Day CLXXVI

Bridges & Tunnels

     Sometime after that was over, I ran into Charles, and was given an invitation to a wedding which I didn’t have the slightest intention of attending. It was in Queens, and that might as well have been in Staten Island or a foreign country as far as I was concerned. I was from the Bronx, and I didn’t want to know from any other place. I went to the other boroughs on business, but not to hang out, which is funny because when we were kids, the old man used pile us up into his Chevy, and we’d visit our cousins in Brooklyn. One time just after the baby had started to talk, we were going over the Triborough bridge, and she says,

     “Hey daddiieee E!”

     “Yes sweety?”

     “What happens if this bridgey tumbles down ina da watah, uh?”

     The hair on the old man’s arms stood straight up, he lit a smoke, took a deep drag, exhaled, and said:

     “Husssssh, you shouldn’t say things like that.”

     We rode in silence, in a car full of smoke, all the way to Red Hook. Later that evening on the way back, he took the Brooklyn-Battery tunnel. He thought he’d out smart her, he didn’t want to hear her comments again. But when we were in the middle of the tunnel, she says,

     “Hey daddiieee E!”

     “Yes sweety?”

     “Whats above this tunnel?”

     “Oh we’re under the river honey!”

     “So daaa ad, wat happens if da rivah breaks a hole ina tunnel? Watta we do then, uh?”

     He didn’t respond, and lit a cigarette. I think that was one of the last times we visited Brooklyn.