New York Echoes (8 page)

One day he did not go
to the office. Instead, he waited on a park bench for any sign of Susan and the
little boy. The day was bright; the trees had sprouted to full bloom prompted
by the rain and the warmth that had bathed the park in cheerful sunlight.

He saw her approach
from a distance, her and the little boy, his son. As before, she sat on the
bench and began to read the
New York Times
while the little boy played
on the monkey bars. By then, Ben's rage had solidified his resolve. He rose
from the bench and moved toward the playground, his legs slightly wobbly, his
breath short.

As he approached,
another woman sat down beside Susan, someone obviously known to her. It put
somewhat of a crimp in his strategy but he did not falter. She looked up as he
approached the bench and lifted her sunglasses as if to make certain her eyes
were not deceiving her. She folded the paper on her lap.

“Is that you, Ben?”

He nodded, but did not
smile.

“I can't believe it.”

She turned to the
woman next to her on the bench. She was about the same age as Susan.

“This is Cynthia
Raymond,” Susan said, turning to the woman, introducing him. “Ben Grant.”

He was about to ask
whether he could speak to her alone. It was an awkward moment, since he did not
expect to find another person beside her.

“Cynthia is one of my
clients. I've been taking care of little Fred while she was out of town.”

“I took the red-eye
from California, but I couldn't wait to see Fred again.”

At that moment, the
little boy spied his mother and came running to her outstretched arms.

“He was wonderful,”
Susan said. “Not a bit of trouble, really.”

She looked up at Ben
and smiled.

“So how are things,
Ben?” she asked pleasantly.

He cleared is throat
and tried to speak, but found it difficult. They exchanged glances and he saw
no fire in her eyes, no real recognition. It was as if nothing had ever
occurred between them.

“Very well, Susan. I
thought it was you.”

He nodded repeatedly,
but could not find anything else to say. The woman brought her son back to the
park bench and continued to embrace him.

“Do you live on the East Side now?” Susan asked.

“Still on the West Side,” Ben said, haltingly.

“Good seeing you,
Ben,” Susan said, turning to talk to her friend.

 Ben hurried away.

Al sat on a bench in Washington Square and watched the crazy lady with the pigeons. She had long made it known
that this flock was hers and hers alone, and pity anyone who would interfere
with her feeding ritual. Al was amused by her possessive tenacity and was
particularly attentive when an errant tourist attempted to photograph the
ritual and became the butt of her fury.

Al understood ritual.
He had his own, although he assured himself that he had drawn the line on
obsession. The feeding of the flock was, more or less, the woman's entire life,
her reason for being. His own ritual was more like habit and depended on the
weather.

At nine every morning,
barring rain, snow, and intense heat, he would walk the five blocks from his
rent-controlled apartment in the Village,
New York Times
in hand, occupy
the same bench, and proceed to read every word of interest, including the stock
market results, although he no longer had stocks in play. By eleven he was
finished, dropping the paper in the trash bin and sitting awhile, observing the
scene until noon, the time he chose to move to the Olympia coffee shop on 12th Street for the gustatory phase of his ritual, usually to eat an egg-salad sandwich on
rye toast with lettuce and tomato, hold the mayo.

With Milly gone three
years now and Jack in California raising his own family, he was alone, hanging
on in the Big Apple, the only place he knew well enough to survive comfortably,
filling up time, determined to keep his mind churning with interests and trying
not to think about waiting for the other shoe to drop.

He had been a high
school teacher of history at Jefferson High, where he had spent his entire
thirty-year career, through all the turbulence and changes, retiring with
relief. Milly had retired from her accounting job a couple of years later and
they had their joint pensions, Social Security, and rent-controlled apartment
to see them through. With their one child gone off to work in California, they
had tolerated their retirement quite well. Milly had done all the spadework for
their social life, arranging tickets to shows, lectures, and concerts and the
occasional dinner with friends. He went along happily.

With her gone, that
part of his life had wound down. So-called friends had either died or drifted
down to Florida, living in senior communities, which Al dubbed a fate worse
than death, if that was possible. He hated the designation senior citizen,
although he took full advantage of all the discounts. He was a frequent user of
the New York Public Library and had continued his subscription to the 92nd Street Y lectures and often picked up discount theater tickets at the Times Square
discount box office.

Occasionally, his
ritual was enhanced with conversation, usually with a student from NYU, the
buildings of which had completely enveloped Washington Square. Normally he
would be ignored by them. He had by then discovered a person of years was often
considered irrelevant by the young. He didn't like the idea, of course, but he
accepted the situation in silent protest. He wasn't exactly decrepit. Long
walks had kept him limber and he looked, he believed, younger than his
seventy-five years.

