Absent Friends

In the shadow of the El women with their wheeled wire carts stopped for gossip. Old men shuffled by, dangling loaves of bread and quarts of milk in plastic bags. Eleven-year-old Phil Constantine (Konnenstein in the old country, four generations back; Phil had cousins called Conner) was on a mission for the new Spider-Man, hoping maybe for the Fantastic Four, though that was probably not out until tomorrow. He headed up this way a couple of times a month: he'd worked out the Marvel schedule, and DC, too, he knew just when to expect his books.

He knew this, too: Sometimes when you got to the newsstand, the Irish kids from St. Margaret's would be hanging out on the corner. Sometimes if they were, all they did was look at you with stony eyes; but sometimes they wanted more. If they did, you had to fight them. Had to. Because if you didn't take it up there, in public, on the sidewalk, they'd wait for you on the ballfield at dusk, or on the corner where the construction site was: somewhere lonely, where no one would see and no adults were near to break it up.

Phil understood early that that was the point: on the sidewalk, where adults could see and stop you, no one won and no one lost. The St. Margaret's boys could throw down the challenge, could stand proud that they'd defended their territory, could claim they'd have murdered you, pulverized you, little kike bastard, if only old man Murray hadn't come out swinging his baseball bat, hadn't threatened to call the cops. They could do this safe in the knowledge that old man Murray would come out, or Mrs. Harper, or that old crock Lefkowitz with his bloodied butcher's apron. That someone would stop them before they had to find out how far they were really willing to go.

Phil understood that. And this: old man Murray's newsstand wasn't the only place to buy comic books. You could walk way up Broadway, twenty minutes out of the neighborhood, where the St. Margaret's boys didn't care if you went or not. You could jump on the El, ride downtown a few stops, pick up your books in the subway newsstand at 168th, and come back on the same token. You had choices. Going to Murray's, Phil was making his.

So when he had to, Phil fought those boys.

And as great as the relief was that enveloped him anytime he rounded the corner and saw the sidewalk empty, he never once considered not heading to old man Murray's newsstand the day the new Spider-Man came out.

Now, knotting his tie in the locker room mirror, he thought that same enveloping relief was where the team game came from at the Y a mile from Ground Zero, the first weeks after.

They were all relieved that this one morning ritual could continue. That among so many things so totally changed, this one hour was still what it had been. That it required no coping, no dealing-with, no brave adjustments or support groups or halting, painful phone calls.

The passing and the play-making were expressions of gratitude.

Gratitude for what?

They were grateful to one another, Phil thought, for being alive.

Two blocks east of the Y, Phil sat down at a diner counter to drink black coffee, wait for eggs and bacon, thumb through the morning papers. All five, every day: the dailies and the Wall Street Journal. Just to know.

The war on the other side of the world was shown in grainy photos of blossoming explosions. A story on a Pentagon briefing quoted a spokesman telling reporters that the situation was too security-sensitive for him to tell reporters anything. At home, in the twisted, smoking ruins of Ground Zero, eight firefighters were pictured saluting a flag-draped stretcher that carried the remains of one of the three bodies recovered yesterday. No one knew where the anthrax was coming from, no one knew whether the air downtown was safe to breathe, and no one knew what they would find as they pulled the rubble pile apart shovel by shovel and ton by ton. No one knew.

In the Times the Harry Randall story was inside, in the Nation Challenged section with all the other September 11–related news. Reporter Dies in Suicide Plunge from Verrazano Narrows Bridge. Wrote Series of Articles About Hero Firefighter. Phil shook his head. Son of a bitch. He hadn't liked Randall, hadn't liked him at all, but, shit, couldn't a guy even die without the glow of Jimmy McCaffery's halo throwing him into shadow?

He scanned the Times story. He didn't know why he was reading it, and he didn't learn anything from it. The Post and the Daily News were pretty much the same, fewer words, more pictures.

The Tribune was different. They carried the story, with Randall's photo, on the front page, just below the fold. The headline was different, too, a clear shot across someone's bow. Whose? Good question. Phil propped the paper against the ketchup bottle and read every word.

From the New York Tribune, October 31, 2001