Pete Hamill - Tabloid City

But who does he call about Cynthia Harding? She had no children. Except maybe Sandra Gordon. The girl Cynthia adopted, without papers. That party in Montego Bay… what year was it? The tall blonde woman and the small black girl pulling books off shelves… He pauses, takes a deep breath. Tells himself, Clerk this fucking thing. Now. Will there be a memorial? Surely yes. Probably at the library. Maybe Janet can find out. All of us can walk past the lions, past Patience and Fortitude, and enter her cathedral. Is there a will? Call Cynthia’s lawyer. First thing. Soon as I get home.

Jesus Christ. Stop. Go home.

He hurries down the steps to the 6 train but can’t look at the offerings of the newsstand. He swipes his Senior Citizen Metro-Card, the card he calls his New York passport. Moves along the waiting area, hands deep in his coat pockets. He fingers the card, then imagines sweat ruining its surface, and returns it to his wallet. Thinking: If only I’d gone to Cynthia’s party at Patchin Place. Stayed over. Walked Mary Lou Watson to the car. But no. I had to work. Like so many other nights. Still, if I’d taken the night off, maybe none of this would have happened. Maybe I’d be calling Cynthia now, explaining about the World, and asking her out to a late dinner. Instead of snacks in bed. Or takeout. Or dim sum on Saturdays. Maybe… ah, fuck it.

At Grand Central, four graying black doo-woppers come into the car, in rough winter clothes, sneakers, men in their fifties or sixties. They begin to sing.

Why, oh why, do I

Live in the dark?

(day and night, babe)

A woman in her fifties smiles, but won’t make eye contact. A girl in her twenties looks amused in another way. Where she comes from, they never see such an act.

Why, oh why, do I

Sleep in the park?

(can’t pay no rent, babe)

The doo-woppers have the look of men who spent too many years rehearsing in the yard at Attica or Green Haven or Dannemora. They smile but their eyes are sad. One grips a blue plastic bucket. Briscoe drops a fiver into it, and the surprised man smiles brightly, showing yellowing teeth. They keep moving to the far end of the car.

You were my woman

Round and sweet—

Then you took off

With a lowlife creep

They step off at 33rd Street. Briscoe wonders when he first heard someone sing those lyrics. Summer of ’55? No, ’56.

And here I am

A paper wrappin’ my feet—

Frankie Lymon? Didn’t he finish badly? Dying of heroin. What year? Sometime in the sixties. Briscoe was working in Europe, so maybe it was 1964. Thinking: Gotta Google him. Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers. Or maybe the Platters. The flip side of some big hit. Who was I in love with then?

Oh why, oh why, do I

Live in the dark?

He remembers. Betty Haddad. Small, with lustrous black hair, a handsome hooked nose, oval face. Her parents were Syrian Christians. She loved dancing, which they did for a whole summer. Why did they fall in love? It was simple. She wasn’t like all the Irish and Jews and Italians of Briscoe’s tribes. Or more accurately, not like him. It took him another thirty years to realize that was one of the points of New York. Maybe the most important. It’s the city of people who are not like you.

Same with Cynthia Harding. She wasn’t like his people and Briscoe wasn’t like hers.

(day and night, babe)

Why, oh why, do I…

He gets off the 6 train at Spring Street, and feels weariness eating his brain cells. At the top of the steps, he has to pause for breath, settling himself, breathing in the cold air. He walks west, slowly. On Broadway, there in the heart of SoHo, there are more people than he saw in midtown. The usual fat tourist ladies in wide threesomes are ambling down to Canal Street, to buy fake Prada and Gucci handbags. Nobody can get past them. Messengers on bicycles weave in and out of traffic. Horns honk in warning or exasperation. Four young tourists pause on the corner, speaking Italian, squinting at a map, and calling up something on a gadget. Presumably a GPS map. Briscoe considers asking them if they knew what had happened to Frankie Lymon. If not, maybe they could Google him, right there on the corner. Yeah.

He crosses Broadway, heading home. He will call his daughter in Paris and then Helen and then sleep.

10:45 a.m. Sandra Gordon. Lipstick Building.

Her door is open and she sits at her desk, glancing at proofs of the Cash for Clunkers ads. A very big client. Tottering now. Buy our cars, get cash back. Wondering: Did they do this for chariots in the last days of the Roman Empire?

Her right elbow aches. Her right hand trembles. She can’t remember ever fainting before. Not in New York. Not at Columbia. Never in Jamaica. She remembers seeing the front page of the newspaper. Then looking up at the face of Kennedy, the young guy from media analysis, way down the hall, and he’s whispering. “Are you okay, Miss Gordon? You want a doctor?” And she said, “Oh, thanks, Kennedy. I’m okay. I guess I fainted.”

He helped her up and she saw about twenty people in the lobby, all looking at her. Men and women. She still hears Kennedy asking what happened, as he helps her stand. She remembers pointing at the newsstand. The stack of newspapers. The front page of the World. And saying: I knew that woman. The white woman. She gave me my life.

Kennedy went with her in the elevator, gently moving her away from the spectators, and into her office. She kept saying: No doctor, please, I’m okay, I fainted is all… Then the bosses were in her office, and one of them suggested she go home, take the day off, what the hell, it’s Friday. And she smiled and said No, I have proofs to look at, and a lunch appointment and… They all looked uneasy, and the doctor was mentioned again, and Sandra Gordon smiled and shooed them away.

Now she rises from her desk, and looks out the window, south and east, toward where Cynthia Harding lived. The sky is darker than it was when she left home. She hasn’t yet left her office, to walk among the other workers. No longer the mad men of the television series. No martinis at lunch. No smoking at their desks. They’re tweeting, and texting on BlackBerrys, and checking Facebook or MySpace. Not for fun. For ideas. And to gossip.

She wonders if today, they’re tweeting about her.

And out there in the city, Cynthia Harding…

She is thinking: I was gonna call her today. Today . To set up lunch and talk about the endless stupidity of the world, and the men who inhabit it. To make jokes about Myles Compton, wherever he might be. To laugh. To feel alive. And defiant. And let her know that I’m sad too and hurting.

She can’t look over at the three crowded shelves of the office bookcase. Cynthia’s photograph is there on top, along with two photos of Madda. Looking stern and serious in fierce Jamaican sunlight.

She can’t look at the newspaper either, folded in the chair against the window. She can’t go online for breaking news. She doesn’t want to know the details. At least not now. Maybe not ever.

Her secretary eases in without a word. Amanda Burroughs. A crisp British accent. She stands before the bookcase.

— Yes, Amanda.

— So far, no news about the burials, or services. Not at the Times. Not online. I called that Mr. Briscoe, as you asked. His secretary said he’d be available about five-thirty.

— I see.

— And here are three thank-you cards. Mr. Kennedy is out at a meeting, so you have time to choose one.

She lays the cards on Sandra Gordon’s desk.

— Thanks, Amanda.