Manhattan Bay

A creative retelling of a bedtime conversation.
  September 9, 2004

“One day it will all be underwater,” Lanie said. “Long Island will be buried under the sea.”

“Good,” I said. “Then we'll have to move someplace else. Like Manhattan.”

“Manhattan will be underwater, too.”

“No, it won't.”

“It'll go before Long Island does.”

“Not the top of the Empire State Building. We'll get by if we rent at the top of a skyscraper.”

“But how will we get around?”

“By helicopter, of course. Or even better, by vaporetto, like in Venice. They'll have boats and ferries navigating around the buildings. The streets will become canals.”

“That would be nice,” she said doubtfully.

“Except everyone will push and crowd everybody else, this being New York. People will jay-swim across the canals and bang angrily on the boats that get in the way. They'll huff and yell: 'I'm swimmin' ’eah, you joik!' Bums will sit moored off the corners of buildings in tiny dinghies, bobbing on the waves and asking for change. Subway will have sausage-linked submarines instead of cars, circulating between stops like gigantic ocean serpents, writhing as they turn corners. A puzzled giant squid will stare at them from afar.”

Life will heave and sparkle and smell of salt. In an office building, a clerk could look up from the papers on his desk to see fish pressing their faces against the window, looking back at him and quietly moving their tails. Above, seagulls will circle the buildings and dive in to snatch bits of food from the table on a penthouse terrace. The penthouse owners will shake their fists at the lumpen birds in impotent anger.

In the evening, the setting sun will ignite the waves and for a brief moment, the former streets will look like they really are paved with gold.

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