I imagine him in the street, walking about in the rain, burdened only by the vital but mundane complexities of raising a family in the boroughs. Without the calling, the platform for rhapsodic rhetoric, the stepping stone political offices, he’d be just another guy in a trench coat on a rainy night. Maybe he’ll stop for a cocktail after court in Manhattan or closer to home, after the subway, at a neighborhood joint in Holliswood, Queens. Maybe the T.V. would be on, talking about Nixon, and setting him to thinking.

Decisions, decisions – for now they are provincial, almost intimate; small family and work dilemmas that will be sorted out with a little time and without the greater world giving a damn. Choices of case law at work, colleges to ponder for his children, all of which debated without the looming presence of an airplane parked on a tarmac, waiting for a Queens man to change history. What an unexpectedly full and rich life to be led in the bubble of those you know and care about, in a place you’ve lived your whole life. His wife was a schoolmate. His parents’ former grocery store was just down the block as he pulled up his collar against the drizzle.

He reaches a familiar intersection. Home is to the right. To the left are the local New York Liberal Party Offices. He is always taken the realms of possibility; by forks in roads. As he debates how to proceed, the rain continues, the world goes on without him, and the water begins to puddle around his shoes.

-Danny Grosso