The A train, Eighth Avenue Express, Columbus Circle station, New York City
The automatic doors slid open, ushering a gust of freezing air through the train. Verlaine zipped his overcoat and stepped onto the platform, where he was met by a blast of Christmas music, a reggae version of “Jingle Bells” performed by two men with dreadlocks. The groove mixed with the heat and motion of hundreds of bodies along the narrow platform. Following the crowd up a set of wide, dirty steps, Verlaine climbed to the snow-blanketed world aboveground, his gold-wire-rimmed eyeglasses fogging opaque in the cold. Into the arms of an ice-laden winter afternoon he rose, a half-blind man feeling his way through the churning chill of the city.
Once his glasses cleared, Verlaine saw the holiday shopping season in full swing—mistletoe hung at the subway entrance, and a less-than-jolly Salvation Army Santa Claus shook a brass bell, a red-enameled donation bucket at his side. Christmas lights scored the streetlamps red and green. As masses of New Yorkers hurried past, scarves and heavy overcoats warming them against the icy wind, Verlaine checked the date on his watch. He saw, to his great surprise, that there were only two days until Christmas.
Each year hordes of tourists descended upon the city at Christmas, and each year Verlaine vowed to stay away from midtown for the entire month of December, hiding out in the cushioned quiet of his Greenwich Village studio. Somehow he had coasted through years of Manhattan Christmases without actually participating in them. His parents, who lived in the Midwest, sent a package of gifts each year, which he usually opened as he spoke with his mother on the phone, but that was as far as his Christmas cheer went. On Christmas Day he would go out for drinks with friends and then, sufficiently tipsy on martinis, catch an action movie. It had become a tradition, one he looked forward to, especially this year. He’d worked so much in the past months that he welcomed the thought of a break.
Verlaine jostled through the crowd, slush clinging to his scuffed vintage wing tips as he progressed along the salt-strewn walkway. Why his client had insisted upon meeting in Central Park and not in a warm, quiet restaurant remained beyond his imagination. If it weren’t such an important project—indeed, if it were not his only source of income at the moment—he would have insisted upon mailing in his work and being done with it. But the dossier of research had taken months to prepare, and it was imperative that he explain his findings in just the right manner. Besides, Percival Grigori had dictated that Verlaine follow orders to the letter. If Grigori wanted to meet on the moon, Verlaine would have found a way to get there.
He waited for traffic to clear. The statue at the center of Columbus Circle rose before him, an imposing figure of Christopher Columbus poised atop a pillar of marble, framed by the sinuous, barren trees of Central Park. Verlaine thought it an ugly, overmannered piece of sculpture, gaudy and out of place. As he walked past, he noticed a stone angel carved into the base of the plinth, a marble globe of the world in its fingers. The angel was so lifelike that it appeared as if it would come unmoored from the monument entirely, lift over the bustle of taxis, and rise into the smoky heavens above Central Park.
Ahead, the park was a tangle of leafless trees and snow-covered walkways. Verlaine went past a hot-dog vendor warming his hands over a gust of steam, past nannies pushing baby carriages, past a magazine kiosk. The benches at the edge of the park were empty. Nobody in his right mind would take a walk on such a cold afternoon.
Verlaine glanced at his watch again. He was late, something he wouldn’t worry about under normal circumstances—he was often five or ten minutes behind schedule for appointments, attributing his tardiness to his artistic temperament. Today, however, timing mattered. His client would be counting the minutes, if not the seconds. Verlaine straightened his tie, a bright blue 1960s Hermès with a repeating pattern of yellow fleurs-de-lis that he had won on an eBay auction. When he was uncertain about a situation or felt that he might appear ill at ease, he tended to choose the quirkiest clothes in his closet. It was an unconscious response, a bit of self-sabotage that he noticed only after it was too late. First dates and job interviews were particularly bad. He would show up looking as if he’d stepped out of a circus tent, with every article of clothing mismatched and too colorful for the situation at hand. Clearly this meeting had made him jittery: In addition to the vintage tie, he wore a red pin-striped button-up shirt, a white corduroy sport jacket, jeans, and his favorite pair of Snoopy socks, a gift from an ex-girlfriend. He had really outdone himself
Pulling his overcoat closer, glad that he could hide behind its soft, neutral gray wool, Verlaine took a deep breath of cold air. He clutched the dossier tight, as if the wind might tear it from his fingers, and walked deeper through the whorls of snowflakes into Central Park.