Today, June 16, was
actually his birthday, not exactly a celebratory experience since it marked one
more year on the inevitable march to oblivion. He preferred to consider it a
great joke, the very idea of living three quarters of a century. It was a hoot,
he told himself, regaling himself often with a laundry list of past friends and
acquaintances who had checked out of the world. He was a big fan of the
Times
obituary columns, checking the ages of the well-known belated who got the big
write-ups and the listings of others in the “paid for” column announcing the
demise of a loved one.

At times, a student
would engage him in conversation, sometimes out of politeness or seeking
information or directions to this place or that. Lately he had struck up a
conversation with a young student named Marvin. He didn't know his last name.
He was skinny and, it seemed, rarely shaved more than two or three times a week
and wore faded jeans, black T-shirts, and scuffed sneakers, which seemed to be
the uniform of choice of young people these days. He seemed pleasant enough,
intense and intelligent with an open, dimpled smile. He was nineteen, majoring
in computer science, and was often absorbed in banging away at his laptop.

Their conversation was
sporadic. Mostly, Al asked about Marvin's brief history, his life in Great
Neck, inquiring also about his parents, what they did, and about his hopes and
dreams for the future. Marvin was slightly older than his grandchildren, who he
saw little of these days. They were busy with their own lives in California and Al hadn't been to California for two years.

It was a beautiful
day, sunny but cool. The leaves of the well-tended trees rustled gently in the
breeze and his hearing was still good enough to hear the sounds of birdsongs
despite the cacophony of the surrounding traffic. An idea had popped into his
head as he shaved that morning.

If Marvin showed up,
he had decided to invite him to a nice restaurant a few blocks away for what he
dubbed in his mind, a birthday lunch. It would be pricey, but he felt he
deserved to celebrate the event. After all, three quarters of a century was no
small thing. If Milly were alive they would have had a birthday dinner and she
would have ordered a slab of chocolate cake topped with a lighted candle and he
would make a wish, always the same wish for good health for Milly and himself
and their son and grandchildren. It hadn't worked in Milly's case. Wish or not,
she fell ill, lingered, and died in pain in six months.

The stories in the
morning
Times
offered their usual gloomy testimony to a world gone mad
with perpetual terrorism warnings and the continuing saga of man's inhumanity
to man. He read these stories with increasing disgust although he could not
resist a sense that having lived so long, he could look back to having survived
the best of times in America. He had been lucky, he decided, coming through
without a scratch, a combat veteran of the college of hard knocks.

He perused the movie
section, unable to ignore the full-page ads hawking movies that were
increasingly irrelevant to him. Kid stuff, he sighed, noting that the new
movies were an index of how his age group had been excised from the popular
culture.

Television, too, had
written off his so-called category. Senior citizen! Demographics! He scoffed at
the designations and the way people were put in these silly cubbyholes. Once he
had loved the movies. Even now he wallowed in the joy of nostalgia when an old
black-and-white movie showed on television, and he prided himself on how many
actors in these old movies he could name. That was when movies were movies, not
the computer games that passed for stories these days.

Looking up from his
paper, he watched the pigeon lady, knee deep in birds, sprinkle her feed to her
flock of gray-feathered city dwellers. She was a dour, intense woman with a
mean look for anyone who passed to observe her, especially those with cameras
ready to focus. He kept turning away from these peculiar activities to scan the
area for any sign of Marvin.

He was entitled to
company on his birthday, he told himself, feeling a sense of accelerating
impatience and regret that he had not made a date with Marvin in advance. He
was sorry that he had invested so much hope in the idea of the birthday lunch.
As he waited, growing more anxious by the minute, he realized that his
presumption had only set himself up for disappointment. Then, as if it were an
answered prayer, Marvin did show up.

Marvin, oblivious to
the private drama that had been played out in Al's mind, plunked himself down
beside him on the bench and began to open his computer.

“How ya doin', Al?”
Marvin asked as he fired up his laptop.

“Fair to middlin',” Al
said, enormously relieved as he watched Marvin begin to tap the keyboard.

This was always the
extent of their initial greeting. Normally Al would let Marvin work for a while
before extending the conversation. But today was special. He had already gone
through one crisis of waiting and had no stomach to go through the process
twice.

“Got an idea, Marvin,”
Al said, plunging right in. “Today is your lucky day. I'm springing for a fancy
lunch at Café Loup. You and me, kiddo.”

Marvin looked up from
his screen with a quizzical and somewhat ominous expression. It struck Al that
perhaps Marvin was observing him now in a different light, perhaps as a
potential sexual predator. He dismissed the idea and pressed on.

