It takes a while to settle into a new place when you move. The way you think furniture is going to work within a space isn’t usually how it ends up, so we spent a lot of time rearranging. We finally decided we were happy (for now) on where everything was and we would just live with it (for now).

I was meeting people at work, but it was on a professional basis and Susan was writing again, which means she spent a great deal of time by herself. We would cook dinner, have some wine and talk about what we did that day. Susan told me of the progress on her book and how she hoped to wrap it up by the end of the year. I told her stories about my boss and colleagues at the investment firm. We are settling in, we would say, finding our place here.

Warmer weather and longer days had come as we approached Memorial Day. Every morning when I got up, I would look out the kitchen window at the flower boxes. By now, the plants had grown and I could see buds appearing. The promise of summertime flowers.

One day, Susan called me into the kitchen as soon as I got home. “Hey, look at this,” she said. Across the driveway, a woman was weeding and watering the flowers in the flower boxes. She had on a light colored, flowing dress and her long hair would spill over as she tended to her plants. Behind her, I could see two place settings on the table with candles and a small bouquet of flowers. A date?

As we were cooking our dinner, a car we hadn’t seen before, a grey BMW, slowly pulled down the driveway and parked awkwardly on one side of the parking area.
As Susan finished sautéing the salmon, a man with a bottle of wine in his hand carefully made his way toward the balcony, unsure of where to go. Our neighbor appeared, greeted him and asked him in.

We ate our dinner and after the last sips of wine, decided to take a walk through town. It was still warm out with almost no breeze. A perfect evening. As we made our way back up to our place, we heard talking and laughing. We went into our kitchen and took a peek out the window. The date was going well. The candles were flickering, the wine was flowing. But before we went to bed, the BMW started, and the man was gone.

For the next few Saturday nights, this pattern continued. Spring had given way to summer and the flowers in the boxes were now in full bloom. The colors were spectacular and our neighbor made sure her plants were well cared for. Then I woke up early one Sunday morning in July. I thought I heard a noise outside and took a look out of the kitchen. A dog was digging around in the bamboo. After giving up chasing whatever he was chasing, the dog lifted his leg on the tire of the not-so-awkwardly parked grey BMW.

Later that morning, I told Susan that BMW guy had spent the night. “Good for her”, Susan said. “Good for him”, I said. We decided that we would get to know our neighbor a little. I am constantly amazed at how much information Susan can come back with after what always seems to me to be the most idle of chats. Later that week came the report: her name is Pamela, she is about our age, she works at the jewelry store in town, she likes classical music, she moved here 12 years ago and is, or maybe was, single.

August was hot. Early, before the heat of the day would melt everything and everyone, I would go for a run on the beach. On my way out, I would admire the flowers in the boxes, standing bright and colorful, hopeful before another day of baking in the sun.

Cool evenings became the norm as fall pushed summer into the past. The days got shorter. Susan’s book was almost on schedule and the editors at the publishing company were pleased with the progress. For me, it was business as usual. Markets go up and markets go down. There is opportunity in both.

Pamela and BMW guy were together every weekend. While Susan and I cooked and ate in our apartment, they would sit out on the patio, even when it got chilly, late into the night, talking and sipping wine. Good for them.

Then, for several weekends, there were no late evening conversations, no sipping of wine on the patio. Maybe BMW guy was away on business. Then, he was back for a weekend.

We were expected to get a cold snap in the last week of October. Pamela had, in the past covered her plants with a plastic cover to protect them from the cold. I was surprised at how well it worked. The flowers were still beautiful. Then, one weekend, we had a storm. The temperature dropped to freezing and the wind blew 40 miles per hour. The plastic got blown off of the flower boxes. The next day, the sun came out, but the temperature struggled to get into the 30’s.

After a couple of days, it was obvious that the flowers had died from exposure to the wind and cold. We never saw the grey BMW again.

Margolies, however, had one overriding passion. That was handball. He loved any kind of handball – one-wall, four-wall, black ball, pink ball – and its derivatives like paddleball and racquetball. Even when he was a kid, once the exercises were over in gym class, he’d head to the handball court.

Once I asked Mark, whom I met when I worked near his co-op in Brooklyn Heights, whether he played any other games, like basketball or softball. “Well, I learned to swim because I had to. Once I tried touch-football,” he said. “It was horrible!”

When I asked him how he got into handball, he said his father, a working-class Jew from Brownsville, worked for the Post Office, but his passion was boxing. “He was a boxer,” Margolies said, “and he trained for boxing by playing handball. He would go to the Betsy Head handball courts in Brownsville, and I’d go with him and watch.” At the same time, because Mark was very shy and had no friends, he never got into sports like the other kids.

“You know the last time I went to a baseball game? The last year the Dodgers were in Brooklyn—1957,” he said. “My brother took me. I sort of enjoyed it, but I never had any real desire to go again.”

Soon afterward, his family moved to the Sheepshead Bay section of Brooklyn. From there, it was an easy walk to the Brighton Beach handball courts, the mecca of New York City handball. "Everyone," he said, "played there—kids like him, guys in their seventies, A-level tournament players, beginners - everyone." Sometimes he’d have to wait a half hour to get on a court, but he didn’t care. He was hooked.

“When I was playing handball,” he said, “it was like I was taken to another dimension. There was such high energy, I was in such a state of ecstasy, that it was like I was removed from the world. Many of the courts had lights, so sometimes it would be midnight and I didn’t even know it. My parents had to come down and get me. I’d play singles, doubles, sometimes two against one – it didn’t matter, as long as it was handball.”

As time went on, playing on the neighborhood courts got a little boring for him. So he’d get on the trains and go to different neighborhoods all over the city. Even after he got married and moved away from Sheepshead Bay, he continued to go to the courts in Brighton Beach, where the best, most competitive handball players held forth. He went to neighborhoods that most of his peers considered dangerous, like Bushwick or Central Harlem. “Are you kidding?” he’d answer, after someone feared for his safety. “The guys there are some of the best players. They put their all, every part of their body, into it!”

He stopped playing for a few years after he had kids, but when the children got a little older, he went on his handball trips every Saturday and Sunday, while Gabrielle stayed home and pursued her own interests.

 One time I asked him if he'd gone to all five boroughs to play.

“Well, I went all over Brooklyn and all over Manhattan, up to about 168th Street. I never went to the Bronx – it was too far. I didn’t like Queens, didn’t play there except when I worked in a school there. I’d play on my lunch hour, in the schoolyard. The other teachers loved to play me, the custodians loved to play me, even the kids played me. They thought I was over the hill, but when I started to play, they couldn’t believe it!”

