The pink on the western horizon had dimmed to a faint rouge by the time he reached the corner of Ninth and Fourteenth and found, just two doors down from the intersection on the side of the street closer to the river, a dive with a neon Budweiser sign in one window. On entering, he saw that the place was not quite so small. Two rows of tables took up most of the interior, with a bar running along the back wall and a kitchen somewhere behind it accessed via one of two narrow halls. Here was a place he thought he would like to have known, if he had a circle of friends broader than that gaggle of misfits devoted to an obscure Czech modernist, if he got out on the town more and fulfilled the purpose of living here in New York and taking part in the life of a city so opposed in every way to the setting in which he grew up. 

Tonight would be an ordeal, Ray Vance thought. A young man named Charles Lindsay, who espoused all kinds of hateful ideals, was on the ballot in the mayoral election this night in November 1957. Charles had momentum and great wealth and believed that Ray had stolen his girlfriend. And Sputnik had launched the month before, and people believed World War Three might start any moment. 

He sat down at the end of one of the tables, ordered a glass of beer from a young server in an apron and pleated skirt, and watched the place fill up. The guys and gals who came in struck him as largely a collegiate crowd, though here and there the accents of Canarsie and Bay Ridge and Hoboken evoked humbler origins. The other tables got crowded and then his did too, though the cliques and couples minded their business and took little notice of the young man in the trench coat who had a bruised eye and odd streaks of discoloration crisscrossing his face and neck. His recent beating at the hands of Charles Lindsay still showed.

People went to the juke and punched in the codes for hopping tunes. A boy with sandy blond hair in a preppy red vest and jeans and a girl with hair of an even more golden hue in a lime green jacket over a black blouse and khaki trousers, talked so animatedly beside him that he thought his presence was awkward even though he had gotten there first. 

He drank his beer and tried to listen to the juke. The Four Knights were singing about the loneliness that sets in when dreaming about another person. The boy and girl next to him did not agree on the merits of a career in advertising. It was hard and not really practical, the girl said. There were so many other opportunities out there. But advertising was where the money was, the young man insisted. There are things in this world like coffins and toothpaste for which you know demand will never dry up. The girl was familiar with the argument but held her ground. 

At this point Ray tried to stop listening to the argument because he needed another beer and he wanted to listen to the new song on the juke, “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley and His Comets, which he liked very much. The place had gotten full and people laughed hard and yelled out the words to the song. He caught the waitress’s attention and got another beer. As he drank aggressively, the couple beside him entered a new, heated phase of their discussion.

“It’s kind of strange to be having this argument now.”

“We’ve still got most of our lives ahead of us.”

“What I mean is, you really need to figure out what you want to do with your life and then work out a course of study, instead of going out into the world and hoping some of what you’ve learned will be useful in some way.”

“Work on Madison Avenue and I guarantee your life will be free from existential crises.”

This was getting interesting, but sitting here listening felt inappropriate. The song on the juke was so catchy and so suggestive of a life of simple, manageable challenges and dangers, a space in which to live and prosper with a clear milky way above and no one and nothing to challenge your fun. The life Ray had forsworn in order to feel relevant. He had gotten his wish, all right. 

Now he turned to look for the server in the pleated skirt just as she glided up to the table. He signaled to her.

“That’s an awful lot to drink on an empty stomach. Weren’t you throwing up in the john just now?” she said. 

Ray shook his head earnestly. Maybe this was a nice way of telling him that he looked drunk and it exceeded the bounds of propriety to keep serving him. 

But what was this place for, anyway?

“Just one more, please.” 

She rolled her eyes and moved off again. He could not tell whether she planned to fulfill his order. Then, to his surprise, she came back and deposited another glass of beer on the table before him. He thanked her and resumed drinking. Meanwhile, Les Baxter replaced Bill Haley on the juke and the discussion to his left grew still livelier. 

“Tell me what you consider a worthier field. They need all the people they can get to help put the message out there.”

“They have billboards and TV and radio ads.”

“Yeah, but not enough people writing and coming up with creative ways to package and promote and sell the message. The one message, Diana.”

“I know, Keith. I know.”

“Charles Lindsay’s message. The advancement of the interests of the natural aristocracy of this world, and the suppression of the inferior.”

Ray thought he could not have heard correctly. He really must be close to blackout drunk, and his neurotransmission was deeply messed up. 

“The victory of the race. The volk.”

“Exactly, Diana. The volk. There aren’t enough talented propagandists on our side. But just wait till Lindsay’s mayor.”

