WHEN he found a pipe bomb wired under his Volvo Simo Philadelphia. Hed been w on transf an old armory in a rundown area into a school and had just ordered the tractor to rip out and replace six thousand square feet of expensive case?ment windows. Probably the mans profit on the job, he figured. Oher hand, the bomb might have e from any one of a half-dozen small suppliers who were not allowed to bid the project because they couldnt make a performance bond. Or, he told himself, it could have been the ghost of Louis Kahn, mad with jealousy. The Volvo had been leaking oil and hed gotten into the habit of bending down to check the pavement for oil traces after hed been parked for ah of time.
The bomb was tied ly to the tailpipe. The bomb squad came, big burly men in aprons like goalies wear with the differehat these were made of Kevlar. They had a barrel-shaped truck draped in wire mesh. "Aremely well-done bomb," a sergeant told him, after the device was safely iruck. Simon had turhe job over to one of his partners and given himself a sabbatical, his first in fourteen years. Iy, it wasnt the bomb but the prospect of listening to his wifes voice for another hour, another minute.
When she was a child Sarah would occasionally stick a 9D battery in Simons ear and he would then make a sound like a fire engine, or, alternately, a garbage truck. When the women were living with him Simon and one or another of them would sometimes go together to the A & P, at the appropriate hour, just to watch the fire?men buy supper for the firehouse. The double-jointed engine was double-parked outside the store with a fireman in the cab, waiting, and inside four or five tall healthy young men in dark blue FDNY t-shirts would be arguing about what to put in the spaghetti sauce. "Im up to here with mushrooms," Shorty would say, fiercely, and anuy would lobby for hot Italian sausage. The firemen were good-looking, Simon no?ticed, appeared strong and trustworthy and very det. He wondered about the fireman-population, where all this ded goodness came from. The firemen gazed at Veronica or Dore and then looked away, abashed. Later Veronica, or Dore, would say, "Dont be jealous, Simon." Then, after a pause, "Were not harpies." Did she mean that the firemeoo young or rather in some sense sacrosanct? He had given Sarah a fire engine she could sit in when she was four and she had put out maing fires with it.
Bridges should not be painted blue, Simon thought, the horrible Izod blue of the Ben Franklin bridge in Philadelphia ever in his mind. crete, he felt, wonderfully useful and wonderfully ugly, should never be seen in publiless covered with ivy, or, better still, aper. Steel retty, he did not know why. Brick was good and wood best, for all purposes uhe sun. As a student he had submitted a project to redo Rockefeller ter in pickled pine. He had also, on formal occasions, worn a dog collar instead of a tie, most sportif.
Hed dreamed that he was supposed to be on tele?vision for five hours and had prepared nothing. The television people, young men with clipboards, were friendly, were standing around waiting for him to get dressed and proceed to the studio. They seemed fi?dent that he could do what he had tracted to do. There were some notes in another building, a building far from the building in which he was getting dressed, which might help him if he could reach them in time. His gray pin-striped coat was binding his arms like a straitjacke