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FIVE

S ometimes when a light is too bright, it doesn’t illuminate. It obscures.

Eddie is standing on Forty-Fourth Street, alone in the sunshine. The light is searing out here, and the world around Eddie feels cold in it, exposed, like the sun isn’t a star but a harsh overhead spotlight, a stadium light, flattening everything around him into nothing. It scorches his eyes, obliterating the mystery and romance that defined his world just a moment ago, rendering them invisible, gone.

He blinks against the light, shades his eyes with his hands to search for a shady spot. He sees one across the street, a bit of scaffolding to tuck himself under. He stumbles across the street and into the shadow, steadying himself on the cross of metal bars.

The night is gone. The speakeasy is gone. The party is gone. The band is gone. Gene Malin is gone. The boys are gone. Eddie’s trousers and boots are gone.

Francis is gone.

A man on an electric bike zips past, an SUV honks, a woman jaywalks in a cropped T-shirt, a billboard above him advertises a Broadway revival of 42nd Street . It’s 2023 again.

He raises the camera and takes a photograph of the building he thinks he was just in. It develops perfectly, smoothly, nothing strange, just an unremarkable building with a semi-obscured door that says EMPLOYEES ONLY . He points the camera at the sky. The photo develops perfectly, smoothly, nothing strange, just a blue sky and the side of a glass building with two window washers in safety harnesses hard at work. He flips the flash on and off and on again, then snaps. He covers the lens with his hand, then snaps. Nothing works. Nothing takes him back to Francis.

He shouts, “Take me back!” startling a few people across the street, but nothing happens. He does a few steps of the Turkey Trot on the sidewalk, but nothing happens. He knocks on the Employees Only door, but nothing happens. He covers his face with his hands, straining to rebuild the world he was just expelled from, but nothing happens.

Just because something feels real doesn’t mean it is real. We’ve all been fooled before. A scent you’re sure is a baking pie, but it’s just burnt sugar at the bottom of the oven. An embrace that feels like love, but it’s just pity. A camera you think is magic, but it’s just a camera. It’s not special to be fooled.

Deflated, Eddie sinks to the sidewalk. The whirl of elation was so real, so saturating, like the dances themselves, and now all he feels is empty.

A flashing clock on the corner displaying the time and temperature says it’s only one o’clock. He’s had a day in the city and a night at the speakeasy and traveled from Central Park to Times Square and beyond, and it’s still only one o’clock. Time stopped while he was away.

But if time stopped, shouldn’t Eddie still be in Central Park? Wouldn’t that make more logical sense?

Logic, Eddie? Really?

Eddie stands up. He has plenty of time before four o’clock. Plenty of time to keep his promise to never miss sherry hour.

Soon he’s back downtown, outside the Jefferson Market Library. He decides to try the camera again, aiming the Polaroid at the sky. But nothing happens. Just a picture of the sky. He tries again, nothing. Just a picture of a taxi. And again, and again. Nothing, nothing.

Maybe it will work inside the library, he thinks, reaching for any twig of hope, and so he goes inside. He remembers to turn off the flash before he shoots a photograph of the check-out desk. Nothing. He takes a photograph of the fiction section. Nothing. The computer banks. Nothing. He wanders the stacks, snapping indiscriminately, exchanging the film cartridge twice. Still nothing. Nothing but pictures of books.

He lingers in a section of shelves filled with books about New York City history. His hand lands on one, a weathered old volume of New York City photographs from the 1920s and 1930s. He pulls it down and sits at a small desk next to a window overlooking Sixth Avenue. Flipping through, he sees some of the places he’d just been: Fifth Avenue, the public library, Forty-Second Street, Times Square. He turns the pages slowly, lingering on a photograph of the unfinished Empire State Building, scrutinizing a street filled with Duesenberg sedans and city buses. He counts one nickelodeon, one gambling parlor, two shoe shines, one candy shop, and one bread bakery. He sees overcoats and fedoras and travel suits and swinging handbags. He even spies, in the corner of one photograph, Greta Garbo kissing Clark Gable, the very same movie poster he’d seen on his walk through the city with Francis.

His walk through the city with Francis. How easily that phrase pops into his head. Not his imaginary walk through the city with Francis. No. Not his dream of a walk through the city with Francis. Just his walk through the city with Francis. Because he was really there. It all seems so easy to accept now. So easy to believe.

He turns to a two-page photograph of Herald Square at Christmas time. It’s dated 1930. The sidewalk is packed with shoppers crowded around the Macy’s holiday windows, filled with evergreen trees draped in silver tinsel and red velvet bows and flanked by giant nutcrackers in gold jackets with fringed epaulets. A Santa Claus stands on the corner with a cowbell and a Salvation Army bucket. He looks uncharacteristically skinny to Eddie, his suit sagging off his frame. He studies every face, searching their expressions, trying to imagine their stories. Face to face, story to story. But he can’t seem to formulate a single one. The more he stares at the faces, the more distant they grow, like they belong to another world altogether. A world he can’t recognize, can’t understand, can’t imagine. The more he looks, the less he sees.

He is so tired. He lays his head on the cool paper and closes his eyes.

The dream comes quickly. He is with Francis and they are dancing, then walking, then climbing stairs, then entering a little flat overlooking the river with a bathtub in the kitchen. They’re bathing each other, they’re climbing into a big fluffy bed together, they’re curling into each other, holding each other, pressing into each other, closer, closer, whispering, sighing, welcoming, accepting, making promises. There is no fear, here. There are no secrets. Francis knows who he is, and he knows who Eddie is, and he loves them both.

It’s all a beautiful world, saturated with color and desire and absolute belonging. It’s a place (time?) where Eddie feels aware, where he feels alive, where he sees (knows?) who he really is (wants to be?). This tiny world, this infinite world, Francis’s world, where he sloughs off his calcified inconspicuousness and is finally, entirely, seen.

After a few minutes, Eddie stirs and opens his eyes.

Francis is there with a hand outstretched.

“It’s beautiful out,” he is saying. “What are you doing in a library? Let’s go to the beach.”