BANK STREET

by Keith Lord

Chapter 1.

New York, 2001

“But I was careful. I pulled out.”

Though how careful can you be, Jamie thought, pulling out? There was always a

greedy surge, just before interruptus; a drop ­ a Manhattan of latent life ­ finding its

target.

“They say you’re extra fertile,” Valerie sighed. “When you miss a day.”

Jamie glanced up from his phone. In his mind he was freeze-framing, timestamping:

eight-fifteen on a September morning, the sky so blue it seemed to mock him;

Tom’s roof terrace on West 11th, the host bare-kneed on a lawn-chair, swirling an iced

coffee.

“I just took a test,” Valerie went on. “I’m positive. Hold on ­ ”

A voice was calling her. A male voice, but not a bedroom one. Shrill and

prescriptive, it belonged to Professor Harvey Grenke, the noted hawk. Assuring him

she’d be two minutes max, Valerie came back in a whisper.

“Car’s waiting. We’re due at The Economist in fifteen.”

“He can’t go without you?” Jamie pled, aware of the creeping sensation of

addressing an invalid.

“Someone’s got to lug his notes. I’ll call later. There’s two more editorial boards

after this. Then dinner at the House of Lords. So tomorrow ­ I’ll call tomorrow ­ ”

“But ­ ”

But she’d hung up, chumping him again.

“Top-up?”

This was Tom, hoisting the jug of iced coffee.

“Yeah. Cheers.”

Jamie took a hasty gulp, prompting a spasm of neuralgia that at least served to

distract him from his other headache; the one earned last night, alone in the Columbus

one-bedroom.

“Got a picture?” Tom asked, sickeningly handsome with his arms looped behind

the lawn chair, chest hairs sprouting from a blue-check shirt. The terrace was similarly

demoralising: Jamie’s apartment could fit with room to spare on its brilliantined boards.

And this was a rental. Tom’s idea of slumming it.

“Excuse me?”

“This cowgirl of yours. Got a picture?”

Of course he did, though the one he gave Tom wasn’t the best (better ones lay in

his wallet, Jamie holding them back out of a vague caution). It didn’t have to be. She was

a geometric wonder, Valerie Mark, her face calling for no special lighting, possessing no

good side, being simply good all over, from the rich red hair ­ a lion’s mane ­ to the

jutting chin she deployed boldly, rising and dipping like an advance messenger. Such

flaws as she possessed were hardly flaws at all, but marks of character like the grains on

fine leather: the tear-drop smudges beneath her eyes that lent a faintly melancholic air;

the subtle disjoint, three-quarters up her nose, borne of a childhood bucking.

Communing with the print, Tom embarked on a ritual, familiar by now to Jamie,

of gasps and head-shakes, eyes shuttling incredulously between the image and its owner.

“How did you meet?” he asked, a follow-up Jamie invariably heard as: “How did

you meet her?”

“Columbia. She’s International Affairs. Doctoral.”

“I might have to rethink my stance on higher education,” Tom cooed, examining

the photo again. He seemed reluctant to part with it. “So this is the girl you’ve banged

up?”

“Ah ­ you heard.”

Shrugging in exculpation, Tom returned the print. “You don’t seem too pleased.”

“Excuse me?”

“There’s some bubbly downstairs. I’d bring it up if you’d crack a smile.”

“What are you ­ ?”

“You’ve been here, what ­ half an hour? ­ I must have heard the girl’s name a

dozen times. I only have to say how blue the sky is, and you’re off on: ‘Valerie likes

blue. She likes blue, but her favourite colour is ­ ”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Not that I blame you. Seeing her. Knowing you. But why so glum, chum? She’s

having your kid.”

“How do you know? She might want to ­ ”

Tom shook his head.

“Do you think she’d have told you first? No ­ you’ve snared her, haven’t you?”

Tom sounded almost rueful, like a plum deal had passed him by. “You and your fiendish

spawn.”

Jamie shivered. However bluntly, his old friend had cut through it ­ exposing his

fear. Was it his spawn that had snared her? Or was it Rip’s?

He’d feigned nonchalance when the card came from Tyler, Texas, announcing

Casey Gosling, Rip’s kid brother, was getting married. Frowning over croissant and

coffee, Valerie declared finally that she should go, out of respect to Rip’s parents who’d

been so sweet to her, even during the break-up. Out of respect to Rip too, who’d been

pretty decent, all things considered, over the sale of the Georgetown condo and his forced

bivouacking in Pentagon digs. Sure, Jamie could tag along if he wanted, though he

wouldn’t know anyone, and it’d be hotter than Hades down there in the middle of

summer, and ­ this last like a clincher ­ Smith County was dry, honey. Dry as a bone.

