BESTSELLERS & BEST FRIENDS
My book publishing blog, with murder mysteries woven through it.
If this is your first visit, be sure to start with “1. Let’s do it!”
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I took the train up to Boston today, as I’ve done so many times over the last few decades.
But this time, I sadly carried Randy’s box of ashes in an old canvas boat bag.
The train was on time, weather was good, I walked from Boston’s Back Bay station over to the Boston Common.
Oh boy, so many memories.
Randy
My long walk with Berke Breathed. And from here, Leigh Stoecker and I started our walk home through the snow that turned out to be the devastating Blizzard of 1978; three days without heat or electricity and snow up to the second floor of my apartment building. I walked across the Boston Common to Locke Ober’s restaurant with William Shirer, Norman Mailer, Ansel Adams, Hermon Wouk, and many others. And to many lunches at the Parker House bar with my boss, John Maclaurin, where Martin, the Jamaican bartender welcomed us with a smile and a powerful drink that made any day better.
The spreading of the ashes was a bit clumsy. This was a first for me. They blow easily in the slightest wind, and I was sure Randy did not wish to spend his eternity in my old sport coat and jeans. And I suspect dumping human remains is probably illegal without a proper permit.
Also, do you dispose of all of them quickly in one place, or walk around tossing a handful here and there? Do I say something profound, like I’m a wanna-be clergy? If so, do I say something just once or every time I toss a bit of Randy? That sonofabitch! – I laughed despite my tearful eyes – Randy must have somehow known there’s an afterlife in which he could laugh at me making a mess of things in Boston Common.
Finally, despite my making a mess of things, I finished. I left the empty box that had once held Randy on the bench at which he and I often ate our brown-bag lunches when we worked together at Little Brown’s Medical Division.
That somehow seemed the right thing to do. And it would cause somebody else to toss the box into the trash, something I really couldn’t bear to do.
In the Back Bay station, there’s a guy who sells the best homemade sandwiches out of a simple pushcart, along with drinks and chips. I grabbed a lunch from him for the train back to New York.
PAUSE! I have to share this before continuing.
I walk along the Hudson River most every day and think about how pilots "Sully" Sullenberger and Jeffrey Skiles landed an airplane filled with 155 passengers in the water just several hundred feet to my side.
I imagine how level-headed and calm a passenger I would have been. Knowing that my shoes and soaking clothes would cause me to sink should I have to enter the water, I’d smartly take off all my clothes but my underwear. “The hell with the January cold,” I’d at least survive!
Then I shudder, remembering all the photos and video footage of the fully dressed passengers safely standing on the plane’s wings until rescued. I would have been the only one out there, on TV screens across the world, wearing nothing but his undies. And there’d be my poor daughter, watching the news at college with her friends: “Hey, Ruby! Isn’t that your Dad? It is! Hey everybody, come here, look at this, it’s Ruby’s Dad. In his underwear!”
So embarrassing. Not just for me, but especially for my children.
OK, BACK TO BACK BAY STATION
I walked to the station’s platform next to the tracks. I felt my phone ringing but held my bag with one hand and my bagged lunch with the other.
And I just wasn’t in the mood to talk with anybody. Not today.
I took the 2:06 out of Boston scores of times over the years. A local train to Norwood (MA) comes rushing through the station at 2 p.m. It doesn’t stop at the Back Bay station. My phone rang again. I ignore it again.
I looked up at the platform clock, it’s 1:55. My phone rang again. Fuck it. I held my lunch and bag with one hand, and with the other pulled the phone out of my pocket. The phone’s screen said it was Liz Hammer from Macmillan. Hmm. I answered it.
“Liz?”
“Jess!” She yelled, “Where are you?”
“Is this a game—”
“Goddamn it Jess! Where are you? Please!”
Ok, whatever. “Boston. About ready to catch—”
“The train! Run!”
I heard the 2 p.m. Norwood train approaching. Fast as ever. I felt the platform vibrate.
“What are—”
“RUN! I’M BEGGING YOU!
I’m so confused. “Liz, I don’t—”
“We got another manuscript! You get pushed in front of a 2 p.m. train today, in Boston! PLEASE! NOW! I—”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him. A young man ran in my direction, just a few feet to my left, the huge train just a few feet to my right. Holy shit! Instinctively, I collapsed to the ground. Just SLAM! SMACK! and I’m lying face down, spread eagle on the platform. No way I can be pushed onto the tracks from this position. So much smarter than standing. Go Jess!
Then I looked around. Other passengers just stood there, looking at me, with that WTF look. At the end of the platform, the young man hugged the pretty girl he was running to meet.
Fuck! I was on the ground for no good reason. People around me continued to back away. It was my underwear-on-the-Hudson moment. Soooooo embarrassing.
Liz was still on the phone, “Jess! Jess! You there? You OK?”
“Yep. Everything’s OK. Will talk to you later,” I killed the call.
My Amtrak train pulled into the station. I stood up, brushed myself off, and got on. Other passengers kept their distance. Nobody sat next to me until Providence, where a big guy with a garlic salami sandwich filled the seat next to me.
Tomorrow: I don’t know