Hearing this story, I asked whether he was an “A-level” player. “Definitely not—I was a B-level player. But who cares!” he answered. “Besides, A-level players in handball don’t get that much recognition anyway—it’s just that they get into the record books.”

When Mark was about 45, his wrists were beginning to go, so he switched to racquetball – “not paddleball,” he’d say, “the wooden paddle was too heavy for me.” He joined the Eastern Athletic Club in Brooklyn Heights and played there. When his legs and his back started to go, he switched to ping-pong, but soon, he wasn’t even able to do that.

I saw Mark recently sitting at a counter at the Park Plaza Diner in the Heights. His hair was white, his beard was gray and he had a cane at his side.

“Been playing any ball lately?” I asked politely, thinking that the answer was no.

“No. My doctor forbids it—you know, my back,” he mumbled.

“Do you go to the handball courts at Brighton Beach to watch?” I asked, trying to salvage something good for him.

“Yeah,” he said, sighing. “But that’s all I can do.”

“Well, that’s too bad,” I sympathized.

“I’m not sad,” he said. “Handball gave me more than 50 years of fun. I’m can’t complain!”

And I said goodbye to him and walked away, satisfied that he had lived his life exactly the way he wanted to; that he had done something with it that he considered worthwhile.

Raanan Geberer is an editor at a local newspaper in New York and lives with his wife Rhea and his cat Bonnie in Chelsea. His hobbies include vegetable gardening, working out at the gym and playing rock music with friends. He is a lifelong railfan and has an overriding interest in politics, religion, history and literature.

So, when he arrived at the door of my tenement apartment at 1AM, unexpected, unannounced, I didn't say no. I let him in, against all my instincts.

"Hi. I was at the community center. We just finished working. We were painting and doing construction. I'm exhausted. It's too late to go home. Can I stay here?"

He stood there right before me, Jay Martinez, about 5'10", dark-skinned, a little pockmarked. His hair was close-cropped and curly. His ears were extremely small and curled up at the bottom. He was stocky, but he had a sloppy-full belly that spilled over his belt. Though he looked strong and muscular enough he would always let the other men do the hard work and heavy lifting I'd noticed.

And now, here he was. I had gone to school that day, attended three classes at Hunter, worked at my waitress job on the usual 7-hour shift, taken the subway home to the Court Street station at Borough Hall. I'd just gotten in from a very long day a half hour before. I had hoped to do evening prayers, put on my pajamas, watch a little tv and then fall dead asleep. His arrival ruined those innocent plans.

He was a Headquarters Chief in what was then called NSA. Now known as SGI (Soka Gakkai International), it was and is a group founded on Buddhist principles. Many New Yorkers are familiar with NSA/SGI from their time in the 80s when they conducted huge campaigns to recruit people. They could be found in every neighborhood, out on the streets, handing out pamphlets and intruding upon people with the question, posed with a big smile, "Have you ever heard about Nam myoho renge kyo?"

I had been drawn in not by this method of "street shakubuku" (introduction), but through a girl I worked with, Anna. We were both waitresses in a burger restaurant on Court Street in Brooklyn Heights. She intrigued me. She had a young son, was a single mother, worked for the same tips I did, and yet managed to maintain an apartment in the Heights.

Even more importantly, when everyone else was stressing out about not having a date on Friday night, she seemed genuinely happy and at ease, unconcerned with her single status. She seemed buoyant.

"Oh my God, you will not believe what happened today!" she announced to the lunch shift table as we had breakfast before the restaurant opened. "I was $300 short on the rent. I didn't know where I'd get it. So, I just chanted and chanted Nam myoho renge kyo and what do you think happened? I got a check in the mail this morning - a refund from the telephone company!!! for $296! Can you believe it? Isn't that wild?"

She had stories like this on a regular basis: a friend sending her $50, a birthday card with $100, finding $20 on the street when she had no money for dinner for her son and herself.

I was impressed. It didn't hit me until years later to ask why a young woman with an MA in Psychology (fairly rare in those days) was working as a waitress and not in her own field.

Everything about her seemed to be unencumbered by weighty convention, even her physical being, her lack of breasts (which would have bothered other women), her height (5'1"), her very short hair. She had a Peter Pan quality that men found fascinating.

Anna had tried to introduce me to her "Buddhist beliefs" a number of times. "Maggie, you'd love this." I would never give her a hearing. I thought she was a Hare Krishna or somesuch. When I finally told her that, she cried, "What? No, no. That's a cult!"

And then one day she left one of her NSA magazines open to an article she knew I'd be interested in. She left it right where I'd be sitting to have lunch after the shift ended. My eye naturally alighted on it and I read. It was well-written. My English major prejudice was impressed by the grammatical correctness and fluent style. This was no Hare Krishna klaptrap with appalling spelling and uneven font. This was sophisticated stuff.

And so, I was seduced. One day shortly after she invited me to her apartment to see her altar. She led me to the bedroom where she had a small, unobtrusive altar, laid out artfully with fresh green leaves in a vase, fresh fruit in a wooden bowl, a small vessel filled with water. Suspended on the wall above the altar was what looked like a wooden curio cabinet, in blonde wood. It had an elegant simplicity.

"Do you want to see my Gohonzon?"
"What's a Gohonzon?"
"Gohonzon means 'highest object of worship.'"
"Oh. Yeah. Yes."
"OK," she said in the charming, wry, smiling way I'd become familiar with. She looked happy.

She knelt down in front of the altar, put a small leaf between her lips, reached up over the altar toward the cabinet and opened it.

I was floored. The scroll before me was astonishingly beautiful. It was a little mandela. I'd been taking a course at Hunter in Buddhism and we'd studied these. They were meditation objects, meant to help the practitioner concentrate, meditate. This one was awesome. In length it was about 12 inches, in width, about 6. It contained only characters - Japanese? Chinese? The characters were gold, printed on a tannish brown background which had some kind of pattern emblazoned on it. It had such presence! Such charisma!

I remembered how our professor told us that, after his enlightenment, even Shakyamuni's detractors were compelled to rise up and greet him respectfully because he had such charisma, such power.

"It's beautiful."
"Would you like to try chanting?"
"All right."
"Nam myoho renge kyo.... Try it. Repeat after me...Nam myoho renge kyo."
"Nam myoho? renge kyo. Is that right?"

