City of Strangers Read online

  He has to make a plan. Terence can't do much here, in a train car packed with human insulation, but if there has to be some sort of confrontation, if the particles of hostility that hang about him assemble into violence, it cannot happen at Claire's doorstep. Paul could pretend that he's not about to disembark and then slip between the doors: Terence might miss it. Paul tightens his grip around the handlebar as the train slows. The moment has a terrible surface tension. He balances on the balls of his feet and, out of the corner of his eye, observes Terence, who sits alertly. A mechanical whisper indicates that the doors are about to open: he leans toward them and for an instant separates his gaze from his pursuer. The doors open. Before moving he looks once to check on Terence and finds that he has gotten to his feet, his eyes fixed firmly and attentively upon Paul – those eyes, brown and even a little sullen, as if wounded that he would even consider sneaking off. The doors shut and they are once again on their way.

  Terence looks away again, almost with a shrug, as soon as the train is out of the station. They have been at this little game long enough that Paul's initial fear has dulled and, as his chance to see Claire passes, it cools into annoyance. Terence wants to see what he can get away with, how long Paul will put up with him. Still, a face-off, even in the safety of a public place, seems unwise. Paul needs to put distance between them. Later, he will have to phone the police again, and this time he must make them take his complaint seriously; he will go down to the station, give a description, explain the pattern of harassment. For now, he can get off in midtown and use the size and drift of crowds to his advantage. The train clocks through two more stations; Terence stands in wait as serenely as a mannequin. Grand Central comes and goes with a great respiratory exchange of passengers, and, at Fifty-first Street, Paul makes his move. Without even looking – surely he is being followed – he slingshots through the doors and pushes toward the front of the crowd as it slows and branches into thin capillaries at the gates. Enough people become like water; they force an exit. Someone punches through the emergency gate, igniting the alarm's dizzy ululation. Paul slips through the scarred iron door – for him this qualifies as an emergency – and once more he emerges at street level.

  Rainwater stands at the curb in silver puddles, and a high, stern sun glares down. Paul extends his strides as he turns east. He passes through the warm, chalky steam blossoming from the vents of a laundromat, through the salt-and-lard odor at the door of a Chinese takeaway joint, through the bent shadows of fire escapes and empty stoops. The light at Third Avenue halts him and he turns south. Unaccustomed to exercise and already starved for oxygen, the muscles in his legs burn and complain, cramping into aching little knots, and Paul curses under his breath, furious at his body's unreliability, furious at himself for failing to halt its decline. What is he afraid of? What can Terence do to him out in the open? He crosses Third Avenue at Forty-ninth Street, jogging to beat the serrated edge of advancing cars; the nasal snort of a horn admonishes him just as he hops onto the next curb. He wants to lose Terence in the lunchtime crowds near the river. Tourists clot in front of a man selling cheap neckties and belts, and Paul wades through them.

  Turning onto Forty-eighth Street, he nearly collides with someone, and when he looks up to apologize he recognizes the face. The man is an actor, a relatively famous one, and he is eating an apple; his lips are bright with juice. Startled, Paul walks past, and he now sees that he has stumbled upon the set of a film. Men with headsets wave to each other and write on clipboards, and others march in and out of long white trucks. On the sidewalk is a table littered with food: bagels, muffins, sliced fruit, a steel urn of coffee. White screens, stretched like sails, frame the entrance to an apartment building in the middle of the block, along with equally large mirrors, angled expectantly upward; lamps the size of car tires splash everything in unnatural white light. He doesn't see any cameras.

  He emerges onto Second Avenue, continuing south, and can find no sign of Terence, although that doesn't mean anything. He crosses the avenue toward Hammarskjöld Plaza and only when he is halfway between sidewalks does he notice the gathering on the opposite side of the street. Crowds he was expecting, but these people are collected in the hundreds – they number perhaps more than a thousand – and they clearly belong together; they have the slack knitting of an audience at a concert. Paul then sees that their attention is directed at a man standing in front of a microphone and dressed from head to toe in white.

