Ali nodded. “Yes, he saying, ‘Everything good now.’”
Cars zoomed by, cabs, a police car, then another, red lights, sirens roaring. Ali shook his head, dismissively, and went on to tell me a story: “One night, I hear sounds—sirens—lights—and cops pull up right in front of shop. Right here, right there,” he emphasized, pointing out at the curb. “I think, ‘Nothing wrong, I don’t call cops, what’s happening?’ But then police get out of their car and just walk into shop, and the policeman—she say to me—”
“It’s a policewoman?”
“Yes, woman policeman, and she say, ‘I want to buy lottery.’”
Ali explained that it was one of those days when the jackpot was really high. Then he grinned and shook his head, like that was the end of the story.
“So, wait, let me get this straight: There was no emergency? Nothing wrong?”
Ali was blasé. “Right, nothing wrong, I do nothing wrong, I never do. She buy a bunch of tickets.”
“So then what happened?”
“She played her badge number—won $200, and split it with her partner.”
“Didn’t even give you a tip?”
Ali looked at me like, Did you just move here? Are you crazy?
“No! Nothing! They get in their car, put sirens back on, and go.”
I laughed for the first time in many days. “Thank you, Ali.”
“You’re welcome, my friend.”
POSTSCRIPT
I once met a woman who was an astronaut—she’d been an engineer aboard the space shuttle and completed five missions. She told me that the coolest thing about life in space was not weightlessness or the incredible speed with which you travel, but the view of Earth from hundreds of miles away. You cannot imagine how beautiful it is. And when you’re in orbit, the sun rises sixteen times a day.
That pretty much sums up how I feel about New York. I found I had to leave it in order to get a clear perspective on my life here and to write this book—most of which I did in Rome in a single five-week period less than six months after Oliver died.
One evening, I took a walk by the Tiber. I was going to take my usual route—across the Ponte Sisto and through the Palazzo Farnese—but changed my mind when the light turned green and headed west instead. I took a right on the Ponte G. Mazzini and stopped mid-span. Some people say Rome is a big, tough city, gritty, but I don’t find it this way at all. (Have they been to New York?) I find Rome gentle, magical. The sun had just set, and the light was extraordinary—smoky-rosy-golden-violet, light that cannot be captured in a photo or, for that matter, in words.
I found a pen in my jacket and wrote a note to myself on a tattered map, the only thing in my bag or pockets resembling a piece of paper:
Living in Rome makes me wish I were
Living in Paris, which makes me wish I were
Living in Amsterdam, which makes me wish I were
Living in Iceland, which makes me wish I were
Back home.
New York.
Back home, I find that the one question I am asked more often than any other these days (the one question other than, How are you doing?) is, Are you going to stay? Are you going to stay in New York?
“By ‘stay,’ do you mean forever?” I mean to ask but don’t. Stay till I die? Till I am too old to take care of myself, like my father?
“For now,” is my answer, but I don’t know, not really. If moving to New York at age forty-eight taught me anything, it is that I am capable of starting over in a new place. And yet, the thought of leaving it, of knowing how much I would miss, is too painful to contemplate.
I remember how Wendy once told me she loved New York so much she couldn’t bear the thought of it going on without her. It seemed like both the saddest and the most romantic thing one could possibly say—sad because New York can never return the sentiment, and sad because it’s the kind of thing said more often about a romantic love—husband, wife, girlfriend, partner, lover. You can’t imagine them going on without you. But they do. We do. Every day, we may wake up and say, What’s the point? Why go on? And, there is really only one answer: To be alive.
—New York, August 30, 2016
Under the Overpass
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS