F. Paul Wilson: Haunted Air

"Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night," Jack said automatically as he wondered when the last time was a cab had cruised the Brooklyn Army Terminal area at this hour. "And someone'll think you're looking for more than a ride if you do that. We'll call you a cab."

"They never come," she said, heading for the door.

Again that concerned look from Gia. "Jack, we can't let her go. She's in no condition-"

"She's a grown-up."

"Only nominally. Jack?"

She cocked her head and looked at him with big, Girl Scout cookie-selling eyes. Refusing Gia anything was difficult, but when she did that...

"Oh, all right." Donning a put-upon expression, he rose and offered a hand to help Gia to her feet; in truth he was delighted for an excuse to bail this party. "I'll give her a ride. But it's not 'just up the road.' It's on the upper end of Queens."

Gia smiled, and it touched Jack right down to the base of his spine.

Somehow, between saying good-bye to the hostess bride and reaching the sidewalk, they picked up two extra passengers: Karyn-the Bride of Frankenstein-and her friend Claude, an anorexic-looking six footer with a flattop haircut that jutted out over his forehead, making his head look like an anvil from the side. They both thought a jaunt to a psychic's house would be moby cool.

Plenty of room in Jack's Crown Vic. If he'd come alone, he probably would have traveled by subway. But Gia's presence demanded the security of a car. With Gia in the passenger seat, and the other three in the back, Jack wheeled the big black Ford up a ramp onto the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and headed north along the elevated roadway. He said he hoped no one minded but he was opening all the windows, and he did, without waiting for answers. His car; they didn't like it, they could walk.

This kind of summer night, not too humid, not terribly hot, brought him back to his teens when he drove a beat-up old Corvair convertible that he got for a song because too many people had listened to Ralph Nader and dumped one of the best cars ever made. On nights like this he'd drive with no destination, always with the top down, letting the wind swirl around him.

Not much swirling tonight. Even at this hour the BQE was crowded, but Junie made the creeping traffic seem even slower by rattling on and on about her psychic guru: Ifasen talked to the dead, and Ifasen let the dead talk to you, and Ifasen knew your deepest, darkest secrets and could do the most amazing, impossible, incredible things.

Not amazing or impossible to Jack. He was familiar with all the amazing, impossible, incredible things Ifasen did, and even had a pretty good idea how the man was going to get back Junie's bracelet for her.

Yeah, Junie was a ditz, but a lovable ditz.

Maybe some music would slow her Ifasen chatter. He stuck one of his homemade CDs in the player. John Lennon's voice filled the car.

"This happened once before ..."

"The Beatles?" Claude said from the back. "I didn't think anyone listened to them anymore."

"Think again," Jack said. He turned up the volume. "Listen to that harmony."

"... I saw the light!..."

"Lennon and McCartney were born to sing together."

"You have to realize," Gia said, "that Jack doesn't like anything modern."

"How can you say that?"

"How?" She was smiling. "Look at your apartment, your favorite buildings"-she pointed to the CD player-"the music you listen to. You don't own a song recorded after the eighties."

"Not true."

Karyn piped up. "What's a current group or singer you listen to?"

Jack didn't want to tell her that he had Tenacious D's last disc in the glove compartment. Time for some fun.

"I like Britney Spears a lot."

"I'm sure you like to look at her at lot," Gia said, "but name one of her songs. Just one."

"Well..."

"Got him!" Karyn laughed.

"I like some of Eminem's stuff."

"Never," Gia said.

"It's true. I liked that conscience song he did, you know where he's got a good voice talking in one ear and a bad voice in the other. That was neat."

"Enough to buy it?"

"Well, no..."

"Got him again," Karyn said. "You want to try the nineties? Can you name one song from the nineties you listened to?"

"Hey, maybe I wasn't exactly a Spice Girls fan, but I was one hell of a nineties kinda guy."

"Prove it. One nineties group-name one you bought and listened to."

"Easy. The Traveling Willburys."

Claude burst out laughing as Karyn groaned. "I give up!"

"Hey, the Willburys formed in the nineties, so that makes them a nineties group. I also liked World Party's 'Goodbye Jumbo.'"

"Retro!"

"And hey, Counting Crows. I liked that 'Mr. Jones' song they did."

"That's because it sounded like Van Morrison!"

"That's not my fault. And you can't say Counting Crows weren't nineties. So there. A nineties guy, that was I."

"I'm getting a headache."

"Some Beatles will fix that," Jack said. "This disc is all pre-Pepper, before they got self-conscious. Good stuff."

The double-tracked guitar intro from "And Your Bird Can Sing" filled the car as Jack followed the BQE's meandering course along the Brooklyn waterfront, running either two or three stories above or one or two stories below street level. A bumpy ride over pavement with terminal acne. As they ran under the Brooklyn Heights overhang a magnificent vista of lower Manhattan, all lights ablaze, slid into view.

"I feel like I'm in Moonstruck," Karyn said.

"Except in Moonstruck the Trade Towers were there," Claude added.

The car fell silent as they passed under the neighboring on-ramps of the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges.

Jack had never liked the Trade Towers, had never thought he'd miss those soulless silver-plated Twix bars. But he did, and still felt a stab of fury when he noticed the hole in his sky where they'd been. The terrorists, like most outsiders to the city, probably had viewed the twins as some sort of crown on the skyline, so they'd aimed for the head. But Jack wondered how the city would have reacted if the Empire State and the Chrysler Buildings had been targeted instead. They were more part of the city's heart and soul and history. King Kong-the real King Kong-had climbed the Empire State Building.

Brooklyn turned into Queens at the Kosciusko Bridge and the highway wandered past Long Island City, then the equally unspectacular Jackson Heights.

Astoria sits on the northwest shoulder of Queens along the East River. Jack visited frequently, but rarely by car. One of his mail drops was on Steinway Street. As he drove he debated a side trip to pick up his mail, but canned the idea. His passengers might start asking questions. He'd subway back next week.

Following Junie's somewhat disjointed directions-she usually cabbed here so she wasn't exactly sure of all her landmarks-he jumped off the BQE onto Astoria Boulevard and turned north, running a seamless gauntlet of row houses.

"If this Ifasen's so good," Jack said, "what's he doing out here in the sticks?"

Junie said, "Queens isn't the sticks!"

"Is to me. Too open. Too much sky. Makes me nervous. Like I'm going to have a panic attack or something." He swerved the car. "Whoa!"

"What's wrong?" Junie cried.

"Just saw a herd of buffalo. Thought they were going to stampede in front of the car. Told you this was the sticks."

As the back seat laughed, Gia gave his thigh one of those squeezes.

They passed a massive Greek Orthodox church but the people passing along the sidewalk out front were dressed in billowy pantaloons and skull caps and saris. Astoria used to be almost exclusively Greek; now it housed sizable Indian, Korean, and Bangladeshi populations. A polyglotopolis.

They cruised into the commercial district along Ditmars Boulevard where they passed the usual boutiques, nail salons, travel agencies, pet shops, and pharmacies, plus the ubiquitous KFCs, Dunkin Donuts, and McDonald's, interspersed with gyro, souvlaki, and kabab houses. They passed a Pakistani-Bangladeshi restaurant; its front, like a fair number of others, sported signs written not just in foreign languages but foreign script. The Greek influence was still strong, though-Greek coffee shops, Greek bakeries, even the pizzerias sported the Acropolis or one of the Greek gods on their awnings.