And now it was 3 years later. The "honeymoon phase" had ended abruptly the moment I finally acquiesed and became an official member. At first, I'd been treated like the loved and wanted golden child who could do no wrong, whose every move was pure delight. Upon joining, the pressure began.

Calls at 7AM Saturday morning: "Where are you? We're doing a 5 hour daimoku toso (chanting session). You have to be here!"

Calls at 11PM: "Tomorrow morning at 8AM you have to bring 40 sandwiches for the Youth Division."

"Our district has pledged to have 12 new members this month. Do shakubuku (introduction)!"

"We have a target of 150 subscriptions to the World Tribune (organ newspaper). So, your target must be 50. Get on the phone!"

"No! Of course you can't have a Christmas tree!"

I was 28 when I first met Anna and was introduced to her beliefs. I'd had a pretty difficult life. I'd been a foster child, aged out of the system without a penny to get started in the world and no one to lean on. But I'd been getting things together. I'd finally decided to go to college and was doing it, enjoying it. I was a waitress at a restaurant that was not bad to work at, at all. You could have your meals there. And I had friends there.

Restaurant people were fun: real, unassuming, and with irreverant senses of humor. Whenever you had an annoying customer you could curse your head off in the kitchen and return to the dining area calm and composed. A typical kitchen conversation during rush would sound something like this:

"Shit. I have that asshole again on Station 2. He's trying to impress his date by running me all over the fucking place. I feel like telling her I heard he has a small dick."

Wild laughter.

"I got that cheap bitch. She was here yesterday. Can't she find another place to go? She wears a cashmere coat and leaves me a dollar."

"You're lucky. I got Sam again. He's sloshed."

After the intense pressure of the rush we'd all calm down, turn in our books, count our tips, and settle in for lunch together. It was during one of these lunches that I discovered the NSA magazine.

Three years later and I was a kumicho, a unit chief in NSA. On the first day I was appointed, I was given a list of 30 members who had left NSA and told I was to get them back. "Start calling. Don't forget to get their World Tribune subscription money. Don't forget your target."

I learned immediately, as all members did, that questioning was considered negative and destructive, "destroying the unity of believers." Good fortune was determined by one's fidelity to NSA, one's unquestioning loyalty. In fact, one's eternal soul was connected to being an active member, a true believer.

It was an important element in the life of a true believer to "receive guidance" from a "senior leader." With any life crisis you were encouraged to do this. Senior leaders were allowed, even encouraged, to scold, ridicule, castigate, scream at junior members. A senior leader who wasn't willing to be resented by their junior members was irresponsible.

And so it was that I went for guidance to Jay Martinez when the relationship I was in was not going well. I trusted him. He was a Buddhist leader, revered and loved by all the members. He was there to protect me, to guide me, to keep me from harm. I was safe with him.

I confessed to him all my hurt and despair over the broken romance, along with details. He was like a father. After this, he began turning up in odd places and at odd hours. I didn't question it. I was flattered: I felt special. This important man wants to be friends with me. He's so busy and a father of 2, a husband, a Headquarters chief and yet he makes time for me.

So, at 1AM, I wasn't completely surprised. He'd come other times, once in the afternoon, once around 5PM or so. But he had never asked to stay over. What was I to do with this request in my little apartment? I had a tiny bedroom with room only for a bed, and a pull-out couch in the living room.

It was awkward. He sat on the couch awhile and recounted his day. I was so tired. After about an hour he asked if he could take a shower.

"Sure."

He came out of the bathroom wearing only a towel. That's when I finally realized his true intention. I scrambled around frantically thinking what can I do, who can I call. It was 2AM. My friends would all be asleep. And what would I say? What could they do? He was a Headquarters Chief! You didn't say no!

"Do you mind if I lay down?"
"No, go ahead."

What would Anna be doing now? Could I call Liz? 2:05 AM. Don't call anyone. You'll be disturbing people. Just avoid him. Wait him out. He'll go to sleep. Maybe you're imagining things. He's married. He has 2 kids. He's a Buddhist. Wait him out. Clean the house. Study. Sort out your finances. Do the dishes.

I vacuumed. I did the dishes. I cleaned, dusted, sorted. I attempted to study. After a long, long, long time he called out, "When are you coming to bed?"

When I heard his voice, so strong, so awake, so insistent, everything inside me collapsed. I knew I was defeated. I was exhausted and completely alone. It was 4AM, the darkest hour of the night. There was no one to call to, no one to help. And you didn't say no to a leader.

Afterwards, he got up, dressed, and went home. Suddenly, it was not so far away that he couldn't make it there.

The days that followed were days of despair. What had I done? It was all my fault.

After 3 weeks I could endure it no longer. I needed help. I went for guidance. Since my problem involved a Headquarters Chief I went to the most senior leader in New York.
In slow, almost whispered tones I told him what had happened. He was Japanese-American. He listened with a sympathetic face, deep brown eyes, tilting his head compassionately toward me. Finally, he spoke, after a long silence in which he seemed to be deeply and wisely ruminating.

"This is your karma. Be glad he didn't use violence."

I left the center that day determined to turn this negative experience into something positive. In the days that followed I chanted more and more to expiate my negative karma. At every meeting I saw Jay. He gave "final encouragement." I saw him giving guidance. He led prayers. He bantered with members. He was introduced as an important leader and an excellent role model. All the time I struggled with my anger, disappointment, hurt, shame.

One day I returned to the New York senior leader to speak with him about my "negative life condition" and to ask why nothing had happened to Jay Martinez. Again, he looked so sympathetic. He seemed so compassionate as he considered my situation.

And then he said, his long lashes lowered over his half-closed eyes, as if rousing himself from deep meditation, "You must protect the organization. You understand? You must never tell anyone about this."

M. O'Connell grew up in Brooklyn. For a time she was a member of NSA/SGI.

As I went to cross the last street before my door, I heard voices shouting “Shana tova!” Happy new year. I turned my head to see two young Hasidic Jewish men running across the opposite street, directly towards me. They kept shouting at me, “Shana tova!” So I said “Thanks, happy new year to you, too.” I put my foot into the road when they came right up and stopped me. “Have you heard the shofar today?” they asked me. I felt instantly embarrassed. I don’t go to temple, but they didn’t need to know that. So I told them that no, not yet, I’m going tonight… One of them smiled at me and suggested that they play it for me now. I put my bags down at that point. This was going to be way better than real temple.

