Manhattan Is My Beat

actually have been antique, Rune reasoned, since it reminded her of how her mother described the sixties—gaudy and filled with weird glowing lights and spaceships and planets and a confusion of incense smells: musk, patchouli, rose, sandalwood.
    Rune looked at a black-lit poster of a ship sailing in the sky and said, “Highly retro.”
    Stephanie looked around, bored.
    In the display cases: geodes, crystals, stones, opals, silver and gold, magic wands of quartz wrapped with silver wire, headdresses, meteorites, NASA memorabilia, electronic music tapes, optical illusions. Colored lights broken apart by spinning prisms crawled up and down the walls.
    “It’s going to make me epileptic,” Stephanie groused.
    “This is the most radical store ever, don’t you think? Isn’t it fantastic?” Rune picked up two dinosaurs and made them dance.
    “The jewelry’s nice.” Stephanie was leaning over a counter.
    “What do you think he’d like?”
    “This stuff is too expensive. A rip-off.”
    Rune spun a kaleidoscope. “He’s not really into toys, I don’t think.”
    The clerk, a thin black man with a round, handsome face framed by Rastafarian dreadlocks, said to Rune in a deep musical voice, “What you see in there?”
    “Nirvana. Look.” She handed the heavy tube to him.
    He played along, peering inside. “Ah, nirvana, there she is. Special today on kaleidoscopes that show you enlightenment. Half price.”
    Rune shook her head. “Doesn’t seem right you should pay for enlightenment.”
    “This is New York,” he said. “Whatchu want?”
    Stephanie said, “I’m hungry.”
    Then Rune saw the bracelets. In a huge glass pyramid, a dozen silver bracelets. She walked to the end of the counter, staring at them, her mouth slightly open. Exhaling an
Oh
.
    “You like them, do you?” the clerk asked.
    “Can I see that one, there?”
    Rune took the thin bracelet, held it up to her face. Turned it over and over. The silver grew thicker and thinner and the ends were like two hands clasped together.
    The Rastafarian grinned. “She look nice. She look nice on your arm but …”
    “‘She’?” Stephanie asked.
    The clerk was studying Rune’s face. “Mebbe you thinkin’ ‘bout givin’ her away to someone. Mebbe you thinkin’ that?” He held the bracelet in his long, sensuous fingers, studied it carefully. Rune thought of Richard’s hands slowly opening a beer can. The clerk looked up. “To some man friend of yours.”
    Rune didn’t pay attention to his words. “How did you know that?” Stephanie asked him.
    He grinned, silent. Then said, “He’s a nice man, I think.”
    Stephanie looked at him uneasily. “How did you
know?
“
    And Rune, who wasn’t surprised at all by the clerk’s words, said, “I’ll take it.”
    “It’s too expensive.”
    The Rastafarian frowned. “Hey, I offer you satori, I offer you love, and you say that be too expensive?”
    “Bargain with him,” Stephanie commanded.
    Rune said, “Wrap it for a present.”
    The Rastafarian hesitated. “You sure?”
    “Sure I’m sure. Why?”
    “Oh, jus’ this bracelet, she be important in your life, I got this feelin’. Be very important.” He fingered the metal hoop. “Don’t be too fast to give her away. No, no, don’t be too fast to do that.”
    “Can we eat now?” Stephanie asked. “I’m hungry.”
    As they walked to the door the clerk called to Rune, “You hear me?”
    Rune turned. Looked into his eyes. “I hear you.”

     
    “‘I’ll go in, sir,’ “
    Rune handed Stephanie a hot dog she’d bought from the vendor in front of Trinity Church downtown, near Wall Street. She continued speaking. “‘I’ll go in, sir’ is what Roy the cop—Dana Mitchell—says to his captain. They’re all standing around the front of the bank with their bullhorns and guns. ‘I’ll go in, sir.’ And it’s a big surprise because he’s just a beat cop and a young guy. Nobody’d been paying any attention to him. But he’s the one who volunteers to rescue the hostage.”
    Rune took her own hot dog from the man. They sat down beside the wrought-iron fence in front of the cemetery. Thousands of people were walking past on Broadway, some disappearing down Wall Street into the curving, solemn griminess of the buildings.
    Stephanie ate thoughtfully, looking at the hot dog uncertainly after each bite.
    “Then Roy goes, ‘Let me try it, sir. I can talk him out. I know I can.’“
    “Uh-huh.” Stephanie was gazing