Specimen Days by Michael Cunningham

Author:Michael Cunningham [Cunningham, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: prose_contemporary
ISBN: 0-374-70515-1
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2005-06-01T18:30:00+00:00

The food came. They ate, talked about other things, threw the empty containers out. Pete went back to his office. Cat hung around a little longer, for no good reason. It was all cleanup now, it was investigation; the deranged boys were dead, and the work of finding out who they’d been would fall to others. She dialed Simon’s number. He’d called three times since the event, left messages. He’d believe her when she’d tell him she’d been too busy to call him back, though of course it would be a lie. She was the least busy person on the premises. She’d put off talking to Simon (admit it) because she hadn’t felt up to it, hadn’t felt like being tough and passionate and wised-up.

Amelia put her straight through.

“Cat. God, I’ve been worried.”

“Sorry I couldn’t call earlier. It’s crazy here.”

“Can you get out of there now?”

“Yes. Meet me at your place, okay? Just give me a drink and put me to bed.”

“You got it. I can get out of here in about forty-five minutes.”

Forty-five minutes was good time for Simon. Who knew what fluctuations in the futures needed his immediate attention?

“I’ll come by around nine, then.”

“Good. You okay?”

“Relatively.”

“Good. See you at nine.”

She said good-night to Pete and went out into the streets. She’d wander a while among the terrorized citizenry, until Simon could extricate himself from the particulars of whatever deal he was dealing.

She started down Broadway. If you didn’t know what had happened, you could easily believe it was just another night in the city. The sidewalks were a little less crowded, people were moving with more than the usual degrees of slink or alacrity, but if you were fresh from Mongolia or Uganda you wouldn’t have any but the usual touristic impressions. The city was only being rocked in its less visible parts, along its filaments, in its dreams of itself. People were scared, and yes, it was impossible to know yet just how much money was bleeding out, how many reservations were being canceled, how many corporations were considering relocating, but Broadway was still full of cabs and trucks, stores were still open, unfortunates still worked the passersby for change. The machinery of the city, the immense discordant poetry of the city (thank you, Mr. Whitman), racketed on. You had to bring a building down to make things look different. Tonight there were no candlelight vigils, no mounds of flowers, no women wailing. It all went on.

Four people had gone into space to behold the birth of stars. It all went on. What else should it do?

She browsed the store windows along lower Broadway. She was hungry for normalcy the way she might be hungry for a pastrami on rye. She didn’t want to be herself. Not right now. She wanted, right now, to be a shopper, a regular person, unhaunted, unjaded, free from all but the usual quotients of bitterness and guilt, somebody with a little time to kill on her way to her boyfriend’s place.

The

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