And now a slapstick windstorm fit for Harold Lloyd or Buster Keaton.
It was either God’s reply or just April again, in the wind tunnel that was midtown Manhattan. The scent of it, the Easter scent of April in the city, all around her, in the cold air itself as well as on the shoulders of the crowd; the smell of sunlight and dirt, something warming at the heart of it all.
And then she felt his hand on her shoulder and he shouted, “Mary Rose,” which bound him forever to her brother and her father and her life at home since nowhere else did she tolerate the double name. His head was still lowered, his hand still on his hat-he might have been waiting for the right opportunity to doff it-and he peered around at her from under its brim as if from under the rock of another life.
And she, her hand on the back of her own hat, did the same.
“Hello, George,” she said. She could feel the crunch of city grit between her back teeth.
“Some wind,” he said. He had one eye closed against it, the other was watery.
“You’re-telling me,” she said.
They walked together to the corner and as they stepped off the curb, he suddenly reached up and took her raised elbow-the one that led to the hand she held against her hat-and kept it between his fingers as they crossed. She thought he must look like a man attached to a subway strap. At the next corner, he did the same; a gesture that was either brotherly or proprietary, but awkward either way, as if one of them were blind or doddering, or as if both were involved in some odd, raised-elbow folk dance. At Forty-sixth, the light was against them and the wind paused enough for her to take her hand off her hat while they waited with the crowd.