this time requesting a couple of sausages. The server brought two huge sausages and gave one to me and one to my mom. The man put his arms around both our waists and pulled us close. I towered over him. He held me tightly. The person who brought the sausages took the picture. I was horrified but smiled anyway, holding that big sausage aloft.
—Be sure and bring me a copy, said the man, —I’ll put it up on the wall. See you later, sweetheart, he said to my mom.
Over in the next cubicle Whelan was arguing with his wife again, speaking on the phone in harsh hushed tones. These days they argued constantly. They were going through hard times. Listening to Whelan explain things to his father I learned there’d been hard times previously and that his wife had gone back to Germany briefly, where she was from.
After a while I felt strange listening and got up from my desk. I did a tour of the office. I took the elevators down and walked through the mall. I stopped at Borders and looked at the new-release table, checking author bios for birth years and schools. I went outside and sat on a bench on the plaza. I looked at the people and the fountain with the big gold sphere.
Back on seventy I stopped by Dana’s cubicle. On her desk was a picture of her and her boyfriend in the lobby of the Empire State building. His name was Jake. They were getting married in the fall. In the office behind us Sylvia talked on the phone, laughing her high-pitched maniacal laugh.
—How do you stand it? I said.
—What?
—Her. She sounds like fucking Beaker from the Muppets.
Dana laughed. —Bryan. You’re bad.
I walked to my desk and checked my e-mail. There were several new messages but none that pertained directly to me. I stared into the computer. The hours crawled.
We were sitting next to each other on her bed. I was wearing my work clothes. The lights were off but I could still see her clearly. She lifted her shirt. I stared at her breasts in the glow from the streetlight. I sat up and kissed her. We fell back on the bed. I took off my shirt. She sat up still kissing me. I pulled off her shirt. Her hair spilled down and fell around her shoulders. Erin lay back and I lay on top of her and felt warm skin on skin. Later we lay watching television, talking and joking, saying it had to happen, it was bound to happen. We didn’t say anything about it being the last time.
Saturday morning I woke late. I made coffee and ate breakfast and watched some TV. I listened to music and thumbed through some books and looked out the window and played guitar. Finally I walked to the back room and sat at my desk. I turned on my computer, opened a blank Word document, and stared at the blinking cursor without a thought in my head. I wrote for a while, stopped and read the lines. I read them over and over and then highlighted and deleted them and started again. After a while I stopped and deleted that too. I went to the kitchen for a glass of water and came back. I looked at the tree outside my window then back at the screen. I typed some words and then stared at the tree again. It was hemmed in by power lines. A black plastic shopping bag was trapped in the branches. It had been there so long it was faded and full of holes. I’d first noticed it during the winter when the branches were bare and now the leaves had grown in around it. I thought of trying to free it but couldn’t figure out how. Lean out the window with a broom handle, maybe? Throw something over there? The bag snapped and fluttered in the breeze. How could I be expected to concentrate with that snapping? I looked at the computer. A car with a booming system drove by. It stopped at the light at the end of the block and the whole frame shook and rattled with the bass line. Then it went through the light and was gone. In the next apartment someone walked from the back room to the kitchen, the kitchen to the back room. Across the street a kid was yelling for Anthony to come out. I deleted what was on the screen and shut down my computer. I took a shower and left the apartment.
Mattie sat in my cubicle telling me the story of the bombing. I’d met Mattie before but didn’t know her well. She always seemed sort of scattered, popping in and out of meetings, proclaiming how busy she was, never lingering. Yet here she was now, telling me the story of the bombing.
She said most people in the department were new but she and Ginny and a few others were here in ‘93 and were working the day the truck bomb went off in the parking garage and they walked down in the dark and smoky stairwell and it had taken them hours to get out.
She said it was funny too because Max was out on press that day and as time went on they could tell he was sort of mad that he missed it, a little jealous, and even to this day, she said, Max got a little peeved whenever anyone brought it up because in his mind they shared a bond from which he was forever excluded.
