Night Shift

The young man thought of Norma, her happy, surprised eyes and her gentle smile, and he ducked his head a little. 'I guess I do at that,' he said.

'Sure you do. What do you say?'

'Well, what do you think?'

'I'm gonna tell you what I think. Hey! Advice is still free, isn't it?'

The young man smiled and said, 'I guess it's the only thing left that is.'

'You're damn tooting it is,' the flower vendor said. 'Okay, my young friend. If the flowers are for your mother, you get her the bouquet. A few jonquils, a few crocuses, some lily of the valley. She don't spoil it by saying, 'Oh Junior I love them how much did they cost oh that's too much don't you know enough not to throw your money around?''

The young man threw his head back and laughed.

The Vendor said, 'But if it's your girl, that's a different thing, my son, and you know it. You bring her the tea roses and she don't turn into an accountant, you take my meaning? Hey! she's gonna throw her arms around your neck -'

'I'll take the tea roses,' the young man said, and this time it was the flower vendor's turn to laugh. The two men pitching nickels glanced over, smiling.

'Hey, kid!' one of them called. 'You wanna buy a weddin' ring cheap? I'll sell you mine . . . I don't want it no more.'

The young man grinned and blushed to the roots of his dark hair.

The flower vendor picked out six tea roses, snipped the stems a little, spritzed them with water, and wrapped them in a large conical spill.

'Tonight's weather looks just the way you'd want it,' the radio said. 'Fair and mild, temps in the mid to upper sixties, perfect for a little rooftop stargazing, if you're the romantic type. Enjoy, Greater New York, enjoy!'

The flower vendor Scotch-taped the seam of the paper spill and advised the young man to tell his lady that a little sugar added to the water she put them in would preserve them longer.

'I'll tell her,' the young man said. He held out a five dollar bill. 'Thank you.'

'Just doing the job, my young friend,' the vendor said, giving him a dollar and two quarters. His smile grew a bit S- 'Give her a kiss for me.'

On the radio, the Four Seasons began singing 'Sherry'. The young man pocketed his change and went on up the street, eyes wide and alert and eager, looking not so much around him at the life ebbing and flowing up and down Third Avenue as inward and ahead, anticipating. But certain things did impinge: a mother pulling a baby in a wagon, the baby's face comically smeared with ice cream; a little girl jumping rope and singsonging out her rhyme: 'Betty and Henry up in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G! First comes love, then comes marriage, here comes Henry with a baby carriage!' Two women stood outside a washateria, smoking and comparing pregnancies. A group of men were looking in a hardware-store window at a gigantic colour TV with a four-figure price tag - a baseball game was on, and all the players' faces looked green. The playing field was a vague strawberry colour, and the New York Mets were leading the Phillies by a score of six to one in the top of the ninth.

He walked on, carrying the flowers, unaware that the two women outside the washateria had stopped talking for a moment and had watched him wistfully as he walked by with his paper of tea roses; their days of receiving flowers were long over. He was unaware of a young traffic cop who stopped the cars at the intersection of Third and Sixty-ninth with a blast on his whistle to let him cross; the cop was engaged himself and recognized the dreamy expression on the young man's face from his own shaving mirror, where he had often seen it lately. He was unaware of the two teen-aged girls who passed him going the other way and then clutched themselves and giggled.

At Seventy-third Street he stopped and turned right. This street was a little darker, lined with brownstones and walk-down restaurants with Italian names. Three blocks down, a stickball game was going on in the fading light. The young man did not go that far; half a block down he turned into a narrow lane.

Now the stars were out, gleaming softly, and the lane was dark and shadowy, lined with vague shape of garbage cans. The young man was alone now - no, not quite. A wavering yowl rose in the purple gloom, and the young man frowned. It was some tomcat's love song, and there was nothing pretty about that.

He walked more slowly, and glanced at his watch. It was quarter of eight and Norma should be just -Then he saw her, coming towards him from the courtyard, wearing dark blue slacks and a sailor blouse that made his heart ache. It was always a surprise seeing her for the first time, it was always a sweet shock - she looked so young.

Now his smile shone out - radiated out, and he walked faster.

'Norma!' he said.

She looked up and smiled. . . but as they drew together, the smile faded.

His own smile trembled a little, and he felt a moment's disquiet. Her face over the sailor blouse suddenly seemed blurred. It was getting darker now. . . could he have been mistaken? Surely not. It was Norma.

'I brought you flowers,' he said in a happy relief, and handed the paper spill to her.

She looked at them for a moment, smiled - and handed them back.

'Thank you, but you're mistaken,' she said. 'My name is -'Norma,' he whispered, and pulled the short-handled hammer out of his coat pocket where it had been all along. 'They're for you, Norma. . . it was always for you. . . all for you.'

She backed away, her face a round white blur, her mouth an opening black 0 of terror, and she wasn't Norma, Norma was dead, she had been dead for ten years, and it didn't matter because she was going to scream and he swung the hammer to stop the scream, to kill the scream, and he swung the hammer the spill of flowers fell out of his hand, the spill spilled and broke open, spilling red, white, and yellow tea roses beside the dented trash cans where the cats made alien love in the dark, screaming in love, screaming, screaming.