Past Imperfect (Sigrid Harald) (25 page)

Beneath Times Square, the push and jostle was fueled by the junction of three subway lines and the shuttle from Grand Central Station. Crowds of people flashed on and off the trains, dressed in everything from blue denim to black satin, ready for everything from just hanging out to hanging over a box seat at the theatre.

On an ordinary Saturday night, this was the frantic, jagged heartbeat of the other New York, the one they’re always going to do something about. Heartbreaking and hopeless. The roar, the crush, the frayed connection were in the very marrow now; mechanically urban, determinedly artificial.

Suddenly, one section of the busy underground concourse was pierced by a wilderness sound straight from the deep woods: a barred owl’s sharp, barking
hoohoo-hoohoo, hoohoo-hoohooaw!
Twice more came the calls, predatory and haunting, then they were followed almost immediately by squawks and chirps and the raucous shriek of a blue jay’s
Thief! Thief!

It was as if a crate of wild birds had suddenly been upended on one of the lower train platforms and people within hearing distance paused and craned to see.

As the wildly insane
oo-HA-oo
laughter of a loon floated up from a nearby stairwell, one of the aimlessly drifting figures stiffened like a bird dog that had unexpectedly caught the pheasant’s scent out there in the tall grass. Checking out this Times Square station had been an impulsive hunch, nothing more. Turning now, quartering the area.

Oo-HA-oo.

Downstairs.

Good God! Was it really going to be that easy?

On the next level down, a slender sandy-haired man had backed himself against a steel girder between two sets of stairs. His overcoat was unbuttoned and the right side was pushed back so that passersby could, if they so desired, easily drop money into the slotted can that dangled from his belt. He carried in his hands a stack of bird pictures, cut from an adult coloring book, which he had accurately colored in vivid crayons, then glued to thin cardboard and covered with clear plastic wrap. Each picture was about six by eight inches and neat hand-lettering on the border identified each bird by both its common and Latin names.

So intent was the sandy-haired man on his act, that the nondescript figure walking slowly down the stairs didn’t even register as an individual.

Easy does it,
thought the bird dog.
No eye contact. Don’t spook him. So that’s Jerry the Canary. This clown really likes train stations. Platform’s too crowded. Another push? Could I get away with it? Or better to follow and see where’s he’s nesting now?

His audience hooked, Jerry the Canary held up his next bird card, a bright red cardinal, and burst into a mixture of clear and slurred whistles:
what-cheer-cheer-cheer.
In swift procession came a bluebird’s soft gurgling notes, a wood thrush’s rounded flutelike phrases, a robin’s joyful whistle, and a virtuoso rendition of a horned lark’s high-pitched series of irregular tinkling notes, which was so delightful that it brought a round of applause from his audience.

Experience had taught him when to stop and pat his money can and do his stork walk around the circle of onlookers. When one or two bills were dropped in along with several coins, he twittered a song sparrow’s
sweet-sweet-sweet!

Before the Canary came too near, his stalker had turned away, pretending an interest in the overhead sign that identified this as a stop for the Broadway-Seventh Avenue Local. Like a taxi summoned by a doorman’s whistle, the 9 train rushed noisily into the station and disgorged another load of Saturday night revelers.

Jerry the Canary had just begun to mimic a catbird when a policeman from the Transit Authority leaned over the railing above and spotted him.

“Hey!” the cop shouted, “Canary! I want to see you!”

Instantly, the catbird picture was replaced by an amateurish drawing of a fat yellow Tweety Bird. “Ooh, I t’ought I taw a puddy-tat!” he lisped and ducked into the 9 train just as the doors were closing.

The transit cop sprinted down the steps. “Wait!” he yelled.

But the conductor never heard and the train had already picked up speed. In frustration, the cop thwacked the nearest I-beam with his nightstick and glared at the laughing bystanders.

Across the platform, the bird dog reined in similar frustration and bitterly consigned all T.A. cops to hell.

“Beep!”
went her answering machine and “Dammit all, Siga!” went Oscar Nauman’s exasperated voice. “Why’d you give me your work schedule, if you’re never going to be in?”

Sigrid clicked off the tape and lazily undressed. She’d had just enough wine to feel mellow as she hung up her slacks and jacket, put the rest in the laundry hamper, and slipped into a red silk negligee Nauman had given her. How amused he’d been to discover that while she didn’t seem to care what her street clothes looked like, she did have a weakness for expensive silky, lacy lingerie.

The gown was a clear red. No orange overtones. An “Eastern Winter” red. Well, no one had ever faulted Nauman’s color sense, had they? She smiled to herself and turned the tape back on.

“Anyway the panel went okay. The Mickey Mouse guy dropped out to go to Cologne to pick up some prize or other. Buntrock took his place and did his usual tap, toe, and bubble dance about appropriations, simulacra, Foucault . . .”

As Nauman dismantled Buntrock’s speech, Sigrid pulled from her closet all her earth-toned clothes: the browns, bricks, and terra-cottas. Next went the yellowy beiges and olives, even though this left her closet decimated. She was ruefully intrigued to see how many of Grandmother Lattimore’s jewel-toned choices remained. Nauman was always trying to make her wear them. She thought of that museum benefit she’d promised to attend next week. Maybe she’d surprise him and wear that dramatic sapphire taffeta.