  He mixes into the group's raggedy fringe. Here and there stand uniformed police officers, laden with metal and gear, and on a rooftop high above he sees the glint from a pair of binoculars. A television crew hangs off to the side. Above the belt of the river, flags, certain of their importance, straighten in the wind. Terence has disappeared. Paul presses deeper into the crowd, and eventually finds himself in its concentrated heart, where he can barely move. Most of the faces around him aren't white.

  The man addressing the crowd has been speaking in a language Paul doesn't recognize, but suddenly he switches to English. 'The burning of buildings and the loss of lives have been unacceptable. People who love God and Muhammad are becoming overwhelmed by their anger.' He goes on. It's about the cartoons, then – this, too, is a protest, like those he has seen on television, with their scorched flags and burning cars and vandalized embassies. Applause crackles around Paul. The strange weather that ripples through those crowds overseas doesn't seem to have taken hold here: people are attentive and calm; a policeman checks his wristwatch as the speaker slips again into what must be Arabic. Men in black flank him, in stark contrast to his white robes; behind sunglasses they wear stoic expressions. Security men.

  The speech continues. Growing concerned about his lack of mobility, Paul begins to thread his way to the other side, toward the horizon of the East River and the rough face of Queens, where the Citigroup tower stands awkwardly upon the low borough. He is aided by a loosening of the crowd, for which he detects no apparent cause; people are pulling apart, creating channels of space. He checks again for Terence. As he reaches the other edge, he notices the movement around him. They're turning as one to face the river – and, because it is where he happens to be, Paul. Has he done something? But their eyes all gaze beyond him, well beyond him, beyond the river and Queens, beyond even the Atlantic Ocean. He recognizes at once what this is. A voice of warm monotony, with a cello's plangent timbre, puffs out across the clumps of heads, intoning words Paul doesn't know. The call to prayer. It is followed by silence. For the space of a breath nothing happens, and then, at once, the hundreds of bodies fall, like blades of grass blown flat by the wind; the sound rolls over him like the sound from a building collapsing in the distance. They are humble, devout, good. People fold their legs and prostrate themselves, hands clapped to the concrete, foreheads balanced between them like delicate ceramics; they use sliced-up cardboard boxes and unfurled garbage bags to protect their knees from the damp ground. Paul's head pounds. He has never seen so many people pray at once: it is like seeing a tidal wave for the first time, or a tornado, an asteroid. He was part of this crowd a moment ago, one of many, and now he stands alone; now, even worse, he is in the way.

  Small birds, winter scavengers, twist above the river. His coat whips around jauntily; the wind gains strength and the fragile puddles nearby respond with ecstatic little vibrations. Clouds converge on the sun and around him the light melts away. He is cold and slightly shaking, and he wants to get out of the aim of their prayer. He looks up and around at the high, imperious faces of office buildings. This particular block is secluded in its madness: the man chasing him, the demonstration, the massive collective prayer. The rest of the city is right now like the people in these buildings, locked away in dry aquariums behind clean glass surfaces. There is another pause in the imam's speech. The congregation rises as suddenly as it fell. The entire episode has a frequency to which all but Paul are attuned, a pious choreography. More words follow; but this chapter of speech is brief, and once again th
ey fall with spectacular calm.

  He starts to move away. A hiccup in the concrete snags his shoe and he stumbles, as if missing a square in hopscotch. Paul looks up. It feels like an agnostic insult, this startled jerky motion he has made, but they are concentrating on God, not him. No one gives any sign of noticing – no one except the solitary figure on the opposite side of the crowd. He stands there, watching Paul, and smiles faintly.

  Once more the crowd rises; Terence disappears behind it. Paul doesn't wait. He makes a hard diagonal across the plaza, back toward Second Avenue, where he presses into the flow of people, close quarters that lock him into a fast walk. Paul fights against the tidal push of the avenue. Gone are the calm, contemplative expressions of people at prayer; wherever he looks now, the faces are proud, preoccupied, shatterproof. Dozens of bodies occupy a single frame of vision, some paused, some in motion, some alone, some in groups: metropolitan density is too much for the human eyeball to sort. A single block of New York City is an immense concentration of detail and circumstance, and Paul's brain, like his muscles, isn't trained to work in this reactive mode. A quick surveillance finds no sign of Terence, which means he either fell behind or has concealed himself once again. Paul walks north, looking up the narrowing avenue to where it finally vanishes altogether.

