New York - The Novel

I’ll be back inside half an hour.”
    “Okay, Dad.” She smiled. “Thank you.”
    He turned down Park Avenue. He didn’t really have an errand, he just needed to walk a little more. Park Avenue was looking its best. You wouldn’t think times were hard—not so bad for lawyers, it had to beadmitted, though the family assets had decreased substantially in the last eighteen months. But it was tough for a lot of people.
    When you thought about it, though, the cycle of boom and bust, advance and recession, had been going on in the two biggest financial centers, New York and London, for centuries. Some busts were bigger than others—the Depression was huge. But this beautiful avenue still went on.
    Poor immigrants still arrived and found the freedom they sought, and prospered.
    And let’s face it, when you thought of the riots, the brutality, even the prejudices of generations past, New York for all its faults was a far kinder place than ever before in its history.
    The Big Apple. People thought that phrase came from the sixties. Actually it came from the late twenties and thirties, but what the hell? And what did it actually mean? Something you could take a big bite out of, he supposed. Some said it was the apple that tempted Adam. No doubt that too—New York was always materialist. But it was also the city of excellence, of art, music, of endless possibilities.
    He passed a fashionable store and was surprised to see that in their window display they were using a Theodore Keller print. It looked terrific. That really pleased him.
    And made him think of Katie. Katie Keller had done well.
    As well as her catering business, she’d opened her own restaurant in northern Westchester County. He and Maggie often went there on summer weekends.
    He remembered so well the moment of panic he’d had back on the terrible day the towers came down. She’d been in the Financial Center across the street, thank God, but it had been hours before they’d been able to make contact with her.
    Only one person that he knew himself had died that terrible day. Old Sarah Adler. If it hadn’t been for her, he’d have been in the headhunter’s office in the World Trade Center himself. Whether he’d have been trapped and lost his life it was impossible to say. But whether or not she’d saved his life in a physical sense, she’d saved it in every other way.
    Sarah Adler had gone. Along with more than a thousand others, she had left not a trace of her body that could be identified. An absolute and final loss.
    Not absolute, perhaps. She was remembered. Whenever he looked at the great space in the sky where the towers had been, he always thought of her with gratitude, and affection. And thousands of others were remembered, in a similar fashion.
    And he was glad that a new, Freedom Tower would arise to take the former towers’ place, for it seemed to him that this was everything that New York stood for. No matter how hard things were, New Yorkers never gave up.
    He continued walking. He came down past the Waldorf-Astoria, and the enclave of office buildings around the lovely, Byzantine-looking church of St. Bartholomew. As the lunch hour approached, a jazz band had started playing in the entrance of one of the bank buildings. People were gathering to stand or sit and listen to the music.
    How delightful it was in the sun. Even here in New York, time could sometimes stand still.
    And suddenly it came to him. That Strawberry Fields garden he’d come from, and the Freedom Tower he’d been thinking of: taken together, didn’t they contain the two words that said it all about this city, the two words that really mattered? It seemed to him that they did. Two words: the one an invitation, the other an ideal, an adventure, a necessity. “Imagine” said the garden. “Freedom” said the tower. Imagine freedom. That was the spirit, the message of this city he loved. You really didn’t need anything more. Dream it and do it. But first you must dream it.
    Imagine. Freedom. Always.

Acknowledgments
    During the course of researching this novel, I have consulted a great many books, articles and other sources. I should like in particular to record my thanks and appreciation as follows.
    My warm thanks Professor Kenneth T. Jackson, for the most courteous and kindly overall guidance, and for
The Encyclopedia of New York City
, which sits in joint pride of place upon my desk, beside the magnificent
Gotham
, by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace.
    I