Specimen Days

Cat went down Bond, past the stratospherically expensive Japanese restaurant, past the jinxed store where another optimist had put up signs announcing the imminent appearance of another boutique that would be gone in six months or so. She crossed Lafayette and went up to Fifth Street, her block, her home, what she had come to call her home, though when she'd moved there seven years ago it had been temporary, just a few dim, affordable rooms, postdivorce, until she started her real life in her real apartment. Funny how in only seven years it had metamorphosed from fallback to treasure, how people couldn't believe she'd wangled her way into a rent-controlled, lightless third-floor walk-up on a block where crackheads didn't piss in your vestibule every single night. It all kept shifting under your feet, didn't it? Maybe future generations would prize those spangled Orion sweaters from Nassau Street. Maybe things would fall so far that a pair of cardboard imitation-alligator shoes made in Taiwan would look like artifacts of a golden age.

She passed among the unnerved denizens of Fifth Street. The two Lithuanian women were out on the sidewalk in their folding aluminum lawn chairs, as always, but instead of watching the passersby with their usual regal weariness, they leaned into each other, talking animatedly in their language, shaking their heads. The punk couple with sunburst haircuts stomped along with particular fury so, people, you're fucking surprised that it's all blowing up in your goddamned fucking faces? Only the old homeless man, at his post in front of the flower shop, looked unaffected, chanting his inaudible chants, the hired mourner of the neighborhood, its own singer for the dead.

Cat let herself into her apartment. For a moment she imagined it as the boys of the bomb squad would find it if she d been blown up on the corner of Broadway and Cortlandt. Not so good. Admit it: it was the apartment of somebody who'd let things slide. There were clothes and shoes strewn around; there were dishes in the sink. The books that had long ago overflowed the bookcase (yes, boards and cinder blocks; she'd meant to replace it) were stacked everywhere. Were there spots of mold floating in the coffee cup she'd set on the book pile on one side of the sofa? Sure there were. If you ran a finger along a windowsill, would it come up coated with velvety, vaguely oily dust? You bet it would. It could have been the apartment of a slightly messier-than-usual graduate student. The oatmeal-colored sofa with the broken spring Lucy had given it to her until she got something better. That had been seven years ago.

Fuck it. She was busy. She was beat. Cleanliness was a virtue but not a sexy one.

She checked her voice mail. Simon was the first message.

Hey, you know anything about the explosion? Call me.

She called Titan. Amelia, Simon's secretary, put her straight through.

"Cat?"

"Hi."

"What's going on? What do you know about this thing?"

"I think I talked to him. The bomber." "You're kidding."

"Three days ago. We're not sure yet, but I think I talked to him."

"You talked to him. He called you." "It's my job, baby. I'm the one they call."

"Where are you?"

"Home."

"Do you want some dinner?"

"I guess. I'm honestly not sure."

"I'm going to buy you a drink and some dinner."

"That'd be so nice."

"Where do you want to go?"

"Someplace unchallenging. You pick."

"Right. How about Le Blanc?"

"Great. Perfect."

"Half an hour?"

"Half an hour."

He hung up. While they were talking, Cat had done it again. Picked up a pen and written in her spiral notebook:

Fortress of solitude? Does dirt = filth? Whereas the little house?

She tore out the page, crumpled it, and tossed it away. When had regular note-taking turned into… whatever this was? Free association. Had it started after 9/11? She hoped so. Cause and effect were always comforting.

* * *

She got to Le Blanc in exactly half an hour. She was the first to arrive, as she'd expected. Simon could never just put down the phone and walk away, not even in an emergency. He lived in an ongoing state of emergency. He traded futures. (Yes, he had explained it all to her, and, no, she still didn't understand what exactly it was that he did.) Fortunes flicked across his computer screen, falling and rising and falling again.

He was the man behind the curtain. If he failed to take care of business, Oz might dissolve in an emerald mist. He'd be there as soon as he could.

Cat herself could not overcome her habit of punctuality. She'd tried. It wasn't in her to be late for anything, ever.