  Fresh crowds pack the sidewalk. In the distance he can still hear the speaker, his words like the solitary tolling of a church bell on the other side of a hill. Paul turns around, then turns again. Up and down the avenue – in doorways, under awnings, behind piles of garbage – Terence is nowhere to be seen. Coats flap in the wind. A plastic bag scuttles through legs and feet like a crab.

  He waits. Nothing happens. He walks back to the subway in a blind daze, looking around once or twice. It is almost one o'clock, which means that Claire left for work long ago.

  In the station he jostles a round woman loaded down with shopping bags, who shoots him a dirty look. He doesn't care. A train must have just left: there is no one else waiting. Paul walks to the end of the platform, past the last bench, and stands by a black, sulking garbage can. In his peripheral vision he is aware of the platform filling. He finally hears the train and senses that first slipping of the station's air. At last there's a light. The tracks begin to glow. Air piles against the side of Paul's face as the train hurtles into the station. The doors open, he enters, and they close again with a sigh. He takes a grip of the handlebar and closes his eyes, exhausted. On his back the cool sweat starts to dry.

  But the train doesn't move. Seconds accumulate. Paul opens his eyes and immediately sees the reason. Three fingers with rough, pitted nails have stuck themselves in the door, between the lips of black rubber, and on the other side Terence hovers like a figure in a nightmare.

  The doors stutter; Paul holds his breath. They are inches apart, separated only by the sheath of bad glass in the door: in the pressure chamber of their silent exchange the seconds slow: they do not move. The fineness of Terence's face surprises him, as white as the inside of a halved apple; with the pale hair it burns glossily against the scum and spit of the station wall, the dun, bony tiles. At his throat, under the black leather jacket, is a triangle of yellowish white. His eyes make terse, tiny adjustments: they are assessing Paul, gathering and storing information. A hard bulge distends the skin under his ear and throbs like a baby heart – he's chewing gum. Paul takes a step back as a shudder runs through the metal doors. He considers making an effort to pry out the fingers, but Terence spares him the trouble. He snatches away his hand; the doors proudly snap shut. At last the train pulls away, but Paul can't take his eyes from Terence, whose lips are peeled back from his teeth in a grin.

  The forest of champagne flutes on the long white table, occupying an entire side of the museum's main hall, makes Claire think of all the ways they could shatter. Members of the catering staff, clothed in starched black shirts, flock and flow nearby as they make the last preparations, gathering heaps of ice in metal buckets and setting out soldierly rows of bottles. Tonight the museum hosts the reception for the mounting of its newest acquisition. Belonging to an after-hours crowd gives Claire an enjoyable, almost mischievous feeling, like those evenings as a teenager when for one reason or another she found herself back inside her high school. Buildings have distinct personalities, connected to their purposes and hours of use, and to inhabit one at an off-time – to denude the museum of its serious attire and fill it with liquor and the insistent roar of a dinner party – stirs up the exhilaration of trespass. Perhaps this is enough to account for her peculiar mood, her speculation about the ways the night could fail, beginning with the destruction of a thousand glasses of good champagne. The most spectacular version she can devise involves the highly improbable toppling of the twenty-four-foot sculpture in steel that looms darkly in the center of the atrium.

  The guests have yet to arrive. In the past months Claire has been a quick study, memorizing the identity and importance of hundreds of people whose capital animates the ecosystem of the New York art world. Working in galleries, she came into contact with many of their ilk, but it's an entirely different tribe that inhabits the rarefied atmosphere of museum endowment. And they will, very many of them, be here tonight. As planned, Century now hangs in its new home, the south wall of the atrium, framed by an enormous white expanse. A short article ran today in the Arts section of the Times; everyone was thrilled. Later, Bernard will make a brief toast, less in celebration of the art than as a testament to the donors who made its purchase possible; he will stress the lasting value of their investment, the pride of place that Century will hold in the museum's permanent collection when, after its tenure in the atrium, it's moved to the fourth floor among the other postwar giants.