She said a few weeks later she came back to grab some files and had to have a police escort and it was, god it was eerie, her desk was just the way she’d left it, half a moldy bagel on her desk, papers spread out like she’d only just gone to the bathroom or something.
Sometime later I asked Ginny about the bombing. She shared her recollections and told me that when they finally reopened the building there was a coffee cup waiting on everyone’s desk with a picture of the twin towers on it and the words WELCOME BACK.
At a party at a bar on Avenue A I met a woman named Hasna. She wore dark jeans, a dark long-sleeve shirt, and a dark head scarf that showed only her face, the skin of which was quite pale and smooth. She had a great smile and laughed easily. I sat next to her at the end of the bar and we talked.
She was from Detroit. I was blown away. I loved meeting people from Michigan. She knew what Meijer’s was. She knew that soda was actually pop. She’d been to Kalamazoo to see rock shows and even knew the names of a couple of my old pals. She was twenty-two and liked Dischord and Touch and Go bands. She worked various freelance fact-checking and copy-editing jobs. She’d worked at some public-policy journal and now worked at Rolling Stone.
As we sat there I studied her. I was intrigued.
She’s drinking Cokes, not alcohol, and wearing the scarf. These must be religious deals—or the scarf is at least. Then again she likes Fugazi so maybe she’s straight edge and that’s why she doesn’t drink. And if she is religious, isn’t it against the rules to even be in a bar? To wear jeans? Doesn’t it have to be a long skirt?
Who was I kidding—I didn’t know about any of this. I was ignorant of most of the world’s cultures. I wasn’t even sure what religion I meant. But there was something about her. I liked her immensely.
She mentioned a Guided by Voices show she was going to, a private show at the Bowery Ballroom next week. A friend of hers said he’d put her on the guest list. He was managing the opening band. I’m jealous, I said, I love GBV. She said I could go in her place if I wanted. She didn’t know much about GBV anyway. A groovy invitation-only show would be lost on her.
When she said she was leaving I got up and left with her.
We sat next to each other on the L train in one of the little two-seaters. I was self-conscious being so close to her. She had a great mouth and she smelled good. Even though her shirt hid it well I’d snuck some peeks and could tell she was stacked. I wanted to see her again soon but for some reason didn’t know how to tell her this.
She brought up the GBV show. Here’s my window, I thought.
She took out a notebook. I wrote down my e-mail address. I got off at Bedford. Hasna continued on to Grand Street. It was a pleasant night. People were out. McCarren Park looked unreal under the bright stadium lights.
Hasna arranged for me to go to the show. I met her and her friend in the East Village. She made a quick introduction and split. I watched her leave with a certain sadness. I was stuck with her friend, who as it turned out was a creep. He spoke as if he was a hugely connected and clued-in dude. He had big plans to conquer the rock world. I’d never heard of the band he was managing. They were perennial opening-act material, strictly small-time. But I drank the free cocktails and snarfed the free food. The show was a party for some technology company. Few in attendance seemed to care about Guided by Voices, who played to thirty or so people standing near the stage. Everyone else milled around chatting in the back of the room.
Erin and I crossed Graham and walked down the block. We knocked on the door at Remington’s crib. Roy answered and we went through the living room to the kitchen. Sitting at the table wearing a sleeveless undershirt was Baines. He got up smiling and we hugged. I introduced him to Erin.
I hadn’t seen Baines since early ‘97, when Paul and I stopped in Chapel Hill on the first leg of a road trip. He had some kind of office gig then. Later I heard he was writing. I heard on a lark he’d gotten a job at Burger King and written about it and the piece had been published in the Washington Post. Sitting at the table he told me more. An agent had seen the piece and asked to represent him. The agent asked if he wrote fiction. Baines showed him some stories and the agent was pleased. Baines applied to MFA programs and got into Columbia. He was returning to North Carolina in a few days but would be back at the end of the summer to start classes. The only thing was his sublet wouldn’t be ready yet, it was being remodeled. He was going to need a place to stay for a few weeks and said if we heard of anything to let him know.
