Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk(52)

“Pardon me?” I say when he’s close enough to hear me without my having to shout. “I was just looking at the river. Is that not allowed?”

He’s breathing hard from his jog, in front of me now, looking me in the eyes as if to appraise me.

“It’s all right as long as you’re not going to jump,” he says, his eyebrows furrowing into concerned blond caterpillars.

“Jump?” I say, and feel insulted. “To commit suicide?”

“People do,” he says.

I look at him, then past him. “I’d have to cut through the fence,” I say. “And then the water’s not more than ten feet below. If I were going to kill myself, I wouldn’t do it that way. What a mess. The whole goal would be for me to die quickly, not to pass torturously of blood poisoning or god knows what months after the fact.”

“Look, lady, I’m sorry I yelled at you,” he says. “I’m just trying to do my job, you know.”

He looks about thirty. Up close his expression is more sad than angry, and his speaking voice is softer, more reedy, having lost the edge it carried when he first yelled.

“I respect that,” I say. “When people are committed to a job.”

The blond caterpillars huddle again. “Are you making fun of me?” he asks.

With the streetlight behind me I can see his face better than he can see mine. “I most certainly am not,” I say.

“It’s not even that I’m that committed,” he says. “I actually hate this job. I just don’t want anybody killing themselves or otherwise getting in trouble on my watch.”

“So you’re a night watchman?”

“Basically, yeah. Security guard. Rent-a-cop. Whatever you want to call it,” he says. “I don’t have any, like, authority. And it’s boring. Yelling at you is probably the most excitement I’ll have all night. And I don’t particularly get off on yelling at old ladies.”

“I have a name,” I say. “Which is Lillian Boxfish. You?”

“Stu,” he says. “Stu Koszinski.”

“How did you end up with this job you don’t like, Stu?”

Stu opens his mouth, about to tell me that he’s working, that he can’t talk right now. Then he closes it, realizing it doesn’t matter. “I’m a Vietnam vet,” he says. “I used to be in the navy. I kind of lost my footing for a while after I got back. Now here I am, guarding this construction site on the waterfront. Far cry from the high seas.”

I think about telling him that this place is called Battery Park for the old artillery batteries they built to defend the city—even here, war is not so far off—but instead I say:

“Thank you for your service. I’m sorry you had to do it.”

“Really?” he says. “You’re welcome.”

“I don’t make a habit of saying things I don’t mean, Stu,” I say.

“A lot of people of your generation seem to think that ’Nam doesn’t rate,” he says. “You guys got the good war. I know all about that, so you don’t have to tell me.”

“I’d never tell you that. I hate all war. I hated that war, too. My husband was in Italy from 1943 to 1945, and when he got back things between us were never quite as they were before he left.”

“Me and my old lady got divorced when I came home,” says Stu. “I never even get to see my kid anymore.”

“Max and I divorced as well. Though by the time we finally did I don’t think the war had much to do with it, at least not directly,” I say. “I’m sorry, Stu.”

“It’s all right,” he says. “It’s not like it’s your fault. It’s life, right?”

“Yes, I think so,” I say. “I think it’s life. Do you want to know what job I had and hated most?”

“Sure,” says Stu. “Fire away.”

“In the summer of 1945 I was freelancing—I’m a writer—and I was saying yes to everything at that point, because Max had just gotten back from Europe and we weren’t sure what was going to happen. You understand.”

“I understand,” says Stu. “Gotta make the money while it’s there. Mind if I smoke?”

“Not at all,” I say. “So I took a job writing limericks. You know what those are, Stu, don’t you?”

“There once was a man from Nantucket?” he says, taking a drag.

“Well, the ones I was writing were for a family newspaper,” I say. “But that’s basically the idea. The Sunday New York Journal-American hired me to write limericks—just the first four lines of them, actually—at $10 a pop. A year’s worth, so $520 for the batch.”

“$520 for incomplete limericks—that’s so much money,” says Stu. “Times have changed.”

“Don’t get me started, Stu,” I say. “This was for their ‘Best Last Line Contest.’ Readers would mail in their submissions to compete for the weekly prize. Would you like to play? It might cheer you up.”

“That’s good of you, Lillian,” says Stu, “but I’m okay. I don’t ever get full-on cheerful. And I’m not mad that you’re here or anything. You just caught me in a moment of commitment to duty. Maybe I overreacted. Yelled more than I needed to.”