S Rozan - Absent Friends

Phil pushed out of Grainger's into stillness. The streets were almost empty of people, no cars at all; down here the perimeter still held. The rumble of heavy equipment faded as he moved south, away from the site. Behind him the sky glowed with an icy gleam from the enormous lights lent by filmmakers to the rescue effort. No, not rescue now; now, just recovery.

A faint breeze brought him the smell of burning. At Battery Park he walked past the wary eyes of two young men wearing military camouflage, holding rifles, serving their country on the tip of Manhattan. Kids with guns, Phil thought. Once that would have meant either a threat or a client. Now, God help us, they were here to protect him.

He leaned on the railing near the ferry terminal. He knew this place so well, he was sometimes surprised his shoes hadn't made grooves in the pavement, his hands hadn't worn down the rail. He'd stood here so many times in the beginning years, staring across the water, letting the ferries go, telling himself he'd take the next one. And in the end turning, walking home.

Telling himself it didn't matter. Telling himself it was better. Going for coffee in the morning with the blond photographer in the top-floor loft whose boyfriend had just walked out on her. Buying drinks for a girl from some southern college while she marveled at how everything was just so different here. Phil thinking, My God, they'll eat you alive, taking her home, leaving her, perplexed and a little hurt, at her apartment door.

And waiting. Until-collapsing under the weight of a need as great as his? or just simple loneliness? he was never sure-the walls Sally built to keep him out would crumble. Then for months he'd cross the harbor nearly every evening to her world, that alien place of quiet houses on shaded streets, Sunday morning church bells, and neighbors who lived in the homes they'd grown up in. He'd stay until morning, then sneak away, sailing back through the breaking mist to the sparkling towers of his own world like a prince from some idiotic fairy tale. Trying to avoid being transformed by the sun's first rays into what, exactly? What could getting caught with Sally Keegan in the hard light of day turn him into that he hadn't already become?

Phil stared across the harbor, watched the ferry, but tonight he couldn't go.

Now, when the death of Jimmy McCaffery was only one of many deaths that Sally's Staten Island neighborhood was trying to stand up under-McCaffery, gone from the place for over twenty years but still a hero there, how well Phil knew-Phil was staying away. Not because he gave a damn how the people of Pleasant Hills looked at him, the silent stares as he walked down their streets. Truth was, it wasn't so different now from the way it had always been. He'd always felt eyes on him, known things were said beyond his hearing that he wouldn't want to hear. The idea that the people of Pleasant Hills thought less of him than before Harry Randall's muckraking was almost laughable.

But Sally. She'd read the articles, too. She had never cared any more than he what her neighbors thought, and she didn't care now: but Sally wanted to know the truth. Demanded explanations he didn't have. Refused the ones he gave her.

Sally didn't believe what Randall had written about Jimmy McCaffery. Kevin didn't, either. In Pleasant Hills, no one did.

It might, though, be true.

But it appeared they were all willing to believe what he'd written about Phil.

And Phil?

Phil had to admit (but so far, only to himself) that what Randall had written about him might also be true.

He turned, to look not across the harbor but anywhere else. Up the Hudson, at buildings and ships and, above them, tiny pale stars just opening into a perfect cobalt sky. Harry Randall. That bastard Harry Randall had killed himself. And why the hell, Phil thought, gripping the rail as though to choke the truth out of it, why the hell, if the old bastard was going to do this, couldn't he have done it weeks ago and spared everyone all this shit?

The river went on and the stars didn't blink. Phil's fury faded, unsustainable. The answer, of course, was that without the McCaffery story and the shitstorm that followed it, the old bastard would never have done this at all.

Staring north through the haze of the filmmakers' lights, Phil considered the crushing weight of guilt Randall must have carried these past weeks. The truth about McCaffery might have mattered once. But not now. New Yorkers didn't need truth now. Now New Yorkers needed what Sally and Kevin had always needed: for the sainted Jimmy McCaffery to have actually been the hero they thought he was.

Randall's article had come too late to do anything but harm. And Randall must have finally come-too late-to see that.

And so Phil accepted the facts of Randall's death as they had been spread before him. Oh, he had questions, when was he without questions? But not among them, not yet, was the question of whether Harry Randall's death had actually been suicide.

September 11, 1978: The Boys (Jimmy)

Now it's later, though not by much, and changes have come, but not so many. Not the important ones; or if they have begun, you cannot see them.

Jimmy's a fireman. Aces the Academy and has a choice of houses; and though he could have had Manhattan, where the television cameras always come, or Bed-Stuy, where the trucks go screaming out two, three times a night, Jimmy asks for and gets Engine 168, around the corner. Wants to be close, so he can trot down to the house on days off, to drink coffee, listen to the old-timers. He loves the stories, Jimmy does: lunatic bravery, elaborate pranks, offhand memories of laughing just out of Death's reach.

Four years old: Jimmy across the street, wearing the red plastic fireman's helmet he got for Christmas, so excited he can't stand still as the bell clangs and the door flies up so 168 can go tearing out. Firefighters yank their coats on, swing up on the truck as it starts to roll. One of them grins, waves to Jimmy. Jimmy's father grabs him: The kid was gonna run right up onto it, he tells Jimmy's mother later, shaking his head. He was going to the fire, weren't you, Jim? I wanted to go, Jimmy says, I wanted to go to the fire. His mother asks, You wanted to help the firemen? Jimmy nods hard. But Daddy said, Daddy said they don't let kids, kids aren't big enough. I can help when I'm bigger. When I'm bigger, I'll go to the fire and help. Jimmy's dad musses Jimmy's hair and smiles. His mother smiles, too, but then she looks at him without saying anything, just looks and looks at him.

Now, when the smoke is whipping and the flames are roaring, someone still has to hold Jimmy back, someone senior screaming, No! some soot-streaked face in his, yelling, Don't play Superman, kid, just do your job, that way you make it out and all your brothers, too. What Jimmy wants, what he wants, is to go howling in, come out carrying everyone in his arms.

But Brother: they're calling him that already.

So he nods through the smoke, follows his orders, shrugs when his captain shouts to him, What the hell's so funny? Jimmy's seen the same grin, the one he can't keep back, flash across his captain's face, and some of the other guys', too, as they're piling off the truck, eager, one more time, to cheat the dragon.

Jimmy's happy.

October 30, 2001

Laura was on the street, blundering through the scattering of midtown pedestrians. End-of-the-day rush hour, but no crowds; mostly office workers, residents, people who had to be here. Finally, on a corner, a cluster of defiant tourists, pointing cameras at the Empire State Building because it was still standing.