Some jobs started off really inspiring, and then turned to absolute shit—literally. Almost as many people as requested Studio 54 asked to relive their ancestors’ arrival at Ellis Island. So many, in fact, that Appleby sold it as a two-part, all-inclusive experience. We tracked down an old steamer ship and packed it full of clients in authentic period costumes from whatever country their ancestors came from. The ship left a dock in eastern Long Island, just far enough away that the queasy got to toss a few cookies to the shores of Brighton Beach, and made the trip into New York harbor, past the Statue of Liberty, and to the Ellis Island Immigration Station. There, everybody was shuffled into a crowd and forced to wait in long lines before having their last names Americanized, getting their papers stamped, and being sent on their way. For those really ambitious, the second part of the experience involved a week-long stay in a rebuilt Lower East Side tenement building. People got to relive the deprivation and suffering their ancestors went through after having arrived on the gold-paved streets of America. Of course, many of the customers lasted one night eating the authentic slop food before pulling out their cell phones and ordering take-out.

The misery of the immigrant experience was a hit. It was almost as popular as the murders, and it created a whole new scale for our company to operate on. Orders came in for us to set up a Hooverville in Central Park. I don’t know how Appleby managed to do it, but he got the permits, and within a week’s time we had an entire shanty town hellhole built in a secluded corner of the park, complete with extras paid to randomly mock assault people and steal their belongings.

            More than anything, it seemed, pain was what sold. People loved to explore the darker sides of the New York experience. They wanted to be beaten up and robbed and treated like crap. Maybe they thought they could exorcise their guilt over being rich by subjecting themselves to manufactured hardship. Whatever longing drove these people to us, Appleby was more than happy to accommodate their whims.

On the up side, ironically, nobody asked for a rerun of the 1990 garbage strike. We’d barely gotten away with some of our re-creations, and I’m pretty sure the natives wouldn’t let us cover their city with rancid mountains of trash just to service some transplant Manhattanite.

I guess I should have been happy because of the money I was making. Appleby paid well, and to some it must have looked like I was living the New York dream. But all the misery was starting to get me down. I’d been working with Old New York for two years and was feeling like I was past ready to move on. While interviewing prospective actors I often found my mind drifting, trying to remember why I’d moved to this city, and knowing that reconstructing memorable moments from history and movies wasn’t it. I wanted to make my own history.

            Our latest client was asking for us to restage Simon and Garfunkel’s reunion concert in Central Park. Appleby tried his best to make it work, but the more time we spent going over it the more impossible it seemed. Even if we could somehow get half a million people to either buy tickets or act as extras, and even if we could somehow coordinate the logistical nightmare of such an event, there was the fact that the Central Park Conservancy was pissed at us over the Hooverville gig. It seems that Appleby had withheld some important details in order to slip through the paperwork for that job, and once the park officials saw that we weren’t exactly Christo with his Gates, they worked as quickly as they could to shut us down. I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t want a crime-infested makeshift village of shacks and tents right in the middle of the park.

            Eventually, Appleby had to give up and tell the clients that there just wasn’t any way they were going to see old Paul and Art duet on "Bridge over Troubled Waters" short of renting a video of the original.

            Rather than getting him down, having to admit defeat lit a fire under Appleby. He became determined to make his next project happen: resurrecting Times Square of the Seventies and early Eighties. As burnt out as I was, I decided it was a project worth sticking around for, if for no other reason than to see how he pulled it off.

            And, boy, was it ever worth it.

            The Times Square order was the hardest job to date. Because we couldn’t use the real Times Square, we first had to find a neighborhood nearby that was close enough in layout that we could superimpose the old Square onto the current surroundings. Bobby, Xan, and I, and even Appleby himself, scouted locations for a month before we found the right place in a far corner of Queens. The shop owners, for the most part, loved the idea . . . and the potential money that would pile into their cash drawers as a result. Our set designers got to work making facades while hundreds of extras were auditioned to play the dregs and skells and low-life lunatics that would be lurking around the porn shops and peep shows and shadowy back alleys.

            When we were done, it was like an amusement park. There was no specific event we were reenacting, no specific performances. Hell, the whole thing was a performance. It was like a giant installation piece. It was show on an environmental scale, a living museum that our clients were free to wander around to their hearts’ content.

            The first night of the re-creation I was sitting in a booth in a restaurant made up to look like the Howard Johnson’s that used to be on 46th and Broadway. Bobby, Xan, and Appleby were there with me, sharing a plate of disco fries, watching as our customers gleefully scurried about our masterpiece of urban decay. Even without looking at him, you could feel the pride coming off of Appleby like the stench from an overturned Dumpster. This was his crowning achievement.

            It felt good.

            And that’s when he leaned into the table and had us huddle around him. With that same smile he had on his face the first night I met him, he asked in a giddy hush, "Are you boys ready for our next job?"

            I couldn’t help but be excited. Appleby’s enthusiasm could be infectious, but it was Times Square that revitalized something in me. After seeing what we were really capable of, I was ready for whatever Appleby had lined up next.

            "What’s the next job?" I asked.

            Appleby’s grin got wider. "I got two numbers for you," he said. "Nine. Eleven."

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