Straining at the seams like a dowager in an overstuffed dress, Chinatown had for years been expanding into adjacent districts, encroaching on the border of Little Italy to the north and the court district to the south. It was perhaps the most vibrant-and most chaotic-of all Manhattan neighborhoods. When Kathy Azarian called Lee to say she was in town for the evening, and suggested they meet, it was the first place he thought of.
They met at Chatham Square and wandered the crooked, narrow streets until dusk. Chinatown lay in a jumble all around them, spread out like a web woven by a drunken spider. There were no right angles-everything was twists and turns, streets as crooked as the orderly grid of Midtown was straight. There was mystery around every corner, behind the opaque steamed windows of noodle houses, squeezed through the narrow doorways of dim sum parlors, with their platters of succulent, sticky dumplings visible through grimy picture windows. Lee had always loved the dimly lit doorways of the curio shops, the pharmacies and herbariums, with their imponderable supply of green tea cures, shark fin soup, and musty boxes of rare, unpronounceable herbs. Chinatown wasn't just another neighborhood-it was a separate universe.
Lee had gone down there in the early days after September eleventh, and felt as though he were wandering onto the set of a disaster film. It was all unreal, the once-familiar streets now a scene of unbelievable devastation. Below Canal Street, three out of every four people were in uniform: the National Guard, with their military camouflage gear, looking ready for combat; state troopers, tidy and crisp in blue and gray, with their Smokey the Bear hats; and of course New York City cops, everywhere. They roamed the streets in their starched blue uniforms and heavy black shoes, wary but full of purpose.
And of course there were the firemen, worn and weary but lit from within, caught in the incandescent glow of heroism, trudging to and from the scene of horror in their thick rubber boots and coats, courageous faces smeared with sweat and grime.
Downtown in the days that followed, the night air was yellow with soot and tiny particles from the explosion, and the streets and sidewalks were covered with a dusting of light gray debris. As he biked through it, Lee was reminded of films he had seen about nuclear devastation. The whiteness felt like a nuclear winter. Dismounting, he had wheeled his bike down as far as the intersection of Liberty and Nassau. He was surprised they allowed him to get so close-he had a clear view of Ground Zero. Once again, he was reminded of a movie set. Huge mercury lights threw their yellow glare onto the remains of the doomed buildings, writhing metal that looked like the weathered ruins of ancient castles, twisting up from the earth as though they had stood there for centuries.
Everywhere, workers came and went. Relief workers in their dusty overalls, grimy kerchiefs tied around their heads, leaned against office buildings or sat on the steps, their white dust masks hanging around their necks. Young cops gathered on street corners, shifting their weight from one foot to the other, poking at piles of debris with their billy clubs. The air was suffused with a golden mist that you could smell and taste, and it was incongruously, cruelly beautiful.
Now back in Chinatown again, this time with Kathy beside him, dusk deepening into twilight, Lee still felt the terrible sadness, but this time it was mixed with a new emotion: hope. They walked in silence for the most part, stopping occasionally to admire a piece of ornate carving in a shop window, or inhale the aroma of roasted duck coming from a noodle shop. He tried to keep his mind off his current case, but the newspaper headlines kept running through his head.