Flashback: 1989, Bill

I was living in that tiny Hell's Kitchen apartment -- my first real New York City apartment, just one tiny bedroom to share with my roommate, a college sorority sister. We owned a sofa bed; our coffee table was a box that once held copier paper. It said "Hammermill" on the side. The wardrobes of two career-building, night-clubbing twenty-something girls were crammed into one closet. We slept side by side on chaste twin beds facing 48th Street.

That summer was one of the hottest on record, days on end over 100 degrees. In the days before all the city's buses were air-conditioned cigars, a trip crosstown on the 104 was enough to ruin the best day. Sweaty armpits in my face and the swampy bodies of fellow commuters were more than I could take. Most days I chose to walk.

Each day, my walk home took me past my neighborhood firehouse, where I would cast sidelong glances at the men gathered on the apron. I knew that I was young and cute and that their eyes followed me as I walked by.

"Much cuter than cops," I observed to Joyce, my roommate. Her father was a university professor and she didn't understand what she called my "Blue-collar fantasies." I was dating a construction worker at the time, spending my weekends traveling on the Red and Tan #47 bus to have mediocre but regular sex with him. I thought I might love him, even though he was ten years older than I was.

"So-so regular sex is better than no sex at all," I declared.

I used to see the dog outside the firehouse. He always looked so sad and put-upon, and so resigned to his fate as a prop for the firemen. He was a giant of a dog, nothing but black fur and drool, and he easily outweighed me by fifty pounds. I pitied him in that steaming New York City August as he panted away the afternoons. I wondered if he was happy.

One day he looked at me with such beseeching eyes that I had to stop. I crouched in front of him and scratched his huge furry head. He closed his eyes and seemed to smile, and with a big-dog snuffle, he settled down with his head on his paws. I fondled his bunny-fur ears and murmured baby talk at him for a minute before I became aware of The Feet.

Arranged in a semicircle in front of me were half a dozen pairs of great, big man-shoes. Black, lace-up brogans, mostly, with scuffed toes; some boots that were just extended versions of the brogans. I continued looking upward and realized that in front of me were six men, all smiling bemusedly, all with their arms crossed comfortably over their chests. Some of them held coffee cups.

I was wearing a red tank top. I caught a couple of them looking down my shirt.

I knew I should say something, because obviously they were waiting for the first question. They waited for me to initiate. This was a situation they were used to. I chose the obvious route, and gave them my best "aren't I cute" head tilt, the one I knew spilled a swirl of hair fetchingly over my shoulder.

"What's his name?"

The poor thing's name was Bear. His owner was tall and taciturn. There was something about his unsmiling disposition that reminded me of my oldest brother and drew me to him. Crabby but kind, I decided, looking at the slight downturn of his mouth. I liked his true-blue New York accent. He was "from here," as most of my new City friends were not. His name was Rod, short for Gerard, as only a Brooklynite would say it.

The shift (or tour, as I would learn they were called) was ending, and he invited me to McHale's for a beer. It wasn't quite a date (there was that boyfriend in Rockland County, after all), but I went anyway. We sat in a booth near the front door. The air-conditioning was punctuated by humid blasts from 8th Avenue as the door opened and closed.

"I invited one of the othuh guys from the fiuh-house to come have a beah with us," Rod said. (That's the last dialect I will write! I swear!) I was relieved. That meant it wasn't a date. We were just two potential new friends settling in when another push of damp heat swirled around my legs and in walked Bill.

"This is Billy," Rod said innocently, and I politely reached out to shake his hand. I looked into his face and was immediately taken by his smile -- his smile more a polite gesture than anything else, really, but so bright and flashing for an instant before he reined it in that I was taken by surprise. I saw immediately that he wasn't a smiler by nature; he was more naturally solemn than I. In that first instant I saw that he wasn't a laugher, but a watcher. Where were the lighthearted, laughing Irishmen I had heard populated New York?

Our eyes met for no more than the socially-permissible second, but the thing I saw there must have been in my eyes, too, for we both looked down quickly at our sweating beer bottles. He asked polite and interested questions, which I answered with equal politeness and gravity. We carefully avoided prolonged eye contact as the three of us conversed over those icy Budweisers. I think we knew something was going to happen, and before we had done more than shake hands with each other, we already felt guilty about it.