The smiling man reached into his coat (he must have been so warm, I kept thinking) and pulled out a ram’s horn (the shofar). The other gentleman reached into his own coat and pulled out the book. Shofar explained to me that he would play and the other guy would read, and when he said Amen, I was to repeat it. OK. I can do that. Then he started playing and the other guy started reading, and I got really quiet. People were walking by and looking at us, confused. This was not, to be clear, a Jewish neighborhood. The corner we were on was at the intersection of three hipster bars and a blue-collar block of mostly black people. This was not Torah-land.

I was unsure where to look. Do I stare at the man reading, making sure to hear the Amens? Do I stare at the man blowing into the horn? Do I give them each equal eye time? It ended up equal, and I got all the Amens correctly. During the reading, I tried to remember the last time I had uttered “amen,” and was pretty confident that I never had before. Perhaps I’d mouthed it a few times at dinners with my father’s family, but the word felt funny in my mouth, like it didn’t belong, like I was stealing it from someone. But I wanted to feel something this time, so I concentrated so hard on saying it right and at the right time. Still nothing. But I was falling in love with my new companions a little.

After a couple of minutes, Shofar looked up from the horn, smiled at me again and said “Just one more minute, ok?” OK. He went back to the horn, and the reading kept up, two more Amens. Then it was done. “Shana tova,” they said again, and went to leave. “Wait a minute, let me ask you something,” I said. They turned and waited for my question. “How did you know I was Jewish?” Now their facial expressions changed from curious to amused. Shofar looked at me and said “Because of your face.” Oh. “Well, that’s funny, since my mother always says I’m the waspiest looking Jew she’s ever met,” I explained. “She’s wrong. Tell her we know better,” said Shofar. And then they left.

Simone grew up in Manhattan but has since become a dedicated Brooklyn transplant. She writes when she can, but in real life she works in TV. When really inspired, she reviews movies and TV at moniemovies.blogspot.com.

“What?” I squawked, genuinely surprised. It was the week of Thanksgiving. We were meant to be discussing favorite trimmings alongside the turkey, not armed robbery. “So you've lost everything. Keys, wallet, phone, etc?”

“No, he just took the phone. He said give me your phone or I'll shoot you.”

In his mind the story ended here, but for me it fell short of so much. “Tell me every detail. It’s the most exciting thing you've said in weeks!” Realizing my voyeuristic delight had unsubtly revealed itself, I added: “Exciting in a bad way, obviously.”

He obliged me. “I was listening to music. I opened my gate, went to the mailbox, heard it close again, looked up, the guy goes "give me your phone I'll shoot you." I said "pardon". I was stunned so he said it again. I'm like "fine" and took it out and he kind of ripped it from me. Then he was gone.”

I was amazed. I had never felt unsafe in his neighborhood or in its surrounding areas. He lives in Bed-Stuy. His nearest subway stop is Nostrand Avenue where the food choices are a fried chicken lover’s delight and the vibe is jostling and purposeful. There’s nothing particularly endearing about this strip of fried food joints, the Laundromat, the tired-looking liquor store and the stream of pedestrians and traffic, but I was fond of the streets further north where his apartment is snugly nestled. Stray in that direction and you’ll find the mood changes; it grows sedate, relaxed and more salubrious. The streets are broad and exquisitely sleepy. The neighborhood is gloriously settled and at ease with itself. Somehow it feels less gimmicky than Manhattan. Even the trees ooze age and wisdom. In the past I had wanted to perch on a step, sip my coffee and become a part of the scenery, although perhaps that wasn’t so wise hearing his story.

“I don't think he ran away fast,” my ex was saying.

“Thank god he didn’t want your wallet too,” I was trying to console him, but he was still stuck on pace.

“He must have walked fast.”

“Where’s the mailbox?” I was trying to picture the scene with limited success. I lived more centrally and I didn’t own two cats that liked to jump on people while they were sleeping, so we had almost always stayed at mine while we dated.

“Right in front of the apartment.”

“Did he walk up the steps?”

“No, it's before the steps.” He explained the set-up. “The landlord used to have a slot for everyone by the top of the steps, but now there are separate slots for all three of us at the bottom.”

“So did you have any mail?”

“No, if I hadn’t gone to the mailbox this wouldn’t have happened.” He paused for a moment before adding:
“You're the first person to ask me that question, it's a good one.”

“Well it adds a whole new layer of pathos to your story.”

It was too bleak a thought to linger over so we discussed whether he should move neighborhoods and if so, where? We drifted on to more random topics. We were flitting all over the place, discussing work, weather, whether it’s ever acceptable to wear socks during sex. And because he was no longer talking about it, not wanting to dwell on it, I was certain that he would move.
 

The construction worker eyed my father’s neatly pressed slacks and asked, “Who are you?”

“I’m his friend? He told me to meet him here for lunch,” my father said.

“Your name Reilly?”

“Yeah,” my father said.

“Richie’s waiting for you.”

“Where?”

The guy with the hard hat pointed ten stories up to the high steel. And then he said, “Take the cage up.”

At the top, the elevator operator opened the cage and motioned to a group of guys who were sitting on wooden planks, suspended over two horizontal steel beams. They were eating their lunch with their feet hanging over the edge, kicking at the clouds.

“What’re you doing?” my father asked. “Where’s Richie?”

“He’s out there. Just walk.You’ll find him.”

“Are you crazy? I’m not going out there. Take me back down.”

Richie Two-ax was my father’s best friend. He was a bolt man, an ironworker, a Mohawk Indian who rode gray iron girders through the high blue sky as they were maneuvered into place by a huge crane perched atop the skeleton frame of the growing Western Electric Building in late 1950s Manhattan. It was his job to fasten girders together with bolts from the bucket strapped to his waist. Like most Mohawk men, he hung out in the Wigwam Bar on Nevins off Atlantic in a part of Brooklyn known as Little Caughnawaga , a ten-square block area which became home to about 800 Mohawks, ironworkers and their families, during the height of the construction boom in New York.

Little Caughnawaga was like any other ethnic neighborhood in New York, transformed by the arrival of the latest other. Long-time residents complained about the decaying neighborhood, but shop owners saw an opportunity and adapted by stocking new foods. The pastor of the local house of worship, Cuyler Church on Pacific Street, had the same business sense as the neighborhood shopkeepers. He learned the Mohawk language, offered a Sunday service to families in the neighborhood, and increased his flock.

