Done. Get that online later, he thought, needs a hashtag though… something like, #whoneedsawife? or #f*ckyouangie?
Deciding that he had seen the iconic buildings, he felt that they looked too busy and the line of people waiting to pass through a security checkpoint was too long, he changed his mind about going inside. His intention was to see, if not experience, as many of the landmarks as he could to show the world that she hadn’t broken him. Switching back to the map, he retraced his steps to hit 5th Avenue again. Almost immediately the building across the wide street from him took his breath away, so much more impressive and attractive than the skyscrapers people talked so much about. The cathedral was packed with people out in front and the sidewalks were cluttered by people trying to take their own picture with selfie sticks. It was like an assault course for anyone trying to just get by. Cal snapped a couple of pictures from his side of the street; even if he’d managed to cross over in one piece he’d end up having to take his own selfie from an angle which would look straight up his nose to get the beautiful building in the frame.
As with so many other people who have never visited a place laid out in a grid, he marveled at the high buildings to either side as his progress was halted for each street he had to cross. His earlier elation at his sense of freedom faded somewhat when he tried to walk casually and enjoy himself. He soon found that acting like a rock in a riverbed was less fun than he imagined, because instead of the people flowing around him like water, he found himself bumped and shoved by every fourth man or woman to walk by him.
He gave up and quickened his pace to that of a New Yorker: hurried. Another six blocks north took him to a towering monstrosity of dark glass. Catching the name over the doors finally forced him to make the perilous journey across the street to take his photo with the sign behind him. He hoped the face he pulled would make people laugh and like it when he posted it later. Slipping his phone back in his pocket he carried on, his eyes peering inside the windows of Tiffany & Co. where a glance at the big diamond rings removed his good mood like a pin connecting with a balloon.
Everywhere he looked people were bustling along, utterly sure of where they were going and in a rush to get there. People shouted into their cell phones or into the small mics in the cables to the earbuds they wore. He was startled the first time he saw the venting steam rising from the street ahead, like some layer of hell waiting just below the surface. He had dressed for colder weather, but soon found that the concentration of people and fumes inside the narrow alleyways of skyscrapers made it warmer than he expected.
Glancing to his right he locked eyes with a man in the back seat of cab. A real gen-u-ine NYC yellow cab, as iconic the world over as the bulbous, noisy, and uncomfortable black cabs of London.
Being British and being abroad in an unfamiliar city teeming with tens of thousands of people who all seemed to know where they were going, his embarrassment took over in an instant and he tore away his gaze knowing that he could never look back in that direction for as long as he lived. It was almost as awkward for him as accidentally touching a stranger’s hand in a crowd.
Now that he was very aware of the cab next to him, he realized that there seemed to be no point in anyone driving anywhere in New York. For almost six blocks he and the cab leapfrogged each other, both making slow progress through the streets which just didn’t seem to have been built with this many people in mind, until blessedly the cab turned off down a one-way street ahead of him.
Now he saw that the buildings ahead to his left dropped away, and the imposing skyline of glass and brick and stone gave way to daylight and the color green, bringing with it a renewed chill in the air. His elation at walking solo in the big city caught up with him, and he realized his feet were already starting to hurt. He had spent more time on his feet in the last twenty-four hours than he usually did in a week, and he placed his ass on the nearest bench in Central Park with a sigh of relief.
He snapped himself another selfie, then retrieved a small pastry from his pocket and ate it, all the while keeping watch on a street preacher yelling on the sidewalk from his left, promising eternal damnation to all who didn’t repent their sins. From there he intended to walk through the park, visit the zoo, then head back to his decadent hotel room.
Angie may not have been there, may have ruined his life, but their goal when they booked the honeymoon was to see the city.
The plan had changed, but the goal remained the same.
DUCKS IN A ROW
Thursday 6 a.m. – Free America Movement Headquarters
“Suzanne!” barked Colonel Butler as he returned to his command center following his morning run. Two other Movement soldiers had run through the steep forest trails with him, both men half his age if they were a day, but he had still led the way and dictated a fierce pace which they struggled to match.
“Suzanne!” he called again, annoyed that he had to repeat himself.
“Here, sir,” she called out from inside his office. Nodding to his running partners, their misting breath combining to form a steamy cloud enveloping them all, Butler went inside.
“Good morning,” she said, handing him a cup of coffee and perching herself on the corner of his desk. Butler chugged down the hot coffee, wiping his mouth with a hairy forearm. Suzanne waited patiently for him to finish, watching as his thick chest rose and fell.
Any normal operations command center would be bristling with wires and screens, radio headsets buzzing and phones ringing, but this was more like the command post of a general in the civil war; runners came and went with information written on pieces of paper and each one was decoded using the same method the Movement used throughout the country. People quietly shuffled the papers, sometimes getting up and calling a runner to take messages out to town where their wider network of contacts would distribute them. There was always a flurry of activity first thing every morning, after that the slow-moving flow of information and intelligence ground almost to a halt until the afternoon brought new information.
The only nod to modern technology at all were six plasma screens mounted on the wall, all of them showing twenty-four-hour news from the US as well as international news. Each was fed through the satellite mounted outside, and it was the only electronic connection with the outside world. The satellite let news in, but nothing out. It was safe, and even Butler was sure that the NSA or Homeland Security couldn’t eavesdrop on them through the news channels.
The news, national, international, and local, was the best way to stay abreast of events and come tomorrow, would be his window to the world to see if the plans he had so painstakingly created and nurtured, in some cases over years, were working.
“T-minus thirty hours and change,” said Suzanne, as though Butler hadn’t been aware of the countdown clock. Bizarrely, she was the only person in the movement not to call him sir or treat him like some kind of mortal god. She was different. She wasn’t ex-military, had no military family members—she had no family at all that Butler knew of—and she had no personal axe to grind at the dissolution and disarming of American soldiers. She had carried a 9mm, a purse gun as Butler would call it favoring his heavy forty-five, and went to her local range every so often to keep her eye in. She was no militant, no wounded ex-servicewoman left to rot on a pension too small to keep a roof over her head, but she had found the Movement, she had recruited herself, and she was invaluable to him.