Pete Hamill - Tabloid City

— And you? she says.

He tells her about the death of the World, and the wake in the city room, and the website that starts Monday. She squeezes his forearm.

— Oh, Sam, what a day for you.

— You too.

From the bar he hears a burst of whiskey laughter, rising above some music. Lady Day. “Moonlight and love songs / Never out of date…” He thinks: I need to call my daughter again. I need to sleep.

6:50 p.m. Beverly Starr. Belleville restaurant, Park Slope, Brooklyn.

Almost time, she thinks. Check paid. Coffee still hot. She is at a corner table on the side of the long bistro, sitting alone on the banquette, with a view of the restaurant from one wood-paneled end to the windows on Fifth Avenue. Snow is falling. Chester Gould snow. Big fat flakes falling on Shoulders or Flattop or Mumbles. She is drawing in a small notebook, making notes. And enjoying the comforts of the familiar. The bar stacked with bottles and a few high stools. Mirrors on both sides of the long room, for tracking waiters or prospects.

She often comes here in summer, when the doors are open to the air, walking up the hill from her house, then three blocks to the left. It’s always packed with young mothers who park their Hummer-sized strollers outside and hold kids on their laps. On this night of snow, only a half dozen other tables are occupied, three of them by couples. The snow falls steadily on the parked cars.

To the right of her table, four young women from the Like Brigade are drinking margaritas. The dreaded four-letter word is fired in tremulous salvos. She wishes she could call on the exterminating angel of her graphic novel. She blinks. Blinks again.

She dials the car service on her cell.

— Hey, it’s Beverly. How about ten minutes? In front of the Belleville.

— Sure t’ing, Bev.

She slides out from behind her table, walks to the coat rack, grabs her coat and hat, and heads for the door. Then goes out into 5th Street. And stands there. The snow is clean. The snow is odorless. The snow doesn’t lie.

Under a lamp, she pauses and looks up at the snowflakes as they fall. She focuses on one, about fifteen feet above her. Separating from the others. Blinks. The flake has just been born. It sways from side to side, as if hearing soothing music. She blinks again. Then the flake hurries down to the cement of the city. She counts, and at the number two, the snowflake is gone forever.

A car horn beeps on the corner. She turns.

6:55 p.m. Josh Thompson. Fourteenth Street, Manhattan.

That Old Guy with the white beard had warned him about the snow. The Old Guy in his own wheelchair. He was outside the church when the Mexicans carried Josh down the steps. Josh looked up at the sky, which resembled water in a glass when you pour some ink in it. The Old Guy pulled up beside him. He told Josh it was coming. The snow. He said, Don’t even think about being out in the snow, soldier.

Then the Old Guy started giving Josh a short course in living in a wheelchair in New York. Those grades at the corner? the Old Guy said. We call them “cuts.” They are suppose to be one-eighth of an inch at the bottom. Surprise, surprise! Some of them are a full inch! Try to get up one! You need to use your weight! Lean forward, then move the fucking wheels like your life depends on them, which it does. Going down the cuts, lean back and lie low, go slow, don’t let your weight topple you face-first into the fucking street. For sure, some asshole driving a sanitation truck will back up and run over your head and turn the chair into an ashtray!

— When you stop somewhere to admire the view or the ass of some broad, lock the chair. So it don’t roll in any direction! Don’t go near Sixteenth Street. It’s the worst street in New York. And stay off Madison Avenue in the Sixties, where all the rich people live. They don’t want cripples in the neighborhood, so they don’t have cuts. Or they’re at an angle. And late in the day and especially at night, don’t let any young assholes offer to carry you anywheres. Or push you. They think it’s funny to race you along a block or two, then let you roll… I’d like to shoot the fuckers!

— In the snow you can’t even see the potholes so you’re goin’ along crossing the street and everything looks even and whoof! You go into a fucking hole full of snow and fall on the side and hit your head maybe, and break a fucking arm maybe, and the buses and trucks and cars, especially them Jersey drivers, are all honking and yelling, and you figure: Fuck it, I may as well die. And here in Fourteenth Street, especially with snow, don’t go over past Ninth Avenue. There’s cobblestones there and they get like glass from the snow and you slide all over the fucking place and there’s Pakistani limo drivers don’t know where they are, tryin’ to fine some restaurant in the Meatpacking District, they call it now. And shplat! They kill you too. All right now, soldier, the Old Guy says, his beard as white as the snow. Enjoy New York.

And he was gone, moving in the other direction. And here is Josh Thompson alone, with fewer people on the sidewalks, fewer cars or buses or trucks. He is aimed at the river, facing the street of cobblestones leading to the old mosque, leading to Aladdin’s Lamp.

He begins pushing the wheels, slowly. Heading west. To the minarets. He looks back for the old Mexican woman who was so nice to him. She’s nowhere in sight.

7:10 p.m. Malik Shahid. Muhlenberg Branch of New York Public Library, West 23rd Street, Manhattan.

Malik is alone at a small table near the windows, the snow falling on the street behind him. Again, he is trying hard to look normal. A solitary man among seven or eight other solitaries. Wearing his coat as if permanently cold. His cheap black beret stuffed in a pocket. Far from the radiator on the far end of the room. He is making marks on a ruled yellow pad with a new ballpoint pen. Both letters have been written and he wants to read the long one again. The envelope is addressed to Michael Daly at the Daily News. The columnist. They’ll put it on the front page, with big fat headlines. The envelope already carries a stamp. It is not yet sealed.

Malik has a large book open in front of him, and is trying to look as if he is studying it and making notes. The book is The Thousand and One Nights. The heathen book that tells the story of Ala’ad-din, meaning “nobility of the faith.” What faith? Not Islam. He looks intensely at a page, holds a finger to a sentence, then writes on the yellow pad. Like a scholar doing research. Pressing angrily with his ballpoint pen. If the heavy white bitch behind the desk even bothers to look at him, she will see a young black man, doing work toward a degree, maybe. The words written on his yellow pad say something different from the words he fingers in the book. He does not see the words in the book.

Aladdin’s Lamp.

Aladdin’s Lamp.

Aladdin’s Lamp.

Aladdin’s Lamp.

In his head, the words are like a chant. From a madrassa. Or like Sirhan Sirhan in his journal, the words used as the name of a book Malik once read.

RFK must die.

RFK must die.

Malik glances at the clock. Thinks: Almost time to leave. He removes the longer letter and reads:

To Everybody:

If you read this, I am in Paradise. I have obeyed the commands of Allah to do my best to cleanse the world of sin and corruption. I have chosen to obey the Quran. In the filthy corrupt West, all sin is permitted. I have chosen to follow the command of Allah. To erase. To purge. To cleanse.

I have purged my own mother, as commanded. I have purged her slave owner. I have purged the sinful imam who defied his faith by collaborating with enemies. I wish I could have purged my so-called father, who is a policeman for the oppressors, and dared to use the name Ali. That will be the duty of some future servant of Allah, some other soldier in jihad. In another few hours I will purge many other sinners who defile what was once a holy mosque.