“Wait. Not ‘to the East Side.’”
“Williamsburg,” Eric sez, “actually.”
“It’s all goin over to Brooklyn. Feels like we’re the last of the old-time Alley folks.”
“Hope it’s nothing we’ve done.”
“Isn’t you guys, it’s Manhattan in general,” Driscoll explains. “Not like it used to be, maybe you’ve noticed.”
“Greed situation,” Eric amplifies. “You’d think when the towers came down it would’ve been a reset button for the city, the real-estate business, Wall Street, a chance for it all to start over clean. Instead lookit them, worse than before.”
Around them, the City That Doesn’t Sleep is beginning to not sleep even more. Lights come on in windows across the street. Drunks out too long after closing time scream in discontent. Down the block a car alarm starts in with a medley of attention signals. Over in the flanking avenues, heavy machinery roars into standby mode, preparing to move into position beneath the windows of citizens incautious enough to still be in bed. Birds too clueless or stubborn to get out of town before the winter now creeping upon the city begin discussing why they’re not in avian therapy yet.
Maxine, busy with the coffee routine, observes her own migratory birds with regret. “So in Brooklyn will you guys be living together or separately?”
“True,” reply Eric and Driscoll in unison.
Maxine regards the ceiling briefly.
“Sorry. Nonexclusive ‘or.’”
“Geek thing,” Driscoll explains.
THERE HAVE ALREADY BEEN a number of panicked, not to mention abusive, calls from Windust by the time Maxine shows up at work. Daytona is strangely amused.
“Sorry you had to deal with that… he didn’t get racial, I hope.”
“Maybe not him, but…”
“Oh, Daytona.” Maxine takes the next one. Windust certainly seems perturbed. “Calm down, you’re blowing out my speakerphone here.”
“That fucking destructive irresponsibile bitch, what does she think she’s doing? Does she know how many people she’s just put at risk?”
“‘She’ being…”
“You know what I’m talking about, goddamn it, Maxine, did you have anything to do with this?”
“With…” She can’t help it, it does her spirit good to see him this way. Eventually she gets him to splutter it out. Seems March Kelleher has finally gotten around to posting Reg’s footage from The Deseret roof on the Internet. Well, thanks for the heads-up, March, though it is about time.
“Let me just look, here.”
March—Maxine can imagine with what kind of a mischievous glint—trying to maintain a class-act approach, “Many of us need the comfort of a simple story line with Islamic villains, and co-enablers like the Newspaper of Record are delighted to help. Poor, poor America, why do these evil foreigners hate us, must be all this freedom of ours, and how twisted is that, to hate freedom? Really thinking about all those buildable lots where the demolition’s already been done. If you’re interested in counternarratives, however, click on this link to the video of a Stinger crew on a Manhattan rooftop. Check out theories and countertheories. Contribute your own.”
No invitation needed, really. The Internet has erupted into a Mardi Gras for paranoids and trolls, a pandemonium of commentary there may not be time in the projected age of the universe to read all the way through, even with deletions for violating protocol, plus home videos and audio tracks including a lilting sound bite from Deseret spokesman Seamus O’Vowtey, “Our buildin security’s the best in the city. This has to be an inside job, likely somethin to do with certain o’ these tenants.”
“Wow, bummer,” Maxine somewhat insincerely.
“That doesn’t begin to—”
“No I mean The Deseret, it took me years to get in their front gate, and here’s a whole missile crew just moseys on in and up to the roof.”
“No use telling her to take the video down, I imagine?”
“There’s already a million copies out there.”
“Shit’s hit the fan down here. I’ve come in for an episode of inconvenience myself, effectively I’m a fugitive now, need to sneak in and out of my own house, last I heard from Dotty was back in the middle of the night, reporting unmarked vans out in front, now she’s gone totally offline and who knows when I’ll see her—”
“Where are you calling from, I keep hearing Chinese in the background?”
“Chinatown.”
“Ah.”
“I don’t suppose you could meet me down here.”
“No?” Whatdafuck. “I mean, what for?”
“None of my ATM cards seem to be working anymore.”
“And, excuse me, you want to borrow money? From me?”
“I wouldn’t say borrow, because that assumes a future in which I might pay it back.”
“You’re beginning to scare me a little.”
“Good. Can you bring enough just to get me down to D.C. again?”
“Yeah I saw that movie, I think Elizabeth Taylor was playing you?”
“I knew this would come up.”
Today, she reminds herself heading downtown, all the fortune cookies are screaming, “Err on the side of no schmucks!” This man deserves no mercy, Maxine, your best course here is to just let him go fuck himself. He’s short of cash, boo hoo, given his skill sets, knocking over a convenience store shouldn’t be such a stretch for him, preferably one in New Jersey, he’d already be halfway to D.C. So of course here she is, hurrying to him with a valise full of greenbacks. The apparent cause and effect in this may be worth a look, however. March posts the footage, Windust is forced into flight and his money supply frozen. The links between are hard to resist—Windust, if not ramrodding the whole Deseret roof operation, must’ve been at least in charge of security, and he fucked up. Anybody plugged into the Internet, any bleating sheep of a civilian, can now see what it was Windust’s job to keep hidden. So, big surprise any sanctions should turn out to be serious, maybe extreme?
She sits watching on the backseat video display their snail’s progress through the streets of Manhattan, as tracked by GPS, drifting into unprofitable thoughts. Is it that American Indian curse about, if you save somebody’s life you’re responsible for what happens to them from then on? Setting aside fringe theories about Indians being lost tribes of Israel and so forth, did she save Windust’s life once long ago without knowing it and now invisible karmic bureaucracy is passing her these messages—he wants you, so go!
She finds Windust under an awning with a number of Chinese people, waiting for the bus, the Manhattan Bridge looming nearby. After watching from across the street for a minute, Maxine realizes that the people on either side of Windust aren’t talking to each other directly, but through him. Smart-assed as ever, he seems to be translating back and forth from one kind of Chinese to another. He spots her looking at him, nods, gestures, Stay where you are, threads his way across to her. Not looking that great. In fact, a man on the edge.
“Good timing. Just spent my last U.S. dollars on the bus to D.C.”
“There’s a bus terminal around here?”
“Street pickup, savings passed on to the customer, bargain of the century, you’re Jewish, I’m amazed you haven’t heard of this.”
“Your envelope.”
Instead of counting the bills like a normal person, Windust with a small practiced hand move hefts the envelope, the sort of thing that over time, for a career bagman, gets to be automatic.
“Thanks, angel. Don’t know when—”
“Reimburse when you can, something I don’t have to declare as income. Maybe from the street floor at Tiffany’s— no, wait, what’s her name, Dotty? Nah, you wouldn’t want her finding out.”
He’s examining her face. “Earrings. Simple diamond studs. With your hair up… .”