Bailey stood outside on the sweltering sidewalk, trying not to think about how good a chardonnay would taste right now. The touch of the glass on her lips, the intense acidity followed by the velvet sensation that all was right in the world. Back when she drank, she could live in the moment. High on weed or on coke, the past and the future ceased to exist. While ensconced in the lush, landscaped grounds of Silver Hill, she was able to see that way of thinking wasn’t helpful, and she had talked about her past openly, more than she had with anyone. But here in the city, no one cared.
If she turned right and headed down the side street, she was sure to come upon one of the dozen Irish pubs that lined the blocks of Midtown. Places where office workers could escape from the monotony of their lives.
The room where they’d had group at Silver Hill was covered in mottos from the program. “One day at a time” and “No matter where you go, there you are.”
Well, here she was: a drippy, pathetic mess, desperate for a drink in a dive bar.
She checked her watch. There was no time for liquid distractions. She was due to meet Melinda at Cafe Luxembourg in the West Seventies in a half hour. That was truly her last chance. The train would be a steamy cauldron of humanity this time of day, the windows slanted open, like the heat of the tunnels wasn’t just as unbearable as the fiery furnace of the subway car. She couldn’t face it. Instead, she headed north on foot, cutting into Central Park at Seventh Avenue.
Before her mother’s death, Bailey and her parents would venture into the city a couple times a year from their house in New Jersey, usually to see a Broadway musical where dancers executed fast, furious combinations that took Bailey’s breath away while her father, Jack, squirmed in the too-small seat next to her. But Bailey and her mother always buzzed with excitement the morning before, choosing their dresses with care, as if they might get “discovered” during their big day out. Once in Manhattan, her mother would point out her old haunts, like the building where she attended some posh secretarial school for three months before getting married, and the Horn & Hardart Automat where she and Jack met.
During one excursion, having arrived two hours before curtain, Bailey had suggested they visit the boat pond in the park. She’d brought along a magazine with a photo of a gondola passing under an arched bridge, and thrust it between the front seats of their Volkswagen Beetle. “It’s so pretty.”
“No one goes in the park,” Jack warned. “It’s full of gang members, all dust and graffiti because the city ran out of money to take care of it. It’s a ruin, like the rest of Manhattan.”
Her mother studied the magazine. “What if we walk along Central Park West? We could stop by the Dakota and drop in on your relatives.”
“For God’s sake, Peggy. No one drops in like that in the city. And they’re not my relatives, remember?” The conversation came to a halt as Jack slammed on the brakes, narrowly missing a bicycle messenger. They’d eaten soggy fries and overcooked burgers in a diner to kill the time instead.
Bailey didn’t see the city as a ruin. She saw important people going to important places. She’d wanted to be one of them.
For a while, she had been. But now her fall from grace was complete.
As Bailey got deeper into the park and away from the grid of streets, the air became noticeably cooler. A light wind blew in from the west—thunderstorms were predicted for the afternoon—and the rhythmic whispering of the leaves helped slow the beat of her heart and her desire for a drink. She took a deep breath.
The park was a mess still, that was true. But a private group had taken over the maintenance, and the place was getting spruced up. The trash situation seemed better than ever, no more overflowing bins with rats leaping out of them. Progress.
An ugly chain-link fence lined the north side of the Seventy-Second Street park entrance. Bailey was breathing hard from the walk and the heat and she stopped for a moment, clawing the metal with her fingers and pressing her face into the diamond pattern like a child. The area, recently dubbed Strawberry Fields in John Lennon’s memory, was due to open to the public next month. Five years since he’d been gunned down. Every one of her generation remembered where they were when they found out, as if it had just happened yesterday.
A shout from one of the workers brought her out of her thoughts. A couple of the guys at the base of the excavator stared down at something in the dirt, then called to what seemed to be a supervisor, who ambled over, coffee cup in his hand. The supervisor motioned for the excavator driver to cut his engine and wiped his forehead with a red bandanna. They all stood in a circle, necks craned downward, as if in prayer.
Bailey moved on. The Dakota loomed large as she waited for the light to change. The sides were gray, coated with a century of soot, but it still stood out from its neighbors. No subtle art deco motifs here, this was pure decadence. Gables, windows of all shapes and sizes. A filthy, aging dowager of a building. Bailey counted up four stories and located Melinda’s apartment.
When she was a child, Bailey and her parents had visited Melinda, her twin brother Manvel, and their mother once a year, usually around the holidays. The twins’ mother, Sophia, was a throwback to the old days, encrusted with jewels, even at breakfast, her manner cold and officious. The early family gatherings had always been awkward affairs, the tension between Bailey’s dad and her “aunt” palpable, the economic divide an enormous chasm. Once, Melinda had insisted Bailey stay for an overnight visit. They’d raided the kitchen in the still hours of the early morning, cramming Lucky Charms into their mouths straight from the box while Melinda whispered the gory details of the murder of her great-grandfather, the architect Theodore Camden, in that very apartment. They crept into the dark library and Melinda pointed to the far corner, near the window.
“He was killed by some woman who used to work in the building,” Melinda whispered. “She stabbed him, and he bled to death on this very spot. Begging for mercy. She was crazy, they say. Cut off his finger and kept it as a souvenir. Look closer, you can see the blood.”
Bailey leaned forward, squinting, to make out a dark pattern on the floor. Melinda suddenly tweaked her on either side of her waist, making her jump and scream, and they ran back to the safety of Melinda’s canopied bed, crying and laughing at the same time.
The girls had gotten closer once Bailey moved to the city for college, the two of them gradually increasing the dosage and frequency of banned substances in their systems. Manvel, meanwhile, graduated from Yale and headed to the Deep South to do a dissertation on self-taught artists, only returning a few times, including when Sophia died seven years ago.