Page 36

TWO

E ddie follows Francis by a tentative half step as he leads him through the park. He starts to notice that everything around them is different, nothing like it was a minute (hour, decade, lifetime) ago. The grass at their feet is brown and desiccated, not green and lush. The sky is gray, not blue, and the buildings around the park barely clear the tops of the trees, save for a small handful of ornate towers to the south.

Francis’s clothes have changed, too. His jeans aren’t jeans anymore; they’re nubby gray trousers, frayed at the hems and held up by suspenders over an old-fashioned white henley with the sleeves pushed up. He wears a tattered newsboy cap and muddy black boots lashed with strips of brown leather. Eddie checks his feet, now clad in scuffed boots of his own. His trousers match Francis’s almost exactly, except for a hole at the knee. He wears no suspenders over his itchy muslin shirt. His tote bag is gone now, but the camera still hangs from his shoulder.

What is going on? Eddie’s mind races too fast to ask the question out loud. It’s all he can do to see everything and to keep up with Francis, whose pace seems to increase with every step.

They walk through a cluster of rickety shacks, simple structures of plywood and canvas that look hastily erected. Men and women gather around them, all dusty faces and ratty clothes. Some sweep listlessly at the ground with their feet, others stand in groups of three and four, talking quietly.

Boys and girls with sunken eyes play lazily with sticks and rocks. A child in a makeshift burlap tunic with faded letters across the chest spelling out Thrifty Brand Flour approaches with upturned hands, stopping them. She looks up through her curls and holds out her palms, as if she keeps her hands like this all the time, just in case something falls into them. She strains to smile, but conjures a sparkle in her tired eyes. Eddie smiles back, an instinctive response, then digs into his pocket, relieved to find the quarter left over from the opera tickets and birthday card. Not much at all, he thinks, though when he presses it into her palm she lights up, squeaks in jubilation, and races off, kicking up tiny clouds of dust with her bare feet. He wonders where she’ll go, and hopes she’ll be safe there.

“They say a depression is coming,” Francis says, watching the girl run and duck into a lean-to. “I say it’s already here. Look around at this shantytown. Can you believe the government allows people to live this way?”

Eddie hears a rustle of paper to his left. It’s coming from a small hand-fashioned tent, really just a couple of rusted poles with a bit of fabric hung over for shade. Inside he sees a pair of men in dirty clothes spooned together on the ground. They are covered by sheets of newspaper, peaceful in sleep. They fit together so perfectly, these two men, and Eddie wonders who they are, how they found each other, how they live.

“Come on,” Francis says.

“Where are we going?” Eddie asks, his voice louder and more anxious than he expected it to be. “I really, uh, I don’t want to be late.”

“Don’t worry, you won’t be.”

“Are you sure?”

Francis stops and smiles. “I promise.” He points at a gate leading out of the park. “This way. Fifth Avenue.”

Eddie swallows his apprehension as they step onto the avenue and turn downtown. They hug the curb to avoid the traffic—the avenue is thick with it. Ford Model As and Buick LaSalles fight for space with smoke-choking city buses and clomping horse cabs, the crush punctuated every now and then with an extremely fancy sedan. The one up ahead is the biggest car Eddie’s ever seen, a convertible coupe that seems to stretch halfway down the block, all yellow and green and polished chrome. It glints in the sun, as if mocking the shantytown behind them. Pedestrians stop to ogle as it rolls to a languid stop at the intersection.

“Nice Duesey!” Francis shouts.

The driver stares disapprovingly at the boys, then revs the engine. It spits out a cloud of black exhaust before disappearing around the corner.

“The fat cats love their Duesenbergs,” Francis says, shaking his head. He points up at the soaring apartment buildings above them, behemoths of limestone punctuated with carved gargoyles. “They live up there, in apartments in the sky, way up in the lap of luxury, looking down at the rest of us in the dirt scrounging to get by. But the rich don’t care. As long as they get their satin sheets and caviar, there’s no depression for them. If the rest of us are poor, it must be our fault. But I would never trade my boots for an automobile. Not even a Duesey. Much easier to get around town on foot. Easier to escape on foot, too.” He raises an eyebrow. “You never know when you might have to make a getaway.”