Go. You go. Have fun. Just no funny business (here a laugh, a finger wag.)

Head cocked, nose wrinkled, she was on the phone to STA to book her flight.

The weekend of the wedding, Jamie fretted like an abandoned puppy. Sunday

night he took a cab, ambushing her at JFK. He wanted to catch her unawares, being

possessed of a notion, ridiculous really, that if Rip had had her he’d have left his mark.

His animal essence. Jamie would smell him. In fact, Valerie smelled richly of hotel soap,

which only made him more nervous.

Riding home ­ the clotted Van Wyck ­ Jamie was an octopus; frantic with lust. At

the apartment, he hemmed her in at the door, cases at her feet. No easy task when she was

four inches taller, but the abandoned puppy was a dog with its leg cocked now, itching to

mark its territory. To reclaim her.

And sex was what they did best. Jamie made no great claims of virtuosity ­ he’d

had his share of damp fuses and silent sufferers ­ but with Valerie, sex was a revelation.

A triumph. The power at his hands! There on the futon, he was a Bernstein, a van

Karajan, the apartment ­ symphonic with her shrieks and moans ­ his carnal Carnegie

Hall. At 36, she was six years his senior, and Jamie had read somewhere ­ one of his

English novels ­ that older women were better, more grateful and intense, because they

fucked like it might be the last time. Valerie fucked like an older woman all right, but

never like it was the last time. Fifteen minutes and she’d be nudging his shoulder, ready

for the next time.

Except for tonight, when she was suspiciously stiff, cool to his touch.

“I ran out,” she confessed, straitening the hem of her dress.

“Ran out?” Jamie wailed, rent by visions of Captain Rip, bedecked in chevrons

and epaulettes, unburdening his ex-lover of a Hilton bath-robe as she tossed back the

ortho-tricyclens like Quaaludes. “When?”

Valerie met that with a shove. She picked up a case.

“I’ll get rubbers,” he quavered, a hand at the door.

“Nuh-uh,” she chided. “You know they make me yeasty.”

He pretty much crumpled at that. Valerie, quizzical, laid a palm against his cheek.

“That bad, huh?”

“That bad.”

“Well ­ just this once.”

“You’re sure?”

“Be careful.”

They say you’re extra fertile, when you miss a day.

But I was careful. I pulled out.

“ ­ pregnant.”

“Huh?”

“I said chance’d be a fine thing, if my Dot ever got pregnant.”

Dot ­ Dorothy ­ was Tom’s new wife, though he lacked the ring to prove it. She

was in London, apparently. Tom had offered no photograph, and Jamie ­ not quite ready

to believe in her ­ hadn’t asked.

“You’re trying. Already?”

“Of course,” Tom snorted, as if Dorothy was a car and Jamie had asked if he was

driving her. “Apart from anything else, there’s the dowry to consider. Her father’s the

Earl of Pitloss. The old coot could keel over any day. So the more kids the better, willwise.”

“Will-wise. Must be frustrating.”

Hard to believe they’d been inseparable in high school, Jamie thought, drawn to

each other by inferior looks and a passion for music. Tom, gangly tall, was a natural

musician, as comfortable with a guitar as he was uncomfortable with a girl. Jamie,

shortest boy in the class, couldn’t hack a kazoo, but he listened with a cultured ear. Both

were only children: Jamie had a dead Mom, Tom an absent one ­ living in London but

rarely discussed, her principal legacy being the English accent he put on to impress;

Jamie had a drunk Dad, Tom a broken one ­ a record producer whose career peaked with

disco. Jamie suspected Tom of harbouring a crush on him, but tolerated it in return for

access to his friend’s bedroom and its studio bounty: the Les Paul; the mini-Moog; the

mixing desk’s aurora of diodes and meters, a visual lullaby on sleep-overs.

Tom’s successes since high school Jamie received as a repudiation of his own

adolescence, his orphan years; even of the strangely tender moment, near high school’s

end, when Tom had tried to kiss him outside the White Horse Tavern. Violently

heterosexual ever since, Tom seemed to reinvent himself without effort, casting off the

awkward years like prototypes. Jamie envied him.

Why am I here, he wondered. Tom ­ today’s Tom ­ wouldn’t summon him

without a purpose. They’d lost touch when Jamie quit advertising, so to reach his old

friend Tom had resorted to barbarism ­ as far as he was concerned ­ snail-mailing a note

care of Columbia. Literally: Jamie Stills, Columbia University, New York. Not even a zip.

