Charlie had died too soon; the very year of his death seemed to proclaim the fact. With all its tragedy, 1968 had been an extraordinary year. There had been the failure of the Tet Offensive, and the huge demonstrations in New York against the Vietnam War. April had seen the terrible assassination of Martin Luther King, and June of Robert Kennedy. There had been the memorable candidacies of Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey and George Wallace for the presidency. In Europe, the student revolution in Paris, and the Russian crushing of the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia had changed the history of the Western world. Andy Warhol had been shot and wounded, Jackie Kennedy had married Aristotle Onassis. So many iconic events in modern history had taken place that year, and Charlie Master had not been there to witness and comment upon them. It seemed so unnatural, so wrong.

Yet in some ways, Gorham was almost glad that his father had not lived to see the last few years. For that depressing garbage strike at the start of ’68 had not been the culmination, but only the beginning of New York’s troubles. Year after year the great city his father loved had deteriorated. Huge efforts had been made to market New York to the world as an exciting place. Taking a little-known slang term for a large city that dated back to the twenties, the marketing men called it the Big Apple, and invented a logo to go with the name. Central Park was filled with concerts, plays, every kind of activity. But behind all the razzmatazz, the city was falling apart. The park was turning into a dust bowl, where it was unsafe to walk after dark. Street crime continued to rise. As for the poor neighborhoods like Harlem and the South Bronx, they seemed to be falling into terminal neglect.

Finally, in 1975, the Big Apple confessed it was bankrupt. For years, it seemed, the accounts had been falsified. The city had borrowed money against revenues it did not have. Nobody wanted to buy New York debt, and President Ford refused to bail the city out unless it reformed itself. “FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD” the Daily News headline had memorably put it. Emergency help from union funds had saved actual collapse, but the Big Apple was still in a state of ongoing crisis.

Charlie would have hated New York’s humiliation. But Gorham still wished that he had his father to talk to. They might disagree, but Charlie was never passive, always informed, and usually had an opinion. Since his passing, Gorham was left to make sense of the world by himself, and when he was alone in the apartment sometimes, he would feel quite sad.