“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.”
He doesn’t need to explain or apologize. Now that he’s relaxed, I can see something clearly in his eyes, in the way he’s standing: He’s terrified to be here alone. Scared of what the job makes him do and scared, too, of whatever made him take the job in the first place. All reasonable fears, I suppose.
“Oh, come on, Stu,” I say. “Let an old lady show off. I’m proud as a peacock that I can still remember any of them.”
“All right,” says Stu. “Try me.”
“Okay,” I say, and then recite, “In a moment off duty, a cop Told a motorist, speeding, to stop. Said the arm of the law, / ‘It may stick in your craw—’”
I look at Stu. He looks at me. “Then what?” he says.
“Well, then you write the last line,” I say. “That’s how it worked. That was the contest. Come on, Stu. Go for it.”
Stu shrugs, helpless. “But I need you to take off your top?” he says.
“Well,” I say. “That rhymes.”
“Sorry,” says Stu. “Sorry. Just free-associating.”
“No, no,” I say. “That’s not bad. It wouldn’t have won you any prizes from family newspapers in 1945, but nowadays who knows? One more?”
“Sure,” says Stu, smiling, finally. “I got nowhere else to be.”
“All right,” I say. “A gang of young rockets from Mars / Shot to earth, like exploding cigars, But when they inspected Our World, they elected—”
“To turn and head back to the stars?” says Stu, crinkling his face in concentration.
“Stu, that’s pretty,” I say. “If I were the judge, I’d give you the blue ribbon.”
“Thanks,” he says, tossing his cigarette butt down toward the Hudson. “I better get back to work. Patrol the site and all.”
“Of course,” I say. “Thanks for playing. I should be going, too.”
“Where you headed?”
“I’m going to a party. For New Year’s Eve. Up in Chelsea.”
“And you’re walking?”