Most of the Irish and Italian residents who lived nearby passed through Little Caughnawaga as tourists. It was alien turf for them, but for my father, it was a familiar place because of his friendship with Richie. For the last forty years, he has been telling and retelling stories about Richie with the regularity of the seasons. I call these his Richie Two-ax stories and I recently tried to stitch them together to figure out what the Mohawk ironworker was like. What I discovered was that the anecdotes my father had shared with me over the years, tell me more about him than they do about Richie.

The story about the time he was supposed to have lunch with Richie at the Western Electric Building is the odd one out of the lot because this is the only story in which my father voluntarily leaves his side. In every other story, my father is the classic, loyal friend.

For example, after the Manual Training High School Prom in 1958, they were walking through Duffy Square as three guys passed them. Richie didn’t like the way the guys leered at the girls, and they may have said something, so he went after them. My father gets really animated when he tells this part of the story: “He didn’t say a word, didn’t wait for me. He just went shithouse. Two big guys squared off against him, and when Richie dropped one of them with that right hand of his, the other one lost heart. The guy opposite me was more interested in getting his friends away from Richie than in fighting, so I helped him break it up.”

But it was hard to stop Richie once he started fighting, so soon the cops got involved. According to my father, “Richie was still hot when the cops showed up and there was a lot of pushing and shoving. One of the cops pushed Richie and he pushed back. Richie always pushed back. Didn’t take shit from nobody. And neither did the cops, so out came the Billy Clubs. The cop started pounding Richie, but he refused to go down. Two other cops jumped in and they eventually cuffed him and pushed him into a patrol car.”

My father talked to the cops after they had calmed down and explained to them what had happened. “The guys insulted the girls,” he said. “What would you do if someone insulted your girlfriend in the street?”

“He pushed me, kid,” one of the cops said.

“He’s a hothead,” my father countered. “Give the guy a break. He’s an ironworker.”

“He’s Mohawk?” the cop asked.

“Yeah. C’mon, cut him some slack. He’s a good guy.”

“Where does he work?”

“At the Western Electric Building on Broadway and Fulton.”

“Go see if he knows our guys down there,” the cop told to his partner. And after a brief conversation, which my father couldn’t hear, they released Richie.

My father was by Richie’s side in 1957 when they walked into fraternity dance at Prospect Hall, on Prospect Avenue between 5th and 6th, in Brooklyn: “As soon as we got in, someone threw a bottle of Bushmills in Richie’s direction. It didn’t hit him, but he knew it was intended for him. He had had a beef with some Italians a few weeks earlier. So he went after an entire table of them. No words. No warning. Just steel violence. It took four of us to pull him away. Richie started swinging at us when we pulled him off of one of the Italians, but I managed to calm him down. Once we had a few drinks and everything was fine.”

The best example of my father’s loyalty to Richie takes place on the night of the riot at the Wigwam Bar. This is my favorite Richie Two-ax story. Each time my father told his seasonal story about the Wigwam riot, his blue eyes lit up and he became animated: “One night, after we dropped off our dates, Richie told me he had to go see his cousin who was the barmaid at the Wigwam, and he asked me to come along. We walked into the bar just in time to see her rip a stone tomahawk off the wall, almost knocking down the huge picture of Jim Thorpe that was right above it. She swung it at a guy who had grabbed her arm, and she hit him square on the head.”

Sometimes, during this part of the story, my father reached up to an imaginary tomahawk and swung it down into the air. When he did this, I could almost see the picture of Jim Thorpe swaying on the wall.

He used to get up during the next part of the story, but the arthritis in his feet make him less animated today: “Richie jumped on the guy who had grabbed his cousin, and before I knew it, the place had erupted into a riot! I remember yelling, ‘I gotcha ya back, Richie,’ but before I could take a swing, a huge ironworker I didn’t know picked me up and carried me outside. I yelled at him when he put me down: ‘My friend Richie’s in there!’ Before the guy ran back in, he said, ‘This is a Mohawk fight. No white men allowed.’”

“I tried to go back in, but something was blocking the door. I looked around and saw a black and white police car down the block on Nevins, near Dean Street. So I ran up to the car and told them about the fight. The cops were ambivalent, and when they didn’t do anything, I told them, ‘Hey, my friend’s in there.’ One of the cops said to me, ‘Don’t worry about it, kid. It happens all the time. We’ll take care of it.’ Just then, a guy came flying through the plate glass window and the cops called for backup.”

My father avoided moralizing at the end of his stories and left it to me to figure out what they meant. It took me a while, but one night, years later, as I was watching a National Geographic episode on the salmon's mating ritual with my young son and my father during a Sunday visit to Brooklyn, it hit me. My father had always been obsessed with the salmon’s difficult journey to return to its original spawning ground. He was particularly amazed at how a male salmon would sacrifice itself for its mate. If a female salmon had inadvertently landed on the shore as they leaped upriver, the male would join her and try to push her back in the water so she could continue her journey to lay her eggs where she herself had hatched. Or he would die trying.

As my father explained this ritual to my son, just as he had explained it to me, I realized that the salmon’s spawning ritual was the perfect explanation for my father’s persistent retelling of his seminal stories, which touched in his friendship with Richie, his membership in gangs, and his life on the streets of 1950s Brooklyn. Each of his seasonal retellings of these stories was his journey upriver, back to his spawning ground. And each time he brought me along, pushing me back into the river of his dreams.

Don Reilly received his MA in Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama from University College Dublin. He is an Associate Professor of English and Chair of the English Basic Skills Department at Bergen Community College in Paramus, New Jersey. Reilly is a reluctant suburbanite and lives in Wayne, New Jersey with his wife and children, but his heart remains in Brooklyn, the borough of his birth. He is currently working on his MFA in Creative Writing at the City College of New York.

The first time I tired to pass as a senior I told the young man at Paragon Sporting Goods that I was 62. He asked me for ID. I said I didn’t have any on me. He asked me what year I was born. This is where my math skills messed me up. Even though I’d prepared for this question with a pen and paper before I’d gone to the store to try to save on my tennis permit by adding five years to my age, I gave him the wrong answer.

I said I was born in 1950. He punched a few keys on his computer and looked puzzled at the result. “It says you’re only 61,” he said.

I was sweating already because I’m out of practice lying to authorities. True, it wasn’t like lying to the IRS or unemployment, but still I was out of practice.

“Oh, so I’m too young? I asked him.

“Yeah,” he said.

My friend Trevor from the East River Park courts told me about the scam and said it was easy to pull off because you didn’t have to show any id. Plus the Paragon clerks who you have to fool didn’t care much one way or the other. The other thing that made it such an easy hustle, although I’d just blown it, was that for anyone in their teens or twenties, the difference in looks between anyone over 45 and a tennis player who has reached the magic age of 62 is indistinguishable.

