January 2012
1 post
Free download of "Stand Together, Fall Apart" →
The entire novel—originally serialized on Tumblr in the run-up to the 10th anniversary of September 11—is now available for free online at www.bryanvandyke.com. Offered in Kindle, iPhone, iPad and Android versions.
September 2011
7 posts
“Horace “Ace” Mejeur is a good man who believes in the goodness of...”
Stand Together, Fall Apart: Table of Contents
Chapter 01 * Chapter 02 * Chapter 03 * Chapter 04 * Chapter 05 * Chapter 06
Chapter 07 * Chapter 08 * Chapter 09 * Chapter 10 * Chapter 11 * Chapter 12
Chapter 12 of 12
They finished John’s trial almost a year to the date after the attacks. I returned to New York for a few days afterward. Out of habit I went to the diner where I’d been on the morning of the attacks – it was one of my favorites, with red tile floors and laminated menus and decorative glass tabletops. Seated at the counter, I ordered fried eggs and a glass of whole milk. The place was busy...
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Chapter 11 of 12
I visited the Fulton Houses many times when John lived there with his mother, back when I was his mentor, but I never became comfortable walking through the narrow halls. Mina’s apartment was in the back, and the hallways leading there threaded through what felt like a menacing labyrinth. The buildings rise up in plain stories, one floor after another all the same, like a place that has no...
“I tired of hearing just how good John had been, what a saint he had become, how...”
– Excerpt from Chapter 10
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Chapter 10 of 12
The Exchange re-opened on Monday, just less than a week after the World Trade Center fell. After the opening bell, the stock market plummeted faster and harder than any of us had ever seen; the new king was fear and he was everywhere, all the time, watching us from a terrible set of a thousand eyes.
For employees of McGrath & Swinburne, that day was doubly hard. We were still acquainting...
August 2011
5 posts
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Chapter 9 of 12
I was not at my desk in the North Tower when the first plane hit. Quite a few of my colleagues and friends were there, however; the work day at McGrath & Swinburne always started around 7:30 am. But my hatred of mornings—and my habit of oversleeping—kept me out of harm’s way. It’s funny how a bad habit can bring about good luck.
Imagine if my Uncle Horace had succeeded...
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Chapter 8 of 12
A week later John called and told me he was ready to sell the matchbook. He had a friend out in Queens who could help us, he said. I still wasn’t entirely comfortable with John’s usage of the word “us,” despite my ostensible allegiance to him. But there was, I reasoned, no real harm to anyone in what he was doing. John’s friend worked at the Aqueduct race track, and I asked if he wanted to share...
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Chapter 7 of 12
For hours that night I sat in the wing chair near the window of my apartment and listened to late-night delivery trucks on Fourteenth Street. I knew what I should do. But that did not mean I knew what to do. What kind of person, after all, has no trouble discerning what weighs more, loyalty to a friend or the rule of law?
In the narrowed vision of the law, there was no excuse for my evasion with...
“You could almost imagine how she had looked in the Seventies when she braided...”
– Excerpt from Chapter 4
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Chapter 6 of 12
Even after he lost his job, John still came by the McGrath & Swinburne offices; his presence was odd to say the least, but he had that indefatigable charm. He’d show up early and chat with the receptionist and greet his former co-workers as they arrived for work. He always brought in jugs of Dunkin Donuts coffee or a few dozen H&H bagels. The office admins loved him and they’d always...
July 2011
15 posts
“We shook hands on the curb. He hadn’t zipped up his coat and I could see the wet...”
– Excerpt from Chapter 5
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Chapter 5 of 12
If John had come of age on Wall Street in another era, he would have gradually accumulated money and influential friends and a reputation for success. In time he’d get involved in trading or money management and he’d move to the Island and rent an empty house with lights that would blaze all night while slept on a raft in his pool. Instead, his career stalled before it began; he had...
itisyay asked: I am really enjoying your book so far! Thanks so much for sharing it with the world!
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Chapter 4 of 12
After almost a year of meet-ups and noir movies and bull sessions, John ended his court-ordered term as my protégé on June 3, 1998. He was officially free again on the day he graduated from H.S. 615, the Chelsea High School. I was in the audience, and I stood up and whistled with two fingers as he sauntered across the stage for his diploma. You’d think he was valedictorian for all the noise his...
Behind the Story: Notes on Chapter 2
Chapter 1 was a festival of noir references; in Chapter 2, the allusions and insider jokes of Chapter 1 fade to the background and character development gets more serious attention.
The writing process for Chapter 2 was quite unlike the rest of the book. I added most of this material in 2010 after re-reading a previous version of the book and deciding that the narrator needed a back story. ...
“John’s mother Mina was a nurse in the burn ward at Saint Vincent’s and was...”
– Excerpt from Chapter 4
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Chapter 3 of 12
John and I met for the first time in a gym at Stuyvesant High School, about a ten-minute walk from the Trade Center. I found it ironic that the mentorship organizers had decided to stage their event in the gymnasium of a selective magnet school that most likely none of the mentees could ever get into. Then again, maybe what I took for cheap irony was someone’s idea of a subtle point. ...
“For six weeks of Tuesdays we watched Hitchcock films at the Quad: Vertigo, Rear...”
– Excerpt from Chapter 3
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Chapter 2 of 12
If I am to confess all that happened between John and me, then I must begin by admitting to myself as much as to anyone else that the decisions I made in New York in the fall of 2001 – the decisions that led to my fleeing town the following January – were decisions that came as a consequence of events and facts that stretch all the way back twenty years.
I was not born in New York, as I’ve already...
“He was waiting in the vestibule with his hands deep in the pockets of a scuffed...”
– Excerpt from Chapter 3
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Behind the Story: Notes on Chapter 1
Re-reading “Stand Together” I often notice images, phrases, and names in the text that functioned as inside jokes with myself. Decoding these references is not essential to enjoying the narrative; however, knowing the story behind the story does sometimes make a novel more interesting.
Notes on the first chapter:
Chandler novels delivered to the office. Chandler as in Raymond...
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Chapter 1 of 12
The day after John was arraigned at the courthouse on Chambers Street, I quit my job at McGrath & Swinburne and broke the lease on my two bedroom apartment in West Chelsea. People at the office wanted to know which of our loathsome downtown competitors had lured me off, no doubt with a better title and bigger bank. No one believed me when I said that I didn’t have a great new gig lined up....
“He seemed like a good man, and I hated to mislead him. But good and bad are not...”
– Excerpt from Chapter 7
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Terror, greed, betrayal, forgiveness and hope --...
Set in New York City just before and after 9/11, “Stand Together, Fall Apart” tells the story of the ill-fated friendship between John Marion, a teenage drug dealer, and Horace “Ace” Mejeur, the Wall Street professional who believes he can reform John.
The book description above only mentions 9/11 in passing. That’s because this is not a 9/11 novel per se. Except...