Yesterday being July 4th.
Well I did.
Yep I was determined to pay some bills that had been collecting dust in my Things to Be Ignored box, so I wrote a few checks, shoved 'em in envelopes and off I went.
At my corner mailbox, I pulled the handle, but the dad-burned door wouldn't open. Didn't faze me. I mean, this is the East Village. Anything could have happened. Might have been someone too wasted to tell the difference between the garbage can and the mailbox who crammed too much stuff in there, or the thing just might have been broken.
So I plodded on, undeterred.
Found another box on Avenue A, but it wouldn't open either. That's when it hit me. Duhhh. The mailboxes were locked shut.
I know it's odd to say, but none of the terror warnings for the Fourth of July had sunk in. This did. The %$#@&* mailboxes were locked!!
Not only did the reality of the fact that this city was worried about someone dropping bombs into our mailboxes hit me, I was also struck with the terrible notion that I would now have to finish all my day's errands while carrying a huge wad of letters.
Oh, how I suffer.
As the day progressed, I noticed other things, about a hundred cops on the corner of 14th and 1st getting ready to patrol the FDR, a whole lotta very nervous people walking even faster then usual, a ton of police barricades piled up to be delivered eastward.
Naturally all of this made me feel profoundly patriotic.
How dare I consider doing not much of anything on this day when I should be celebrating freedom and the fact that my building has a killer roof-deck.
So I threw a spontaneous potluck rooftop soiree.
Tommy and Ed came over with beer and wine. I bought a shit-load of Chinese chicken wings, some hummus, chips, cheese crackers ... the usual Rossi vittles. Carol and Sandy came over with Thai food. Kathleen brought up a tart (the kind you eat not the kind you date).
Turned out my neighbor Mike was having a get together with some of his rocker (DUDE!) pals on the roof, too, so it was a real party.
Now here's the deal with my roof. Even though it's practically on Avenue C, we get a lousy view of the fireworks, 'cause one of the projects is so huge it blocks out the central view. So basically what we see is the fireworks that shoot up high enough to be over the building or what comes cascading down the sides. It kinda sucks, but when given the choice of cramming in between thousands of rowdy people on the FDR amid high terror alerts, or watching the tops and sides of the fireworks from a comfy roof deck with tons of wine and munchies, everyone thought this was the way to go.
First thing Kathleen said to me when I met up with her on the deck: "Did you see the Batmobile?"
Turns out a fighter jet was patrolling, not to mention a whole lotta helicopters.
Next door to us is Christopher's tenement building. It's a story higher and a bit to the east, so they have a perfect view of the works. Earlier, Christopher had promised to invite us all up to his roof. I was expecting to get a call to go over there any second. Instead some cops were peering down at us from his roof.
"Did you see the snipers?" one of Mike's Dude! pals asked.
Is that what they are?
Then Kathleen's cell phone rings. It's Christopher. An elderly woman who lives in his building was just found dead on his roof. Yeah the roof that was only about 15 feet away from us. The cops were there for her, not as snipers.
The woman, who as a rule could generally be found buying beer at the corner bodega had gone up on the roof in this sweltering hundred degree day to drink. She'd passed out at some point and lain there in the intense heat all day long. How long she'd been dead, I don't know, but Christopher said she was barely recognizable.
The night took on a bit of an eerie tone after that. None of us knew her except as one of the many characters in the neighborhood, but knowing that a corpse was lying just beyond the wall 15 feet away is a bit of strange element to mix into a party.
I guess it was good thing that she died on July 4th. Who knows how long it would have taken for them to find her if not. This night was the most social night of the year for her building. Christopher told me the whole building goes up there on July 4th. It's tradition.
They were there last night, but they were quiet.
I wondered how it felt to them to climb up there, ready to celebrate and instead find a dead neighbor.
When the fireworks started, I forgot all about the corpse, and the mailboxes and the cops and the batplane and delighted in the tops and sides of a gorgeous fireworks display. We all cheered and hooted and hugged and kissed and joked.
Kathleen passed the tart around, and I kept screaming, "Stop calling me that!" every time she offered, "Tart?"
Carol regaled us all with her non-PC rants about the proper revenge for 9/11. Let's just say it left the Sears building as the tallest in the world. Tommy flexed his newly developed biceps (swimming with resistance paddles or some such thing). Ed and Kathleen bonded over celebrity bathroom decor. Sandy explained exactly what "Mushy" means in her country. It was a fun group.
This, then, was the night, the first Fourth of July after September 11th, with good friends and lots of laughter amid the strangeness of it all.
I let my eyes stroke the perfect view of the red, white and blue Empire State building and then turned toward the hole in the sky that was the World Trade Center.
"The sky seems so empty over there," Carol said.
"Not to me," I thought to myself, because I see them still standing there. They flicker in and out like candlelight, but they're there.
They are always there.
