New York - The Novel

should it be Angelo who was talented, and handsome, and fine? Why was his little brother something that he himself was not, and never could be?
    All these years he had protected him. He’d done what he thought was right, and what Anna would have wanted. He’d given Angelo everything. And what was his reward? To be surpassed, left standing like an onlooker, a fool.
    Caught unawares by this realization, as it seemed to be, Salvatore could not help himself. He stared at his brother with hatred. Had they been alone in the desert, he would have struck him dead.
    For a long minute, as the wind hissed, he gazed at Angelo with murder in his heart.

    He sensed the danger just before it struck.
    The wind does not break against a skyscraper. It wraps itself around it like a serpent. It breathes up and down; it strikes its head in suddenly through openings and rushes through to the other side. It squeezes and it twists. It is dangerous and unpredictable. Just before you feel it, you may hear the sudden bang of a heavy gust as it rushes across the open floor at you.
    On the high girders of the Empire State, a gust could sweep a man off his feet.
    As the gust came at Salvatore, he automatically caught the edge of the girder and braced himself. But it had been some time since his brother had worked on a high building, and besides, he was not paying attention.
    The gust reached Angelo. It smacked into the sketching pad and tore it from his hands, carrying it thirty feet out from the building, where counter-winds buffeted it about like a kite. Instinctively, Angelo reached after his drawing as it flew from him. He was stretching out into space, grasping at empty air. He was tilting.
    He was losing his balance.
    Salvatore saw it even before Angelo knew it was happening, and he threw himself toward his brother. He was aware that the two Mohawks onAngelo’s left were moving also, but his attention was wholly on his objective. If he could just grab his brother’s jacket.
    Angelo was going over the edge. He did not have time to right himself. His slim body twisted back, his hands searching for something to hold on to. But it was too late.
    Then suddenly, just as Salvatore’s outstretched arms were thrown forward, just as he might have touched him, Angelo’s body shifted, abruptly, to the left.
    The Mohawks had him. They were dragging him toward them, and holding him fast, thank God.
    Had Salvatore not swiveled to look at the Mohawks, he might have kept his balance. But as he crashed to the edge, he slipped, tripped over the girder, and went headlong into empty space.
    Salvatore Caruso knew he was going to die. As he felt himself go over the edge, he was able to think fast, and clearly. I am going to die like my sister Anna, he thought. He wanted to tell Angelo that he loved him, and did not hate him at all. But then he realized that Angelo had no idea of the shameful thoughts that had passed through his mind in the moments before. So that was all right.
    Nine floors below hung the duckwalk. The duckwalk had a hard roof to protect the stone setters from any falling debris. If he hit that roof the impact would surely kill him, but wouldn’t stop his fall. He’d bounce off the roof, and then fall like a stone all the way down to the street. He must try to miss the duckwalk, and cry out as he fell, to warn the people on the sidewalk far below.
    He heard a voice above cry out his name, “Salvatore.” It was Angelo.
    There was only one thing he had not thought of. He realized it a moment later.
    He was not falling as fast as he should.
    When the wind strikes a tall building, its current is checked. It searches for somewhere to go. Often, it will go up. Just as the wind will rush up a cliff and blow you back if you look over, great up-currents of air chase the soaring facade of a skyscraper.
    Now, as he fell, Salvatore suddenly noticed that Angelo’s sketchbook, which should have been below him, was rising, flapping like a bird, some way over his head. While the sudden gust from the west side had ripped the book from Angelo’s hand, great eddies in the changing wind had also caused a column of air to funnel up the eastern facade.
    And now, like an angel’s hand, it took Salvatore as he fell and held him, then pressed him back against the framework of the building, so that he crashed with a thud onto an open parapet, three floors below.
    The landing knocked him unconscious, and broke his leg.

    It was a spring morning in 1931, a