Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk(37)

By now I have come to appreciate the Twin Towers, even though I thought them ugly at first, boxy and rectangular and needlessly huge. While they were being constructed, somebody, I can’t remember who, called them soulless and inhospitable to human use: a pair of glass and metal filing cabinets on a colossal scale. In spite of myself, I have always found their gigantism majestic, and now I esteem them, too. If some latter-day Moses ever displaces them—their current tenants’ arcane shifting of cash and commodities someday rendered as quaint as the radio scrappers’ labor, supplanted by robots, satellites, who knows what—then I suppose I would feel their absence much as I do that of other already absented parts of my city. Dully but not quite fully gone. A pair of phantom limbs.

I am standing there, north of Liberty Park Plaza, looking up at the Towers, when someone barks at me.

“Excuse me, ma’am” he says, in a bass-drum boom. “Excuse me. Hey, lady!”

The voice is close, but I don’t see anyone on the street, and for a beat I’m confused—a feeling I hate for its resemblance to senility. Then I see he’s yelling from the rolled-down window of a long limousine.

I have Mace in my purse—a Christmas present from Gian—but I do not bother to reach for it. The man looks harmless. He pulls his heavy car to the curb, clicks on a light above his head to better show himself, and we regard each other through his open window. He is black and has a mustache as dapper as Dashiell Hammett’s, and his eyes are wide, brown, and kind beneath his chauffeur cap. He is wearing a tuxedo, out of professional obligation, of course, but I admire how put together he is, all the same.

“Didn’t mean to scare you,” he says over the idling engine.

“I’d hate to see what you’d do if you did,” I say.

“I just thought you might be looking for a cab. Are you?”

“That’s thoughtful of you,” I say. “But no. No, thank you. Besides, you look more like an extravagance than a cab. Very fancy. And strange to see you out here tonight—I can’t imagine many people are working late on New Year’s Eve. Isn’t the stock exchange closed tomorrow?”

“It is,” he says. “But my guy, the guy I just dropped at his office, is a commodities trader. I guess there’s some shit going down in Tokyo, and he’s got to be on top of it. That’s a quote. Excuse my French.”

“That’s all right,” I say. “What’s your name?”

“Skip,” he says. “My real name’s Paul, but nobody except my Aunt Kitty calls me that. How about you?”

“Lillian,” I say. “And thanks again. But like I said, I’m not looking for a ride. Also, don’t you have to take your trader home? Or to some New Year’s Eve orgy?”

“As a matter of fact, I thought I would,” he says. “But he just sent word that he’ll need a few hours, so they’re sending me uptown. He’ll call the service later. Now it seems kind of wasteful to drive all the way back alone.”

“I thought wastefulness and greed were the driving engines of Wall Street.”

“I can’t dispute that, Lillian,” says Skip. “But please bear in mind that just because I am on Wall Street does not mean I am of it.”

“Fair enough,” I say. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Skip, but I’m doing fine on foot.”

“Well, maybe you ought to be looking for a lift,” he says. “It’s getting colder out, finally. And the city’s dangerous. Just over there is the Chambers Street station, where that Subway Vigilante fled to. And you, well, you’re—”

“Old?” I say. “That is a fact. But I’m all right.”

And I pause, torn, as I often am, between wanting to tell the truth—to impress Skip with my self-sufficiency—and not wanting to be perceived as crazy: some nutty old lady too far around the bend to care for herself. Erring on the side of truth and pride, I add:

“I’ve walked all the way from Murray Hill, and I’m almost to Delmonico’s. I’m not ready to give up the satisfaction of making it there under my own steam. At my age, I need to take my thrills where I can.”

“Murray Hill,” says Skip, shaking his head. “Damn.”

“Yes,” I say, and decide I might as well toss in a lie, just in case. “I’ll be right on time to meet the people I’ll be dining with. My family. We have an 8:30 reservation.”

“Come on, Lillian,” says Skip. “You remind me of my Aunt Kitty. She’s tough—can’t tell her nothing. You’ve practically made it. Why not call good enough good enough? It’s so close, I’ll take you there for free.”

“Has anyone ever told you how persistent you are?” I say.

“I’ve just seen some freaky things in this city, Lillian,” he says. “I wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t try to help you out. The other day—check this out—the other day, up on the south end of Central Park, I saw a seven-foot-tall dude with a fireman’s axe and a Dracula cape. He ran right into the park. Broad daylight. Families around and everything. The cape was from a kid’s costume. Looked like a dishtowel tied around his neck. He wasn’t wearing anything else. The city’s getting fuller of degenerates by the day.”

“That is an excellent story, Skip,” I say. “But we are nowhere near Central Park. I’ll be okay. And besides, how do I know you’re not a degenerate yourself?”