The Curse of the Labrador Duck (30 page)

Looking to improve our image of Philadelphia, Jane and I set off for the Rodin museum. After Paris, if you want to see sculptures by Rodin, Philadelphia really is the place. A wealthy patron, Jules Mastbaum, had paid for the recasting of Rodin’s greatest works and the construction of a building to house them, but, regrettably, Mastbaum checked out before the work was completed. We rented headsets to get the best possible Rodin experience. We learned that because of poor eyesight, Rodin had developed into a rather tactile fellow. We saw
The Thinker, The Burghers of Calais
, and
The Gates of Hell
, which I had always suspected were somewhere in Pennsylvania. There were also a couple of fine statues of what can only be described as soft-core lesbian porn. So, overall, a really great place.

My cold was rapidly getting worse, and it seemed as though I had two options. I could go for a run and risk making the illness much worse, or I could pamper myself a bit, catch a nap, and miss the opportunity to see more of Philadelphia on foot. I went running. Being fond of running over bridges, I ran through Philadelphia’s central core, aiming for the Benjamin Franklin Bridge over the Delaware River. As I approached, a sign warned cyclists and pedestrians to use the bridge at their own risk. Only sensible, I would have thought. However, the city of Philadelphia had ensured that I would be at no risk whatsoever, blocking all pedestrian access to the bridge with a massive chain-link fence and padlock. Back at the hotel, the little red “message waiting” button on the bedside telephone remained resolutely unlit. Come on, Nate. Show me what you can do!

After a shower, it was time for Jane and me to drown my sorrows and germs further. We found a nice little pub with good beer on tap. We chatted, drank, and watched a couple at the next table go through a dance of seduction. I told Jane that, as a behavioral ecologist, I liked to interpret the behavior of people courting. The young lady was pretty good at it, playing with her hair, and touching his wrist when her companion made a joke. He was pretty hopeless at it, failing
to be amused by her little quips, and moving away every time she tried to move closer. By the time we left the bar, his chances for a little action were rapidly approaching nil. Jane suggested that he might be gay; I suggested that he might be dim-witted.

Back at the hotel, I checked the little red light on the telephone one more time. No luck. Thinking that Rice might have left a message with the front desk rather than on the answering machine, I went to ask the fellow at reception. “Is the red light on your telephone lit up?” he asked. I had to admit that it wasn’t. “Well then buddy, you haven’t got a message.”

Jane and I had Saturday morning to discover Philadelphia. In full tourist mode, we sought out the historical quarter of Philadelphia. At Christ Church burial ground, established in 1719, we found Benjamin Franklin’s grave, inexplicably covered with coins. The headstone for Gerald J. Connelly Jr. (1927–1991) celebrated his life as a seaman, soldier, and safecracker. Huh? Most headstones marked the remains of persons who had passed away long before Connelly began his life of crime. Benjamin Rush (1745–1813), a signatory to the Declaration of Independence, was described as a heroic physician, teacher, and humanitarian. Captain John Shaw (1772–1823) was recognized as showing “integrity above suspicion, and honor without blemish.” Colonel Benjamin Flower (1748–1781) was apparently “punctual.” When my time comes, I just hope that my mourners can think of something more complimentary to say than that I managed to show up on time.

To see the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall, Jane and I stood in line for thirty minutes for an overly enthusiastic grope by security personnel. Entirely dissatisfied with their own lives, members of the security group took delight in making senior citizens walk back and forth through a metal detector, removing belts and wrist watches and eyeglasses until they didn’t make the machine beep anymore. “But I’ve got a metal hip,” explained one silver-haired lady. The Liberty Bell, placed in the Independence Hall tower in 1753, called members of the Pennsylvania Assembly to debate and vote. Somewhere along the line it developed a God-almighty crack. The bell is now housed in its own center, surrounded by security personnel. An old fellow in a white baseball cap neatly summarized the Liberty Bell for me. “Well,
there she be!” It’s a big bell with a big crack, and no one gets to ring it anymore.

