yacht.”
“Do you know where I can find Shawna, Ms. Chambers?”
“Azure. Call me Azure.”
“Azure,” I said as if speaking an incantation.
“There’s a red-brick building north on D past First, that’s what Chrystal told me. It has a stand of aspen on the roof.”
For a moment Azure’s mind traveled to the faraway tenement inhabited by her wild creature daughter. Her lips twisted and she directed that gaze toward the reassurance of a blank blue wall.
“I should probably go,” I said.
“My husband, Nathan, doesn’t know how to talk like you,” she said. “He needs to move around too much, and he, he touches me.”
“I’m going to stand up now,” I said.
“It was nice seeing you, Mr. McGill. You’re a kind man.”
18
IT WAS LATE in the afternoon but the summer sun was still up and luxuriant. I considered walking across town to the place where Shawna might live but gave up on that idea for the moment.
Age has taught me to take my time with some destinations.
That includes going home.
I started walking north on Greenwich Street, realizing as I went that I was probably going to walk the eight miles to the Upper West Side and my broken family.
WALKING THROUGH the borough of Manhattan is another supplementary exercise for me; I feel my whole history passing down the blocks of my delinquent adolescence and criminal maturity. The bricks and concrete, stoplights and police cruisers were my indictment for a thousand crimes committed without remorse, or even much awareness. I’d never been caught or convicted, not so much as indicted for the lives I’d shattered. But I remembered when walking who I’d been and why I paid penances like sitting patiently with innocents like Azure Freshstone-Chambers.
At Christopher I turned right, making my way over to Hudson Street. Six or seven blocks north of there Hudson became Eighth Avenue, the artery toward Broadway and, ultimately, my home.
As I was crossing Thirty-second Street I pulled out my cell phone and called information.
“Say a city and state,” a pleasant woman asked over the invisible waves of communication.
“New York, New York,” I said.
“Say ‘residence’ or the name of the business you wish to call.”
“Residence.”
“All right. You said ‘residence.’ Is that correct?”
“Yes,” I said, looking up toward the Thirty-third Street sign.
“Say the last name and the first.”
“Highgate, Corinthia.”
“Yes. Corinthia Highgate. Would you like me to connect you at no extra charge?”
“Yes.”
The phone went dead for a moment, but I knew from experience that this was just part of the charade. The human voice without a soul returned to her electronic tomb and the system passed along the digital impulses of my request.
A phone rang. It did this seven times. I was prepared to leave a message. And then the eighth ring was cut off midway through its arc and a frail woman’s voice said, “Hello?”
“Mrs. Highgate?”
“Miss Highgate. Who is this?”
“My name is Ambrose Thurman,” I said, using the name of a man who might have been a friend if he had not died violently. “I’m a—I’m the nephew of a man named William Williams.”
“Lee. Oh, I haven’t heard that name for many years, many years. You’re his nephew, you say?”
“Yes. Well, not actually. My father, John Laniman, died soon after I was born—”
“I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay. It was a long time ago, before I can remember. Anyway, my mother got remarried—to William’s brother, Thomas.”
I thought that it would be a nice, and convincing, touch to make me, a black man, legally related to the missing Williams.
“I never knew he had a brother.”
“He was just a half brother, and the family was sort of estranged,” I lied. “Anyway, my stepfather died recently and I decided that I should get in touch with old Bill.”
I studied acting for the express purpose of being able to lie convincingly on the fly.
“Lee,”
“Do you know where I can find Shawna, Ms. Chambers?”
“Azure. Call me Azure.”
“Azure,” I said as if speaking an incantation.
“There’s a red-brick building north on D past First, that’s what Chrystal told me. It has a stand of aspen on the roof.”
For a moment Azure’s mind traveled to the faraway tenement inhabited by her wild creature daughter. Her lips twisted and she directed that gaze toward the reassurance of a blank blue wall.
“I should probably go,” I said.
“My husband, Nathan, doesn’t know how to talk like you,” she said. “He needs to move around too much, and he, he touches me.”
“I’m going to stand up now,” I said.
“It was nice seeing you, Mr. McGill. You’re a kind man.”
18
IT WAS LATE in the afternoon but the summer sun was still up and luxuriant. I considered walking across town to the place where Shawna might live but gave up on that idea for the moment.
Age has taught me to take my time with some destinations.
That includes going home.
I started walking north on Greenwich Street, realizing as I went that I was probably going to walk the eight miles to the Upper West Side and my broken family.
WALKING THROUGH the borough of Manhattan is another supplementary exercise for me; I feel my whole history passing down the blocks of my delinquent adolescence and criminal maturity. The bricks and concrete, stoplights and police cruisers were my indictment for a thousand crimes committed without remorse, or even much awareness. I’d never been caught or convicted, not so much as indicted for the lives I’d shattered. But I remembered when walking who I’d been and why I paid penances like sitting patiently with innocents like Azure Freshstone-Chambers.
At Christopher I turned right, making my way over to Hudson Street. Six or seven blocks north of there Hudson became Eighth Avenue, the artery toward Broadway and, ultimately, my home.
As I was crossing Thirty-second Street I pulled out my cell phone and called information.
“Say a city and state,” a pleasant woman asked over the invisible waves of communication.
“New York, New York,” I said.
“Say ‘residence’ or the name of the business you wish to call.”
“Residence.”
“All right. You said ‘residence.’ Is that correct?”
“Yes,” I said, looking up toward the Thirty-third Street sign.
“Say the last name and the first.”
“Highgate, Corinthia.”
“Yes. Corinthia Highgate. Would you like me to connect you at no extra charge?”
“Yes.”
The phone went dead for a moment, but I knew from experience that this was just part of the charade. The human voice without a soul returned to her electronic tomb and the system passed along the digital impulses of my request.
A phone rang. It did this seven times. I was prepared to leave a message. And then the eighth ring was cut off midway through its arc and a frail woman’s voice said, “Hello?”
“Mrs. Highgate?”
“Miss Highgate. Who is this?”
“My name is Ambrose Thurman,” I said, using the name of a man who might have been a friend if he had not died violently. “I’m a—I’m the nephew of a man named William Williams.”
“Lee. Oh, I haven’t heard that name for many years, many years. You’re his nephew, you say?”
“Yes. Well, not actually. My father, John Laniman, died soon after I was born—”
“I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay. It was a long time ago, before I can remember. Anyway, my mother got remarried—to William’s brother, Thomas.”
I thought that it would be a nice, and convincing, touch to make me, a black man, legally related to the missing Williams.
“I never knew he had a brother.”
“He was just a half brother, and the family was sort of estranged,” I lied. “Anyway, my stepfather died recently and I decided that I should get in touch with old Bill.”
I studied acting for the express purpose of being able to lie convincingly on the fly.
“Lee,”
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