“I do some of the less glamorous work, like market trend research, bookkeeping, taxes. I also make some of my own trades—your portfolio might look fishy if there aren’t losses reported, so I keep it real. And I balance your capital gains with your charitable contributions—sounds sexy, huh? That’s where a lot of my time goes. There are countless good causes and your millions can’t help them all.”
“But I do help some?”
“A lot.” At her hopeful smile, he offered a list. “Military veterans, the homeless, animal rescues, special-needs children, refugees from war-torn countries. Then there’s all the medical research you help fund: cancer, AIDS, Parkinson’s, you name it.”
“Wow.” She stood a little taller.
“That’s not all. There’s this thing called crowdfunding, where people set up websites to get donations over the Internet. Some have a serious financial crisis, like medical bills or impending foreclosures, and some are looking to fund a creative project—comic book, movie, et cetera. You’ve even put money toward a museum celebrating Nikola Tesla—I did, too, because Tesla was the bomb. Anyway, I try to make sure these people are legit, but you don’t care—you’re like the freakin’ Oprah of Kickstarter and GoFundMe.”
“Oprah Winfrey, I know that one.” Recognition flashed in her eyes, and she pointed a finger around the room, shouting, “You get a car, you get a car, you get a car!”
He laughed. “Exactly. It’s insane how much money you give away.”
“It sounds like fun. I’d like to see these websites.”
“You will.” Kenzie closed the binder.
“Aren’t you gonna make me do my homework first?”
“No, I’m putting this away. And you’re putting that”—a nod at her laptop—“away.”
She offered an agreeable shrug. “Park?”
“No park. It’s almost February and we haven’t left a five-block radius in weeks. We don’t have to go far, but we could at least explore the city.” It was something her mother would say, though Kenzie’s adventurous spirit was less daunting.
“You don’t…” She began to formulate an argument, but could only conjure feeble excuses. “You’re right. I’ll go put on some shoes.”
“Great. But before that, could you do your Oprah for me again?”
* * *
They got the obvious things out of the way first. The Brooklyn Bridge. The Met, MoMA, the American Museum of Natural History. Central Park. Rockefeller Center. Times Square (“It looks like a sci-fi movie!” Oona exclaimed). The Statue of Liberty (from a distance, because she refused to ride the ferry; for posterity, she bought a small souvenir statue for her display case).
At the top of the Empire State Building, Oona gazed south, and her heart went somber at the sight of a single skyscraper standing in place of the Twin Towers.
“Did you know one of the towers had a bar called the Greatest Bar on Earth?” she told Kenzie. “Dale always talked about bringing me there once I turned nineteen—that was the drinking age back then.” She closed her eyes and tilted up her chin to meet a gust of wind that blew back her hair like a flag.
“I knew someone who worked there. As a waiter at Windows on the World.”
“Was he … a friend?”
“More than that. I was in New York the summer before my senior year of high school, a few months before the planes hit,” Kenzie said. “We met in Washington Square Park and hit it off. He was nineteen. Wanted to be an actor. We spent a week together and did sort of a long-distance thing when I went back to Boston. Emailed, IM’ed, and called a lot.” He ran a hand up and down his arm, as if massaging a sore muscle. “He worked the breakfast shift so he could go on auditions.”
Oona whipped her head toward him. “Was he there that morning?”
Something sharp flickered across Kenzie’s eyes. “Yeah, I think so. I never heard from him after that. For a while, I told myself he found out I lied about my age—got freaked out I was seventeen, not eighteen—and that’s why he stopped talking to me. He was never online, so I told myself he blocked me. I thought about looking up the list of names…” Kenzie chewed his lower lip. “But I haven’t, because…”
“Because that leaves a chance he might still be alive.”
“Yeah. He meant a lot to me. I’d rather not think of him as a victim of something so awful.”
“God, Kenzie.” She pulled him into a long hug. “Why didn’t you tell me this before when I asked you about 9/11?”
He stepped back and jerked a shoulder up. “I don’t know, you were so caught up in your own grief, I didn’t think you’d want to hear about it.”
Shameful tears sprang to her eyes. “I’m still caught up in my own grief. But I won’t let that make me a crappy friend.”
In the months that followed, her friendship with Kenzie deepened. Between their outings, playing catch-up with the decades, and studying the binder, she usually had enough to keep from being swept away by wistfulness for her earlier life. But sometimes nostalgia would deal her a mean sucker punch, like the one afternoon in April when she and Kenzie were walking around Little Italy. There were more souvenir shops and fewer restaurants than she remembered, but as they reached the intersection of Mulberry and Hester, she gasped and pointed across the street.
“Oh my god, Caffe Napoli is still here? Dale took me there on our second date.”
“Do you want to … go inside? Run far away?” Concern folded Kenzie’s forehead.
“No. It looks fancier now.” Staring up at the gold and black signage, she blinked until the tears receded. “Did I tell you how Dale and I met?”
“Tell me again.”
“A month before my junior year of high school, I was in a bookstore reading the latest Rolling Stone. This guy came up to me—sleepy eyes, rockabilly hair, leather jacket, super-cute—and just started talking to me about music. Asked me what bands I was into, teased me for liking Pink Floyd, but then we bonded over Velvet Underground. He introduced himself and when we shook hands…” Her face softened into a dreamy smile. “I knew. This was it. He was it. He asked if he could give me his address, if I’d write to him, even though he lived in Brooklyn. I agreed, and Dale handed me a piece of paper that already had his name and address on it, with ‘guy from bookstore’ written on top. We exchanged a few letters, and when school started again, I saw him in the hallway. He was a year ahead of me—I don’t know how I hadn’t noticed him before. He finally asked me out, and our first date was dinner and a movie—fried calamari at Rocco’s followed by Private Benjamin.” Though of course they hadn’t watched much of the movie. As soon as the lights were dimmed, their lips sought each other’s out, months of anticipation overshadowing any inhibitions. Their kisses tasted of marinara sauce. Bright light burst behind Oona’s closed eyelids and the hairs on her arms stood on end as everything around them faded to black.
“And for our second date, he took me for dinner in Chinatown, followed by dessert. Right here.” Oona gave Kenzie a fortified look that promised she wouldn’t cry. “That’s when he told me he was starting a band and wanted me to be in it. By that point, I was so in love, he could’ve told me he was starting a circus and I would’ve joined it.”