I knew I’d never be as cool as my 57-year old English buddy, Trevor, from the courts under the Williamsburg Bridge. He is the charming scoundrel type of sometime painter, sometime photographer, sleazy in the best way, émigré artist type of New Yorker who’s scraped out a living in the city for the last few decades. He lived in the Chelsea Hotel, dated Madonna before her career got off the ground, and won a huge settlement from his landlord after not paying rent for years.

Now he works as a bartender at the hottest restaurant in the West Village, runs an antique lingerie web site and spends a few hours in the middle of most days at the East River Park tennis courts, or as he calls it, the East Village Country Club.

I think he is impressive in his way. And it is an approach that as we boomers get closer and closer, some of us are already there, to not having to scam for the geezer version of the city’s tennis license, that is disappearing. Trevor is a throwback to the Max’s Kansas City era and some of the more glamourous scenes from the city’s past. Plus he’s an expat who stayed, which to someone like me, who barely made it out of Jersey, also has a kind of allure

One of the things about aging is if you miss that chance to date Madonna in the 70's or to play in the NFL, Brett Favre aside, the opportunity, like all the years that add up to only having to pay $20 for your permit, is gone.

So while some of Trevor’s accomplishments are out of reach, no matter how much I might want to emulate his sleazy brand of cool, his reinvention of himself as a sophisticated, expat New Yorker, I thought, couldn’t I at least pull off his tennis permit ruse?

I did the math again. If I was going to be 62 in May 2011, I would have to be born in 1949.

This time at Paragon, there was a young woman running the permit desk. I said I wanted to buy a senior tennis permit. She asked me for ID. I said I didn’t have any on me. She asked me to spell out my name. She asked me when my birthday was. “November 2, 1949"

After some more clicks on her computer, she asked me to take three steps to the left and stand on the red line so she could take my picture for the permit.

A few days later I ran into Trevor at the courts. I showed him the plastic id-like card. It wasn’t as good as dating Madonna. It wasn’t as good as running an antique lingerie web site. But it was OK for me, a guy from Jersey who passed for 62 on only his second try.

Brent Shearer is the book critic for Long Island Tennis Magazine. He is the only reporter to have been kicked out of the 2008 U.S. Open.

Mindy? she asked, half turning her face from the TV set. I could hear Ed Norton calling out, Hellooooo, ball.

Yeah? I answered from the doorway.
You know about sex, right?
Yeah, Ann told me about it.
You don’t have any questions, do you?
I guess not.
Good.

For the record, Ann was my friend who was a year older and more worldly, and always smelled like a combination of Rive Gauche and Big Red gum. Her lesson on the birds and the bees had gone like this: The man sticks his pisher into the woman’s pisher, and something comes out of his pisher that makes the woman pregnant.

When we informed my brother Harry about this state of affairs, he ran straight to our father to ask him if he really stuck his pisher into our mother.

Who told you that? my father demanded.
Mindy and Ann.
They’re lying.

Mindy Greenstein is a clinical psychologist and writer. She is the author of The House on Crash Corner and Other Unavoidable Calamities (Greenpoint Press, 2011).

Sunday afternoon, hours before the play begins, Chola leaves church at the end of the Mass. She has received communion and now walks with her teacher, Sister Ramona, to the Dominican Sisters' convent which is to the left of the old grey-stone church built in 1886. In the role of the parish school principal she will dress in a set of garments, a costume that looks very similar to the holy habit worn by Dominican Sisters for hundreds of years.

Chola will be dressed by Sister Ramona and Sister Anthony in the common room in the convent. I wait for her in the school auditorium for over an hour before the play, eyes fixed, heart beating with great expectation. When Chola enters the auditorium she wears a black cotton tunic, the holy habit, that covers her body and falls to her ankles. A round shaped stiff white collar, a gimp, surrounds her neck and shoulders. It is heavily starched and extends outward and away from her body. A belt made of woven black wool tightens the habit around her waist. Wooden rosary beads, large and small, hang from her belt to help her count her prayers. A large silver cross hangs from a black cord around Chola 's waist. Jesus hangs from the cross. His head is down so I know he is dead.

Chola 's arms are fully covered. I can see both long and three-quarter sleeves, the one flaring out over the other. Chola neatly folds the longer sleeves up from her wrist. I curiously touch the sleeve as she folds it back noticing its smooth texture, but Chola taps my hand, like Sister Jean often does, and says, "You can't touch." That's when I notice a wedding ring on her finger: did she get married in the convent? I panic. Then I remember that Sister Jean also wears a wedding ring, and so does Sister Ramona, Sister Anthony and all the Sisters at Our Lady of Good Counsel. When I once asked Sister Jean who she was married to, she said she was the bride of Jesus. I start to think. When Jesus came back from the dead, did he marry all these Sisters? I asked my dad how many wives a man could have. He said only one and if you have more than one wife you can go to jail. Now I’m worried. I can't let Chola marry Jesus and raise her children as a single parent. I want to solve this mystery just like Trixie Belden in the Black Jacket Mystery.

Chola's dress is mysterious, just like Sister Jean's, my 5th grade teacher. I search for clues and ask Chola about her habit, and she tells me she can't talk about how Sister Ramona and Sister Anthony dressed her or what clothing she wears underneath. What happened to Chola has never happened before -- to be dressed as a Sister and told not to tell anyone how she was dressed or what she is wearing underneath. This is her secret. When Chola walks on to the stage I peek for a glimpse of her underskirts. Her holy habit is a sign she will live her life for Jesus. She will take a vow of poverty and share everything that she has. I wonder if, last week, when Chola gave me half of her package of Twinkies, she had already been practicing her vow. Later that same day Chola gave me a set of three baseball cards from her bubble gum package. One card was a big surprise: "Campy" Roy Campanella, the catcher on my favorite baseball team, the Brooklyn Dodgers. I hope that maybe next week she will give me the baseball cards packaged in her favorite potato chips.

I briefly imagine I would be happy for Chola 's vow of poverty if she joined the community of Dominicans. Maybe then she will have good luck. God will give her, and she will give me, the Mickey Mantle and Pee Wee Reese baseball cards that I've been searching for in every nickel package of Bubble Gum. I imagine the sun-filled day of her consecration. Chola gives me a special part in the ceremony that sets her apart to serve God. She asks me to recite the Lord's Prayer, a prayer I know by heart. I imagine the Dominican Sisters will serve my favorite foods from the school cafeteria for the celebration lunch: macaroni and cheese, slices of pepperoni pizza, and hamburgers with ketchup and sliced pickles.

