Water, Wind, Fire

We climbed up a thin-railed ladder. It was at nearly 90 degrees and led into the sky. I could feel the rust flaking off in my hands. I could feel my sandals angling against each rung. I could feel the whiskey twirl in my head. We reached the top and sat on the platform, which was a series of flaking iron slats only about a foot and a half wide, and we watched the water ripple below us, maybe 60 feet down, and we wondered at the lit buildings. We had a time of it trying to light our cigarettes.

“I fell asleep up here once,” the Welder said.



Today I spent with One Man in Baghdad, who is, clearly, not in Iraq but in New York. We drank wine on a terrace in Tribeca and watched a storm gather on this 85-degree day. As we stood from the table, the wind whipped our empty bottle of Sancerre clear off. Waiters scooped up glasses and we ran down the stairs to the street to get to the subway as quickly as possible. At street level, wind hit us squarely. It was the Great Grit Bowl. I have never felt such force from wind; my dress was held securely down in the front only to fly directly up in the back—it was “like Marilyn Monroe…in a turbo jet engine,” OMiB said.



We flew into the subway station and witnessed a chase. A plainclothes cop led the manhunt as a Man in Blue hid behind a column. Suddenly, they sprinted. Off went the prey, a teenage boy in a striped polo. They ran—fast—down the platform and when they reached the end the kid jumped onto the tracks. We all gasped. Some of us shouted “No!” as he ran at full speed across the uptown tracks, the third rail, the downtown tracks. Four beats later the cops jumped in and crossed all the lanes too, only slightly more carefully. The three disappeared at the far end on the far side of all the tracks as the uptown 1 pulled in and OMiB and I sped off, grit-covered and stunned.

“The devil just came down from the sky,” he said.

“And I think we just watched him run across the tracks,” I said.

“'It was a beautiful warm day' is how the story would start,” he said. “There is some kind of thread here, we just have to find it.”

“Maybe it would end with: 'And the devil got away again,'” I said.