Ray looked at the server, who was busy at another table, at her co-worker, also quite busy, and at the crowds filling the space, most sitting and some standing or milling around by the juke and flipping through the selections. What luck he had had, to end up sitting next to these two people totally by chance. He looked into his beer. Right now, Ellen Marshall, the love of his life, was over at the house on Washington Square, enjoying moments of intimacy with her parents, who had offered to give her whatever she wanted for Christmas, whatever her heart desired, anything in the world, and she had named the inventory in Arthur Bukovsky’s used bookstore, the one Ray and Ellen had visited together, or so Ray surmised. For his part, Ray sat here feeling lonely even in the midst of so many people.

Nor were they the only ones. 

All around, in the bar, people rose from their tables and began to sing. 

“As Sputnik soars above us,

Our enemies claim the skies,

But the master race is roused,

And we will quell their lies!” 

Ray knew, from the moment the chant began, that the tone and rhythm of the song drew directly from the Horst-Wessel-Lied. 

People turned to watch with jeers and mocking looks as he flung some bills on the table and rushed out of the bar and onto the cold street. The crowd inside began another verse of their disgusting song, something about marching and conquering. The server called after him but he did not catch it and hardly cared.

Outside it was frigid and the air frighteningly lucid, and the myriad of stars were like the visual echoes of conflagrations at points all through the galaxy. For a moment he stood on the pavement, panting hard and trying not to throw up, and then he hurried down Ninth Avenue toward the narrow and cobbled streets of the West Village, thinking that Charles Lindsay was correct, the fascist had people and operatives everywhere and not a move or act or thought of Ray Vance could be private anymore. Someone must have followed him. What happened in there was not a prank but an effort to mess with his mind on the deepest level and inspire terror that would grow ever more acute until Ray walked out of Ellen’s life forever.

He looked over his shoulder at a street where nothing stirred in the penumbras of the lights. Coming downtown, he had not made minimal efforts to be furtive. By zigzagging and changing course often, he hoped to evade anyone after him. Ninth Avenue led just a bit over two blocks down from Fourteenth Street. On reaching Gansevoort, he made a sharp right and cut over to Washington, then raced down to Twelfth, eying people standing outside the bars, but they seemed to take no notice of him at all. Then he reached Twelfth and made a left, moving toward Greenwich as fast as he could without running. He pursued Greenwich two blocks down to Bank, then made another right toward the intersection of Bank and Washington.

Halfway there he paused, alone on a block submerged in dark. Here was a setting that lent itself to the kind of scene he had dreamt of before he ever left the rural state where he grew up. He had lain in his bed picturing a dark street at the heart of an unbroken stillness and silence, imagined himself loitering there, smoking like a dime-novel tough guy, and then a woman with bright lipstick and a sultry smile, wearing a fedora and a tight-fitting dress, moving into the penumbra of light from the one lamp. What they said from that point on mattered little. It was the scene that mesmerized him. 

There would be no such scene tonight, he thought, and if the wrong stranger found him it might be the last night of Ray Vance’s life. Lindsay wanted him to walk away from Ellen, and with his fortunes and deviousness could apply tortures that Ray had only just begun to divine. 

He closed the distance to Washington and spotted a quaint café on the far side of the street, close to the river. Maybe he could hide out there for a while and then make his way through the chaos and noise of midnight to the Upper East Side. He stole across the street and entered the little place, which had five tables and a dim light, four plants set tastefully along one window, and a tall server in a white apron who had little to do at the moment. He took a seat, spent a minute composing himself, and ordered a tea. 

While he waited, a young woman came out of the bathroom. He realized he happened to have taken the table next to hers. The ends of her blond hair met in a bun at the back and gave her exceedingly pale cheeks a prominent, slightly haughty air. Her selection of a red dress had nothing to do with the occasion, he felt, but was the expression of some inner quality. As she sat down at the table beside his, she smiled pleasantly as you might at a boy riding his bike past your lawn. If the still healing bruises and cuts made an impression, her look did not betray it.

“We’re two of a kind,” she said as the waiter set a cup of tea down on Ray’s table.

Now he looked at her without subterfuge, letting himself appreciate her beauty.

“Good evening, miss. How do you mean?”

“I mean that almost everyone in the world wants to drink and dance tonight, and we’ve sought out a quiet place.”

Not knowing how to tell her that he had spent much of the past hour drinking heavily, he hoped his breath did not do the job for him.

“I don’t make it over here too often. I know the East Village better.”
She nodded.

“Is that where you grew up?”

“Oh, no. I’m a farm boy from a place you’ve never heard of.”

Here was an answer calculated to show that he had no insecurities about who he was, but what people made of it was another matter. She seemed charmed.

“That’s a nice way to introduce yourself.”

