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(previously appeared on rec.arts.mystery, July 31, 2002)
It's about a 2 mile walk from the Medical Examiner's Office to Partners in
Crime, a trek I've been making twice a week since the summer started. I try to
vary the route so I don't get bored. Today I wondered, which way would I go? I
had walked from 30th Street to 23rd down 2nd avenue and thought about going
crosstown, but then I remembered that only a few days ago a woman had been
struck and run over by a sanitation truck at the corner of 23rd and 6th. Seeing
her crushed body in the autopsy room the day after the fact was hard enough; I
wasn't particularly sure I wanted to encounter her ghost.
I find that since I started the internship that the specter of death is pretty
unavoidable. Today, like other days, I ended up passing by Gramercy Park, which
is a gorgeous park. However it's also adjacent to the Gramercy Park Hotel, where
on my first day at the ME's Office the owner's son jumped to his death. Again, I
thought I could feel a ghost there. But it also could be that the wind was
blowing a bit as well.
More on Gramercy Park. Like I said, it's beautiful--small, enclosed, nice
greenery, a bit of an oasis in the midst of chaos. But for whatever reason, I've
yet to figure out how to enter the park. Each time I've walked by, I can never
find the entrance. Maybe I haven't looked hard enough, and usually I don't have
the time anyway, but then I wonder if there's actually an entrance after all, or
if the people I sometimes see sitting inside, knitting clothes on park benches
are only a figment of my imagination.
Often I meander during the walk and take some time to shop for clothes and other
things, but today it was simply too damn hot to do anything but walk as quickly
as I can, which means I get to the store about an hour early. And that turns out
to be cool as Jeremiah Healy, aka Terry Devane, has stopped by to sign the
single copy we had of his latest book JUROR NUMBER ELEVEN. He's a funny guy. He
also tells the worst jokes imaginable that are really only funny because he ends
up laughing hysterically as he tells them. Then he, his publicist, and one of
the store's owners leave to get drinks, and I get my shift going. It's slow, as
these are the doldrums of summer where selling $200 under break-even point is
not a bad day. People buy books and the closing hour approaches.
I walk to the 14th street station and get on the express train, which has a
habit of staying put for 20 or so minutes before leaving. I don't notice the big
commotion until the next stop, when a young mother admonishes her kids to sit
elsewhere because right next to them, an anguished young woman is in serious
throes of labor. Her husband/boyfriend/whatever is looking worried as hell,
stroking her stomach and obviously hoping she doesn't deliver before they get to
the hospital, which I assumed to be a fair ways uptown, probably in Harlem. For
whatever reason--probably because their clothes and appearance suggest they are
poor, if not homeless--they can't afford to take a cab. I try not to look
because it's really too voyeuristic to watch her in such obvious pain, but I
can't help but notice that her left shoe is off, and the right foot is twitching
madly. Will they get there in time? Will she deliver? I'm not the only one who
had these questions but all of us nearby are looking away, trying hard to think
about the fact that we're getting home soon, and hoping that we don't have to
deal with a really messy situation. And I will probably never know the outcome,
as I get off several stops later and they are still there, hopefully closer to
the hospital but maybe closer still to delivery on the subway car.
But in a way, though unusual, I'm strangely glad to see all this unfold. A
baby's going to be brought in this world, and while that baby may be facing a
multitude of problems, there's no reason to take away hope for the kid. And even
though I may be all to acquainted with death these days, there's new life being
made to equal the balance.
And that was my day.
Sarah Weinman
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