  Paul's failure to appear this morning distracts her only a little. Sunday night is already abstract and distant, an historical event; today she waited at the apartment as long as she could. Frankly, she was relieved when he didn't come, as cruel as that makes her feel.

  Someone squeezes her arm from behind. The sensation is sudden and unwelcome, and it immediately sets her on edge, but she relaxes upon turning to find Bernard's pink old face, its wispy white hair and soft patrician jowl. For a man of his importance and longevity, he's surprisingly easy to be around, his attention always safely avuncular. Others cluck at his habit of tediously expatiating, in his light British accent, one of education and casual privilege, on this or that matter – and at his ability to bring any subject around to himself, the grand narrative of his first-rate life. He's met everyone, seen everything, been everywhere. Just the same, Claire is fond of Bernard and, at his better moments, finds him fiercely charming.

  'Have you girded yourself for the advancing army, my dear?'

  She smiles, waits for him to go on.

  'Each of them will take the usual three minutes to stare at the painting and then wander off, glass of champagne in hand – my God, you would think they hadn't ever had champagne before, the way they slurp it up! Then off to find the plaques in the museum that hold their names. Or, in the case of many, their mothers' names.'

  At six they appear. Bernard brings around one or two notables and makes the introductions. Claire has a glass of champagne, surprised by how quickly it takes her; champagne, more than any other drink, gives her a wonderful lightness, like compressed air under the soles of her feet. New faces appear by the minute. David's isn't one of them. She will do fine with or without him, even if it must be said that he has a talent for this sort of event, the sport of socializing; she always feels somewhat ill at ease in this company, somewhat unlike herself. Champagne helps. She shouldn't have much more: the party technically counts as work. The men climbing the stairs from the lobby all seem to be much older, and reliably they have younger wives on equivalent arms. The women of their age who come are often widows. She and David have spoken once since Wednesday, by phone – a short, almost businesslike conversation; he hasn't stopped by her office.

  Discreetly, Claire looks down at herself.
She wears a black dress, elegant and simple, one that divulges distinctly more of her breasts and hips than she normally does at work. Did she choose it to impress David? Truthfully, he didn't enter her mind when she was putting on clothes; she considered only the importance of the event, yet perhaps the thought swam underneath. The feints and submerged gestures of dating do not yet feel natural; years of marriage allowed her to forget how easily new affairs start and stop, how an untested romance can dissolve quietly and without explanation. She dislikes the thought of playing this game again, and in tonight's circumstances it seems especially unpleasant. This is hardly the time to sort through her feelings for David. They are both adults. When he arrives they'll act the part.

  Bernard rescues her from her thoughts. 'This way,' he says. 'I want you to meet these ones. Big donors, of course, but none of the usual foolishness. I think they're more to your liking.' Claire smiles and submits to the urgent tug at her elbow, falling into step with Bernard, and across the room she spots their quarry: a man about Bernard's age with a woman who could be a year or two younger than Claire. She smiles inwardly. Men remain a constant source of amusement. She cannot believe how a man of such age, something north of sixty, can appear in public with a woman – a girl! – so young. She would have thought men of that age would be more ill at ease about their bodies, the shrinking and withering, the wrinkles and the spots. How could he take off his clothes, and she hers, and he remain standing there with even a drop of dignity left in his heart?

  Before they quite have reached the couple, Bernard leans in to whisper: 'David Kim isn't going to make it. He's caught a bug, it seems.' Claire looks quickly into his face, worried that he knows about her and David – would it matter if he did? – but the expression there reassures her that he intends only an innocent report on a colleague's whereabouts. Gossip about subordinates mercifully isn't one of Bernard's interests.