It was a beautiful lighter. It was too dark out for Max to see whether it was a ST Dupont, but, god, he hoped it was.
“Thanks for the smoke” the old smartly dressed man whose lighter it was said, holding the cigarette up to the streetlight.
The snow fell lightly over Central Park South, though it’s residents, the old men and their young wives, had already gone in for the night or out to dinner, the tourists walked slowly under the flakes staring at the towers which overlooked the park. Occasionally they bumped into a regular New Yorker speedily making their way back to far less impressive apartments downtown. Max’s new companion, the old man, smiled at the tourist’s children the way Max sometimes smiled at the homeless.
“We should probably go back up, no?” the old man suggested and Max did nothing to argue.
The ascended up the tower’s beautiful elevator that opened right onto the party. The light of the loft was muted, but was warm and gave just enough illumination for the wall adornments–expensive paintings and sculptures–to shine brilliantly, but not too much that the ladies black dresses couldn’t absorb it. The whole room’s color matched that of the champagne glass someone quickly handed Max.
His old man disappeared into the crowd and Max, without much fear, perused the packed room, picking up hors d’œuvres
“I work
with John”“I work with John” he said quickly, but casually when someone asked him who he was, the man then smiled and kept walking.
After the second glass of champagne, he found himself talking to a gorgeous young woman, her dress a slightly lighter black than the other woman, but not much lighter. For nearly an hour they spoke, their voices having to keep rising over the increasingly loud party until Max was hoarse, at which point he continued anyway. Tomorrow morning he wouldn’t remember a word of any of it, but right now every smile she gave him made him think that this is where I belong, this is where I’ve always belonged. She even touched his shoulder a few times to brace herself while laughing, sending chills down his spine.
When they finally parted, Max found a group of men to stand with, not participating in their loud conversation, but just watching, listening. When he laughed with them, they looked at him with approval and when one man left to get himself champagne, he came back with two, one for himself and one for Max. He told them that he wished he had stories of equal humour, but that he ‘just worked with John’. They nodded in sympathy and said ‘don’t worry, you’re young’.
On the fourth glass, he felt as if something had happened; that just being here made him successful, he hadn’t seen how easy it was and now, just by standing here, he was a rich man. People here didn’t worry about ‘rent’, and he had been foolish for doing so. A great euphoria filled him and he wanted to hug everyone. The girl, the girl who he had spoken to, walked by him and he gave her a huge smile, to which she enthusiastically replied ‘Hi, Max’, before putting on her fur coat and getting ready to leave.
He left when the part became half-empty, not wanting to, but realizing, even though drunk, that being one of the last ones there was too dangerous. He stepped out on the now empty streets where the snow had stopped and the tourists were gone.
“You want me to call a Taxi?” the building’s doorman asked.
Max shook his head ‘no’, choosing instead to walk, not to the subway on Columbus Circle, but to the subway farther up, where no one could see him enter the station. He bought his fare with the last five dollars to his name, less afraid now then he had been because, somehow, he worked for John. Safe in this feeling, he spent the whole train ride home admiring his new lighter.
Have you considered Subscribing to all of this madness?