Jamie doubted Tom would be so slapdash with the Chase Manhattan Bank, say, or the

New York Yacht Club. His missive ­ not even a letter, just the print-out of an e-mail he’d

composed before realizing he lacked an address to send it to ­ found its intended

recipient in Fine Arts only after another Jamie Stills ­ Columbia College co-ed ­

disowned it as hers. Tom was hitched, it read, and bound for London to be with his bride.

Could Jamie spare an hour before he left? By the time he called back, it was almost too

late. Tom was flying tonight.

“Come here,” Tom bade, rising to approach the south-side railing. Jamie did as he

was told, raising a palm against the Trade Centre glare. He’d been cloistered uptown too

long ­ he hadn’t thought to bring sunglasses.

“See that?”

Jamie looked past Tom’s outstretched arm, through the cracks in the buildings,

and found his old home. The Bank Street carriage house, yards from the Hudson, sold

after his Dad died. Jamie had stood before it a year or so ago, on a walking date with

Valerie. Gesturing to the second-floor French windows, he told her about the Jersey

sunsets, vivified by the chemical plants; the routine he had with his Mom, a to-and-fro of

‘looks crimson tonight’ and ‘more of a tangerine, I think,’ or ‘is that a blood red or a fiery

red, would you say?’ Valerie laughed, her eyes fixed on the carriage doors, the stable

doors, her mind never far from horses. The doors looked different now, rosy with varnish,

and the whole edifice, Jamie realized, bore the marks of new money: the tin-roof

sparkling; the brick-work flush and grouted.

He looked up. Tom beamed like a proud father.

“You?”

“Guilty as charged,” Tom chortled, hand on heart. For a mad moment, Jamie

thought Tom might be giving it to him, some kind of reverse wedding present. “I rented it

to a nice Japanese couple. He’s in futures. It’s a solid investment in its own right, of

course, but I have much bigger plans.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Not for it. Did you know it’s a site of historic significance, by the way?

Untouchable, worst luck. But it came with an intriguing bonus: air-rights.”

“Air-rights?”

“Vertical dominion. The power to build up. Your old man was pretty savvy for a

Marxist. When I saw the old place was on the market, I remembered him crowing:

‘they’ll never get anything up next door, not while I’ve got the air-rights.’”

“Next door’s a dump,” Jamie said, glancing right to confirm it still was. The plot

by the carriage house, last stop before the water, housed nothing but a concrete lean-to

used by a truck rental company for storage.

“It is now ­ I’ve got the air-rights. But in my hands.”

“It could rise.”

“To the moon. Of course, I’m off to London, which makes it hard to scout things

out. So I thought you could.”

“Me?”

“That truck company, for instance. Who rents trucks, in Manhattan?” Tom said

disgustedly. “They must be gasping for cash. Then there’s Landmarks. Siting. All that

palaver.”

“I don’t know anything about real estate.”

“But you know the Village. And I feel like I owe you ­ for your Dad, his

bragging. You’d have some walking-around money. Get this off the ground, and there’d

be a real job for you.”

“I have a real ­ ”

“I hardly think a PhD in ­ what was it again?”

“The Edwardian novel.”

“The Edwardian novel, is going to butter your Valerie’s bread,” Tom said darkly.

“Not with a kid on the way. So what do you think?”

About the kid or the job, Jamie wondered, searching for a distraction. He found

one in the sky, a jetliner tearing in from the north, silver belly flashing in the morning

sun. It was low. So low his coffee shook.

“I think that plane’s really fucking close.”

Tom looked up, a wrinkle of distaste as if he was weighing the flight-path’s

impact on his new investment.

“That’s Giuliani for you. He lets the airlines get away with murder. Must be a

Newark flight. It’ll turn soon.”

But it didn’t turn, hushing the friends for those last chaste seconds, the time it

takes to run thirty blocks at five hundred miles an hour. The plane seemed to Jamie to

take a tiny pause before the Trade Centre, weighing its options before erupting in a spew

of gold and black. Neighbours ­ fellow deck-dwellers ­ cried out. Born again, they cried

for Jesus, for Jesus Christ. The blast came so late, so baffled by the bay breeze, Jamie

thought a gun had been fired. He ducked, rising slowly, sheepishly, suffused with shame

as girders and slabs, the tower’s very viscera, spun earthwards like petals from a spent

bouquet.