“Which way is Brooklyn?” he asked the tour guide.

She pointed. “Over there. You can see the three bridges— the Williamsburg, the Manhattan and the Brooklyn Bridge.” “That’s where I’m going next,” he said.

He took the elevator down, hailed a cab and said, “Take me to the Brooklyn Bridge.”

“The Brooklyn Bridge?”

Philip flung his duffel bag inside. “That’s what I said.”

“You gonna jump off it or buy it?” the driver asked.

“Fuck you, doc. Just drive and save the smart-ass jokes for the out-of-towners.”

The driver let him out at the bridge and Philip started walking across it. There was a cool breeze and he felt good, but when he reached the halfway point, he stopped and looked down. All that water. God, it was beautiful. Suddenly he felt very depressed. He didn’t know why, but in the middle of this beautiful bridge he felt so down he couldn’t go on. He slung his duffel bag over his shoulder and turned back toward Manhattan.

His depression grew deeper. Here he was in New York and not having a good time. There was something he had to see, someplace he had to find, but he didn’t know what or where it was. He got on a bus, took it as far as it went, then transferred to another bus and another, looking at the houses and the people but not knowing where he was going or what he was searching for.

He got off at a shopping mall and wandered. In to middle of the mall he saw a wishing fountain. He flipped a couple of coins. As he started to toss a third quarter in, he felt a tugging at his sleeve. A little black boy was looking up at him with big pleading eyes.

“Oh shit,” Philip said, flipping him the coin. The boy grinned and ran.

Philip picked up the duffel bag. The depression began to eat at his gut with such a feeling of pain that he stood there for a few moments, shuddered and left the spot …

David staggered under the weight of the duffel bag and dropped it. That was too heavy for an eight-year-old—almost nine—to carry. He dragged it along behind him, looking at the store windows, wondering where he was and how he had gotten here. He sat down on a bench, looked around and watched children playing. He wished he could play with them. Then he got up and started pulling the duffel bag again, but it was too heavy, so he just left it and wandered off.

He went into an Army and Navy store and looked at the surplus CB’s and sirens. He picked up a big plastic bubble and pressed a switch. A siren went off and the red light inside started flashing. Terrified, he dropped the bubble and ran, knocking over an ice cream vendor’s bicycle parked outside and scraping his elbow. He kept running.

When he saw no one coming after him, David stopped running and walked the streets, wondering how he was going to get back to the house. Dorothy was probably worried about him. And he was getting hungry. He wished he had an ice cream. If he could find a policeman, he would ask him how to get home. Arthur always said if he was lost, he should ask the bobbies to help him …