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“We’d be famous”

Off the top of a building we fell that day, and sidled across the Hudson River, and in a few moments the helicopter stopped, shook itself and gingerly descended a couple of hundred feet. Looking out of my side window I found myself hovering, with a disrespectful clatter, close to the nose of the Statue of Liberty. We hung there for a minute, and the sunshine reflected off the water hung about her head. Then, with a last curtsey, we flew away. “If we had hit her we’d be famous,” I said to the pilot as we darted off. “What a way to go,” he said. “I’d be the guy who assaulted the Statue of Liberty, and you’d be instant Shakespeare.” Later I climbed up the statue from the ground, and sympathized with the lady who wrote in the visitors’ book that it was ‘a nice sight but the stairs weren’t that wide.’