city unwrapped you like a candy bar and ate you all up. You’re nothing but a dusty milk bottle left on a tenement porch, a spider building a nest across the top. Traffic din pounded your marrow to dust. Subway sucked your breath like a cat sucks the soul of a babe. Vacuum cleaners got your brain. Alcohol dissolved the rest. Typewriters and computers took your final dregs in and out their tripes, printed you on paper, punched you in confettis, threw you down a sewer vent. TV scribbled you in nervous tics on old ghost screens. Your final bones will be carried off by a big angry bulldog crosstown bus holding you munched in its big rubber-lipped mouth door.”

“No!” he cried. “I’ve changed my mind! Marry me! Marry-“
His voice cracked the ice tomb. It shattered on the floor behind him. The shape of the beautiful woman melted into the floor. Spinning about, he plunged into darkness.
He fell against the wall just as a panel slammed shut and locked.
It was no use screaming. He was alone.
At dusk in July, a year later, in the subway, he saw Ned Amminger for the first time in 365 days.
In all the grind and ricochet and pour of fiery lava as trains banged through, taking a billion souls to hell, Amminger stood as cool as mint leaves in green rain. Around him wax people melted. He waded in his own private trout stream.

“Ned!” cried Will Morgan, running up to seize his hand and pump it. “Ned, Ned! The best friend I ever had!”
“Yes, thaf s true, isn’t it?” said young Ned, smiling.
And oh God, how true it was! Dear Ned, fine Ned, friend of a lifetime! Breathe upon me, Ned! Give me your life’s breath!
“You’re president of the company, Ned! I heard!”
“Yes. Come along home for a drink?”
In the raging heat, a vapor of iced lemonade rose from his creamy fresh suit as they looked for a cab. In all the curses, yells, horns, Ned raised his hand.
A cab pulled up. They drove in serenity.
At the apartment house, in the dusk, a man with a gun stepped from the shadows.
“Give me everything,” he said.
“Later,” said Ned, smiling, breathing a scent of fresh summer apples upon the man.
“Later.” The man stepped back to let them pass. “Later.”
On the way up in the elevator, Ned said, “Did you know I’m married? Almost a year. Fine wife.”
“Is she,” said Will Morgan, and stopped, “. . . beautiful?”
“Oh, yes. You’ll love her. You’ll love the apartment.”
Yes, thought Morgan; a green glade, crystal chimes, cool grass for a carpet. I know, I know.
They stepped out into an apartment that was indeed a tropic isle. Young Ned poured huge goblets of iced champagne.
“What shall we drink to?”
“To you, Ned. To your wife. To me. To midnight, tonight.”
“Why midnight?”
“When I go back down to that man who is waiting downstairs with his gun. That man you said ‘iater’ to. And he agreed ‘later/ I’ll be there alone with him. Funny, ridiculous, funny. And my breath just ordinary breath, not smelling of melons or pears. And him waiting all those long hours with his sweaty gun, irritable with heat. What a grand joke. Well … a toast?”
“A toast!”

They drank.

At which moment, the wife entered. She heard each of them laughing in a different way, and joined in their laughter.

But her eyes, when she looked at Will Morgan, suddenly filled with tears.

And he knew whom she was weeping for.

The end