“—and the parties were better than I thought they would be. Got to see some of my pictures I hadn’t seen in years. Years? Hell, decades! You never forget a one of them, Siga. Funny how they mellow. I hated to walk out of the room . . . was like I might never see them again . . . never had that feeling before.”

The concert at Avery Fisher Hall had ended and the audience streamed out into Lincoln Center’s broad plaza. As the floodlit central fountain gushed upward in changing colors, the pathetic falling cadences of a mourning dove attracted some of the concertgoers:
ah-love-love-love!
came the wistful call.
Ah-love-love-love.

Despite the cold, many lingered to hear what would follow. With the music of Mozart and Haydn still echoing in their heads, the contrast between that sophisticated orchestra and this primitive maker of naive music was deliciously irresistible to certain jaded palates.

The sandy-haired man sat on the edge of the fountain and chirped and twittered to such an appreciative (and moneyed) group that by the time he saw two boys in blue approaching from Columbus Avenue, he had collected enough to buy food and a warm bed at the Paradiso for at least a week.

Melting into the crowd with his pictures tucked into a deep pocket, Jerry the Canary wondered if maybe he’d been wrong staying underground all winter. If they were gonna keep hassling him, he told himself, maybe he’d just migrate to the streets early this year.

CHAPTER 22

The temperature plummeted and snow began falling again well before daybreak Sunday morning. As if determined to disguise the city’s filth, it draped a fresh white blanket over the unmelted piles of dirty snow which still lingered from Thursday, covered rotting piers and the stripped cars abandoned near those piers, hid all the paper trash caught in the shrubs and iron railings of vest-pocket parks around the island, and lent the twisty narrow streets of Greenwich Village the illusion of a nineteenth-century village again. The Sanitation Department fought back, of course, immediately deploying salt trucks and plows. Yet, because it was still the weekend, only the main transverse roads were cleared from the East River to the Hudson; and Washington Square began to take on a Currier and Ives beauty that promised to delight any Sunday strollers hardy enough to venture out.

West Tenth was one of the streets that hadn’t yet been plowed or salted, and as Sigrid picked her way toward Hudson Street, an optimistic cross-country skier schussed past, heading for the waterfront.

Sigrid was an urban creature, never one to sing anthems to the beauties of nature. If she had a sport, it was swimming in a heated indoor pool, not skiing frigid peaks, that attracted her; yet waiting at her bus stop, she tipped her head up to let the dry, powdery flakes fall on her face and when her bus arrived, she took a window seat so that she could go on looking at the snow.

The heaters on this bus barely functioned; the other passengers’ breaths came in puffs of steam; yet she was warmed by the memory of sledding with Nauman up in Connecticut, and for the first time since dropping him off at La Guardia last Tuesday, she admitted to herself that she missed him and wished he were back in town.

How much more pleasant it would be if she were on her way to meet him rather than facing up to what waited for her at work. She knew she should spend this commuting time on planning—if not for diffusing the tensions bound to arise when knowledge of the special task force leaked out, then certainly for her meeting with Tom Oersted at seven.

Instead, as the bus lurched and swayed from one stop to another, she continued to watch the snow.

Bernie Peters looked up in surprise as Matt Eberstadt entered the squad room shortly before eight.

“I thought you were going to call in sick,” he said.

“Yeah, well after what Pam told Frances, I thought I’d better get in here and pull my weight,” Matt said testily.

“Huh?”

“Frances says Pam thinks it’s my fault you don’t have time for the kids.” He hung his quilted jacket next to Bernie’s and headed for the coffee pot.

“Oh, jeez!” Bernie groaned. “I’m sorry, Matt. I guess I sorta let her think I was working a coupla times when I didn’t go straight home.”

“Thanks a lot, pal.”

“I know, I know, but jeez, Matt, sometimes I hate to walk in the door, you know? The kids are always whining and Pam acts like it’s my fault they tire her out. Maybe I shouldn’t have let her go back to work. How’d you keep Frances home all these years?”

Matt snorted at the idea of making Frances do anything she didn’t want to.

“It was her decision. She sat down and figured it out once and by the time she added everything in—fast food, baby sitters, extra clothes for her, bus fare, kicking us into a higher tax bracket—you know how much she’d have cleared at a nine-to-five job? Forty-four dollars a week. She decided it wasn’t worth the aggravation.”

“Wish she’d have a talk with Pam for me,” said Bernie.

“It’s different with the young women today, I guess,” Matt said, uncomfortably. Pam Peters was fifteen years younger than Frances, prettier, and probably hell on wheels in bed; but he wouldn’t trade a dozen spoiled brats like Pam for one level-headed Frances.

“It’ll get better as the kids get older,” he told his partner.

“I guess,” Bernie said gloomily. “How’d the game go last night? Kenny start?”

“Yeah. Played sixteen minutes and scored four for six with three assists. Tip even got in for two minutes: Oh for two from the field; but he got the front end of a one-and-one, so Frances said they were both pretty excited.”

“You didn’t go?”

Matt shook his head. “She thought I ought to get straight to bed.” Bernie looked at him critically. “You sound a little better. How do you feel?”

“Okay,” said Matt. “Nothing like a good night’s sleep.”

He promptly yawned.

As they began setting out the day’s priorities, the hall door opened and Tillie arrived with a sheaf of computer printouts.