—What about your middle room? said Erin.
—What?
—In your apartment, that middle room.
—You have an extra room? said Baines.
—Sort of.
—Well what do you think. Maybe I could sort of check it out.
I told him there were no windows. He said he didn’t need them just for three or four weeks. I said I’d have to walk through his room to get to the rest of the apartment. He said how bad could it be?
—It’s not that bad, said Erin.
He had a little notebook. He wrote down the address.
—How fortunate we should run into each other, he said.
Baines walked through the apartment and looked at the room. He said it’d be fine for his purposes, he’d be rocking a pretty spartan arrangement. We talked about writing and the publishing game. Baines asked where I’d been sending my stuff. I pulled out the manila folder. He sat on my bed going through my rejection slips, commenting occasionally on certain magazines, reading aloud certain handwritten remarks.
Usually I thought of the folder with a certain pride, as physical evidence of a struggle that would one day pay off. But something in me changed as I watched Baines sift through those notes.
—My agent wants to try Esquire with a couple of my new stories, he said.
—Esquire. They publish good fiction.
—They used to. Fuck, man. I don’t know.
—What?
He looked at the rejection slips.
—It’s just so demoralizing, he said.
At work using LexisNexis I found the Burger King piece. Baines told me the idea had been to work there a month but he’d hated his coworkers and the work was shitty and he decided one night after working back-to-back doubles that he had enough material and walked off the job after a week. In the piece various unsavory characters and appalling working conditions were described, several tragicomic anecdotes relayed, and there were a few grim stats about fast-food wages and the industry as a whole.
I squared the pages and set them on the desk. I thought back on what I knew of Baines, Remington, and Ellis. I’d met them in 1996 or so when they played in a band called the Hot Ones. My band Fletcher played some shows with them in Kalamazoo and met up with them once in Knoxville, Tennessee. There was something untouchable about them. They made me want to be like them, to the extent that after talking to them I’d adopt a slight southern drawl. I remembered they’d gone to small liberal arts schools I’d never heard of that must have cost twenty grand a year at the time. I remembered many of their stories seemed to involve foreign travel, having adventures in Rome or somewhere. Ellis, the bass player, wrote a zine chronicling his travels in which he cast himself as a kind of rogue romantic, wandering the land, meeting interesting people, taking a temp job when he needed money—which he never seemed to—or so he could write something comical about having a dumb job. Now that I thought back on it, work never seemed central to any of their concerns.
I picked up the pages and skimmed them again.
One week—barely enough time to learn your coworkers’ names.
Lois gave everyone their birthday off. This wasn’t official Morgan Stanley policy, just something she did to be nice. The day I turned twenty-six I sat in a laundromat on Nassau Avenue, reading and staring into the machines as they spun.
Back at the apartment a package was waiting. I checked the return address. It was from my dad. I took it up to the kitchen and opened it. Two books were inside. One was a fat volume of poetry by Czeslaw Milosz, the other was Don DeLillo’s White Noise. I stood holding White Noise, turning it over in my hands. I owned two copies already, a Penguin paperback like this one and a Viking first edition hardcover.
Don DeLillo was one of my favorite writers. I’d read all of his books, some more than once. The first one I read was White Noise. I read it two years ago and it blew me away. I started to ape DeLillo’s style in my writing. I started to think in his sentences, his actual ones and my ripoffs. I read Underworld next, read it sitting in my parents’ basement in the lonely and scary weeks before I moved to New York. Then I read all the others, starting at the beginning, going in order of publication. A few months earlier I’d dropped three hundred dollars on a first edition of Americana, his first novel.
My dad couldn’t have known any of this. Contact between us had been minimal. The few times we’d talked we didn’t talk about books.
That night I went with Erin and Baines and some of his North Carolina pals to a Mexican restaurant on Fourteenth Street. We ate out back on a patio. I got high on sangria but couldn’t shake the weird feeling I’d had all day of time getting away from me, the reins slipping from my hands.
