Behind the Scenes of: 

A BIRDHOUSE IN BROOKLYN

One bright August morning, only a couple of summers since London, the normally incessant traffic along East River Drive was at a standstill. Drivers and passengers—some leaving their cars for a better look—watched, mesmerized by this speck of a man maneuvering his way across the cable strung between the towers, one hundred and ten stories high. Crowds gathered in the street below applauded his light-footed dance. Curious seagulls skimmed above. Lucy recalled something the diminutive tightrope walker said in an interview that followed: “You need dreams to live.”

Somehow Petite had thawed her resistance to the towers, and might have been the unwitting catalyst for her move downtown. The dust on her indecision had only just settled—the condo purchased, the furniture in place—when a car bomb attack in the garage of the World Trade restarted her conflict. She caught herself thinking about what else might never occur in these changed times, what other bits of magic would go unrealized.