There was a Greek god sitting on her beach
And as Catherine stood there, glued to the window of her grandfatherâs beach house in the Hamptons, the visual was as arresting as anything ever painted by a master.
From her side angle, she could see him only in profile. A hard jaw that looked chiselled instead of real. He had forgone sunglasses, staring sightlessly into the churning grey waters of the Atlantic, with the sun burnishing him in gold highlights. His hair was short and dark, with a few pieces curling waywardly at the neck. Thick black lashes were clearly visible, even from a distance.
And that was only above the shoulders. His torso was like exquisite marbleâpowerful and broad, a sheltering bulkhead in any storm, its long axis divided by rippling abdominal muscles. A sprinkling of chest hair formed a narrow line down the sternum, leading toâ¦toâ¦Catherine smiled to herself.
There was art, and then there was man art.
Dear Reader,
This is a story thatâs been in my head for a long time. We were living in Texas on September 11, and I shared the same sad reactions as everyone else about the day, but the lives of those who died took on an equal and overwhelming significance, as we ended up moving to the suburbs outside New York City in December 2002.
Once my son started playing baseball, I attended many games at his school, and noticed a plaque. Itâs small, bronze and nailed up on the old wooden wall of the field house. Itâs in memory of a gentleman who was on the baseball board for the town and who died on September 11. It doesnât talk about the attacks, doesnât say how he died, but instead the words are about his life and his contributions to the league. In that moment, what had been such an infinite and nearly unimaginable tragedy became very, very real.
One life. One normal man coaching on this half-pint baseball field, who hadnât expected to die so soon, and the people he touched. Not an entire country, not an endless news clip circling many, but one family and one small community coping with the loss of a single person, amidst the tragedy of so many.
Respectfully,
Kathleen
SINCE THE SUMMER he turned eleven, Daniel OâSullivan woke up every morning the same way. With an aching hard-on. After he was married, the first light of dawn became his favorite time. Heâd roll over, impatient hands searching for his wife. After making love to her, heâd shower, shave, and together theyâd take the subway to work. What more could any guy want?
But then one September morning seven years ago, bright sunlight mocking in the sky, that all exploded, along with two airliners, two buildings and two thousand, seven hundred and forty peopleâone of whom was his wife.
Gone.
For the next five years he rolled over to look for her, impatient hands searching blindly, and she wasnât there. And so the hard-on stayed.
The morning wake-up call evolved, the change coming so gradually that initially he didnât notice it. In those beginning moments of wakefulness, when his brain was more than halfunconscious, he stopped looking for his wife, impatient hands no longer reaching for someone who wasnât there.
Gone.
Daniel was starting to forget.
Now, if this was any of a thousand other people in the world, maybe thatâd be okay. But Daniel wasnât wired that way. Love was forever. A promise was forever, and so two years ago he shifted the wedding picture to his nightstand as a reminder of exactly how much his wife meant to him.
It didnât help.
No matter what he did, no matter what he told himself, in those first seconds of the day his hands stayed stubbornly buried under his pillow. That betrayal to her memory shocked him as badly as her death.
And so the hard-on stayed.
Daniel didnât look at other women, he didnât flirt with other women and he sure as hell didnât sleep with other women. Maybe his sleep-bagged mind would betray her, but his body wouldnât.
His wifeless life settled into a dull pattern that he didnât dare disrupt. And it was for that reason that when summer rolled in to Manhattan, Daniel didnât leave like so many other New Yorkers.
July in Manhattan was hell. Hot, humid, and the dense air hung low on the rivers, casting the entire island in a muggy shade of yellow. The hell-like conditions were the number-one reason that most sane people left the city for the veritable paradise of the outlying beaches. The hell-like conditions were the number-one reason that Daniel OâSullivan was determined to stay, no matter what his two brothers wanted.
âIâm not going,â he told Sean and Gabe in his most serious, âdonât hand me that crapâ voice. And in case they didnât pick up on