The next day I called my mom to get my dad’s number. I dialed it that evening. Marsha answered and said happy birthday. She went on for a few minutes about Avi, who’d turned one a few months ago.
—We’d love to see you. It’s just a few hours by train and we have plenty of room.
—We’ll see, I said.
—I know your father would love it if you came. And Avi, we’ve been telling Avi all about you. He knows he has a big brother in New York. He’s eager to meet you.
She said it was great talking to me. She handed the phone to my dad. I thanked him for the books and said it was strange in a way because I was already such a big Don DeLillo fan.
—Yeah, said my dad. —I always really liked him too.
I noticed a woman in the cafeteria, a real stunner. She went from station to station assessing the selections, arms folded across her chest. When she was done she and a friend met up and discussed what looked good to them and what they might get. Then they both turned and made the circuit again. She was maybe six feet tall and had long black hair pulled back in a ponytail and dark Latin-looking skin. She was wearing a skirt and had long legs and nice thin ankles and a great purposeful walk, or that’s how it seemed anyway hearing her crash down in high heels. I stood there pretending to deliberate and watched her. Eventually she picked a line. I watched her a moment longer. Then I went over to one of the sandwich-ordering kiosks. I tapped my order on the touchscreen. A little paper came out. I took the paper and stood in line. Soon one of the men called my number. I paid for the sandwich and walked into the dining area. I sat by a window and ate alone. When I was done I got up and placed my tray on the conveyor belt. I took the escalator up, took the elevator to seventy, and returned to my desk. The long afternoon passed and then the days and the weeks.
One night I was watching TV. A commercial came on. It showed some young people driving in the country at night. A sad acoustic song played. There were four of them in the car, two guys and two girls. They were the only ones on the road. The guy in the backseat looked over at the girl next to him. She in turn looked up at the full moon. Soon they pulled off. They’d arrived at a house party. The driver studied the scene with mild contempt. The house was crowded and loud and there were stumbling drunken people out front yelling woo. No one in the car said anything or got out. They looked around at each other somewhat sadly and then the car reversed and they drove off. They were on the empty road again under the beautiful moon. The last shot was of the girl in the backseat. She turned and looked either at the guy next to her or over her shoulder into the night, her mouth slightly open, the wind blowing her hair. The Volkswagen logo appeared on the screen. By the time this happened I was nearly in tears. I wanted to rise from the floor, climb through the TV, leave my life and everything I knew behind. I wanted to be one of those kids in that car. The girl in the backseat was so incredibly lovely. What was she looking at there at the end? It couldn’t have been the geek next to her. No, her face, her eyes hinted at a deeper sort of longing. She was searching for something on the dark lanes behind them that she likely wouldn’t find.
—The thing about New York, said Baines, —is say you want a little peace. So where do you go? You go into Central Park and find a bench and sit down. And you’re sitting there trying to groove on some nature. And you look around and you sort of stare down at that bench and you know that a million people have sat on that very same bench before you, they’ve all gone there trying to achieve the same little moment of peace.
It was early September. We were on the roof. There was a pause as we drank from bottles of Bud and stared at the skyline, the sky around it bright orange, slashed with swirls and ribbons of clouds.
—You ever think about leaving? said Baines.
—New York? I don’t know. Sometimes.
—Where do you think you’d go, back to Michigan?
—No. I don’t think so. At least not yet.
—There’s a great bit in this Larry Brown book, On Fire, where he talks about flying to New York to go on the Today Show and he’s mortified by the hugeness and the inhumanity of it all.
—Larry Brown. Remington lent me one of his books. Big Bad Love.
—What’d you think?
—I loved it.
—Yeah he’s one of my favorites. He lives down in Oxford, Mississippi. I think he’s buddies with Barry Hannah down there. Man, Larry Brown’s got the right idea.
—What’s that?
—You just, you hang out where you’re from and do your own thing and if you’re good enough and you’re lucky, maybe the world comes to you.
