Unsafe Harbor Read Online Free Page A

close up now,” she said.
    She lowered the counter window, and I slowly walked back to my SUV.
    Magda was right. Wool is wool is wool. Only some arevastly more expensive than others, and then there are those that are highly illegal.
    A sickening feeling began to take hold. It was one that, for now, I didn’t want to think about, much less know.

Three
    I wrote up a few more tickets, until four thirty rolled around and everyone promptly rushed out. It was as if a school bell had rung and officially announced dismissal. I hung back, choosing not to be part of the throng. Besides, I knew what awaited me on the road. I’d be swallowed up in a mob of cars. Finally, having no other choice, I climbed into my vehicle and gave way to being part of rush-hour traffic.
    My Trailblazer joined the horde that inched along the Jersey Turnpike. It gave me plenty of time to take in the local scenery. Row houses stood etched against clouds of smoke spewing from refinery stacks. It billowed like grimy scarves being pulled from a magician’s sleeve. Then I looked to my right and my heart did a somersault. There was the place that I’d left for so long. I’d finally returned home to New York.
    The Statue of Liberty seemed to welcome me back as it followed my Chevy, never choosing to leave my sight. However, there was still a gap where the Twin Towers used to be. If I tried hard enough, I could almost paint them in once more with my mind. Then I’d look again only to find that they were really gone.
    The city was where I’d been born and raised. It was the one true, solid thing in my life. Or at least that’s what I’d alwaysbelieved. But I’d been feeling lost of late, having bounced around for so many years. My friend Terri had suggested that maybe I needed to reconnect with my roots. Perhaps he’d been right. In this case, my Africa was New York City.
    I followed the traffic into the Holland Tunnel and held my breath, anxious to reach the end. Once inside the tunnel, I always had the same vision. I imagined one tile popping off the wall, followed by another and another. Then a trickle of water would begin to seep in. I’d watch in growing horror as the volume continued to swell until tiles shot off the walls like rockets. But as in all good horror flicks, there was still more to come. That would only be the beginning.
    A torrent of water next came hurtling in from the tunnel’s opposite end. Then the crest would rise up along my tires. Soon it would slip into the car, and my feet would begin to get wet. The cold, dark liquid would tickle my ankles, climb past my calves, and scale my legs to slowly cover my thighs. All the while, I’d be pounding on the car door and windows, knowing that I was going to die.
    “Don’t be afraid,” little fish would say, as they’d swim past with their mouths agape. “Just take a last breath, and then swallow the water. For you, there is no escape.”
    Terrified screams would ring in a concerto of death as the tunnel walls began to cave in. We’d all be crushed beneath concrete and grime, buried in a watery grave. I had no doubt that my very last thought would be exactly the same as the one I was having right now: Life would be so much easier if only I didn’t have to deal with lousy bumper-to-bumper rush-hour traffic.
    The red taillights of cars glowed eerily on porcelain white walls as I carefully checked the tunnel again. Their luminous splotches resembled splatters of blood, which only added to my catastrophic vision.
    I expelled a sigh of relief as I exited onto the street and was enveloped in a madcap swirl of activity. Gone was my nightmare, replaced by a multitude of people and noise. It was as if I’d been dropped in the middle of a movie.
    The lights in high-rise buildings beamed like stars in the night. They twinkled inside their concrete and steel constellations. Their reflection bathed the road so that taxis speeding by were immersed in their glow. The stream of vehicles morphed