Chuck puts the helicopter on his American Express card. Our pilot, Norman Knodt, assures me that nothing bad has ever happened to him in a helicopter excepting getting it shot up nine times, but that was in Vietnam, and he foresees no problems with the garbage-barge mission. Soon we are over the harbor, circling the barge, which turns out to be, like so many celebrities when you see them up close, not as tall as you expected. As I gaze down at it, with the soaring spires of downtown Manhattan in the background gleaming in the brilliant sky, a thought crosses my mind: I had better write at least 10 inches about this, to justify our expense re ports.
Later that day, I stop outside Grand Central Station, where a woman is sitting in a chair on the sidewalk next to a sign that says:
TAROT CARDS
PALM READINGS
I ask her how much it costs for a Tarot card reading, and she says $10, which I give her. She has me select nine cards, which she arranges in a circle. “Now ask me a question,” she says.
“Can New York save itself ?” I ask.
She looks at me.
“That’s your question?” she asks.
“Yes,” I say.
“OK,” she says. She looks at the cards. “Yes, New York can save itself for the future.”
She looks at me. I don’t say anything. She looks back at the cards.
“New York is the Big Apple,” she announces. “It is big and exciting, with very many things to see and do.”
After the reading I stop at a newsstand and pick up a COPY Of Manhattan Living magazine, featuring a guide to condominiums. I note that there are a number of one-bedrooms priced as low as $250,000.
Manhattan Living also has articles. “It is only recently,” one begins, “that the word ‘fashionable’ has been used in conjunction with the bathroom.”
DAY THREE: just to be on the safe side, Chuck and I decide to devote Day Three to getting back to the airport. Because of a slipup at the Department of Taxi Licensing, our driver speaks a fair amount of English. And it’s a darned good thing he does, because he is kind enough to share his philosophy of life with us, in between shouting helpful instructions to other drivers. It is a philosophy Of optimism and hope, not just for himself, but also for New York City, and for the world:
“The thing is, you got to look on the liter side, because HEY WHAT THE HELL IS HE DOING! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING YOU (very bad word) Because for me, the thing is, respect. If a person shows me respect, then HAH? YOU WANT TO SQUEEZE IN FRONT NOW?? YOU S.O.B.!! I SQUEEZE YOU LIKE A LEMON!! So I am happy here, but you Americans, you know, you are very, you know WHERE IS HE GOING?? You have to look behind the scenery. This damn CIA, something sticky is going on WHERE THE HELL IS THIS STUPID S.O.B. THINK HE IS GOING? behind the scenery there, you don’t think this guy what his name, Casey, you don’t LOOK AT THIS S.O.B. you don’t wonder why he really die? You got to look behind the scenery. I don’t trust nobody. I don’t trust my own self. WILL YOU LOOK AT ...”
By the time we reach La Guardia, Chuck and I have a much deeper understanding of life in general, and it is with a sense of real gratitude that we leap out of the cab and cling to the pavement. Soon we are winging our way southward, watching the Manhattan skyline disappear, reflecting upon our many experiences and pondering the question that brought us here:
Can New York save itself? Can this ultrametropolis—crude yet sophisticated, overburdened yet wealthy, loud yet obnoxious—can this city face up to the multitude of problems besetting it and, drawing upon its vast reserves of spunk and spirit, as it has done so many times before, emerge triumphant?
And, who cares?
A Boy And His Diplodocus
We have been deeply into dinosaurs for some time now. We have a great many plastic dinosaurs around the house. Sometimes I think we have more plastic dinosaurs than plastic robots, if you can imagine.
This is my son’s doing, of course. Robert got into dinosaurs when he was about three, as many children do. It’s a power thing: Children like the idea of creatures that were much, much bigger and stronger than mommies and daddies are. If a little boy is doing something bad, such as deliberately pouring his apple juice onto the television remote-control device, a mommy or daddy can simply snatch the little boy up and carry him, helpless, to his room. But they would not dare try this with Tyrannosaurus Rex. No sir. Tyrannosaurus Rex would glance down at Mommy or Daddy from a height of 40 feet and casually flick his tail sideways, and Mommy or Daddy would sail directly through the wall, leaving comical cartoon-style Mommy-or-Daddy-shaped holes and Tyrannosaurus Rex would calmly go back to pouring his apple juice onto the remote-control device.
So Robert spends a lot of time being a dinosaur. I recall the time we were at the beach and he was being a Gorgosaurus, which, like Tyrannosaurus Rex, is a major dinosaur, a big meat-eater (Robert is almost always carnivorous). He was stomping around in the sand and along came an elderly tourist couple, talking in German. They sat down near us.
Robert watched them. “Tell them I’m a Gorgosaurus,” he said.
“You tell them,” I said.
“Gorgosauruses can’t talk,” Robert pointed out, rolling his eyes. Sometimes he can’t believe what an idiot his father is.
Anybody who has ever had a small child knows what happened next. What happened was Robert, using the powerful whining ability that Mother Nature gives to young children to compensate for the fact that they have no other useful skills, got me to go over to this elderly foreign couple I had never seen before, point to my son, who was looking as awesome and terrifying as a three-year-old can look lumbering around in a bathing suit with a little red anchor sewn on the crotch, and say: “He’s a Gorgosaurus.”
The Germans looked at me the way you would look at a person you saw walking through a shopping mall with a vacant stare and a chain saw. They said nothing.
“Ha ha!” I added, so they would see I was in fact very normal.
They continued to say nothing. You could tell this had never happened to them over in Germany. You could just tell that in Germany, they have a strict policy whereby people who claim their sons are dinosaurs on public beaches are quickly sedated by the authorities. You could also tell that this couple agreed with that policy.
“Tell them I’m a meat-eater,” the Gorgosaurus whispered.
“He’s a meat-eater,” I told the couple. God only knows why. They got up and started to fold their towels.
“Tell them I can eat more in ONE BITE than a mommy and a daddy and a little boy could eat in TWO WHOLE MONTHS,” urged the Gorgosaurus, this being one of the many dinosaur facts he got from the books we read to him at bedtime. But by then the Germans were already striding off, glancing back at me and talking quietly to each other about which way they would run if I came after them.
“Ha ha!” I called after them, reassuringly.
Gorgosaurus continued to stomp around, knocking over whole cities. I had a hell of a time getting him to take a nap that day.
Sometimes when he’s tired and wants to be cuddled, Robert is a gentle plant-eating dinosaur. I’ll come into the living room, and there will be this lump on my wife’s lap, whimpering, with Robert’s blanket over it.
“What’s that?” I ask my wife.
“A baby Diplodocus,” she answers. (Diplodocus looked sort of like Brontosaurus, only sleeker and cuter.) “it lost its mommy and daddy.”
“No!” I say.
“So it’s going to live with us forever and ever,” she says.
“Great!” I say,
The blanket wriggles with joy.
Lately, at our house we have become interested in what finally happened to the dinosaurs. According to our bedtime books, all the dinosaurs died quite suddenly about 60 million years ago, and nobody knows why. Some scientists—this is the truth, it was in Time magazine—think the cause was a Death Comet that visits the earth from time to time. Robert thinks this is great. A Death Comet! That is serious power. A Death Comet would never have to brush its teeth. A Death Comet could have pizza whenever it wanted.