We moved on to Liberty Hall. “The Birthplace of the Nation,” it is the spot where delegates from the American colonies formed the First Continental Congress. As the tour began, a ranger of the National Parks Service told us, “No food, no drinks, no chewing gum—there is a garbage bin to your right. Use it!” He went on in this friendly tone. “Cell phones must be turned off. Stay with your tour group. Take a seat against the wall. I will be checking tickets for the eleven-forty tour!” Jane and I were part of a group of sixty-four. Some of the visitors were from Russia and given explanatory pamphlets. Presumably in Russian. I wanted to ask for a pamphlet in Scottish for Jane, but I was a bit frightened of the pretour guard, er, guide.

This fellow was replaced by a ranger who was to guide us around the site. Undoubtedly, she had auditioned for every comedy club along the Eastern Seaboard, and, failing to get even a single gig, settled for giving talks for the Parks Service. She was abrasive. Had she just stumbled in from killing a bear and not yet found her shampoo or a hairbrush? For a comedian-wannabe, she was surprisingly self-conscious, unable to look any of us in the eye.

The tour began. “You can learn a lot about life from George Washington,” she said. I pondered what those lessons might be. Visit your dentist regularly to avoid a mouth full of badly fitting false teeth; or, don’t claim to have thrown a silver dollar across the Potomac River when everyone knows the river to be a mile wide; or, don’t let your physicians remove five pints of your blood in an attempt to heal you? This ranger clearly felt that being an enthusiastic supporter of America meant being an enthusiastic critic of Great Britain. “I don’t want to pick on the monarchy, but let’s talk. The Queen knows she’s gonna die. Right? So what does she do? ‘So long?’ ‘Good luck?’ No! She gives the crown to her son. I mean, let’s get real. So, anyway…” She didn’t seem too keen on the French, either: “So we owe France twelve million dollars for the American War of Independence, and George Washington says, ‘So long, guys!’ So you know what Washington tells them? I mean, this is true. He tells them, ‘No way!’ I mean it!” To give her credit, she taught me that George Washington was one of only six persons who signed both the Declaration
of Independence and the American Constitution, eleven years later.

Rice never got back to me, and the two specimens on public display in Philadelphia remained unmeasured. I consoled myself with the knowledge that the world’s largest stash of Labrador Ducks awaited me just up the coast.

I
HAD FACED
considerable difficulty booking us into a suitable hotel in New York City. I had used the internet to look for something close to the natural history museum and other touristy attractions without breaking the bank. It seems that “close” and “cheap” are mutually exclusive options in NYC. We were faced with three alternatives. We could book into a youth hostel at seven persons to a room, a flea-bag hotel with fewer stars than Guantánamo Bay, or something way beyond our budget. I swallowed hard and booked us into the final, rather posh, option. Even so, I had to book a room with just one bed to keep costs down. Jane had been pretty good when I told her about sharing a bed.

As we checked in, a fellow in a tuxedo was playing a piano in the lobby. The massive floral display behind the reception desk was real, as were the jade plants in the lobby windows. As we got off the elevator and aimed for our room, a lady in a fur coat pointed at us and said to her companion, “Oh, look, Dolores! Backpackers!” I so badly wanted to say, “Oh, look, Dr. Caldwell! Boors!” I should have—but I didn’t.

My head cold was settling in for a long stay, and I was crashing quickly. Jane convinced me to join her in downing a couple of beers in a bar just around the corner from the hotel, which proved to be blessedly free of smokers. The venue was full of happy noise, and to be heard with my croaky voice, I had to stick my lips inside Jane’s left ear hole. The beer was good, and probably killed a few germs.

As much as I wanted to discover the Big Apple, I was rapidly running out of steam, while Jane was just getting revved up for a big Saturday night. So while Jane got glammed up for a night of adventure, I crawled into bed. I was awakened at 11 p.m. by a telephone call from a man who insisted on speaking to his girlfriend, Caroline. I explained that Caroline wasn’t in my room. “Well, this is room 704,
isn’t it?” I explained that he had the room right but the occupants wrong. When he demanded to know which room Caroline was in, he heard some very, very rude words, followed by the slam of the telephone handset. I was awakened again at 1 a.m. when Jane couldn’t fit her key in the lock.

