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I can see the compassion in Larry’s eyes and I’m touched by it.   I can see the uncomprehending helplessness he’s feeling in the face of what he calls my  “madness.” (If he only knew.)  And my heart goes out to him.   I wish I could help him to understand; I owe him that.   He has taken a risk to come here to my Upper West Side apartment to make one last attempt to persuade me to leave with him—to leave Manhattan for the safety of some rural sanctuary.  But it’s a debt that will have to go unpaid.  Of course I can’t leave.  And of course I can’t make him understand why I must stay. 

Wearily, he rises to his feet.  As he is standing over me, he raises a hand, either in a gesture of frustration or to strike me.  To slap some sense into me, as they say.  But no, he merely turns and walks to the door.  Standing by the door, he turns to face me one last time.  “Listen Steve,” he says,  “Ten o’clock.  I’ll wait out front in the car for two minutes.  No longer than that: it’s too dangerous.  I have to be at the heliport on time or Dahlia and I…  If you’re not there, God help you.”  And with that he’s gone.  As I listen to the sound of my friend’s footsteps receding down the hall, I feel only the tranquility of the true believer, of one who has chosen a path.   Two minutes or two hours, my friend…  My place is here.

I go to the window and look out.  There’s not much I can see.  The red brick building next door. A sliver of the outside world at the end of the ally.  A brief glimpse of my friend’s car pulling away.  But I don’t need to see.  I know what’s happening out there.  I know the terrible price the world is paying for the gift I’ve been given.  The world’s curse; my blessing.    

Where’s my guitar?  I want to play something for Julia.   Something sweet and sentimental.  

I pick up my guitar and, sitting on the piano stool, rest it on my knee.  Strumming an A minor cord, I wince at the dissonance.  Its out of tune.  I play an open E string with my thumb.  Then the A.  Then the D.  The D is flat.  As I turn the key to tune the string I start to laugh, remembering that time at Larry’s apartment, years ago now, when he was sitting in the wrong place when I was tuning a guitar.  I heard a ping! and then an  “Ouch!”  “Sorry,” I said, grinning.  I had tuned the string too high and, snapping under the strain, it whipped out and gave him a sting.  Then I went to the high E string.  Ping!   “Ouch!”    “Oh man, I’m sorry!”  He moved to my safe side and I laughed my ass off.   

I’ll miss him.  But leaving is the right decision.  For him.  Glancing over at the sofa, my eyes fall on the newspaper Larry had brought with him, a prop used to dramatize the urgency of the situation.  The final edition of The New York Times.  With typical hubris the paper announces it’s own demise in the headline: Times to Suspend Publication Indefinitely, and below that, as though of secondary importance is this: Experts Predict the Dead Will Outnumber the Living.  

When Larry showed me the story, reading aloud selected excerpts citing mortality rates and other ominous statistics, my only response was to offer congratulations.   It was his first front-page by-line since starting with the Times a couple of years ago.  I observed wryly how a good crisis can be a real boon to a reporter’s career.  Its just a mater of being in the right place at the right time, I told him. 

I could take some pride in his accomplishment.  When we were both researchers for rival newsmagazines, barely two years after graduating in the same class of ’72 from City College, I’d encouraged him to pursue his interest in science by taking graduate classes at night.   “You better specialize,” I told him.  After Watergate and the fame of Woodward and Bernstein, everyone and his brother wanted to be a reporter.  The influx of Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford wannabes would swamp the ranks of political and general interest reporters.   I didn’t take my own advise because by that time the music was showing some promise.  I’d had a few songs published and a couple of the better ones had found their way onto the albums of respected, if not chart-topping, recording artists.  No hits, but enough success to keep the publisher interested—and just enough royalty money to elevate the idea of a music career to the level of serious possibility.  Larry’s enthusiasm was hard to resist.  Give it a shot, he would say.  If it doesn’t work out I can get you in over here.  We were each other’s career councilors.  

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