traffic of Eastern Parkway. The Museum, designed by Stanford White, was part of a complex of nineteenth-century parks and gardens that included the Botanic Gardens we’d just left as well as nearby Prospect Park—a 500 acre area of land, sculpted into fields, woods, lakes, and trails by the landscape designers Olmsted and Vaux, the same ingenious pair who’d created Manhattan’s world-renowned Central Park.
Eastern Parkway flowed us into Grand Army Plaza, a busy traffic circle dominated by the central branch building of Brooklyn’s Public Library (one of the first libraries that allowed readers to browse). I remember one of my old professors calling the architecture a triumph of context. The smooth, towering facade was created to resemble an open book, with the spine on the Plaza and the building’s two wings spreading like pages onto Eastern Parkway and Flatbush Avenue, two of the three spokes of Grand Army’s wheel. Prospect Park West was the third spoke, but I didn’t know which direction the vehicles in front of me were going to turn.
Sweat broke out on my palms as I followed the SUV around the whooshing spin-cycle of vehicles. While I was living in New Jersey, I’d driven every day. Now that I was a fulltime Manhattan resident again, my car sat in a garage while I mainly got around by subway, bus, or taxi, so I was pretty well out of practice putting pedal to the metal. On the other hand, I’d never liked traffic circles. I’d always end up going around and around, as if I were trapped on some out-of-control carousel, and I had to gather the nerve to jump off.
At the moment, I didn’t have the luxury of going around more than once or I’d lose my quarry. Vans, trucks, buses, and cars were zooming by in lanes on my left and right. Signs announced the upcoming turnoffs, and it was difficult to keep my eye on the Town Car, the SUV, and the rest of the traffic.
“Madame!”
“Yes?”
“Make sure you watch for any sign of Ellie’s Town Car peeling off the circle and taking a turn, okay? My eyes are still on the SUV in front of us.”
“Okay!”
“I’m anticipating a right onto Flatbush, by the way.”
“Why?”
“That’s the way we came in. It’s a straight shot right up Flatbush to the Manhattan Bridge crossing, and I’m betting Ellie’s destination is Manhattan. Here it comes . . .” I began to swerve the wheel, moving into the turning lane, and then—
Oh, crap . . . “They’re not turning!”
“Stay in the circle! Stay in the circle!” Madame cried, her wrinkled hands practically lunging for the wheel.
I swerved back to my original lane and an immense, white SUV behind me blew his horn. I glanced in my rear view. The man driving was cursing at me, one hand on the wheel, another holding a cell phone to his ear, which was completely illegal and reckless, thank you very much!
“Someone should tell that guy ‘hands free’ is the law of the land now!” I cried.
“Eyes ahead! Don’t try to turn before they do,” Madame warned.
“Okay, okay! I was just anticipating—”
“Don’t anticipate!”
The black SUV kept going. It was still following Ellie’s Town Car. A few seconds later, Madame started shouting. “She’s turning now! The Town Car’s turning!”
“So is the SUV!” I shouted back.
Both vehicles had left the Plaza and were heading for Union Street.
“Union Street?” I murmured, continuing to trail the sports utility vehicle. “Now why does that sound familiar?”
We drove a few blocks, then a red light up ahead halted our progress for a few minutes.
“I’m not too familiar with this borough,” Madame said, glancing at the rows of beautifully restored brownstones on both sides of us. “How often have you been here?”
“Quite a few times. Matt’s been renting a storage warehouse not far from here.”
“I remember coming to Brooklyn when Matt was very young,” Madame’s eyes took on that faraway look again. “Antonio took us to Coney Island. The park was a madhouse, of course, since we went on a sunny Saturday afternoon, Matt did so love the rides—”
My fingers tightened on the steering wheel. If Madame went down memory lane now, I’d lose Ellie for sure!
“Coney Island’s many miles away,” I pointedly interrupted. “It’s on the south end of the borough, on the Atlantic, probably over forty-five minutes away from where we are now.”
“And where are we now exactly?”
“Park Slope.”
Brooklyn was home to at least ninety different neighborhoods and two hundred nationalities, many of whom had created ethnic enclaves (not unlike