She nodded. “Do you mind if I ask how long you’ve worked at Grand Central Station?”
“Terminal.”
“What’s the difference?”
From behind him, Doris snickered. “Rookie question.”
“The difference is that a station is a place where a train passes through, on the way to somewhere else. A terminal, as the name suggests, is the end of the line.”
“I see. Grand Central Terminal. Got it. How long have you worked here?”
“Since 1942. Why don’t you do a coffee run? It’s in the Station Master’s Office, under the stairs that way.” He pointed west. “That’s also where you should use the restroom if you have to. Whatever you do, don’t use the public bathrooms; it’s too dangerous.”
The tube in the center of the booth began to vibrate. Virginia gasped and almost fell off her stool when a wiry man with thick black hair emerged and stood not two feet away from her, as if he’d appeared out of thin air.
Terrence handed him some papers, and then he disappeared back inside. “That’s Ernesto.”
“But where did he come from?”
Doris mocked in her high-pitched squeal, “But where did he come from?”
“Enough, Doris. There’s a set of spiral stairs that connect us to the information booth on the lower level.”
“How many people work down there?” She glanced at Doris to see if she’d do another echo, but a traveler had stepped up to her window and she was otherwise engaged.
“Just the one. He’s only part-time, though. Back in the day, we had fourteen clerks up here, two below. Not a lot of elbow room.”
Indeed, if each window had a clerk sitting behind it, the booth would have been impossibly crowded. Until now, she hadn’t noticed how many spots were empty.
Winston spoke up. “The average clerk answers 167,440 questions a year.”
“Wow.” Virginia tried to look suitably impressed.
“We don’t get nearly that many now, though.” Terrence’s voice had a hint of nostalgia. “That was back when trains, not planes, were the way to get around the country.”
“You must know everything about this building.”
“Probably do.”
“I heard there used to be an art school in Grand Central.” Better not to mention that she’d been inside; she didn’t want to get in trouble on her first day.
He nodded. “The Grand Central School of Art, it was called. Every September and January we’d get students asking how to get to it. East wing, top floor.”
“You have a good memory.”
“That’s why they pay me the big bucks.”
“Why did it close?”
“World War II, probably. No one had time for frivolous vocations during the war. There were Nazis right in the terminal, trying to sabotage the trains by dumping sand on the power converters. Luckily, we caught them just in time.”
Doris cocked her head. “‘We’? Did you personally make the arrest?”
“Well, the police did. But you bet I would have caught them, had they asked a question.”
“Like ‘Vo ist de power converter?’” Doris broke out in a full-throated laugh.
Terrence smiled. “Exactly.” He had a dreamy, faraway look in his eyes. “Back in the day, Grand Central was the beating heart of New York City. Soldiers, artists, businessmen, all dashing to get where they needed to go.”
Winston piped up. “Did you ever see Jackson Pollock?”
“Afraid not.”
“Winston, do you know a lot about art?” asked Virginia.
“I like the ones who splash all the paint about.”
“Right.” The jump from Nazis to abstract art made her head spin. Of course, it probably should come as no surprise that the info booth clerks were chock-full of facts, many of which had nothing to do with trains. Nature of the job.
“The art school, though. They say it’s haunted.” Totto’s eyes were narrow slits. “An art teacher was killed in a train crash and all the artwork was destroyed. They say the ghost of the artist haunts the place, and no matter how hard Penn Central tries, no one will rent it.”
Doris tossed an empty paper cup into the garbage. “No one will rent it because this place is a dump, and who wants to have offices in a dump? Hey, trainee, I need more coffee.”
Virginia took the coffee order, writing it down on the back of one of the train schedules, and walked to the Station Master’s Office. The inside of the terminal was dark, even at midday, the ceiling stained by decades of cigarette and cigar smoke and the bare-bulb chandeliers encrusted in soot. The whole place felt noxious.
Even so, hints of its former grandeur existed. A railing dripped with delicate brass filigree, topped by a scratched oak handrail. Even flaking paint couldn’t obscure the ornamental detail of the metalwork. Virginia found the coffee machine in the Station Master’s Office and trundled back out, balancing five paper cups on a plastic tray. Once back in the booth, she bolted the door behind her and handed out the coffees. Totto even said thank you.
The rest of her day went by fairly quickly. She tidied the area around her, grabbed a hot dog outdoors for lunch in order to get out of the gloom, refilled the schedules again, and answered the phone, which was usually for Terrence.
A few minutes before five, Terrence told her to head home. Not until she was outside the booth did she realize she didn’t have her coat. She’d left it in the closet at the Penn Central legal offices.
Spun around by the crush of commuters, Virginia decided to take the elevator on the far side of the station rather than fight her way across the concourse. She got off on the seventh floor and stepped into a long hallway with trash piled up high against the walls and a general air of disuse. She headed right, figuring she’d end up at the offices soon enough, but only found more of the same. Had she gotten off on the wrong floor?
She turned another corner and froze. Three men sat in an alcove, sharing a joint that turned the air acrid and sweet. They wore jeans and leather jackets. Virginia’s mother had always warned her to check the footwear of men who lurked about. “If they’re in sneakers, it means they’re planning to rob you and make a fast getaway.”
Typical of her mother to make such a sweeping generalization. But all three wore sneakers. Her mother’s words seemed to ring true as Virginia stared at their jagged faces.
“Whatcha doing here, lady?” The tallest one spoke up, pointing his finger at her like it was a gun.
They rose, slowly, the way cats move when they don’t want to startle their prey.
She turned around and ran.
CHAPTER THREE
April 1928
Clara stood on the corner of Forty-Second Street and Vanderbilt Avenue, enraged. The sight of her illustrations, which she’d taken months to plan, design, and execute, hanging on the wall of the gallery’s sales office like some cheap prints, ran through her head like a newsreel, followed by Mr. Lorette’s sniveling face and that teacher’s feeble attempt to mollify her.
“Wait!”
Levon Zakarian emerged from the terminal, wearing a long dark coat that flared behind him like an eagle’s tail. Five of his students, including Nadine, trotted to keep up with their hero. “Where are you off to? I feel awful about what happened up there.” He gestured with his thumb to the roof of the building.
“You didn’t have anything to do with it.”
She hadn’t noticed how tall he was. He had about four inches on her, she guessed. At six feet tall, Clara wasn’t used to having to look up to anyone. Her mother would have called him a swarthy man and not intended it kindly. But his pointed chin and nose created an elegant profile that counteracted the very bulk of him.
She’d never seen eyes so black, like ink, that it was hard to distinguish his pupil from his iris. His heavy eyelids lent him an air of recalcitrance or amusement, she wasn’t sure which.