“After you leave me safe at Eighty-sixth, you’re going to go up to his place, aren’t you?”

“I was thinking of it, actually.”

“So.” She linked her arm in his. “Let’s go up there together.”

“You can’t come.”

“You can’t stop me.”

He looked at her in astonishment. “You are a strange woman, Miss O’Donnell.”

“You better believe it.”

When they got to the Ninety-sixth Street crossing, they had a view over a whole section of Spanish Harlem. The streets were quiet for the moment, but they could see several fires. They walked swiftly along to Juan’s building. The doorman had shut the door, but after shining a flashlight to inspect them, he opened it, and Gorham explained his mission.

“Mr. Campos didn’t go out again, sir, I can tell you that.” Gorham expressed relief. “Did you come here to visit him once before?” the doorman asked. Gorham replied that he had. “Well”—the doorman evidently decided that Gorham and Maggie looked respectable—“some of the tenants went up on the roof. He may be up there. The intercom isn’t working, but I can telephone his number if you have it, just in case he came back down.”

This time Juan picked up. He was amazed to find that Gorham was at his building.

“I thought you might be hanging out with the pretty redhead.”

“She’s with me.”

“You want to come up on the roof? There’s a bunch of us up there, and we have beer. You’ll have to walk up a dozen floors.”

Gorham relayed the invitation to Maggie.

“We accept,” she said.

There were quite a few people up on the roof. There was a good view over sections of Harlem; part of the skyline of Brooklyn, to the east, was also visible; and all over the area, fires had broken out.

The sound of fire engine sirens echoed across the night. After a while, from a few blocks up Lexington, there was a screech of tires followed by a resounding crash of glass, as if someone had driven a van through the windows of a store.

“That’ll be the supermarket,” said Juan calmly. Then, turning to Maggie, he added: “El Barrio. My people.”

They sipped from cans of beer, and watched the fires spreading in the hot and humid night. After a time, over in Brooklyn, a huge fire started to develop. Half an hour passed, but it just kept spreading.

“It must stretch for twenty blocks,” Gorham said.

“More, I think,” said Juan.

And so, well into the early hours of the morning, they stayed on the roof, watching the great, divided city of New York express its tensions, its rage and its misery, by fire, and looting, and more fire.

Giving Birth

1987