This is a bit that didn’t make it into the book. I found it today when I was working on the opera.
1979
The US ambassador to Afghanistan is snared and killed by Islamists. Civil war erupts in Yemen. There’s always a war somewhere. On a windy corner at Church and Rector, the Trade Center Towers block the sun. I stand beside a stack of newspapers. Holding one up, folded so the headline shows. “Get your Post here, New York Post here, only a quarter, get your Post here!”
I have been issued a green apron, with three pockets for change. A floppy cap. I look like a newsboy from the 1930s. We work on commission. A nickel a paper. It’s to my advantage to look cute. Herds of people slog by, bound for the subway. Evening rush. Work, home, work, home. Rush rush rush.
It’s an okay job. Thirty bucks in two hours. I’m in a crew with mainly black and Puerto-Rican kids. One cherubic little thirteen-year-old. A couple girls. The only adult man, Sid, has the best spot. Right in front of the Trade Center. He sells eight bundles a day. I sell one or two. The little boy sells three. He has nice shoes.
The rush runs down. Rachel runs up. She jogged all the way here. “They just called! They just called! You got in!” I rearrange my mind to figure out what she’s talking about. “The medic school! The man said you got in! You have to call him back!” We hug and jump around in a circle. One of my regulars stands there laughing. “Good news?” he says.
All those New York jobs I had. Selling wooden sailboats for no money. Being a janitor in a whorehouse. Waitress at Zum-Zums. Kitchen help and overseer in a backgammon club, cleaning up the back-room where a poker game went on for days until the fish ran out of money. Assistant to Shannon, the publisher of a horse betting sheet printed on dark yellow paper meant to resemble gold. Selling flowers on the street, silk scarves on the street, tube-tops on the street. Sparklers on the street, safe and sound for the kiddies. Illegal, but I had a lookout. I had my EMT license, but no one wanted to hire a hundred pound EMT who looked like a high school hippie girl.
The medic test was in an auditorium with 300 men and a couple women. Number 2 pencil. My volunteer ambulance corps recommended me. You had to be sponsored. 23 of us got in. I was going to be a medic. Stop getting high. Buckle down and sleep at night. I didn’t really care at the time I took the test. I never got lucky at those things.All I ever did was shit jobs.
A rush of heat into my chest. I got it. Now that I actually got in I wanted it so badly my heart ached. Medic school. My way out.