And the power’s out in the heart of man . . .
Jeff has been moved to Roosevelt Island, where neither bridge nor tunnel cross save for the F train, when it stops, and The Tram, when it chooses to work. In a city where trestled masterpieces criscross the East River like so many castiron Rialtos . . . Rialti? . . . Roosevelt Island occupies a transitory deadzone between the Queensboro and the Triboro. Between tall-masted Mannahatta, low-slung Astoria (without power for over a week now), and the slowly crystallized Long Island City, a blocky, Stalinist solution to that most capitalist of quandries: finding decent multi-bedroom rents in New York City.
The F train was running on the V line, overshooting the island, necessitating a detour via Roosevelt Ave/Jackson Heights. Right president. Wrong station. The Tram is not functioning, or at least I’ve decided it won’t, so as to rule it out at an option. A tram, high up in the sky, with nothing but the river to break the fall. Who needs it? Not I. Jeff will remain here until he can leave.
I’ve long wondered who lives out here, presuming the views to be phenomenal, which indeed they are. Just as I imagine/remember the opening credits of Diff’rent Strokes, which panned briefly across the skyline of East Uptown, to be. And then what was so errant about that first "e" to have to replace with an apostrophe?
Jeff has been speaking for a few weeks now, in spite of the trach in his throat.
"What street are we at?"
"Street? Jeff, I don’t know what the streets are called out here"
It’s true, I don’t. We’re at One Main Street, on an Island with seemingly only one road and no commercial functions. How awful would it be to come along this way and not even get a river view?
"No . . . what street in Manhattan?"
"Um . . . I dunno . . . I mean, maybe we’re parrallel to Sutton Place? Beekman Place? We’re just south . . . south? . . . of the Queensboro Bridge. 59th Street, so maybe we’re at 56th, 57th? Where do you think that is, Jeff? Beekman Place?"
"I guess"
Jeff has developed pneumonia. No fever. But he has an infection in his chest, just like he did those first weeks in the ICU, which he was not awake to remember. The nurses don’t follow up with him. To get to his hospital ward, you pass through an assortment of indigent enfeebled, bereft of various limbs through various transgressions. All Jeff did was step outside his door on a Friday night.
"Jeff, when you’re well enough to walk we should get everyone together and have a weenie roast out on the promenade. We’ll bust out the bag of Kingsford and . . .
. . . good god, did I just say weenie roast?
"Weenie roast?", exclaimed his mother, "oh yah, it looks lovely outside."
But I meant it. I haven’t been to a bona fide cookout in a while, let alone hosted one. It’s been years since my parents switched to propane. Something so reminiscent of childhood, though, the smell of processed meat grilling in some forest preserve somewhere. Old School. Maybe Daniel Wright Woods. None of those around here. Just Roosevelt Island, somehow squeezed in the middle of the center of the universe, with no way to get to it but underground, and up in the sky. A peculiar little refuge from a city of ghosts. Jeff will remain here until he can leave.
And until then, these visits will continue. F train from Herald Square. To a stop where many get on but at which hardly anyone ever seems to leave. The station an aesthetic cross between the D.C. Metro and the one in Montreal. A couple of hundred feet below the 14th mile where I hit my wall. Where Jeff will remain until he can leave. This, I suppose, will take some getting used to.