“What do you mean?”

Francis doesn’t answer. He just steps off again, an even faster pace now, long strides, and Eddie trots to keep up. They continue down Fifth Avenue, past the southern edge of the park, past the newsreel theaters (“It’s gotten harder to sneak in since the talkies took over,” Francis says), past several automats (“The best place to swipe leftover bread from people’s trays”), past haberdashers and bootmakers and opticians and churches and betting parlors. The sidewalks get more and more crowded by the block; soon they are groaning with people. Office workers in gray suits and felt fedoras, shoppers in floral dresses and woven cloches, kids in hair ribbons and scally caps. They dodge pairs of cops swinging batons, a line of nuns in black habits, an old woman on a stoop with a boxy handbag in her lap, a stray terrier begging for scraps, a weary-eyed man in a tattered brown overcoat holding a sign saying THANKS FOR NOTHING HERBERT HOOVER . They hear Spanish, Italian, German, Chinese, Creole, and Russian. They hear English so saturated with Irish tones and trills that Eddie doesn’t even know it’s English, until Francis answers back.

They walk past the majestic St. Patrick’s Cathedral at Fifty-First Street, past the gaping construction zone at the Rockefeller property, all the way down to Forty-Second Street, where the massive New York Public Library and its protective stone lions rise like bulwarks.

Francis points downtown toward a towering structure. It is unfinished, but already it stands much taller than the rest of the buildings in Midtown.

“Can you see the workers up top?” Francis says. Eddie squints but can’t see anything. “Here,” Francis says, draping one arm around Eddie’s neck and pressing his palm into Eddie’s chest, sending a shock through Eddie. He points with his other hand to the top of the steel framework. “Follow my finger. See? They look like ants up there, and we look like ants to them. They say no one’s ever fallen off, but I don’t believe it. They work up there, a hundred stories up, not even a rope.”

Eddie forces his focus onto the building and away from Francis’s touch.

“They’re calling it the Empire State Building,” Francis says. “The newspapers say it’ll be finished next year, 1931.”

“Next year, 1931,” Eddie repeats. “So that means this is—”

“—1930,” Francis says, nonchalant, casual, as if this is just a little chat about unimportant details, as if identifying what year they’re in is as unremarkable as identifying what time of day it is.

“It can’t be,” Eddie mutters, too quietly for Francis to hear. “It can’t be real.”

Except Francis does hear, or else he reads Eddie’s mind (which wouldn’t surprise Eddie; nothing would surprise him at this point). “It can be,” he says. His voice is so relaxed, familiar, calming. He pats Eddie’s chest again. “And it is. Look around.”

Eddie takes in the concrete and steel and dust and businessmen and mailmen and pickpockets and shoppers and streams of office workers, some swinging black lunchboxes, others pale blue handbags. He obeys and takes a listen, to the honking buses and shouting newsboys and rumbling trucks and a lone trumpeter playing valiantly against the din as he busks for change. It’s New York City, bustling and alive, almost a hundred years before his own time. I am here, Eddie thinks. It’s not possible, it makes no sense. But Francis is right. I am here.

“It’s real,” Francis whispers. And then, like a breath, he releases Eddie. “They say there’ll never be a taller building. They say the laws of physics won’t allow it. But they said the same thing about the Chrysler Building, remember?”

Eddie shakes his head.

Francis laughs. “Of course you don’t,” he says. “But I do. Anyway, I can’t wait to go up to the top. I’m afraid of heights, though, so you’ll have to come with me and hold my hand. Will you hold my hand?”

Eddie looks up at the building again, growing dizzy as he raises his eyes. He’s not sure if it’s the height of the building or the idea of holding hands with Francis that makes his knees buckle, but before he falls, Francis is right there, steadying him.