“Thank you. So where are you from?”

She shrugged.

“A lot of places that aren’t much more alike than the rural states and here. And I’ll tell you, I’ve grown a little weary of the arrogance that people here tend to show toward the provinces.”

Ray nodded quickly and sipped his tea.

“Yes, I know exactly what you mean. They just don’t get that looking down their nose at people they deem unsophisticated becomes a form of bigotry in its own right.”

When she smiled he felt enclosed in a temple of light, a warm pleasant safe place. His tea was a little sweet and had a bracing pungent quality. The more he drank, the more he could dilute the booze in his body.

“You’ve thought about these things a fair amount, I can tell. I wouldn’t be surprised if we’ve heard some of the same people disparage the interior of the country.”

“We just might have.”

Though she had finished her espresso, the waiter was aloof, and the street outside was dark. 

It was her turn to speak, but he enlarged on the theme.

“I don’t know why a city can’t be great—and we have more than enough to be proud of here—and still tip its hat to other places for what they bring to the table.”

“That’s mixing analogies a little, but I agree,” she said, and smiled again.

“Yes, it is. I put my foot in my mouth when—”

He almost said, When I talk to a beautiful woman. 

“—when I get going on certain subjects.”

That smile. That look. Knowing, sympathetic, encouraging. The tea was so delicious and refreshing, it made you feel as if you stood in a corridor through which cool air gusted. 

“You know, I don’t think you’re clumsy with words at all.” 

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“I have this feeling you’re a writer.”

“Close. I’m a member of a society that discusses books and writers. One writer. Kafka.” 

“That’s really wonderful. I’m honored to share this space with you. You know, if you are a writer, if you’re someone who really can influence the hearts and minds of others with the eloquence of your words and the power of your ideas, you should speak out about the city’s disdain for the heartland. Let people know it’s not okay.”

To Ray this was a simplistic and faintly cloying way to talk about writing, but for a moment he felt a bit like an artist in a park approached by an admiring kid. It was disarming. And her smile, her smile!

“Oh, I do speak out about it. Just ask any of my friends.”

“I don’t think you understand me. Don’t you know about the struggle that keeps threatening to engulf the world?”

He had begun to enjoy the conversation quite a bit, and these words were like a board to the back of the head.

“Uh, yes. I’d have to have been living in a cave not to know about the superpower rivalry.”

She shook her head.

“No, sir. That’s not what I mean and that’s not really what you think I mean, is it?”

Suddenly the tea lost its taste and the street outside looked darker than ever, as if this part of the island of Manhattan had broken off and drifted out to a remote point in the ocean.

“Maybe you’re one of these lunatics who belongs to a cult that believes Jesus is coming and the world is going to end and it’s going to be really dramatic like the Book of Revelations.”

He was sure she would take offense. But her voice was calm as ever.

“It doesn’t have to be. I think people know which way things are going and we see it all around us every day. We need to be ready to die in large numbers, but if we mobilize properly, it will be the Russians and all those who oppose us. If it ends up being a majority of the human race, then so be it, as long as there’s room for our side on the ark. We can’t be too squeamish about who’s on our side in this struggle. You do see my point here, Raymond.”

He stared at her in disbelief, racking his addled brain, trying to align the features before him with the mental image of someone he had met at some point in the recent or distant past, with a patron of the bar he had fled, or an undergraduate at the university, or someone he had bantered with at a party after his twelfth beer, or a stranger on the street, or a face in the window of a passing car or bus. He could not find a match. Given that he was still tight, he must consider the possibility that she was someone he had met, someone whose name he would realize on waking the next morning he had spoken many times, or she might be a stranger deployed by someone who hated him, she could be the agent of his self-annihilation. As he saw it, the choice now was between an act that would lead to his arrest and leaving immediately. He flung bills on the table and dashed out into the night. 

He had to get uptown without passing anywhere near the bar that the fascists had taken over. He ran east through the streets, mostly retracing his path but keeping below Twelfth Street until he got over to Sixth Avenue, where the traffic was heavier and a fair number of cabs were out. He still had a bit of cash. He stood at the curb on Sixth, his thumb cocked, and hoped that none of the shapes passing up and down the avenue would recognize him and that a cab would quickly pull over. Most of them seemed more than usually bent on ignoring him, but at length a taxi slowed and stopped and he climbed in and shut the door hurriedly. The cabbie spoke in a hoarse voice.

“Where to?” 

“Central Park South.”

“Central Park South and what?”

“That’s close enough, thanks.”

The cabbie grunted and the vehicle slid out into the street again. Now Ray looked for the first time at the driver, a short, stout man in a gray jacket with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows and a cap like the kind they wear in Czechoslovakia. 