Over breakfast the next morning, I got the synopsis of Jane’s Saturday-night adventures, which began with the words: “I love this city.” She had started off with a taxi ride to a bar-and-grill combo. She plunked herself down next to a fellow from Ireland who claimed to be a technical advisor to the Secretary-General of the United Nations and owner of a Paris newspaper. The fellow bought Jane drinks and then a meal. Then the barmaid bought her a drink. Jane was one popular Scot. As the evening wore on, she met a composer, an accountant, the owner of a bowling alley, a pediatrician who also played French horn, and a tall, blond, gorgeous massage therapist. The party moved on to a nearby nightclub. Jane danced to salsa music, which isn’t often heard in Scottish pubs.

W
HILE WAITING FOR
my Labrador Duck encounter on Monday morning, Jane and I made our Sunday turgid. We started by walking east to Central Park, clearly one of North America’s greatest city parks. I had expected the park to be flat, like much of Manhattan, but it has been sculpted into beautiful undulations. Even early in the morning, Central Park was full of recreational runners as well as the participants in the Colon Cancer Challenge Race. We stumbled across a rainbow-clad group of cyclists staging for a ride. I asked the prettiest one (well, why not?) how far they were going. “New Jersey,” she explained. You have to be impressed.

The promotional magazine in our hotel room listed some of the fun activities available in Gotham for the out-of-towner, including the opportunity to see a taping of
The Late Show with David Letter-man
, and it sounded like a fun thing to do. Jane and I walked south from Central Park to the Ed Sullivan Theater, which looks a lot more impressive on television than on the street. We filled out forms and had a briefing with assistant Seth, who gave us a 50–50 chance of being called for the show the following night. Regrettably, the red light on our hotel room telephone stayed as resolutely dim as the one on
the hotel telephone in Philadelphia. Jane and I would have to make our own fun.

We recharged our batteries with coffee and headed for Times Square. What a sensory onslaught! A concrete canyon with bright lights and flashing signs. An army of perceptual psychologists had been working around the clock to figure out how to assault visitors into buying stuff or going places or doing things, none of which they really needed or wanted.

It was roughly at this point that I lost Jane. I looked in the immediate vicinity and then further afield, peering over and around people as best I could. No Jane. Before leaving Scotland, I had promised Jane’s mother that the one thing I certainly would not do was lose her daughter. A couple of minutes passed. Still no Jane. My mind started to race. Whom did I contact first—the British Consulate or the Canadian Consulate—and how long did I have to wait before I started panicking? Not much longer. I once read that twelve people are murdered in New York City each day. Surely a good portion of those are Scottish cardiologists. Would the NYPD think that I had killed her? Would I spend the rest of my miserable life rotting in an American prison? Oh, dear God.

“Hi, Glen.” She had wandered off to take a photograph.

Feeling the need for a sense of perspective, we got in line for the greatest view of NYC—the observation deck on the eighty-sixth floor of the Empire State Building. It was early on a chilly Sunday morning in March. Surely if there were any line up at all, it would be a short one. Here is my advice—unless you really, really want to see New York from 1,000 feet up, spend the $13 on a round of coffees for your friends. Folks will be in line for the Empire State Building long after you have finished your drinks. But of course no one was polite enough to tell us that. We started off with an escalator ride from the ground floor to the basement, generously described as “the concourse.” The building’s management had clearly stumbled on a very good deal on ugly yellow paint. Unlike the building’s elegant lobby, rich in marble, the basement had been decorated in Early Demolition. We cowered in a long line beneath ductwork, naked light bulbs, and bare-ended wiring. There were missing acoustic tiles, and, although I’m not certain, I think I saw asbestos insulation. All of this was just
while lining up to buy tickets, and it snaked back and forth like a bank queue on heroin. Hawkers tried to sell us NY City Passes, NY Skyrides, and Tony’s New York Stories, in all possible combinations and permutations. My camera, still glowing from our time in Washington, was x-rayed again.

Having purchased our tickets, we got in another snaking line in a basement hallway with poor lighting. After thirty-five minutes, we took an escalator past the elegantly appointed ground floor to another line in another grotty hallway. This was the queue to have our tickets taken, which led to another line to have our gear x-rayed again. We were finally allowed to board an elevator to the eightieth floor, where we lined up to be photographed in front of a picture of the Empire State Building. This left us in one more line, this time for the elevator to the observation deck. An assortment of audio tours were hawked again. “Last chance!” A hot dog stand or a coffee kiosk would have gone over much better at this point.