Lost Treasures
(exclusive peek at a rhapsodic excerpt of my novel-in-progress)
This rhapsody of description is from my novel in progress, Secrets of an Opera Star. In this sequence, Fiona is reluctantly returning to Manhattan for the first time in many years.
I had to cut this whole section because I’m trying to trim the word count, but it’s definitely a darling - I loved writing it. Enjoy! And thanks so much for being a subscriber.
Manhattan in the summer. It’s like a beautiful woman with her clothes off. There she is—the hot, beautiful City—her skyline all spread out and lonely and available to anyone who wants some fun and is willing to pay.
After giving me a glimpse from afar, the Amtrak tunneled us to midtown. I got off the train and transferred to the subway without even seeing daylight. That’s New York for you—all that height and she keeps you under her feet.
To be fair; I had earned the City’s disdain by my neglect.
At 72nd street, I emerged onto Broadway. I was ready for anything except the crazy, lazy energy of a City summer. Smack! You have left her alone too long; she hits you across the face with her thick, overcooked smells of baking peanuts, frying hot dogs, burning incense, and wilting flowers. But wait. Walk a few steps and the cool aromas of a thousand expensive hand-made soaps and creams and lotions envelop you as you pass the air-conditioned entrance of the shop; it’s like being suffocated by scented silk pillows.
The time and temperature flash across an elaborate bank building, while below, half the people run as if they’re late and the other half dawdle as if they’ve just been fired.
Traffic honks incessantly: like angry Chihuahuas, taxis are annoyed by everything within a five-foot radius. Buses flash past a construction site—a herd of rhinos on the savannah would make less dust. The workers in orange vests swipe at the fresh grime silting their faces with dirty gloves, sigh, and keep on digging. In five steps, I passed six storefronts, and in each there had been something to catch my eye. I overloaded on color, smell, and sound.
I forgot how hopeful the City could make a person feel. It was like visiting an aunt who saw nothing but the promise you had when you were twelve.
I forgot, too, how just looking at a building could make you want to live there. Could make you believe that someday you might. I looked in a lot of windows. Did a lot of wishful thinking. Made a lot of promises.
Central Park on the way to Bethesda Fountain: here again I’d forgotten how fantastically the City unfurled in the summer. The color green actually held a scent here. Trees: verdant, the wind shuffling their leaves like a winning deck of cards. People: toned and tanned, evenly spaced like extras in a movie, running because they feel the urge for sun on their face. You could taste the endorphins in the air. Even the dogs were smiling.
And empty: the City had shaken out all the snobs, the social climbers, the overdone Page 6 types with their D&G accouterments and matching accents and attitudes. Both the fancy wives and the expensive mistresses were in the Hamptons for the summer. The rich and tasteless men that supported two of each were holed up among the clouds, preserved in ice-cold aeries of narcissistic glass.
The City was mine again. Just like old times.
She had welcomed me back, but told me to take my place in the end of the line; she’d get to me soon as she could.
I stood in Central Park below the sculpted angel made famous in countless art galleries, photographs, movies and plays. I looked out over the flat surface of the boat pond and remembered eating dinner with Victor at the nearby restaurant; clinging to his arm in the moonlight.
The restaurant had closed, the marriage hung by a thread, but New York City was as beautiful and alluring as ever. Pain always sharpens its teeth on beauty. Or is it the other way around? Here, it is hard to tell the difference.