“Sorry,” Eddie says, flushing red. He crouches down to pretend to tie his boot. He’s still wobbly and loses his balance, tipping to the left. But Francis’s leg is there to catch him again.

“Got you,” Francis says.

Eddie closes his eyes for a moment to catch his breath. He half expects all of this to disappear while he does it, and that he’ll wake up back in Central Park, looking at clouds.

But Francis is tapping him on the shoulder. “Up you get,” he says, and then turns west onto Forty-Second Street. Eddie follows close behind as they snake between two young men wearing Macy’s sandwich boards, advertising a summer sportswear sale. “How do you do, Clarence,” Francis says to the taller one with the black driving cap.

“Francie,” the man says. He mock-salutes him.

“What am I, chopped liver?” the shorter one says. He swats Francis on the shoulder.

“Oh, hello, Martin,” Francis says. “How do you do, too?”

Francis doesn’t wait for an answer. He smiles at Martin—how easily Francis smiles!—and keeps going. Eddie trots to keep up. “Who were they?”

“Oh, just a coupla Macy’s boys. That store is full of—” Francis turns to Eddie. “Well, you know.”

“I do?”

“Sure you do.”

Eddie drops a step, falling behind. How easily Francis had said that. How clear his meaning was. Francis knows that Eddie knows. And that means Francis knows something about Eddie. And for the first time he can remember, it doesn’t chafe to feel seen. It feels good. Yes. He is conspicuous to Francis and it feels good.

At the corner of Sixth, Francis stops in front of two carts selling roasted chestnuts. “Hungry?”

Eddie is surprised that anyone’s selling roasted chestnuts on a summer day, but they smell so good. He approaches one of the carts, but Francis nudges him to the other one, where a tiny old man with deep forehead wrinkles stands waiting. “Trust me,” he whispers. “His are better.” And then, to the man, Francis holds up two nickels. “Giacomo! Due!”

“Due,” the old man says, handing over two paper cones filled with warm chestnuts dusted with salt and sugar. Eddie pops one in his mouth. The flavors of chestnut and caramel flood his tongue.

“Giacomo has the touch,” Francis says. “He makes them taste like candy.”

They cross Sixth Avenue, and now they’re entering Times Square, a riot of flashing marquees and sparkling billboards and cars and buses and people and people and people!

Francis points to a cluster of young men in white shirts and brown suspenders, three or four of them, laughing together. He raises a knowing eyebrow. And there’s another cluster, and another. They’re standing, talking, looking around in that secret, coded way that won’t give them away except to eyes that know the code. Francis knows that Eddie recognizes the code. That feels good, too.

“Times Square. Where the boys are.” Francis puts a hand on Eddie’s shoulder. “Of course, what do you expect, with all these theaters around? You can’t put on a play without a few homosexuals in the cast, not to mention backstage. It’s a law of nature. Of course, the big producers try to pretend we don’t make the whole theater business run, but Broadway would collapse without the pansies.”

Pansies. Eddie flinches at the word like he did last time he heard it, but Francis—just like Mae West, just like Cookie—says it easily, earnestly, with no hint of cynicism. Only warmth and…

“Without us, I mean,” Francis says.

… and pride.

After a sharp turn up Broadway and then a jag west on Forty-Fourth Street, Francis stops underneath a poster for a Greta Garbo movie, Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise . It shows the movie star in a passionate embrace with Clark Gable. “I don’t know why Greta Garbo is hugging Clark Gable,” Francis says. “When everyone knows she’s in love with Mercedes de Acosta.”

Eddie has never heard the name Mercedes de Acosta, but he does know Greta Garbo, thanks to Cookie. “I like Garbo,” he says. “I think she’s great.”

Francis raises both eyebrows. “You know Garbo?”

Eddie smiles. “Don’t be stingy, baby.”

Francis lets out a laugh, a big, sharp laugh, and claps Eddie on the back. “I knew you would,” he says. “I always knew you would. Come on.”