Sunset Park

Miles just sixteen and Bing a year older, the one following the smart-kid road at Stuyvesant and the other in the music programat LaGuardia, two angry boys who found common cause in their contempt for the hypocrisies of American life, and it was the younger one who taught the older one the value of resistance, how it was possible to refuse to participate in the meaningless games society was asking them to play, and Bing knows that much of what he has become in the years since then is a direct result of Miles’s influence on him. It was more than what Miles said, however, more than any one of the hundreds of cutting observations he made about politics and economics, the clarity with which he broke down the system, it was what Miles said in combination with who Miles was, and how he seemed to embody the ideas he believed in, the gravity of his bearing, the grief-stricken boy with no illusions, no false hopes, and even if they never became intimate friends, he doubts there is anyone from his generation he admires more.
    He was not the only one who felt that way. As far back as he can remember, Miles seemed different from everyone else, to possess some magnetic, animal force that changed the atmosphere whenever he walked into a room. Was it the power of his silences that made him attract so much attention, the mysterious, closed-in nature of his personality that turned him into a kind of mirror for others to project themselves onto, the eerie sense that he was both there and not there at the same time? He was intelligent and good-looking, yes, but not all intelligent and good-looking people exude that magic, and when you added in the fact that everyone knew he was the son of Mary-LeeSwann, the only child of Mary-Lee Swann, perhaps the aura of her fame helped to enhance the feeling that Miles was one of the anointed. Some people resented him, of course, boys in particular, boys but never girls, but why wouldn’t boys resent him for his luck with girls, for being the one the girls wanted? Even now, so many years later, the Heller touch seems to have survived the long odyssey to nowhere and back. Look at Alice and Ellen. Alice finds him wholly admirable (a direct quote), and Ellen, dear little Ellen, is besotted with him.
    Miles has been living in Sunset Park for a month now, and Bing is glad he is here, glad the Paltry Three has been turned back into the Solid Four, although he is still baffled by Miles’s sudden change of heart about coming to Brooklyn. First it was no, and the long letter explaining why he wanted to stay in Florida, and then the urgent phone call to the Hospital late one Friday, just as Bing was about to close up and return to the house in Sunset Park, and Miles telling him that something had come up and if a place was still open for him, he would be on a bus to New York that weekend. Miles will never explain himself, of course, and it would be pointless to ask, but now that he is here, Bing is heartened that old Mr. Sullen is finally prepared to make peace with his parents and put a stop to the idiocy that has been going on for so long, much too long, and that his own role as double agent and liar will soon be coming to an end. He feels no guilt about having deceived Miles. If anything, he is proud of what he has done, and whenMorris Heller called the Hospital this morning to ask for the latest news, he felt a sense of victory when he was able to report that Miles had called his office while he was in England and would be calling back on Monday, and now that Miles has just told him he has called his mother as well, the victory is almost complete. Miles has come round at last, and it is probably a good thing that he is in love with Pilar, even if that love feels a bit strange, more than a little disturbing in fact, such a young girl, the last person one would expect Miles to get himself entangled with, but without question charming and pretty, old beyond her years perhaps, and therefore let Miles have his Pilar and think no more about it. Good news all around, positive things happening on so many fronts, and yet it has been a difficult month for him, one of the most anguishing months of his life, and when he hasn’t been wallowing in mud baths of confusion and disarray, he has been close to despair. It started when Miles returned to New York, the moment when he saw Miles standing in the store and he threw his arms around him and kissed him, and ever since that day he has found it nearly impossible