PRELUDE
Although it was already mid September and wintry weather would soon be closing in on Indian Summer, not a trace of the forbidding season was in the air this balmy Saturday as the tour bus made its way past the barred storefronts and fire damaged pre-war apartment buildings imminently giving way to fabulous townhouses, world-renowned museums, and luxury hotels on the Park.
"Where's Bloomingdales?" The childish voice floated on a Spring-like current of wind.
The bus approached rows of bubbling fountains lining the grand stairsteps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, its yellow and purple banners announcing current exhibits. {Impressionist to Early Modern Paintings from the USSR, August 21 to October 5, 1986}
"Let's get off here," Barbara announced.
The two girls stood up and bounded out of the bus, all the newness of New York greeting them, waiting at their feet.
"Debbie," Barbara had called one day. "Bus trip to New York. Wanna go? It's only ten dollars."
"Yes," she had said instantly. Fresh out of college with not a notion of what she was going to do next, she was game for anything...she had New York on her mind that summer, after graduation. New York, where the clubs stayed open all night, a haven for an insomniac such as herself. She could dance all night. Countless sleepless nights in college, she had longed for such a city.
"But Barbara," she prodded apprehensively. "Do you know anything about New York City?"
"No. But I don't care if I just go there and sit on a garbage can all day. It'll be fun."
Debbie did not want to go all that way just to sit on a garbage can.
"But we have to know what we're doing," she protested. "The last time I went, I was a little girl." She certainly looked the little girl she once was. Not a line framed her cloudless eyes, wide and blue as the sky today. The fair skin, round nose and high cheekbones combined to form a perpetually young face which stubbornly refused to show age. Her petite frame belied her diet rich in carbohydrates, fast foods, pasta and desserts, just plain rich. She could have had a chocolate Sundae complete with whipped cream and a cherry on top every day is she felt like it, and indeed, she had the energy to burn off the calories, even as she devoured it.
Maturity had come early for Barbara. Perhaps she had been born with it. Her innate sense of knowing caused her to see what others could not gauge from a first impression. What she saw did not please her. If Debbie did not get with the program soon, she would find herself caught in a trap. Barbara tried to warn her, but the girl just laughed....Smoke clung to her lenses and her straight hair had gone limp from the smog. "Yeah, I could, will live here," she thought, perhaps knew.
