Strangled - Brian McGrory [41]
By the time I got that request out, he had already hung up. They say that jokes are all about timing, and I’m starting to think they’re right.
I stood up and walked to the green barrel to the right of the bench and saw a copy of that day’s Traveler lying near the top. I say near because on top of the paper were several plastic bags filled with what could politely be called dog waste. As I pulled the paper up, one bag spilled open and the, ahem, waste dripped onto the front page. Now, I’m not saying this is an inappropriate substance to appear on the front of the Traveler; God knows they’ve published worse. But I am saying I’d prefer it wasn’t on a paper I had to read.
I carefully flipped the paper open to page thirty-eight while trying to avoid getting dog shit on my hands. The smell wasn’t entirely pleasant. It always seems fine when it’s your own dog, but someone else’s, it’s completely gross. It wouldn’t happen this way in the movies, with the handsome hero trying to avoid the animal feces as he’s working toward saving the city — that I knew for sure.
Anyway, I got to the appropriate page, and written across the top in pen were the words “Prudential Skywalk. Telescope in the corner pointing toward Charles River and downtown Boston.” And that was that. This Phantom definitely had a flare for the dramatic.
I placed the paper back in the barrel, as ordered, making a mental note to call Peter Martin at the first available opportunity and see if we could get a handwriting analyst to look at the paper before the garbagemen came. I walked back out onto Atlantic Avenue and flagged a cab that happened to be passing by.
The Prudential Skywalk, for the uninitiated, is the pavilion on the fiftieth floor of the Prudential Center, for a while the tallest building in town, but now eight floors shorter than the nearby Hancock Tower a few blocks away. The Pru, as Bostonians tend to call it, is a remarkably ugly structure, boxy and boring and nearly a blight, except it’s our blight, and for that, the city loves it.
I got out of the cab on Boylston Street, reflexively looked straight up at the top of the building in the way that tourists from New Hampshire probably do, and took the escalator up into the mall that wraps around the skyscraper. The streets and mall passages were busy with late-arriving workers and early shoppers, and I looked around in quasi-wonderment at whether I was being followed. I assumed that the Phantom was probably already in the Skywalk, though if he was, what was with all the taxicab stuff? Why not simply sit on the bench with me in Columbus Park?
The elevator ride made my ears pop, as elevator rides generally do. At the top, I paid the nine-dollar admission fee and pictured Martin quibbling with me when I submitted the expense. He’d argue that I should have been able to talk my way in for free because I wasn’t actually going to see the view.
As I strode out onto the glass-enclosed Skywalk, the first sensation was that of light — light everywhere, streaming through the windows, reflecting off the floors, dancing along the walls, glistening off the telescopes that were pointing at the Financial District and the harbor beyond.
The second sensation was that of space — space everywhere. I don’t care how old I am, I don’t care how many times I’ve sat in offices or dined in restaurants atop high-rise buildings; whenever I do, the feeling is one of being above it all, figuratively as well as literally. The city below is minuscule, as are all the little problems of everyday life, things like traffic and litter and crowds and late appointments. High in the sky, you’re above the daily grind, free to contemplate the larger issues of life.
Which I don’t necessarily think