Standing beside Chola after the play is over, I see her white coif, a headpiece that covers her neck and chin. A thin black veil is pinned over the coif and I remember how Sister Jean, sometimes at Mass, wore the veil down to cover her face. I don't like that I can’t see her soft brown hair beneath her cap. I am afraid that her face hurts, crunched in a moon circle, skin puffing out along the pressed edges of her starched coif. Chola doesn't want me to hug her now; she doesn't laugh when I try to be silly. I'm worried. If she is consecrated a Dominican Sister, she will change her name. She will no longer be Chola, and the tomato sauce stained apron that she now wears when she helps our Mom make delicious lasagna, cooked with sausage, ground beef and three types of cheese, will be replaced by a stiff white apron to protect the front and back of her habit when she works in the convent.

I walk out of the church and down the street. I know I am not allowed to cross Broadway alone. My Mom tells me all the time that she doesn’t want me to get hit by the Pesto Cheese Company truck, just like the one that hit Aunt Mary and broke both of her legs last year. But I’m sad and mad and feel like crossing the avenue on purpose. So I do. When I get home to my house on Madison Street, I go to Grandma’s apartment, turn on the television and watch Hector the Bulldog protect Tweety from Sylvester for the hundredth time.

Flo Gelo was born in Brooklyn, where she lived until her early teens. She's published numerous articles in professional literature about illness, death and dying. This story is one in a series about her life on Madison Street.

Waiting in her car in front of my building was Maggie, 40ish with a bowl cut and oversized glasses. She and I were friends from our jobs at the New York City Public Advocate’s office, where she was Liaison to the Asian Community.

I slipped into the passenger seat.

“What’s a fancy white boy like you living in a dump like this for?” She smiled.

“It’s not that bad.” That was a lie. It was bad. Upstairs was 350-square-feet of misery I called home along with four of my bros from California. Though I shared a mattress with a raging alcoholic, I still had it better than Ben who slept on the padded bench and Chris who paid $75 a month to sleep on a yoga mat on the linoleum floor.

“It’s pretty bad,” Maggie said. “I grew up in Chinatown, and I wouldn’t live here.”

We drove to our first stop, a public elementary school near the Manhattan Bridge that was functioning as a polling place that day. Maggie stayed in the car while I got out, carrying a stack of posters, tape and a stapler. Apparently, we were the last campaign to arrive. Every post on the sidewalk was covered top to bottom with posters from various campaigns. Candidates for city council, judgeships and mayor were all represented on these political totem poles.

For the past year and a half I’d been working for Mark Green’s campaign for mayor. I’d started out as an intern in his government office while still in college and worked my way up to press secretary. That morning Green was the undisputed front runner, due in large part to his adversarial relationship with Rudy Giuliani, whose approval ratings had plummeted in his second term. The winner of that day’s primary was expected to be the next mayor after going through the motions of beating the unknown and un-feared Republican candidate, Michael Bloomberg.

I tacked a Mark Green poster to the one sliver of empty space right above a Fernando Ferrer poster. I took a step back to admire my handiwork in all its glory: forest green and white; bold, persuasive lettering. Nothing but a few inches of blue remained visible from Ferrer’s sign.
I continued on like this for three hours, covering every bare surface we came across, with no help from Maggie.

“I have to watch the car,” she explained. “These Giuliani cops would love to ticket me while I’m hanging Mark Green posters.”

With ten posters left and less than an hour before I was supposed to be at campaign headquarters, I found a telephone pole set back in an alley that I designated the Mark Green post. I taped six vertically and the remaining four flapping off horizontally, like a scarecrow.

At 8:45 my 6 train screeched to a stop at Grand Central and I hustled through the train station to the Graybar Building where I rode the elevator to campaign headquarters. As I approached the door, I braced myself for the election-morning mayhem of staffers and volunteers rushing about with campaign paraphernalia. I yanked the door open a crack and jumped out of the way. Nothing. I opened the door farther and looked in. Nobody. I stepped inside. Everyone was around the corner, back toward the press department. They were just standing there, quiet, huddled around one of the TVs.

I approached to see what they were watching. Smoke billowed out from a top floor of one of the World Trade Center buildings. A small fire that looked containable.

“What’s going on?” I asked the man next to me, a volunteer I’d never seen before.

“A plane crashed into the Trade Center.”

I’d seen this happen before. Two days before Christmas one year when I was a kid, a twin-engine plane crashed into the Macy’s near my home. The plane burst through the wall and sprayed burning fuel on a hundred holiday shoppers.

I poked my head into our opposition research office to say hello to my two friends who spent their days looking through the other candidates’ garbage.

“How’s it looking?”

“Not so good,” Stu said. “It’s gonna be tight.”

“He’s just being pessimistic,” Justin said. “It’ll be tight for sure, but we’ll pull it out.”

A chorus of screams rang out from the group watching TV. I turned around and saw the second tower now on fire. People were shouting.

“Another plane hit!”

“This is terrorism!”

We stared at the screen in silence. Then someone yelled, “Everyone, we need you to come up front to get your assignments. The election is still on as far as we know and we need to act like it.”

I peeled off, but the others who saw the crash stayed behind.

My job that morning was to hustle for votes at the 77th and Lexington subway station and then knock on doors in Lower East Side housing projects in the afternoon. Heading back down to the subway, I realized I’d left my government-issued pager at home, and since I didn’t own a cell phone I was going to need it. I decided to jam downtown, grab it, then rush back to the Upper East Side.

Back at my apartment building, I bounded up the stairs, eager to tell my roommates about the Trade Center. The apartment door was cracked open but no one was home. I climbed the flight of stairs to the roof and pushed the door open, stepping into the sun’s glare. Chris was there with his back to me. There were other people I’d never seen before. Then I noticed there were people on all the surrounding roofs, everyone facing south, staring at an immense cloud of smoke.

“What’s up?” I said.

Chris turned. His face looked blank, as if he were scared to move. “The building just collapsed.”

“What do you mean?” I looked at the buildings again. I could see only one and figured the other was shrouded in the smoke.

“It collapsed,” Chris said again, his voice cold and monotone.

His words hit my forehead and crumbled to the ground. What Chris was saying was impossible. Those buildings were permanent. He may as well have told me the sun burned out.

