Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (23 page)

The week passed quickly. Iris Black. Jeremy Black. Kyle Black. Lori Black…Mark Black was crying when he opened the door and saw us, because he had been waiting for someone to come back to him, so every time someone knocked on the door, he couldn't stop himself from hoping it might be that person, even though he knew he shouldn't hope.

Nancy Black's roommate told us Nancy was at work at the
coffee store
on Nineteenth Street, so we went there, and I explained to her that coffee actually has more caffeine than espresso, even though a lot of people don't think so, because the water is in contact with the grounds for a much longer time with coffee. She told me she didn't know that. 'If he says it, it's true,' Mr. Black said, patting my head. I told her, 'Also, did you know that if you yell for nine years, you'll produce enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee?' She said, 'I didn't.' I said, 'Which is why they should put a
coffee store
next to the
Cyclone
at Coney
Island

! Get it?' That made me crack up, but only me. She asked if we were going to order anything. I told her, 'Iced coffee, please.' She asked, 'What size?' I said, 'Vente, and could you please use coffee ice cubes so it doesn't get all watery when the ice cubes melt?' She told me they didn't have coffee ice cubes. I said, 'Exactly.' Mr. Black said, 'I'm going to get right to the point,' and then he did. I went to the bathroom and gave myself a bruise.

Ray Black was in prison, so we weren't able to talk to him. I did some research on the Internet and found out that he was in prison because he murdered two kids after he raped them. There were also pictures of the dead kids, and even though I knew it would only hurt me to look at them, I did. I printed them out and put them in
Stuff That Happened to Me

, right after the picture of Jean-Pierre Haignere, the French astronaut who had to be carried from his spacecraft after returning from the Mir space station, because gravity isn't only what makes us fall, it's what makes our muscles strong. I wrote a letter to Ray Black in prison, but I never got a response. Inside, I hoped he didn't have anything to do with the key, although I couldn't help inventing that it was for his jail cell.

The address for Ruth Black was on the eighty-sixth floor of the Empire State Building, which I thought was incredibly weird, and so did Mr. Black, because neither of us knew that people actually lived there. I told Mr. Black that I was panicky, and he said it was OK to be panicky. I told him I felt like I couldn't do it, and he said it was OK to feel like I couldn't do it. I told him it was the thing that I was most afraid of. He said he could understand why. I wanted him to disagree with me, but he wouldn't, so I had no way to argue. I told him I would wait for him in the lobby, and he said, 'Fine.'

'OK, OK,' I said, 'I'll go.'

As the elevator takes you up, you hear information about the building, which was pretty fascinating, and I normally would have taken some notes, but I needed all of my concentration for being brave. I squeezed Mr. Black's hand, and I couldn't stop inventing: the elevator cables snapping, the elevator falling, a trampoline at the bottom, us shooting back up, the roof opening like a cereal box, us flying toward parts of the universe that not even Stephen Hawking was sure about…

When the elevator door opened, we got out on the observation deck. We didn't know who to look for, so we just looked around for a while. Even though I knew the view was incredibly beautiful, my brain started misbehaving, and the whole time I was imagining a plane coming at the building, just below us. I didn't want to, but I couldn't stop. I imagined the last second, when I would see the pilot's face, who would be a terrorist. I imagined us looking each other in the eyes when the nose of the plane was one millimeter from the building.

I hate you, my eyes would tell him.

I hate you, his eyes would tell me.

Then there would be an enormous explosion, and the building would sway, almost like it was going to fall over, which I know is what it felt like from descriptions I've read on the Internet, although I wish I hadn't read them. Then there would be smoke coming up at me and people screaming all around me. I read one description of someone who made it down eighty-five flights of stairs, which must have been about two thousand stairs, and he said that people were screaming 'Help!' and 'I don't want to die!' and one man who owned a company was screaming 'Mommy!'

It would be getting so hot that my skin would start to get blisters. It would feel so good to get away from the heat, but on the other hand, when I hit the sidewalk I would die, obviously. Which would I choose? Would I jump or would I burn? I guess I would jump, because then I wouldn't have to feel pain. On the other hand, maybe I would burn, because then I'd at least have a chance to somehow escape, and even if I couldn't, feeling pain is still better than not feeling, isn't it?

I remembered my cell phone.

I still had a few seconds.

Who should I call?

What should I say?

I thought about all of the things that everyone ever says to each other, and how everyone is going to die, whether it's in a millisecond, or days, or months, or 76.5 years, if you were just born. Everything that's born has to die, which means our lives are like skyscrapers. The smoke rises at different speeds, but they're all on fire, and we're all trapped.

You can see the most beautiful things from the observation deck of the Empire State Building. I read somewhere that people on the street are supposed to look like ants, but that's not true. They look like little people. And the cars look like little cars. And even the buildings look little. It's like New York is a miniature replica of New York, which is nice, because you can see what it's really like, instead of how it feels when you're in the middle of it. It's extremely lonely up there, and you feel far away from everything. Also it's scary, because there are so many ways to die. But it feels safe, too, because you're surrounded by so many people. I kept one hand touching the wall as I walked carefully around to each of the views. I saw all of the locks I'd tried to open, and the 161,999,831 that I hadn't yet.

I got down on my knees and crawled to one of the binocular machines. I held it tightly as I pulled myself up, and I took a quarter from the change dispenser on my belt. When the metal lids opened, I could see things that were far away incredibly close, like the Woolworth Building, and Union Square, and the gigantic hole where the World Trade Center was. I looked into the window of an office building that I guessed was about ten blocks away. It took me a few seconds to figure out the focus, but then I could see a man sitting at his desk, writing something. What was he writing? He didn't look at all like Dad, but he reminded me of Dad. I pressed my face closer, and my nose got smooshed against the cold metal. He was left-handed like Dad. Did he have a gap between his front teeth like Dad? I wanted to know what he was thinking. Who did he miss? What was he sorry for? My lips touched the metal, like a kiss.

