"Sorry, fella..." she mumbled.
Bridget headed down the stairs from the station and crossed the street, taking in this new land of Queens.
A closed-up deli, some beat-up cars. So far, Queens was like Manhattan dipped in depression.
She crossed the street and felt a pang in her heart. Happened a lot. A kick of an ache - it wasn’t the sights in front of her, it was the missing him.
Billy.
“Jaysis fuck, I wish you were here,” she whispered.
Grief was a fucker, Bridget Dwyer had learned. Sadness was preferable - it hurt, you felt it, then it was over. But grief was like a bad party guest - it left, then came back every hour to ring the doorbell.
Bridget glanced down at the tiny bouquet of purple and yellow flowers in her hand. “Half size. Easy to carry… Cheap,” she’d said to the nice Asian lady with the glasses at the flower stand on St. Mark’s.
As she walked, she glanced around the street. Row-houses, a few kids outside playing kickball.
She slipped the address out of her pocket, written in blue pen on the scraggly piece of paper.
204 Emerson Street, Queens. Drop off the flowers, go.
100 good things. That’s what that peace lady said on the telly back in Belfast. 100 Good things will lighten your soul.
They call that monster the 44 Caliber Killer or Son of Sam. “Fuck him,” Bridget thought that morning, staring at the New York Post cover at the newsstand.
She read the name of the teenager he killed. That’d be where she’d start. Do something. Don’t be paralyzed. Give something. Even if you feel like a total fool doing it. Those parents lost their daughter.
A few minutes later she was standing in front of the gate to a red brick row house with green shutters and a beat up looking porch with a railing - she couldn't remember the girl's name now... the one that lunatic had killed - Denise? Debbie? But she would leave something for the girl’s parents. Something to say the whole world isn't awful. Flowers. It wasn't much, but maybe it’d let in a crack of light.
A small row house, like you'd see back in Belfast. But New York style. Run down, but still, like someone cared about it. A front porch with two wicker chairs. A low metal gate along the front opening up to the chipped concrete path to the front door.
100 good things will lighten your soul.
And from 100 good things, she’d gotten to 86.
She saved a mangy grey and white stray cat on the Lower East Side the week before. Gave it a saucer of milk and brought it to the Italian lady who runs the laundromat whose cat died.
Doing good. It’s kinda how she always was anyway. But it had more purpose now.
Bridget unlatched the lock of the gate and pulled it open. She tiptoed up the front walk and slid the flowers onto the porch. Then placed down the note she had written. "I'm so sorry for your loss..."
She turned and made her way down the walk, closing the gate behind her with a near silent click.
She heard a brash lady voice.
"Yeah - They're not home..."
Standing on the porch next door - a heavy-set 40-ish woman, in a short sleeve blouse with a black bra strap hanging down over her upper arm. The woman flicked her head towards the porch.
"Awww. You leavin' flowers?"
"Yeah... I just thought - "
"That's sweet a' you...You know her? Denise? She babysat my kids. They loved her."
"No... I didn't know her..."
"Nah? Didn't know her?"
Bridget loved how the word 'her' sounded like, 'huh' ‘Didn't know, huh’
The woman shook her head "Terrible thing... Yer a good person...I tell my girls inside by 9 pm. Look. Sweetheart, you better get off the street wit your black hair….You know?”
“Thanks... I’m goin’ to the subway.”
“You know, my friend Toni, her daughter Linda works in Manhattan - she wears a blond wig when she comes home. Cause he likes brown haired girls. It's crazy..."
"Aye, it is.”
"You English, sweetheart?"
"Irish."
The woman grinned. "Ah, yeah. Like the Lucky Charms guy... Sweet. Well, I'm sure they're gonna like the flowers."
Flawuhs...
"You're a good girl there, Lucky Charms..." the woman smiled.
Bridget made her way down the street back towards the subway.
