It was a way for her to escape the destruction that still littered the streets of her Rockaway neighborhood, the giant piles of wood, insulation, and twisted metal from dozens of wrecked houses and businesses, hurricane damage that seemed to Peggy as if it would never completely disappear. Sometimes she took her girlfriend Leslie along, or arranged to meet her for lunch, but today she had a very different kind of excursion in mind. From her closet, she dug through the piles of clothes until she found a comfortable pair of stretchy pants and a sweatshirt. She searched until she found two matching sneakers, laced them up, and grabbed a light jacket. She then locked the house and made her way to the Long Island Railroad, to take the route she endured Monday through Friday, into Manhattan and Pulitzer Hall. Before boarding the train, she thrust some money into the hands of a shopkeeper for a candy bar, yanked off the wrapper, and took several satisfying bites.