Luckily the traffic was lighter than Ray expected, given that people said this was just about the worst night of the year to be out, and the cabbie looked back only once and only twice made eye contact in the rearview mirror. Ray was reasonably certain he had never seen this man before. The driver must have thought Ray was odd for turning to look back through the rear window and letting the lights of the cars behind them sting his eyes.

They passed through the twenties, the thirties, then the forties without incident, and Ray began to feel a bit of confidence that not even someone as devious as Lindsay could have managed to keep him under scrutiny at this point in the evening. The cab advanced into the fifties. He never thought he would welcome as he did now the sight of the dark verdant forms looming at the park’s southern edge.

“Have fun tonight, kid,” the cabbie said on accepting the fare. 

Ray exited the cab and had to restrain himself from running toward Fifth. He lingered at the entrance to the park as the cab sped off, and then, when certain it was gone, walked at a normal pace. Then he turned and made his way warily up toward Ellen’s place, trying not to give the appearance of straining to make out the faces of the strangers who passed in the near-dark, if strangers they were. Once again his existence was a tissue of uncertainties that tested his sanity. If, if, if. He hurried up the avenue, barely trying anymore to disguise his haste, giving the forms around him in the dark as wide a berth as possible and wishing he could cover his own face. Crossing the street up to Seventy-Fifth he slipped and fell and scraped his right knee, but heard none of the solicitude he would normally have expected. The silence from others on the street was a comment on his clumsiness. 

He entered the lobby of Ellen’s building with as normal a mien as he could summon, passed quickly to the elevators, and rode up to the top floor but one. 

Once again the hall was empty. When he opened the door, the cat, Jenny, did not make the show of ebullience he expected. There was no sign of her at all as he stepped inside and closed the door. From force of habit he reached for the light switch by the door, but then dropped his hand and felt like cursing himself as an idiot. Tonight he did not want anyone to think the place had a single occupant. The events of the last few hours were so dizzying and he wanted nothing more than to wake from this nightmare, and the thought that there was no exit threatened to undo all the progress he had made in the course of his courtship of a beautiful and intelligent woman.

He sat down and tried to forestall all thought and memory for a while, and soon he felt something soft and wet nuzzle his left wrist and marveled at how noiselessly Jenny had mounted the couch. For the first time he noticed her eyes, the small amber ovals flashing in the dark, evincing curiosity about the visitor who was so far from the confident titan, the master of his world, that a human is supposed to represent for a creature of Jenny’s size. As he sat there in the dark he realized he had lost all track of time. He wanted to sit here and take it easy and let things settle, but he had to figure out a plan. 

Close to midnight, the voices out there in the dark grew louder and rowdier. What a few of those voices down on the street communicated left him barely able to speak or move.

“Hey, lover boy! How’s the house-sitting going? Too afraid the world will end to come out and join us?”

“Hey, you up there! Want some cow’s blood?”

“Or a bit of dog’s piss?”

“Or some camel dung! I’ll give you a good deal on that!” 

“Fine offerings for a coward. One who can’t face the inevitable and clings to fantasies about his own life and the course of the world. But Sputnik has launched and a showdown is coming, unlike anything in history.”

“Yes, a coward who can’t accept what’s necessary! Come out, little mama’s boy!”

“Hey, up there, come and see what we’ve made for you down here.”

The voices coalesced into a chant.

“Come out and play! Come out and play! Come out and play!” 

Then someone down there had an idea and the words changed. 

“Ray, Ray, come out and play! Ray, Ray, come out and play!” 

So it was out now. Charles Lindsay, the fascist mayoral candidate, had known about this apartment, he had learned that Ray spent time here with Ellen. With the woman Lindsay still considered his future wife in spite of her wish to have nothing to do with him. Now Lindsay’s people were out there, taunting Ray and trying to goad him into giving himself up to them or maybe into self-harm. 

He resolved not to take the bait. He would not show his face at the window or turn a light on. Even if someone had seen him enter the building, the idea would take root that he was no longer here or it had been a mistake and they were wasting their breath. Yes, that was the key. Sit here in the dark and let the lack of response unnerve them.

The taunts went on for a while. They tapered off and rose and fell and rose yet again. Jenny, or those two tiny points of her he could make out, seemed as placid as ever. She reminded him of why people get cats. Let one tiny thing be right in your world, it fosters the illusion of a deeper serenity. 