She was pretty sure the Lucky Charms leprechaun would more have been from Cork or Dublin than Belfast. First of all, the accent, secondly, he'd have had a fuckin' bullet hole in his green hat if he lived in Belfast.
Ten minutes later, Bridget was sitting on a half-lit subway car trundling over the bridge staring at a multicolored tangle of graffiti covering an ad for foot cream.
She shifted her eyes from the ad and gazed at the sunset out the window as the train made its way back across the bridge to Manhattan. What a sight - the breathtaking skyscrapers in the lit up skyline. Who’d have ever thought she’d be here? But right now her heart was somewhere else.
Home. Her sister Leanne. Her friend Sue. Her Ma. She tried to shift her thoughts. Her throat got tight with a sob.
She missed Tayto's crisps and fish and chips from Mara's and pints of Guinness at the pub. But “Home is where you make it,” she told herself like a hundred times a day.
And the least she could do is make this place better somehow for other people.
She pulled the latest news on what was happening back home out of her pocket.
There was a Clancy's on 14th Street that usually had the Irish papers on the bar. She'd go in, chat up the bartender, not order a drink, read the paper, slip out the front few pages to read later, and leave.
Now, sitting on the subway car, she unfolded the page of The Belfast Times and glanced at the headlines from last week.
Some Provies got picked up planting a car bomb in Birmingham, England. New Belfast Mayor elected. Some British envoy to visit kid's school in Armagh. The search for The Panther continues - that IRA soldier who was wanted for blowing up that department store on Reardon Street where three people died. They were saying in the article that the cops were interviewing several suspects. But still had no real leads. They knew the bomber was a woman who had an accomplice. They had some grainy footage. They knew she planted a bomb that killed three people that night at the department store. They knew that the bomb went off an hour before it was supposed to, an hour before the timer said. Chances are the deaths were not planned.
That’s all they knew.
Bridget knew it too.
She knew all about that fuckin’ busted bomb that went off too early.
She had put it there.
8
“Connie Pell on line three.”
“Thanks, Cathy.”
Penny picked up the phone. “Con, three days without you in this office is like a century. Where’ve you been?”
“Oh, y’know, Paris, the Hamptons, Timbuktu.”
A few days after the ‘no baby’ news at the doctor, Penny Langston was sitting at her desk at Peckham Press on Sixth Avenue. Sunlight was streaming in to her office and she had an open manuscript in front of her and a red pen by her side.
Penny flipped the manuscript closed. “You on vacation, darling?”
“Something like that. Everything good?”
“Gangbusters.”
“Facetious?”
“Completely.”
Connie chuckled. “Let’s hear.”
Penny loved her conversations with Connie. The two of them were bonded from some heart and brain place that only came along a few sparkly times in your life.
Penny smiled. “Con, remember I told you I thought I was pregnant? Went to the doctor the other day.”
Penny noticed a crackly sound, Connie Pell’s voice sounded far away.
“The one who flirts with you?”
“Uch, yes.”
“And?”
“Quite not pregnant.”
“Aw, Penny. I’m sorry.”
“T
hanks.”
“You tell Davis?”
“Not yet.”
Connie laughed. “What are you waiting for?”
Penny glanced out the window of her corner office at the sky. She absently stared at three puffy white clouds and squinted to see the shapes. Sheep. Sheep. Seahorse.
“Him to be someone else. Is that unrealistic?”
Connie chuckled quietly. “Not at all, my friend...”
Penny heard an intercom in the background of their call.
“Hey, where are you? Sounds like a train station.”
“Don’t get mad.”
Penny laughed. “What? I won’t get mad.”
“And don’t worry.”
Penny raised an eyebrow. “Connie, I don’t worry.”
“You do worry.”
“I don’t worry.”
“Yeah, you do. So don’t.”
“Thank you. Now I’m worried.
She heard Connie sigh. There was a pause on the other end of the line.
“Um, I’m sort of in a hospital.”
“What? Are you alright?”
