city, when he was going from store to store with his hall mate Casey, were like hyper-vivid continuations of the urban dreams he was having all night. Humanity coming at him from every direction. Andean musicians piping and drumming in Union Square. Solemn firefighters nodding to the crowd assembled by a 9/11 shrine outside a station house. A pair of fur-coated ladies ballsily appropriating a cab that Casey had hailed outside Bloomingdale’s. Très hot middle-school girls wearing jeans under their miniskirts and slouching on the subway with their legs wide open. Cornrowed ghetto kids in ominous jumbo parkas, National Guard troops patrolling Grand Central with highly advanced weapons. And the Chinese grandmother hawking DVDs of films that hadn’t even opened yet, the break-dancer who ripped a muscle or a tendon and sat rocking in pain on the floor of the 6 train, the insistent saxophone player to whom Joey gave five dollars to help him get to his gig, despite Casey’s warning that he was being conned: each encounter was like a poem he instantly memorized.
Casey’s parents lived in an apartment with an elevator that opened directly into it, a must-have feature, Joey decided, if he ever made it big in New York. He joined them for dinner on both Christmas Eve and Christmas, thereby shoring up the lies he’d told his parents about where he was staying for the holidays. Casey and his family were leaving for a ski trip in the morning, however, and Joey knew that he was wearing thin his welcome in any case. When he returned to Abigail’s stale, cluttered apartment and found that Piglet and/or Tigger had vomited in several locations, in punitive feline protest of his long day’s absence, he came up against the strangeness and dumbness of his plan to spend two entire weeks on his own.
He immediately made everything even worse by speaking to his mother and admitting that some of his plans had “fallen through” and he was housesitting for her sister “instead.”
“In Abigail’s apartment?” she said. “By yourself? Without her even speaking to me? In New York City? By yourself?”
“Yep,” Joey said.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “you have to tell her that’s not acceptable. Tell her she has to call me right away. Tonight. Right away. Immediately. Non-optional.”
“It’s way too late for that. She’s in France. It’s OK, though. This is a very safe neighborhood.”
But his mother wasn’t listening. She was having words with his father, words Joey couldn’t make out but which sounded somewhat hysterical. And then his dad was on the line.
“Joey? Listen to me. Are you there?”
“Where else would I be?”
“Listen to me. If you don’t have the personal decency to come and spend a few days with your mother in a house that’s meant so much to her and that you’re never going to set foot in again, that’s fine with me. That was your own terrible decision that you can repent at your leisure. And the stuff you left in your room, which we were hoping you’d come and deal with—we’ll just give it to Goodwill, or let the garbagemen haul it away. That’s your loss, not ours. But to be on your own in a city that you’re too young to be on your own in, a city that’s repeatedly been attacked by terrorists, and not just for a night or two but for weeks, is a recipe for making your mother anxious the entire time.”
“Dad, it’s a totally safe neighborhood. It’s Greenwich Village.”
“Well, you’ve ruined her holiday. And you’re going to ruin her last days in this house. I don’t know why I keep expecting more of you at this point, but you are being brutally selfish to a person who loves you more than you can even know.”
“Why can’t she say it herself, then?” Joey said. “Why do you have to say it? How do I even know it’s true?”
“If you had one speck of imagination, you’d know it’s true.”
“Not if she never says it herself! If you’ve got a problem with me, why don’t you tell me what your problem is, instead of always talking about her problems?”
“Because, frankly, I’m not as worried as she is,” his father said. “I don’t think you’re as smart as you think you are, I don’t think you’re aware of all the dangers in the world. But I do think you’re pretty smart and know how to take care of yourself. If you ever did get into trouble, I would hope we’d be the first