He decided one act of defiance was open to him, and that was not to let them waste the evening for him. He got up and then, avoiding the windows, moved silently over to the bookshelves to the right of the door. Here were so many interesting titles, enough to keep a mind engrossed for months. Maybe a bit of cleverness could salvage part of the evening. He took the small lamp from the top of the shelf and put it on the floor. Then he went to the bathroom, took one of the expensive towels, returned to the big room, and draped the towel over the shade so that, when turned on, the lamp would emit a narrow ring of light in its immediate circumference. He turned the lamp on and, as expected, it did not cast light upward, only a bit at its base, just enough for him to read in a prone position. 

“Lover boy! Come out and play with us!”

“Mommy won’t let you out this late? You do have a mommy, we assume.”

“Come out, baby boy!” 

The first book he pulled at random from the shelves was a slim volume. He did not look at the characters on the spine or the title page, just opened to a page and began to read.

“The consensus in my field still favors the localization of madness as a subject of study and, by extension, its aberrative character as the end result of a perversion of normal psychosomatic traits under conditions of extreme stress, trauma, pain, humiliation, or anxiety, or some combination thereof. I am almost alone in arguing for an interpretation of ‘madness’ as stemming from the responsiveness of traits latent in the average person to appeals of reason and logic, even when expressed by persons who do not have the subject’s interests at heart and do not want him to ‘graduate’ to a higher level of consciousness.” 

This was interesting, but not quite what he was in the mood for. 

“Lover boy! The missiles might be in the air soon! This could be your last chance to come out and have fun.” 

“Join us. We brought a goat here specially for you.”

“Ray, Ray, come out and play!” 

The next book was thicker, and mustier, as if hardly anyone had opened it in a century. He flipped to a page at random and dove in.

“During all the months we lived in the cabin that year, the winds mimicked the voices of people both Carol and I had known at earlier stages of life, including the former romantic partner who committed suicide when she told him she was insufficiently impressed with his looks, education, income, and status in the world.” 

He wished that the people outside would shut up and allow him to concentrate. The frustration got so bad that he considered running to the window and screaming at them, but of course that was what they wanted.

“Come on, lover boy, we don’t really mean you any ill. Think about it. Who’s going to stand up to the Russians if we can’t get our act together?”

“He’s right, you know. Come on out, we just want to talk to you.”

“And I do promise you a bargain on that camel dung.” 

The next book was the size of a Dickens novel, and a little dusty. 

“The people of the quarter were so poor that they quickly assented to make themselves available for each and every experiment. The problem was that not a single one went as planned. Not a single one.” 

He tried to keep reading but the voices outside were as loud and persistent as ever.

“Lover boy! Don’t be a coward, now!”

“Show yourself! We’ve organized a party in your honor.”

“Ray, Ray, come out and play!”

Their taunts were getting stale. The next work he freed from the shelves was a thin little black volume with small elegant print.

“Jan. 18, 1935. I cannot say with certainty that there will be further entries in this journal. My anthropological studies are over but the fact of greater importance is that the natives of this island have come to a decision. They have elected to spurn all traits and characteristics that the advent of persons such as myself has led them to associate with the wicked of the earth who are pushing this planet toward a cataclysm from which not even this remote island may emerge unscathed. They have passed a resolution to kill all interlopers, but have not yet made it retroactive. Not yet. It is hard to maintain concentration. The constant glare wounds my eyes and the sand hurts my feet.” 

To his surprise the voices outside had subsided. He lay in there in the dark, feeling his heart throb inside its frame, listening for evidence of the instability of the walls and floor around him, thinking it all would fall away, at any moment, leaving him to tumble through the fathomless dark until his body smacked into the concrete below. 

Then all the world erupted in song and cheer and laughter and applause. The cries and hoots and cheers in this neighborhood and those below made themselves heard all over, in all the boroughs and across the river and throughout the whole breadth of Long Island. World War Three had not started yet. People were so ecstatic at making it to one more day, one more block of corralled hours and minutes, without the annihilation of the species and the planet threatened so constantly since the end of the war. For all that they had heard, wine still passed lips and bare feet still clumped on warm sand. They aimed to live, and live, and live some more until the blooming of the immense fire-clouds that would mark this world’s passage into hell. 

He did not hear the mob outside again all night. Maybe, just maybe, his ploy had worked and those fools felt every bit as stupid and juvenile as they should. They were the cowards, not Ray Vance.

The door opened in the morning as light streamed through the windows and he lay sprawled on the couch in the awkward position in which he had fallen asleep. Ellen came in, holding a newspaper with the election’s results filling its cover, and they embraced as Jenny rolled at their heels. 

“How were things, love?”

“Quietest night of my life.”

---

Michael Washburn is a Brooklyn-based writer and journalist and the author of five short story collections.