92
Drum: FICTION
entrance with a sign round her neck saying ‘Insult Me
For A Dollar’. James made his way towards the Dean and
De Luca adjoining the Paramount and ordered an orange
juice with which he washed down two Tylenol. He had
hoped that sitting might help. He stared out of the
window as a relic of a man weighed down by dozens of
coats dragged his life behind him in a makeshift trolley.
Inside, half a dozen languages and dialects jarred against
each other politely.
“Across the road, a woman stood
proudly by the subway entrance
with a sign round her neck
saying ‘Insult Me For A Dollar’.”
Peter had said that all would be revealed and explained
at The Hudson in the indoor park. It was not, he assured
James, what it seemed. James had been momentarily
buoyed by this news. Even though it seemed that Peter
had disappeared without trace leaving his colleagues in
the lurch and the business on its knees that was not
what it was. Though it seemed that James had been
forced to go cap in hand to his father to beg for a job in
his reprographic franchise, that was not what it was
either. His spirits drooped a little, though, when he
reminded himself that Peter had helped make them a
relative fortune by the careful placement of elusive –
apparently profound – banalities.
It’s not what you own; it’s who you are. A desirable
location is never going to make up for spiritual
dislocation. Buyers and sellers had liked all that,
assuming (like James) that it was meant to be funny
stroke ironic. That Peter didn’t take himself too seriously.
It had come as little surprise to James that Peter had
sought refuge in The Hudson. Since the accident almost
two years previously, Peter had taken to visiting New
York every three months or so. He had become tired –