—Those are big fucking ifs.
—How long you been here? Two years?
—Just about.
—Yeah man. That’s long enough.
—So where do I go if I don’t go to Michigan?
—You could move down south.
—I don’t know. Chapel Hill was great when I was there in February but I don’t think I could handle it at the height of summer.
—Sure you could, man. You get a nice cold glass of sweet tea, sit on the porch and don’t move. You don’t do shit. New York in the summer is a hundred times worse.
—Michigan’s nice in the summer. Lotta trees and breezes. Lakes.
—Maybe New England’s the place for you. Vermont.
—Could be. I’ve never been.
—Or Maine. What about Maine?
—What about it?
—You ever been there?
—No.
—All right, there you go. That’s the place for you. Maine. You could move to Bangor and hang out with Stephen King.
—Funny you say that. I’ve been on a Stephen King tear recently.
—You ever read The Stand?
—Yeah. When I was younger. I didn’t read the uncut version.
—Oh man. It’s a real masterpiece. There’s something incredibly satisfying about a thousand-page book you can burn through in a week.
The sun had set. We sat finishing our beers.
—Yeah man, said Baines. —You gotta get out of New York.
He was there in the mornings when I left for work and often there in the evenings when I came home. Sometimes I’d think of him sitting home writing while I was stuck in my cubicle and I’d get down on him, wondering who was paying for everything, him or his parents or what, and I’d think again how he only worked at Burger King for a week before writing his piece. Then I’d remember he really was a good writer and I’d feel like a jerk and try to push those thoughts from my mind.
We ate meals together. We sat in my room listening to records. We’d talk about the old days, playing in punk bands. We’d talk about books and writing and girls. Living with Baines made me more productive than I’d been in months. He had a thing about word counts. I’d never given them much thought. He told me Graham Greene wrote five hundred words a day. I’d never read Graham Greene and didn’t care about his work but five hundred words seemed a decent amount to shoot for so that became my goal each time I sat at the desk. On weekends we’d hole up in our rooms writing and come out later and make smoothies. Good and good for you, Baines would say as we clinked glasses. We’d exchange word counts and discuss how the work had gone. He’d tell me about his workshop and show me the stories up for critique that week. I said they seemed like something I could hang with and Baines said obviously. He told me my work was good enough and said I should apply to grad school. He said I should ditch my old desktop and look into a PowerBook, he had one and it was sweet. He said he could even send a fax with it. He said New York was overrated and full of assholes and no kind of place to live and encouraged me to leave town. He expressed frustration that he wasn’t publishing any fiction and wondered aloud what his agent was really doing for him. I listened and didn’t say at least you have an agent and you’ve published something in a big magazine and if you’re feeling down about your writing career then I should be suicidal. He bought a box of Quaker oats and practiced making granola.
Toward the end of September Baines called me at work. His sublet still wasn’t ready yet, the contractors were dragging ass. He said he might need to stay another two or three weeks but he could pay me for the whole month. At the end of October we had the same conversation and I said not to worry about it, pay me whatever.
I was sitting on the plaza enjoying the mild afternoon. I leaned back on the bench and looked up at the towers, the clouds, the sky. Up in that sky my cubicle was waiting. It couldn’t have me back yet. I needed another minute. The sound of the fountain was soothing. I could’ve stretched out, closed my eyes, and fallen asleep. I could’ve gotten up, walked away from there, and never gone back. There were other worlds, other jobs, other ways to waste my life.
What the hell is wrong with me? Why can’t I do this? I’m so fucking tired and I’m only twenty-six.
I heard a voice and sat up. There was a girl on a cellphone. I’d seen her around my floor and thought maybe she worked in sales. She stood a few feet away from me and was arguing mildly with the person on the other end of the line. Now and then she’d pause and gesture. I started to really like her. I liked her voice and the things she was saying. No-bullshit things and who-the-fuck-do-you-think-you’re-talking-to things and when she turned around I fell in love with her ass. It was magnificent. It was a shelf. You could’ve set all six volumes of Proust on it.