“It's my birthday,” he
said in explanation.

“Awesome,” Marvin said.
“Happy birthday.”

Awesome seemed to Al a
bit exaggerated but it did appear to be a more civilized response than “cool.”

“Thanks, buddy.” Al
said determined to appear casual. “Hence my invite. Hell, I'm entitled.”

Marvin continued to
tap keys glancing at the computer screen. Al could tell he was mulling over his
offer.

“A bit pricey. But
what the hell. It's a big one and I'm planning to pop open a bottle of
champagne.”

“Big one?”

“Seven oh, pal.” Al
lied. “Seven gun salute, one for each decade.”

“Awesome.”

“Fuckin' a.”

Marvin looked up and
they exchanged glances. It occurred to Al that he was using his own
generational expression, long in disuse.

“Why not?” Marvin
said. “It's an offer I can't refuse.” He hesitated a moment. “As long as I get
back for my two o'clock tutorial.”

“With time to spare
pal. I've reserved for noon.”

He was hoping Marvin
would not take his remark as presumption. Marvin looked at his wristwatch.

“Let me work this
out,” he mumbled tapping his keyboard.

“No sweat,” Al said,
going back to reading his paper, relieved now. Hell, he thought, Marvin might
be good company, although they hadn't talked much to each other, their
relationship, he assured himself, was more than a mere nodding acquaintance.
They had, after all, exchanged dialogue but it did cross his mind that his
invitation might be construed also as an act of desperation by a lonely old
coot. Maybe not too far from the truth, Al chuckled, putting a humorous spin on
the idea.

Aside from the bare
facts Al didn't know much about the kid, except that he was friendly, polite,
and, for some reason, he had gravitated to sitting on the bench beside Al as if
it were some gesture of camaraderie. After all, there were other benches and he
could have chosen any one of them. Perhaps, Al contemplated, there was some
unspoken, special bond between them.  

They arrived at the
restaurant early. It was half-filled at that hour but the lunch rush was just
beginning, mostly executives from nearby office buildings and administrative
officials and some professors from NYU. They were shown to a table in what Al
determined was an obscure corner. Perhaps the headwaiter had made certain
assumptions about their relationship and made the selection as if they were
seeking a spot for intimate conversation.

“Fancy place Al,” Marvin commented,
eyeballing the restaurant. Al was pleased with his comment.

“What the hell. Not too many shopping
days left.”

“Seventy is not that
old.”

It was, of course, the
expected comment. How about seventy-five, kiddo, he wanted to say, but held
off. He ordered a bottle of champagne, not vintage, but okay for the occasion.
Actually it had been ten years, his sixty-fifth birthday, when he had last
tasted champagne. He and Milly had gone to a restaurant on the Upper East Side, long gone.

“Awesome, Al?” Marvin
mumbled.

“Hell, it's a
birthday,” Al said.

“Cool!”

The champagne came and
the waiter popped the cork with skill, poured, and placed the bottle in an ice
bucket. They lifted their glasses.

“Happy birthday, Al.”

“Thanks for coming,”
Al said.

They drank, both
upending their glasses. The champagne tasted tart and cold and triggered the
earlier memory of his birthday dinner with Milly. He felt a sob begin to rise
in his chest and to deflect it, he pulled the bottle from the ice bucket and
refilled their glasses. Then they both studied the menu.

“I read a restaurant
review that praised their duck à l'orange.”

“Sounds awesome,”
Marvin said, apparently relieved that he did not have to make a choice.

“Appetizer?” Al asked,
being the good host, but hoping Marvin would reject it out of consideration for
the cost.

“You?”

“I'll pass. But you
can.”

“I'm okay,” Marvin
said. Al had ordered some chocolate cake wedges, one with a candle, for
dessert. He had calculated this lunch would go for about two hundred with the
champagne and tip. Hell, he hadn't spent so much money in a fancy restaurant
since Milly was alive and even that was fairly rare. Milly would never have
allowed the extravagance, except for very special occasions, like an important
birthday. It's for you too, doll, he told himself silently, thinking of his
wife, stifling another upcoming sob, masked by clearing his throat.

When the waiter came
back, Al gave the order, embellishing the duck with some vegetable sides.

They drank their second
glasses and Al poured again until the bottle was emptied. He felt the sudden
alcohol rush and noted that Marvin's face had flushed.

“How does it feel to
hit three score and ten?” Marvin asked, his speech slightly slurred by the
alcohol. It occurred to Al that he was reaching for things to say, choosing the
usual cliché. After all, Al reasoned, they had little in common.