Where was everybody at noon on Monday, the tenth of September? At noon on Monday, the tenth of September:
We were at home, reading The Little Sister, by Raymond Chandler.
Don Clay, an interior designer, was sitting on a No. 3 Seventh Avenue subway train on his way to Wall Street. He had noticed, he later told us, that it was a beautiful day.
On the other hand, Edward Koch, the Mayor of New York City, was holding a meeting in his office. The subject under discussion was crime and public transportation. (The next day, the News carried a headline that read, “GARELIK FIRED AS TA COP BOSS.”)
Moreover, Liz Smith, popular gossip columnist for the News, sat in her apartment—twenty-six floors up, with a spectacular view of the East River—finishing the next day’s column. It was due at the paper at one o’clock, and the first paragraph read, “‘Sometimes I wonder if men and women really
suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then,’ said Katharine Hepburn.”
Enid Hunter, proprietress of Enid’s, an antique-clothing store on Spring Street, stood in the doorway of her bedroom and looked around. “Today,” she said to herself, “I will clean up and redecorate. I will hang some new pictures here and I will change around the chairs there. Today—that’s what I will do today.”
Brooke Norman accompanied her mother, Marsha Norman, to the hardware store to buy some tulip bulbs and to pick up some photographs of Brooke wearing her new one-shoulder bathing suit. She heard her mother say that she would try to force the tulips—red and yellow ones—to bloom indoors by Christmas. Then she accompanied her mother around the corner to the bank to deposit the church receipts from Sunday’s service. Brooke Norman is almost two years old.
The attendant at the parking lot at Spring and Hudson Streets sat calmly in his shed. He looked out the window and waved to a woman passing, who did not wave back. A number of large trucks rolled by. Across the street, men went in and out of a topless bar that had a sign reading “Private. Members Only.”
Vince Aletti, an A. & R. man for R.F.C./Wamer Brothers Records, walked into the Strand Book Store. He went downstairs and stood in the section where they keep new books that are bought from book reviewers for a small fraction of the list price and offered to the general public at half the list price. Vince Aletti looked at the new half-priced books in stock. He looked at them for a long time, and then he said to
himself, “The last thing in the world I need is another new book.” He then walked out of the Strand Book Store. (Later, he couldn’t remember if the sun had been shining or not.)
On the other hand, again, Reid Boates, the publicity manager for Doubleday & Company, was at a private luncheon in the company’s private dining room. The private luncheon was held in honor of a woman who is writing a book about Ruth St. Denis. (Later, Reid Boates said “Let me see” when he was asked by a friend to give an account of the luncheon.)
A man walked into an auto-parts store and asked the salesman for a positive crankcase vent valve for his car and instructions for installing it. (Later, the salesman remembered that the customer had said he was taking a long trip and had heard that a positive crankcase vent valve would help with gas mileage.)
A young woman was lying on the shag-carpeted floor of a house on Canal Street. As she lay there, she closed her eyes and listened to an old song by Rick Nelson called “That’s All She Wrote.” When the record came to an end, the young woman got up and placed the needle back on the record so that she could hear the song over again. Then, opening her eyes before getting up the next time, she saw a large dark-gray mouse hopping and running only about three feet away from her. The mouse hopped because his little feet kept getting caught in the shag carpet. The young woman screamed loudly once; she screamed loudly again; she screamed loudly a third time. She later told us that no one, absolutely no one, heard her.
—September 24, 1979