I had a thing for black girls but she was the kind of black girl I felt I had no chance with, like maybe she’d date a white dude but not one who quivered in the men’s room stuffing paper towels under his arms.
Her hair was short and parted to the side. I liked her hair. I liked how she put her arm up with her palm open and hunched her shoulders like I don’t believe what I’m hearing right now. I liked her skin. It was smooth and beautiful. I wanted to touch it. I stared at her ass. It was giving me strength. I was stronger now than I had been five minutes ago. I could make it through the day now, maybe even the rest of the week. I wondered who she was talking to. I wanted to know her name. I watched her and she turned and I got another view. That was all I needed. The world could burn and who fucking cared about writing. That ass was a nation I would’ve fought and died for.
I stood up refreshed and took the escalator to the lobby. I rode the elevators back to the seventieth floor.
Election Night. Pete’s Candy Store was crowded. A TV had been set up on the bar. A celebratory vibe hung in the air. Gore had won Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan. Baines and I traded rounds of bourbon on ice. At some point things changed. The news people recanted. Florida was moved from the Gore column back into the undecided column. The mood in the bar darkened. There were grave exchanges about the Electoral College. I tried paying attention but was too drunk now and couldn’t follow it. We left Pete’s and walked along Lorimer Street. We stopped at Enid’s and drank some more. Remington and Roy were there. Baines ran into an old friend, a pretty girl who worked at Vogue. I sat with her for a while and tried making time but it was no good. The bar had cleared out and Baines and I left.
The clock radio alarm went off at 6:40. I got out of bed and left a message for Ginny saying I wouldn’t be in. Two hours later Baines knocked on my door.
—What the fuck? What’s happening? he said.
—I don’t know. Who won?
—I don’t know. I’m afraid to turn on the TV.
—All right. Hold on. We’ll do it together.
We went into the living room and watched the news. Later we went into the city. The streets were quiet, the atmosphere funereal. We were hungover, hungry. We went to an Indian restaurant on First Avenue for lunch.
I walked down the hallway and into the conference room. I stepped up on the vent and peered out at Manhattan, glittering under the cold winter sky. Frank and Patrick stood in Whelan’s cubicle. They had their coats on and were talking and laughing. I went over and joined them.
Whelan looked good. He and his wife had split up and he’d done a one-eighty. He’d switched from glasses to contacts, was working out, had bought a new wardrobe at Banana Republic. He was even grooving someone else, a woman in his group named Lila.
We took the elevators down and walked outside. A fleet of black towncars was idling at the curb. We got into one and the driver pulled away. We cruised up the West Side Highway. I looked out the window wondering what the night would be like.
At Chelsea Piers we got out. It was bitter cold. We went inside and bought a beer at a concession stand. Gradually the others trickled in. After everyone had arrived we walked out to the gangway and boarded the party boat. It was the latest in a series of holiday gatherings. There were also steak dinners at Del Frisco’s and the Strip House, lunches at Il Giglio and Bouley Bakery, paid for by the various vendors who produced our materials.
I checked my coat and sat at one of the tables. It was open bar. Charlotte asked if I wanted a drink. Yes, I said, gin and tonic. The place filled up. There were dozens of people. I didn’t recognize most of them. There were people onboard from other companies too. Charlotte brought me a drink and sat next to me. We clicked glasses and drank. Whelan and Lila were at the table. They drank their drinks and sat very close and talked only to each other.
The boat started to move.
The food was terrible, shrimp cocktail and dead cheese. I went to the bar for another drink. I finished that one and went back for a third. A sound system played party music. People started to dance. The windows had fogged. You couldn’t see out.
Back by the restrooms was a set of stairs. I followed them up and out to the observation deck. I couldn’t stay out long. I went back in. I ran into Charlotte on her way up the stairs.
—Come out with me, she said.
—I can’t go back. I was just out there. The wind—
She grabbed my arm and pulled me back out. We were the only ones out there. The wind slashed through me. Charlotte turned to face me. I picked up a vibe.
