Time and Again

We got out where Nassau Street meets Park Row, the cab waiting at the curb. I pointed down Park Row toward Broadway. "That's where the Astor Hotel stood, Julia. They built a new one uptown at Forty-fourth Street, and now it's gone, too." I pointed again, at a building I don't think I'd ever seen before either. "And that's where the post office was." Each time I pointed Julia looked obediently, understanding my words and nodding; but I don't think it was really possible for her to understand that that was really where the Astor had been, and this was where the post office had stood.

But then she exclaimed, a sudden little "Oh!" of surprised delight, as she suddenly noticed City Hall and the Court House, both looking exactly as we'd last seen them, and realized that the park across the street was City Hall Park. It, too, was unchanged as far as I could tell; if there were small changes, as there must have been, they weren't noticeable to either of us. Julia stood looking across the street at it, smiling genuinely but tremulously; for just a moment there was the shine of tears in her eyes, then they were gone in the pleasure of what she saw. Very quietly she said, "I'm glad, Si, so glad it hasn't been changed. How good to see it."

Oriented for the first time now, Julia suddenly understood where we were, and looked quickly up at me for confirmation. I nodded, she turned, and — I gestured to the cabby, who followed us along the curb — we walked along Park Row, along the side of what had once been the Times Building, still here though greatly changed. And then we stopped at the site of the building we'd seen burn to the ground. A building as old, now, as the World Building had been then stood in its place. It was equally nondescript, and incredibly very much like it; it looked as though it had probably been built immediately after the fire.

We stood looking at it blankly. In my mind I could easily see the great lashing tongues of orange flame crackling out the window tops of the old World Building; I could still smell the black smoke, still hear the hurricane roar of a fire that was now gone from all human memory, surely, except mine and the girl's beside me, and I wondered what Ida Small's life had been like. I walked forward and placed the flat of my hand against the building wall, and then so did Julia. For a moment we stood with our palms pressed to the actuality of the stone that stood here now, feeling it draw the warmth from our hands, and it should have been real. But Julia looked at me and shook her head, and I nodded. I said, "I know; it's not real for me, either." I put my hand back into my overcoat pocket, and Julia slid hers into her muff.

She walked back to the curb, where our cab was waiting, then turned to the old building and pointed. "That must be about where the OBSERVER sign hung." She glanced at the cabby who was pretending not to listen, then stepped closer to me, lowering her voice. "Si, can you believe that we crawled along that sign only two days ago?" She pointed at the old Times Building. "And there is the very window we climbed through into Mr. J. Walter Thompson's office."

I nodded, smiling at the difficulty of even imagining these things. I said, "His advertising agency still exists. I think it's the largest in the world now, or close to it."

"Oh?" she said brightly, as though at good news from an old friend. "I'm pleased to hear it; he was a very nice man."

We drove on then, block after block, Julia's head constantly turning. It was nearly all completely strange to her, a brand-new place except that she could see the big yellow street signs. And again and again I heard her murmur, "Gone… gone… gone…"

I don't know what the cabdriver was thinking; he was looking at us in his mirror every few seconds now. But when he caught my eye and started to speak, I gave him the hardest glare I had in stock. I don't really like New York cabdrivers. They've been overly publicized, have become arrogant, and I wasn't interested in anything cute this guy was about to say. Julia knew, too, that now he was listening to everything we said, and sometimes when we stopped for a light, people in cars and trucks beside us glanced in at our clothes, then looked at our faces. And of course it had happened even more when we'd walked or stood in the street. Actually I don't think anyone gave us much thought; they'd suppose we were on our way to a rehearsal of some kind, probably for a television commercial. But Julia was very aware of their looks, and when the cabdriver gave us still another inspection in his mirror, she leaned close to me and murmured, "Will we be at your house soon, Si?" and I nodded yes, and told the driver to speed it up.

I made one detour, though. At Third Avenue and Twenty-third Street, I told the driver to head west, and when he started to remind me, wise-guy style, of my original directions, I said, "West on Twenty-third!" and he turned.

We drove around Madison Square then, and heading south on Broadway, driving past the west side of the square, Julia grabbed my arm suddenly just as I'd thought she might. "Si!" she whispered. "It's gone! Really gone!"

"What is?"

"The arm! The Statue of Liberty's arm!" The cabdriver was losing his mind with frustration. "It would be, of course," Julia murmured, "but… now I know that it really happened. And that the entire Statue is in the harbor." Her arm was under mine, and she squeezed my arm tight to her side. "It's scary," she said, and made herself smile at me.

As we waited for the light at Twenty-third Street, Julia sat looking forward through the windshield, no longer caring about the cabby. "The Fifth Avenue Hotel," she said, pointing. "Gone." She looked back over her shoulder through the trees of the square. "All the hotels are gone. Delmonico's, too." At Twenty-second Street, waiting for the light, to turn east, Julia pointed again. "The Abbey Park Theater; gone. And the Ladies' Mile, Si?"

I nodded. "Gone. All gone."

The light changed, we turned east, and I said, "That's Lexington Avenue just ahead; we can turn south there for one block to Gramercy Park. Your house is still there. Do you want to see it?"

"Oh, no!" She shook her head violently. "I couldn't stand that, Si."

Julia was pleased with the elevator in my building, though not with the middle-aged woman holding a poodle under her arm who kept staring at Julia and her clothes all the way up to my floor. I kept a key wedged between the molding of the front doorframe and the wall of the building hallway, where they separated a little about a yard above the floor. With a folded slip of paper, I worked it out now, unlocked my door, and gestured Julia in. She stepped inside, I flicked the wall switch, and — it was almost as much a novelty to me now as to Julia — the living-room chandelier came on.

She gri

"I prefer gaslight,'' I said, but that was so unbelievable she didn't bother answering it. Without taking her eyes from the chandelier, she moved the switch again, and the light went off. I got money from under the paper lining a dresser drawer, and when I went downstairs to pay off the cab, Julia stood, still staring at the chandelier, fascinated, delighted, clicking the light switch on and off, over and again.

I helped Julia take off her coat, and hung it, with her hat and muff, in the closet, Julia's hand rising to push at her hair, and there was a moment or so of awkwardness and constraint between us. I think it was the act of removing coat and hat when she was alone with me in my apartment, something Julia would feel wasn't right, at least in any ordinary circumstance. She covered it by examining my davenport and few sticks of furnished-apartment furniture, a real enough interest actually, since the look of them was new for her. She asked a question or two, then walked to the windows, where I joined her, and she stared down at Lexington Avenue for a few moments, marveling once again at being here.