The Haunted Air Read Free Page A

can you say that?”
    â€œHow?” She was smiling. “Look at your apartment, your favorite buildings”—she pointed to the CD player—“the music you listen to. You don’t own a song recorded after the eighties.”
    â€œNot true.”
    Karyn piped up. “What’s a current group or singer you listen to?”
    Jack didn’t want to tell her that he had Tenacious D’s last disc in the glove compartment. Time for some fun.
    â€œI like Britney Spears a lot.”
    â€œI’m sure you like to look at her at lot,” Gia said, “but name one of her songs. Just one.”
    â€œWell …”
    â€œGot him!” Karyn laughed.
    â€œI like some of Eminem’s stuff.”
    â€œNever,” Gia said.
    â€œIt’s true. I liked that conscience song he did, you know where he’s got a good voice talking in one ear and a bad voice in the other. That was neat.”
    â€œEnough to buy it?”
    â€œWell, no …”
    â€œGot him again,” Karyn said. “You want to try the nineties? Can you name one song from the nineties you listened to?”
    â€œHey, maybe I wasn’t exactly a Spice Girls fan, but I was one hell of a nineties kinda guy.”
    â€œProve it. One nineties group—name one you bought and listened to.”
    â€œEasy. The Traveling Willburys.”
    Claude burst out laughing as Karyn groaned. “I give up!”
    â€œHey, the Willburys formed in the nineties, so that makes them a nineties group. I also liked World Party’s ‘Goodbye Jumbo.’”
    â€œRetro!”

    â€œAnd hey, Counting Crows. I liked that ‘Mr. Jones’ song they did.”
    â€œThat’s because it sounded like Van Morrison!”
    â€œThat’s not my fault. And you can’t say Counting Crows weren’t nineties. So there. A nineties guy, that was I.”
    â€œI’m getting a headache.”
    â€œSome Beatles will fix that,” Jack said. “This disc is all pre-Pepper, before they got self-conscious. Good stuff.”
    The double-tracked guitar intro from “And Your Bird Can Sing” filled the car as Jack followed the BQE’s meandering course along the Brooklyn waterfront, running either two or three stories above or one or two stories below street level. A bumpy ride over pavement with terminal acne. As they ran under the Brooklyn Heights overhang a magnificent vista of lower Manhattan, all lights ablaze, slid into view.
    â€œI feel like I’m in Moonstruck,” Karyn said.
    â€œExcept in Moonstruck the Trade Towers were there,” Claude added.
    The car fell silent as they passed under the neighboring on-ramps of the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges.
    Jack had never liked the Trade Towers, had never thought he’d miss those soulless silver-plated Twix bars. But he did, and still felt a stab of fury when he noticed the hole in his sky where they’d been. The terrorists, like most outsiders to the city, probably had viewed the twins as some sort of crown on the skyline, so they’d aimed for the head. But Jack wondered how the city would have reacted if the Empire State and the Chrysler Buildings had been targeted instead. They were more part of the city’s heart and soul and history. King Kong—the real King Kong—had climbed the Empire State Building.
    Brooklyn turned into Queens at the Kosciusko Bridge and the highway wandered past Long Island City, then the equally unspectacular Jackson Heights.
    Astoria sits on the northwest shoulder of Queens along the East River. Jack visited frequently, but rarely by car. One of his mail drops was on Steinway Street. As he drove
he debated a side trip to pick up his mail, but canned the idea. His passengers might start asking questions. He’d subway back next week.
    Following Junie’s somewhat disjointed directions—she usually cabbed here so she wasn’t exactly sure of all her