—Let’s go get another drink, I said.
—In a minute.
—It’s fucking cold out here, let’s go back inside.
I sipped my drink and stood by the window. I cleared a circle on the glass but couldn’t see through the smear. Whelan came over. He gestured toward Lila, who was talking with some people on the other side of the room.
—Lila’s great, isn’t she?
—Yeah Whelan, she’s all right.
—She’s beautiful. I’m gonna marry her someday.
I had to laugh. As far as I knew he was technically still married.
—Well I’m glad to see you in such good spirits, old boy.
—Thank you, my man.
The cocktails weren’t strong but I was feeling quite high. I got misty for the past.
On this night nine years ago my high school band Brainstorm played a show in our drummer’s basement. I was so in love with Daisy but knew she was at the Portage Northern Christmas dance with motherfucking Jean Pierre. At the show I screamed a loud prayer for a power failure at the dance. I made everyone shut up and pray with me.
—Let’s go back to the deck, see what we’re missing, said Charlotte.
We walked through the crowd, up the stairs, and outside. We were by the World Trade Center. The towers filled the black sky, glittering and magical and cold.
Charlotte skipped forward a few steps, turned around, and smiled.
—Don’t you just feel like you own this city?
—No.
She came over and stood close to me.
—You know what it’s like when you want something so bad and you’re just about to get it? she said.
She put her arms around me and kissed me. I tried kissing back for a moment but the styles were bad. I pulled away. I went back inside and watched the party unfold as if in a dream.
Frank sat glumly at a table nursing a cup of coffee. Patrick walked toward us holding a beer. Nancy drunkenly yelled at Ginny’s boyfriend Ward, pulling his arm practically out of its socket, telling him he needed to get his woman out on that dance floor and dance with her now. Nancy’s husband Avery threw his arms up and screamed. He turned to the window and wrote Avery N Nance in the fog. I looked for Whelan and Lila but they’d disappeared. I walked upstairs and went out on the deck. The boat was under the Statue of Liberty. I’d never seen it this close before. Its ghostly blue form hovered against the cold sky. It looked like a giant unfeeling monster with blank eyes. I leaned over the railing looking down at the water. I went back inside.
I was sitting alone sipping another drink. Charlotte staggered through the crowd and leaned down over me.
—What are you doing later?
—Nothing. Taking a car service home.
—You could come to my place.
Patrick stood behind her. He shook his head and smiled.
—Come on. Don’t you want it? It’d be so amazing.
—I’m sure it would be.
—Come on. Don’t you wanna jerk off in my mouth?
She opened her mouth and jabbed a finger in and out of it.
Patrick said her name and put a hand on her arm. She turned and fell forward and snapped at him, saying he was too fucking blond. They drifted away from me. Everything blurred. The boat was out on the dark water a long time.
Baines moved out a week later. He left me a bottle of Maker’s Mark with a shot glass upside down over the neck. A week after that I got a letter from Glimmer Train saying I was a finalist in their Short Story Award for New Writers competition. The story wasn’t published and the only recognition I received was my name on a list with twenty-two other finalists. But it gave me the hit of confidence I needed and allowed me to think I’d gotten better as a writer and that publishing something was an imminent reality. I took the story to work and made multiple copies. I stuffed them in large Morgan Stanley envelopes, addressed to the ten or so best magazines I could think of. I brought the stack to the mail bins in the One World Trade lobby, kissed each envelope for luck before dropping it in.
I spent a week in Michigan for Christmas. I was supposed to return New Year’s Eve but a snowstorm rolled in and my flight was canceled. My parents and I drove home from the Grand Rapids airport in silence. Ed took the curving rural back roads. We passed through frozen white landscapes and arrived home after dark. I had a great feeling walking into the warm house with my bag, as if we’d gone back in time and I’d only just now arrived. We watched Times Square on TV and drank a toast at midnight. I flew back to New York on the first day of 2001.