Elizabeth Street - Laurie Fabiano [125]
The man’s eyes narrowed. “Mr. Schmidt, the attorney. That would be the nineteenth floor.”
Giovanna smiled and continued to watch the numbers. The elevator stopped on the eleventh floor. She waited anxiously for the car to come back down. When the doors opened, a number of people streamed out, and Giovanna was about to get on when she saw Leo at the back of the car. He didn’t exit the elevator, and she didn’t enter. The doors closed again. This time it went down to a floor labeled “TP.” Another elevator opened and Giovanna entered, motioning down to the elevator operator. In seconds she was down a floor in time to see Leo exit the building’s back doors onto Trinity Place.
She didn’t follow immediately because when the elevator door opened, she thought Leo might have seen her face. She followed him down Trinity Place back to the Rector Place underground station, keeping farther behind than before. As Leo entered the uptown train, she stepped in the car behind him.
Was he trying to lose her? Or was he trying to avoid being followed? If someone was watching him, then they must also be watching her, and for the first time Giovanna was as afraid of what was behind her as what was in front of her.
On the train she could see Leo’s shoulder through the car window. Her ankles were swollen, and the veins in her legs were throbbing. Mercifully, Leo didn’t get out right away. He exited at Bryant Park, walked upstairs, and switched to the Sixth Avenue El.
The parade had already started. Throngs of people clogged the sidewalks. She had never seen such a large crowd in her life—this was a hundred times the size of a feast—in Scilla or New York. When they reached the last stop at Fifty-eighth Street, she saw the tops of floats half a block long squeezing down Fifth Avenue.
Trying not to be distracted by the pageantry, Giovanna followed Leo east to Fifth Avenue. The streets were so packed with exuberant crowds that Giovanna no longer had to worry about keeping her distance, but instead was trying desperately not to lose Leo in the multitude.
“Get your souvenir programs here!” shouted a man, holding a sack like a newsboy. Leo flipped him a nickel and, rolling the program under his arm, headed downtown at Fifth Avenue, parallel with the parade.
To get through the crowd, Giovanna walked on the innermost portion of the sidewalk, but between her height and the immense size of the floats, she was able to see an old ship manned by people in costume sail down the street. On its side was painted HALF MOON. Teams of horses pulled the floats, and each horse was covered in a red blanket stitched with an H and an F.
“We’ve got the line of march. Learn about the floats!” shouted a barker who blocked Giovanna’s path.
Maneuvering around him only led her into a gang of kids on the corner holding up crates, yelling, “Get yer own grandstand here, only fifteen cents. Keeps yuh three feet off the sidewalk!”
In between the floats marched bands from every nation, and men, puffed chests adorned by sashes, walked in formation behind their flags. Sometimes the music of one band stepped on the toes of another, and the crowd reacted to the clash of cultures by sticking their fingers in their ears.
Leo checked his pocket watch, slowed, and turned to view the parade. Giovanna reacted by stopping abruptly, and someone pushed into her from behind, unleashing a string of angry words. The words were foreign, but the meaning clear. Mumbling “Excuse me” in heavily accented English, she pressed into the crowd, watching the parade with one eye and Leo with the other.
Walking more slowly, she became aware of the dampness in her shoes. The pain in her feet was such that she knew the moisture was blood.
A passing float elicited cheers and hats were raised in salute. Giovanna recognized the figure that was part of this tableau—he was the white-haired first president of America who was in Mary’s schoolbooks. He stood on a building’s balcony, and below, on what was made to resemble an old street,