heart of the realm of the modern faceless feudal overlords who drive the economic engine of the ship of state, their domain guarded by giant sentries, skyscrapers, colossuses of steel and concrete dwarfing the peons below.
It is no place for a flower child.
But here we are, passing the worldwide headquarters of Moody’s Financial Services, and now the rebuilt 7 World Trade Center, and now the reconstruction of the towers, and now, just across the street, Century 21, the department store where I have had great success with T-shirts and belts, which can be quite dear. Somehow, Century 21 has withstood not one terrorist attack but two, as if to say to the fundamentalist Muslims, you have thrown your very best at us, twice, and still we are here, defiantly outfitting your mortal enemies, the Sons of Capitalism, with Hanes and Fruit of the Loom at surprisingly reasonable prices: God bless America! And now the Marriott, and now the hot dog stand on the corner of Liberty, of which I have partaken once, during a tenth-grade field trip to the Stock Exchange with Mr. Henderson, and became so violently ill that the doctors suspected I may have contracted botulism, and now passing a Tibetan selling yak wool sweaters off a blanket, and now turning left on Thames, and now entering, behind an old building that vaguely resembles the Woolworth, a dark alley that smells of what can only be wino-urine.
And now I am completely confused.
“What?” I say, but Q puts her hand over my mouth.
“Wait,” she says, and like a trusting puppy I am led down the dank passageway. We pass some sacks of garbage, and a one-eyed alley cat lapping at some sour milk, and arrive, finally, at a tall iron fence, the sort that guards cemeteries in slasher flicks.
“This is creepy,” I say.
“Wait,” she says again and opens the gate, which plays its role to perfection and creaks in protest. Q takes my hand and leads me inside. I look around.
“Can I cook?” she says, “or can I cook?”
It is a garden—that is the only word for it—but what a garden! The gate is covered on the inside by a thick, reaching ivy, as is the entirety of the fence surrounding the conservatory. This vine keeps the heat and moisture from escaping. The atmosphere feels different. It is slightly humid, faintly reminiscent of a rain forest, and at least twenty degrees warmer than the ambient temperature on the streets of the city. When Q closes the door behind us, the current of clammy alley air is sealed behind us, and it is as if we have entered another world, an—I don’t dare say it, it will sound clichéd, but it is the only word on my mind—Eden.
Here are apple trees, pullulating with swollen fruit. Q nods in approval and I administer to a branch the gentlest of taps. A compliant apple falls into my greedy hands. I bite in. The fruit is succulent, ambrosial. Here is a vegetable garden—orderly rows of broccoli, squash, yams, three kinds of onions, carrots, asparagus, parsnips, and what I think is okra. Here is an herb garden—redolent with rosemary and thyme, basil and sage, mint and rue, borage already in full flower. I have the sudden urge to make a salad. Here are apricots. Here plums. Here, somehow, avocados.
Dirt pathways, well manicured, wend their way through the garden. One path leads to a pepper farm. Q tells me that ninety-seven varieties are in the ground. Another path leads to a dwarf Japanese holly that has been mounted on stone. Yet another path ends at a Zen waterfall.
I have endless questions for Q. With skyscrapers encroaching on every side, how does enough light get in to sustain the garden? Who built it? When? Who owns it now? How could its existence have been kept a secret? Why is it so warm? Why is it not overrun by city idiots, ruined like everything else? How is this miracle possible?
Q answers in the best way possible. She sits me down at the base of a pear tree—a pear tree in the middle of Manhattan!—kisses me passionately, and, oh God oh God, am I in love.
Chapter ONE
In the aftermath of the publication of my novel, Time’s Broken Arrow (Ick Press; 1,550 copies sold), a counterhistorical exploration of the unexplored potentialities of a full William Henry Harrison presidency, I experience a liberal’s phantasmagoria, what might be described as a Walter Mitty–esque flight of fancy if Thurber’s Mitty, dreamer of conquest on the battlefield and adroitness in the surgery, had aspired instead to acceptance among the intellectual elite of New York City, more specifically the Upper West Side, the sort who on a Sunday jaunt for bagels buy the latest Pynchon on remainder from the street vendor outside of Zabar’s, thumb it on the way home while munching an everything, and have the very best intentions of reading it.
I am on National Public Radio. It is putatively something of an honor because they do not often have novelists, except Salman Rushdie for whom NPR has always had a soft spot, but I know better. A friend of mine, a lawyer, has called in a favor from the host, whom he has helped settle some parking tickets. It is an undeserved and hence tainted tribute, but the moderator gives me the full NPR treatment all the same. He has read my opus cover to cover and asks me serious questions about several of the important issues raised in the book, including Harrison’s mistreatment of the Native Americans, problematic support for slavery in the Indiana Territory, and legendary fondness for pork products.
“Which was his favorite?” he asks.
“The brat,” I say.
“I have never had a brat.”
“That is too bad.”
“Is it like the knock?”
“No, it is much better.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“It is nevertheless true,” I say. “It is the best of the wursts.”
The Fantasia for Clavichord in C Minor begins playing in the background, signaling the end of the interview. “I am afraid we are out of time,” says the host. “Is this not always the case? Just as things are getting interesting, time runs out.”
“It is always so,” I say, whereupon I am ushered out of the studio to the music of C. P. E. Bach.
The following morning my book is reviewed in the New York Times. To be fair, it is not a review per se. Rather, it is an oblique reference to my novel in a less than favorable discourse on the new Stephen King novel. Specifically, the critic writes, “The new King is frivolous claptrap, utterly predictable, surprising only for its persistent tediousness and the suddenness with which the author’s once discerning ear for a story has, as if touched by Medusa herself, turned to stone. The novel’s feeble effort at extrapolating from a counterhistorical premise as a means of commenting on modern society compares favorably only with the other drivel of this sort—I dare not call it a genre lest it encourage anyone to waste more time on such endeavors—including the profoundly inept Time’s Broken Arrow, surely one of the worst novels of the year.”
My publicist calls around nine o’clock and merrily inquires whether I have seen the mention in the morning’s paper. I say that I have.
“It’s a coup of a placement,” she says. “Do you know how difficult it is for a first-time novelist to get a mention in the Times?”
“A coup? She called my book one of the worst novels of the year. It isn’t even a review of my book. It’s just a gratuitous slight. It’s actually the worst review I have ever read, and she says my book is even worse still.”
“Don’t be such a Gloomy Gus,” says
