he sadly sighed, “You haven’t even had a drink… Lee isn’t coming, of course?”
“He’s working.” Or having a threesome with a beautiful blond and a gorgeous brunette I wanted to add, but thought better of it. The sad Brit might have thought that I was being vulgar, which I certainly did not want. There was enough uncivilized behavior at his party already without my adding to it.
“Yes, Lee is now a national treasure!” Mills smiled widely, “An American Michelangelo! Soon, no one will believe us that we used to know him, will they? By the way,” he almost hesitated, “A lot of people still think that you two are lovers…”
“Really? Who cares?” I found this very amusing, “Don’t even bother to convince them otherwise, Richard. In fact, it’s actually quite funny! In any case, the word ‘lover’ is from the word ‘love’, and I do love Lee like a brother. So in a sense you could say that they are right…”
“Oh, I like the way you put that- ‘from the word love’,” Richard’s charcoal eyes lowered even more, making him look even more like a sad puppy.
I could not wait to leave- a feeling of sorcery was pulsing through my veins like warm electricity – but Mills was still standing there next me, more as if he were just another guest, like me, than the host. Besides, I had the strange feeling that he wanted to say something more to me, but that he could not decide whether to do so or not. At least so it seemed.
“Stephen, my dear…” sighed Richard as he lowered those puppy-dog eyes, “You wouldn’t be offended if I tell you that I know something about your… your problems?”
“Problems?” I asked.
“I mean about work,” it was clear that the Englishman was uncomfortable, “You see, I have a good friend who also works in television… He is no longer young, but is very rich and powerful…”
“Great,” I thought to myself, “Typical…”
“And I mentioned you to him, just a word, without your permission, I know, my apologies…” Richard rambled on faster, as if afraid that I would not hear him out, or would punch him instead. “It’s just that he is a big fan of everything that you have done. He told me himself, and would never lie to me!… He would like to meet with you for a serious discussion. He is a very influential man in the TV world, really. I am very serious. And what’s more, he said that sorting out your issue with Paul is not a problem…”
My issue with Paul…
Paul Foxman, or “Paul the Couch” as he is also known – the son of a bitch! – was my boss, my curse and my slavemaster. He eclipsed my sunshine, poured poison in my morning coffee, he ruined my sex life!…
Then, snap!, just like that “your issue with Paul is not a problem…” It’s just that simple.
“So? You’ll meet with him?” Mills looked at me as if he was asking me for something rather than trying to do me an amazing favor.
To say that life is strange is to say nothing at all. Two hours ago, what the lovely English Richard Mills was offering would have made me the happiest I have been in the last four years. It would have been my salvation, a miracle of miracles, unbelievable and incredible. But at that moment the only thing pulsing through me, powerfully and incessant was “Hannah of Whistleroad Town, Hannah of Whistleroad Town…”
Compared to my absolute, blind faith in my miracle, Richard’s words seemed as empty as banal office gossip. “I don’t need to give you an answer right now, do I, Richard?” I put my palm on his thin adolescent shoulder, “Let’s discuss this another time, OK? But in any case, thank you. You are an amazing and wonderful man.”
“Even for a Brit,” Lee would have definitely added.
But of course I did not bother to add anything. I just smiled my good-bye and stepped toward the door – a luxurious oak door, which turned the lights of the “City That Never Sleeps” into a dazzling multi-colored kaleidoscope.
There are at least ten thousand reasons to live in New York. One of which is autumn. The particularly New York kind of autumn, when summer ends and takes its heat with it, but leaves a warmth behind, and the great city luxuriates in it, while at the same time still bustling along under the slowly falling leaves of hundred year old trees. The people, the buildings and the cars all know that this bliss is only a temporary one – that this tender time will end soon, to be replaced by freezing rain, slush, short and furious snowstorms, and then by the piercing icy wind evilly blowing in from the ocean until spring.
However, its fleeting nature does not diminish the wonder of autumn. On the contrary, it gives it a bittersweet sadness that infuses everything with more beauty and tenderness.
From my old wrought iron balcony, something I don’t think that I have bragged about yet, I have a view of Central Park. Not all of it, of course, just the narrow sliver that runs into West 86th Street. But it is enough to be able to go out with my morning coffee to admire the huge rusty canopy of foliage, among which burn spots of pure gold or piercing blood-red, like the seeds of a pomegranate.
Of course, it gets dark early and the beauty is hidden again until morning, but left behind are the smells of the dying grass and the dried leaves. The bouquet of my city’s autumn wine. Even now, leaving Mills’ gallery I don’t feel cold. There is an unusual warmth in the evening air, so I decide not to take a cab and to walk instead, even though I know that it will take a long time to get back home.
In the last few days I started going out without any real purpose. Just to feel like a part of the miracle called the fall.
These days even cops didn’t seem menacing. As if they were familiar Manhattan ghosts, guarding warm autumn, soaked in the smell of fallen leaves and eternity.
looked up at Lee’s house as I was passing by. A muted light shone in the windows. He was working- of course he was working- so as it turned out I did not lie to nice, kind Richard Mills. For a second I was seized by doubt, and I desperately wanted to go see Lee and tell him about everything, but I reigned myself in. With friends like Lee, you need to go to them with the proof of a real miracle and not with some half baked story from a drunk like Vince Sherman.
“So… Whistleroad Town, her name is Hannah…” I repeated to myself one more time, just in case, although I knew that I could never forget either her name, or the name of the town- even if I wanted to.
I marched on remembering that day, which began like any other. People were passing by, young and old, happy and sad, black and white. But none of them knew my secret. If I had tried to tell them, they would have all thought that I was just another one of the crazies, who roam the streets of New York by the thousands. But I wasn’t crazy at all. I was just an average 27-year old guy named Stephen Wright, for whom everything had been going great, and then turned sour. A guy who would have ended up in the gutter, or slit his wrists, if it weren’t for his friend Andy Lee, an amazing artist and the greatest person in the world. But New York is a thick, worn, old book, filled with a million stories like mine, and striding up the Avenue of the Americas towards home, I could only tell the story of everything that had happened to only one person- me.
Actually, today in and of itself had been nothing special, and was no different from yesterday or the day before. Well more accurately, it would not have been any different if, while walking along Central Park on my way to the “Men’s Club” I had not been accosted by the “American Hero” – one of our local celebrities, an old homeless man with long hair, a ruddy face and a surprisingly lively look in his young blue-grey eyes. The American Hero was an integral part of our neighborhood, as much of a fixture as the corner bakery or the newsstand next to it.
In the last few years they had tried to clean up this side of the park and had placed some of the homeless in shelters, and just moved the rest on to somewhere else, but the American Hero never left (there were rumors that the cops were afraid of him, but this was just typical urban legend bullshit).
Sometimes he might disappear somewhere for a day or two, but he always returned, sitting by the curb every morning on an old wooden crate intently