Chris had quit his job in the collapsed building three days earlier. He was supposed to travel to Italy later that day with his sister Hannah, who I then realized was standing next to him.

“Bombs went off at the bottom and brought the whole thing down” he said.

Bombs. For some reason that made his story believable. I’d seen bombs take down buildings before – on TV at least. My body went cold with fear. Adrenaline took hold. My skin felt electric. I got a rush of energy, but couldn’t move.

“I’m going to turn on the news,” I said. Chris and Hannah followed me downstairs. The image on the TV was a ball of smoke and dust covering everything. The announcer’s voice was frantic.

“The north tower has just collapsed!” she cried. “Both towers have now collapsed!”

Hannah sobbed. She was seated on the padded bench, hugging her knees against her chest. It was her first trip to New York, her first time outside of California.

The phone rang. It was Dave, a friend who had recently moved out of our apartment to live in a residential hotel. “How is everything over there?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“How’s the building. Is it okay? Does it feel safe there?”

“Yeah, the building’s fine. We’re safe.”

“Okay, I think I’m gonna come over. I need to leave midtown. I don’t feel safe here.” He hung up.

It was true that our building was still standing, but for how long I didn’t know. They, whoever they were, had placed bombs in the Trade Center. It was possible there were bombs elsewhere in the city. The TV cut to shots of people streaming out of downtown, out of all of Manhattan. They were heading for the bridges – the Brooklyn, Manhattan and Williamsburg.

That’s the terrorists’ plan, I thought. They were flushing people out of downtown, out of Manhattan, and then, when the bridges were filled, they’d detonate the bombs, bring down the bridges, killing thousands more. They were going to blow up every place that people were likely to be. Hospitals. That’s where my girlfriend was. She had an appointment at a hospital on First Avenue, near the U.N. building. The U.N. Another target. I called her cell phone. Her voice mail picked up immediately.

“I gotta go get Catherine,” I said to Chris. “She’s at the hospital.”

“Dude, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go anywhere right now,” Chris said. Hannah was in a fetal position on the bench, crying through a phone call to her mom back home.

“I gotta go.” I was in a trance as I bounded down the stairs against my better judgment. Outside, people shoved past my building, shoulder to shoulder, in a lava flow of fear and anxiety stretching all the way from my sidewalk, across two traffic lanes, the wide median, two more traffic lanes, to the sidewalk opposite.

I trudged the half-block north to Delancey Street. It was the same; people covered every inch. I looked east and saw that everyone was headed to the Williamsburg Bridge.

The crush of bodies overwhelmed me. It felt like there was just a matter of time before a fight broke out, then a stampede. Hundreds would be trampled to death. Right then laughter erupted from a group of teenage boys, which sent me over the edge.

I forced my way back to my building and tried to unlock the door. My shaky hands fumbled with the keys. I got the door open, dashed inside, slammed it behind me.

“Dude, I told you,” Chris said as I entered the apartment.

I slumped back into the chair in front of the TV.

Dave walked in a little while later, his face ashen, expressionless. “Hey,” he said, dropping his bag and sitting down next to Hannah on the bench.

“Hey,” we responded then turned back to the news.

A reporter from a local station interviewed a man near City Hall about the extent of the deaths and injuries. “Right now we don’t know,” the man said. “It’s possible that the planes were filled with deadly chemical or biological weapons. If that’s the case, the death total could exceed 100,000.”

“Shut up!” Dave shouted at the TV. “Who the hell is this guy? Why are they letting him talk? He doesn’t know anything. He’s just gonna scare the hell out of everyone.”

He slumped back against the wall, and we continued watching, our hearts beating a little harder.
Hannah finally hung up the phone, and it rang. I grabbed it. “Hello!”

“Sam?”

“Catherine!”

“Why haven’t you called me?” she yelled. “I can’t believe you’re at home. I’ve been calling you over and over! Why didn’t you call me? I thought you might be campaigning near the Trade Center when it fell. Why didn’t you call me?”

She never made it to her doctor’s appointment. Running late, she was still showering when the first plane hit. The brownstone shook. She rushed over to the Brooklyn Heights promenade for its view of downtown Manhattan across the river. As she watched the buildings burn, she noticed the row of women with their kids watching the horror unfold. Catherine walked back to her apartment and spent the next three hours calling me.

We decided on the phone that I would go to her place where it was safer. I waited another couple of hours until the mob had thinned and the police finished their search for bombs on the bridges. There were still no cars on the streets, just a few stragglers in the middle of the road like last-place finishers in a marathon.

The subway car was crowded but no one spoke or made a sound. When the train pulled up to its first stop in Brooklyn, I dashed out of the station and exhaled.

Catherine waited for me on her stoop behind a line of 10 people, some covered in white dust, waiting to use the pay phone outside of her garden apartment.

Not knowing what to do we went for a walk. We passed brownstone after brownstone shaded by elms until we reached Montague Street, the main drag in Brooklyn Heights. It was late afternoon and neither of us had eaten since breakfast. We stepped into an Indian restaurant and took a table next to the front window. The place was empty. We watched paper after paper from the Trade Center float down onto the street outside. It reminded me of jogging through the neighborhood in late October as leaves rained down.

Afterward, we walked a couple of blocks to the video-rental store. It was the most crowded I’d ever seen it and most of the new releases were picked over. We agreed we needed comedy, so I stopped searching when I came to “The Jerk.”

At the checkout counter, I watched the TV that hung from the ceiling just inside the entrance. It usually showed movies chosen by the kids who manned the store, but now it was showing the news. I wondered why the camera was trained on some innocuous office building but then noticed the building swaying back and forth. And then it crumbled. Catherine and I watched as this 47-floor mass of concrete, steel, and glass was reduced to dust in a manner of seconds.

“Is this live or did that happen earlier?” I asked the cashier.

“It’s live. That was World Trade Center 7. That’ll be $3.75.”

Twenty-four hours earlier, the collapse of a major office building in downtown Manhattan would have dominated the news. As it happened, it was the least interesting thing to occur that day. It was hard to believe that the lead story in all the newspapers that morning was the city’s primary election. The event that consumed most of my life for over a year was something I hadn’t thought about since I was on the roof of my apartment building earlier that morning.

Catherine and I never watched “The Jerk” that night. Instead, we flipped back and forth between CNN and Comedy Central, alternating the news with comic relief.

As we headed to bed, my pager vibrated on the kitchen table. I dialed the number. It was my boss. He told me to show up at headquarters in the morning for a staff meeting. The campaign continued.