“Yes! Yes of course. It’s nothing. I’ll be home tomorrow,” Connie said. “I sort of got arrested the other day.”
“You got - ”
“Not charged. It’s a long story. Walked into Grenadier Pond for a swim.”
Penny stared at the buttons on her office phone. Her heart sank.
“And these are the words that follow, ‘don’t worry’?”
Connie laughed. “I’m fine. Like I said - home tomorrow. Back at work soon.”
Penny closed her eyes. “Connie....”
“I’ll be fine - it’s just a little - I’m not myself.”
“I know, sweetie.”
Penny had seen it since Connie came back a few weeks ago from Maternity Leave. The sorrow she couldn’t shake.
And Penny knew from her own mother, God not rest her soul, what severe depression looked like.
“Look, hon, anything you need.”
“Thanks, Pen, Just wanted to check in and say hi. You always make me feel better.”
“My sparkling optimism?”
“No. Just you.”
Penny felt the words land in the British part of her heart that took in compliments and then spit them back out. Like when a spoon goes down the drain.
“Con, you want to have lunch this weekend near you somewhere?”
“It’s not that dire,” Connie said with a little laugh. “That you should come out to New Rochelle.”
“I live three towns away.”
“Yeah, nicer towns,” Connie chuckled. “Look, I should go.”
“Right.”
“I’ll see you soon, Pen.”
“You better.”
Penny hung up the phone. She slid the manuscript away and leaned back in her chair, staring out the window at the office building across the way on 57th Street.
“Fuck…” she whispered. As much worry as just plain disappointment to not have Connie around.
Connie was the light in Penny’s workday. She knew work should be - but Connie just lit her up like other people didn’t. If Connie were a guy she’d be worried she had a crush. But of course she wasn’t, so of course she didn’t.
Connie with her great laugh and her freckles and her strawberry blond hair. Who never believed she was beautiful. And was the kind of beautiful that few people are.
And the earnest look in her eyes when she talked about books. She was all business. But the little smirk on her lips anytime else. Like she was just waiting for something to make her laugh.
Penny’s phone rang. An inside line. She picked it up.
“Penny Langston…”
“Penny, it’s Philip.”
Her boss, Philip McLaren. No nonsense. Friendly. Distant. And uttering the words every busy editor doesn’t want to hear.
“Look, Penny. I’m sorry to do this to you. Connie Pell is going to be out for a while.”
A while. That was news.
“I’m going to need you to take over some of her workload.”
“Of course,” Penny said. Because that’s what she always said. No problem. Consider it done.
But all she could think about was Connie.
“Sandy...”
Penny was standing in the carpeted corridor outside Connie’s office trying to get the attention of Connie’s secretary, Sandy. A 20-something with a fondness for Cleopatra eyeliner and glittery tops. Sandy was currently on the phone in a heated conversation with what sounded like her boyfriend. And oblivious to anything else.
“Hi, Sandy,” Penny said. “I need the files that Philip said were - ”
Sandy didn’t hear. She was lost in her phone conversation, with her hand covering her mouth on the receiver as if that made it not a personal call. And talking so quietly there were practically no consonants.
“Yeah, I said that... No... She didn’t... Lewis, I said I’d be there... I heard you, the disco in White Plains.”
Penny sighed. Sandy wasn’t the best secretary in the place. She was actually the worst. But Connie loved her and so Penny loved her.
“Right,” Penny said. “Not to worry. As long as everything goes well at the disco.”
Penny stepped into Connie’s office and looked around. It made her heart tug.
This place without Connie wasn’t the same. And yes, she was worried.
She walked over to the desk. She spotted the framed picture of Connie and her husband, Ray. Mustache. Ill-fitting brown suit. He had his arm around Connie like he was hugging a parking meter.
There on the desk, Penny spotted her new assignment - the three files Philip was talking about. Now these authors were going to be Penny’s.
