Meanwhile, we were living at 2 Fifth.
Washington Square Park was a bone’s throw away—just across the avenue, past the trees, visible if you leaned out far enough. This was before the renovation. Before the symmetry campaign. Before the fountain got dragged into alignment with the arch, geometry trying to overwrite memory.
Back then, in the early 2000s, it was still the Nichols park. Bob Nichols had once helped shape it as a city planner. His wife, Grace Paley, helped shape everything else. Grace—story writer, truth teller, firebrand. Jan had studied with her at Sarah Lawrence. And whenever we saw her at readings or events, Grace would race toward me—me in my wheelchair—arms open, voice bright, as if she had all the time in the world. I’ll never forget that.
I spent entire days in the park, writing, listening, watching. David Bowie was rumored to sit in the park at dawn. I was never quite early enough.
Then came the renovation.
The city approved a $20-million redesign. Cobblestones gone. Benches replaced. The fountain realigned to match the axis of the arch. In a place Marcel Duchamp once climbed that very arch to declare the Republic of Bohemia.
In RIVER, that’s when Kurt enters.
Rhinelander University’s myth-busting archaeologist-on-wheels. A tangle of brown hair. Supernatural glasses—my secret nod to The Master and Margarita. The Parks Department wants his dig gone. Ambrose C. Hudswell, the chief park’s architect, has no patience for potholes of the past.
Kurt used to travel the world for digs. Modified helicopters had flown him to remote sites; ropes, cranes, and pneumatic vacuum elevators had lowered him into the depths. Now he’s working across the street. The dig is sanctioned just barely. It goes down quietly—right beneath the Hangman’s Elm. And beneath that: Minetta Creek.
At first, the usual: a brass keg spigot, a green Dutch gin bottle, a cannonball, a squirrel skull, and the porcelain head of an 1860s doll. Then the ring. Mid-17th century, copper alloy with red glass insets. Traced to West Africa. Found buried in the dark soil under the Elm. Kurt doesn’t announce it. He just holds it. Then he hears something. A low hum coming from the ground. Or is it a hiss? An angry hiss. Either way, it’s just imagination.
Sam “Two Feathers” Hummingbird—Kurt’s assistant, friend, and compass—has already noticed. He watches Kurt differently now. In the novel, Sam says the line flat out, without emphasis: Stop digging. You’re waking up Minetta.
Kurt doesn’t stop. He studies myths but doesn’t believe in them—not literally. But myths, like devils, don’t care if you believe. They introduce themselves politely, maybe even with a grin. Pleased to meet you, they seem to say with the Rolling Stones. Hope you guess my name. The song, by the way, was inspired by The Master and Margarita.
And then they rise.