I found Mr. Black, who was looking at Central Park. I told him I was ready to go down. 'But what about Ruth?'

'We can come back another day.'

'But we're already here.'

'I don't feel like it.'

'It'll just take a few – '

'I want to go home.' He could probably tell that I was about to cry. 'OK,' he said, 'let's go home.'

We got at the end of the line for the elevator.

I looked at everyone and wondered where they came from, and who they missed, and what they were sorry for.

There was a fat woman with a fat kid, and a Japanese guy with two cameras, and a girl with crutches whose cast was signed by lots of people. I had a weird feeling that if I examined it I would find Dad's writing. Maybe he would have written 'Get better soon.' Or just his name. An old woman was standing a few feet away, staring back at me, which made me self-conscious. She was holding a clipboard, although I couldn't see what was on it, and she was dressed old-fashioned. I promised myself I wouldn't be the first to look away, but I was. I pulled on Mr. Black's sleeve and told him to look at her. 'You know what,' he whispered. 'What?'

'I bet you she's the one.' For some reason, I knew he was right. Although no part of me wondered if maybe we were looking for different things.

'Should we go up to her?'

'Probably.'

'How?'

'I don't know.'

'Go say hello.'

'You can't just go say hello.'

'Tell her the time.'

'But she didn't ask the time.'

'Ask her the time.'

'You do it.'

'
You

do it.' We were so busy arguing about how to go up to her that we didn't even realize that she had come up to us. 'I see that you're thinking about leaving,' she said, 'but could I interest you in a very special tour of this very special building?'

'What's your name?' I asked. She said, 'Ruth.' Mr. Black said, 'We'd love a tour.'

She smiled, took a huge breath in, and then started walking while she talked. 'Construction on the Empire State Building began in March of 1930, on the site of the old Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, at 350 Fifth Avenue at Thirty-fourth Street. It was completed one year and forty-five days later – seven million man-hours of work, including Sundays and holidays. Everything about the building was designed to expedite its construction – prefabricated materials were used as much as possible – and as a result, work progressed at a rate of about four and a half stories each week. The entire framework took less than half a year to complete.' That was less time than how long I'd been searching for the lock.

She took a breath.

'Designed by the architectural firm of Shreve, Lamb, and Harmon Associates, the original plan called for eighty-six stories, but a 150-foot mooring mast for zeppelins was added. Today the mast is used for TV and radio broadcasts. The cost of the building, including the land that it rests on, was $40,948,900. The cost of the building itself was $24,718,000, less than half of the estimated cost of $50,000,000, due to deflated labor and materials costs during the Great Depression.' I asked, 'What was the Great Depression?' Mr. Black said, 'I'll tell you later.'

'At 1,250 feet, the Empire State Building was the tallest building in the world until the completion of the first tower of the World Trade Center in 1972. When the building was opened, they had such a hard time finding tenants to rent space within it that New Yorkers began calling it the Empty State Building.' That made me crack up. 'It was this observatory that saved the building from going into bankruptcy.' Mr. Black patted the wall, like he was proud of the observatory.

'The Empire State Building is supported by 60,000 tons of steel. It has approximately 6,500 windows and 10,000,000 bricks, weighing in the neighborhood of 365,000 tons.'

'That's a heavy neighborhood,' I said. 'More than 500,000 square feet of marble and Indiana limestone encase this skyscraper. Inside, there is marble from France, Italy, Germany, and Belgium. In fact, New York's most famous building is made with materials from just about everywhere but New York, in much the same way that the city itself was made great by immigrants.'

'Very true,' Mr. Black said, nodding his head.

'The Empire State Building has been the location of dozens of movies, the reception site of foreign dignitaries, and even had a World War Two bomber crash into the seventy-ninth floor in 1945.' I concentrated on happy, safe things, like the zipper on the back of Mom's dress, and how Dad needed a drink of water whenever he whistled for too long. 'An elevator fell to the bottom. You'll be relieved to know that the passenger was saved by the emergency brakes.' Mr. Black gave my hand a squeeze. 'And speaking of elevators, there are seventy of them in the building, including the six freight elevators. They travel at speeds from 600 to 1,400 feet per minute. Or, if you so choose, you can walk the 1,860 steps from the street level to the top.' I asked if you could also take the stairs down.

'On a clear day like this, you can see for eighty miles – well into Connecticut. Since the observatory opened to the public in 1931, almost 110 million visitors have enjoyed the breathtaking vision of the city beneath them. Each year, over 3.5 million people are whisked to the eighty-sixth floor to be where Gary Grant waited in vain for Deborah Kerr in
An Affair to Remember
, where Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan had their fateful meeting in the movie
Sleepless in Seattle

. Also, the observatory is handicap accessible.'

She stopped and put her hand on her heart.

'All in all, the feeling and spirit of New York City is embodied in the Empire State Building. From the people who fell in love here, to the ones who have returned with their children and grandchildren, everyone recognizes the building not only as an awe-inspiring landmark which offers one of the most spectacular views on earth, but an unequaled symbol of American ingenuity.'

She bowed. We clapped.

'Do you young men have another minute?'

'We have a lot of minutes,' Mr. Black said. 'Because that was the end of the official tour, but there are a couple of things I really love about this building, and I only share them with people I suspect will care.' I told her, 'We'll care incredibly much.'