The Sixth Station(7)

Grimm, on the other hand, is a British-born, cocoa-skinned beauty, roughly six-one in her heels (and she always wears heels), with this fantastic head of totally unruly shoulder-length hennaed curls. Earrings that could have been pressed into service as rolling pins offset the red cashmere sweater coat she was sporting that day.

She could, and did, stop traffic.

Dona pulled me into the Korean deli on the corner. “Can’t meet him with ripped panty hose, can I,” she said.

“What? Are you insane? We’re late.” I tried reasoning against reason. But it was go with the giant or try to push through the crowds alone again.

“Panty hose! Who the hell even wears panty hose anymore?”

“Plenty of people, darling,” she retorted. “Obviously. Or they wouldn’t be selling them in the delicatessen.”

“You want to be fashion forward to impress the mass-murdering terrorist baby killer? That makes a lot of sense.”

“Excuse me?” she said, stopping to give me a withering stare. “We should at least try some objectivity here. Have you decided it’s ‘guilty until proven innocent’?”

As though she hadn’t just smacked me down, and rightfully so, she picked up a pair of panty hose, paid the guy, and said, “Block me, will you?” as she pulled on the only ones they had in stock, in size “gigantic.”

“Those panty hose must be older than me. They’re in a plastic egg, for chrissakes! And they’re blue,” I chided her as we ran out, leaving the shocked deli owner shaking his head.

“No need to curse. Press coming through!” she yelled.

We tried pushing through the mass of humanity, all of whom wanted to be exactly where we had to be—at the gates of the United Nations building, still half a block away.

“I can’t believe we’re going to be shut out!”

“We’re not going to be shut out, and I’m going to meet him, too,” Dona said.

“You drive me nuts.”

“O ye of little faith!”

“You mean ye of no faith,” I corrected her.

“Press coming through!” we both then called out.

“If I miss this trial … Damn—why did I stop with you?” I moaned as I elbowed a man who turned around and pulled back his arm, ready to let one fly right at my eye. “Just try it, you bastard!” I said, which caught the attention of one of the riot-gear-suited cops, who came barreling through.

“Hey, you! Put down that fist,” he called to the man, grabbing his arm and pulling it behind him in one motion so swift I hadn’t realized at first what was happening.

The cop, still holding the man with one arm, started talking into his shoulder two-way when he stopped, surprised, and said, “Wait a second—aren’t you, whazzername—the reporter?”

“Well, yes, I am,” Dona said, always assuming that all men were talking to her at all times. “And you, gorgeous man, are…”

“Holy crap,” the cop answered instead, realizing who she was too. “On Fox, right? And you’re in the paper, right? The Standard—Russo—right?” he asked.

“Yup,” I said.

I looked at the cop desperately. “We’re gonna be locked out if we don’t get through.…”

The cop waved over two other cops, who elbowed their way through the crowd. “Let’s get these ladies inside there,” the first cop said, pointing to the UN driveway, and within seconds the seas began to part before us and our armed escorts.

Dona looked smug as she was pressed through the throng. I felt besieged.

The cops brought us to the barricades skirting First Avenue, signaled for one of the patrolmen to unlock a link on one barricade, and we walked through as the crowd grew increasingly unruly behind us—all demanding to know why we got preferential treatment.

“Hope I see you tomorrow…,” the cute cop said.

“Do you think he’ll call me?” Dona asked, never even thinking he might have been addressing me, as we trotted across First Avenue. “I mean he knows how to find me—at Fox, right?”

Ignoring her, I turned my head toward downtown. Coming toward us at a good clip was a caravan of fifty-something armored vehicles.

“Hurry up. They’re almost here!” I screeched, and we rushed the UN gates. They’d already started closing.

“Please, please, sir, please let us pass,” I cried to the guard, who looked right through us and continued the slow slide of the automatic gates.

“No, wait!” Dona said to him, holding her press pass aloft. “I’d love to get your comments on camera—Dona Grimm, Fox News,” she said, reaching in with her video cam.