She flipped through the files: David Dudley, Thrillers - Mid-list but with promise, Sarah Gottleib - Contemporary Romance, and Jamie Brennan - the one who had written that book The Readers that everyone had loved. About the people who came into the bookstore where she worked and what they bought. It was charming but thin.
And where the other authors had new manuscripts, under Jamie Brennan it said, Work in progress.
Penny scowled. “Work in progress, what the bloody hell is that about?”
She stepped out into the hallway. Disco Sandy was now off the phone and arranging some paperclips into a neat pile.
“Sandy…”
She looked up. startled. “Oh my gosh! Ms. Langston… You scared me.”
“Is there anything else for Jamie Brennan? What does ‘work in progress’ mean?”
“Oh. Connie said they would get together for lunch at Schrafft’s once a week. They were forming it.”
“For the past year?”
Sandy shrugged. “I’m not sure.”
“Right. Well, that’ll change… Hey, look - have you heard anything else from Connie?”
“Um… She called this morning. Told me about the files for you. Said you’d know what to do.”
“How did she sound?”
“Okay, I think.”
“Okay, like…”
Sandy’s eyes shifted back and forth. “Like fine?”
“Fine like… herself?”
There was a long pause. Sandy’s large muppet-like eyes appeared to cross slightly.
“…What?”
Penny smiled. She felt foolish for asking. “Nevermind. Thanks for the files.”
Penny turned and made her way back down the hall back to her office.
“Penny! Hey…”
Fellow editor Joan Sussman caught up to her.
Joan Sussman was a mid-40’s mover and shaker in the industry with a blunt bob and a penchant for coke. She was perpetually on the move. Penny noticed she always walked fast like a sandpiper avoiding a wave.
Joan peered up at Penny from her 5’1” frame.
“Hey, doll. Heard Connie’s out for a bit.”
Penny waved to Gavin Barone from marketing down the hall.
“Um, yes.”
There w
as something about Joan Sussman that you had to like. Penny did.
“So it would seem, Joan.”
“Poor thing. The baby-sads or something, huh?”
“I’m not sure.”
“My mother had that. They almost locked her up.”
Joan waved at someone down the hall. “CALL ME LATER, BOBBY!” Then turned back to Penny. “You look gorgeous today by the way. That dress. Wowsa. Diane Von Furstenberg wrap?”
Penny absently glanced down at her emerald green and white dress. “It is.”
All she could think about was Connie.
So, fine. She did worry.
“Love it,” Joan said. “God, Penny, to have one millionth your gorgeousness for an afternoon.”
“That’s a very nice thing to - ”
“I’d go out and get laid.”
“Right.”
“Hey. I’m taking some of her authors – Connie’s. Heard you got David Dudley and Sarah Gottleib. Care to trade for Doctor Annie Whatsername who does the diet books?”
“The Pear Slices Diet? No, thank you.”
“Aw, come on. Who else you got?”
Penny looked at the files. “Jamie Brennan?”
Joan’s face lit up. “Ah! She’s the next thing almost. The Readers right? Looks like Candice Bergen. Got a good look. You could book TV shows with that look. God, why aren’t my authors pretty? I’ve got one, I swear to god, Penny. She writes romance. Looks like Mr. Ed.”
“Joan, why do you always talk so fast, is it coffee?”
Joan laughed. “Coffee. Bennies. Don’t judge.”
“Wouldn’t dare,” Penny smiled.
“That Jamie Brennan - she have a book written yet?”
“I’m not sure what’s happening there. No manuscript.”
Joan waved to someone down the hall. “CALL ME ABOUT THE BOOK LAUNCH!”
“Joan, my ear.”
“Sorry - Yeah, Jamie Brennan,” Joan continued. “Connie said she had some shit happen. Can’t write. Kid Gloves. I dunno. Something like that.”
“Something like what?”
She turned towards her, but Joan had already ducked into the conference room and joined a meeting in progress.
“Okay, tell me when you’re doing that!”
9
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