I threw my five thousand on the pile.
“You should have heard the radio,” she said. “Congress passed about two dozen laws in the last hour. They’ve given everybody every right you could think of, and a few I never dreamed existed.”
“It’s the age of the common man,” I told her.
For an hour I stood at the door handing out money, but it was just plain foolishness. The streets were mobbed with people handing out the stuff. Everyone wanted to give it away. It was a game; the rich gave it to the poor, and the poor turned around and handed it back to the rich. By two o’clock it was impossible to tell who had been rich and who poor.
In the meantime, Jane kept me posted on what was going on over the radio. Every country on the face of the earth was passing emancipation acts as quick as they could get a quorum together. The age of the common man had really come in—two days before deadline.
Jane and I left for lunch at three o’clock. We both knew it would be the last time we’d see the store. As a final gesture, we piled fifty thousand dollars or so on the counter, and left the doors open. It seemed the only thing we could do.
We ate in an East Sixty-third street restaurant. The regular help had left, but people wandered in off the streets, cooked for a while, ate and left. Jane fixed a few dozen club sandwiches for our share, and then we ate. The next problem was where to sleep. I was sure all the hotels would be full, but we had to try. In an emergency we could sleep in the store.
We walked into the Stanton-Carler, one of the biggest hotels in New York. There was a young man behind the main desk, reading The World as Will and Idea, by Schopenhauer.
“Any chance of a room?” I asked him.
“Here’s a pass key,” he said. “Take any vacant room you can find.”
“How much?” I asked, fanning a few thousand dollar bills.
“Are you kidding?” he said, and returned to his book. He looked like a very serious young man.
We found a vacant room on the fifteenth floor, and sat down as soon as we were inside. Immediately, Jane jumped up again.
“Records,” she said. “I want to spend the day before Judgment listening to good music.”
I was dog-tired, but I wanted the same thing. Jane and I had never had enough time to listen to all the music we wanted to hear. Somehow, we had never gotten around to it.
Jane wanted to go with me, but I thought, what with the jam New York was in, it would be easier if I went alone.
“Lock the door until I get back,” I told her. “It may be the day before Judgment, but not everyone’s an angel yet.” She winked at me. She hadn’t winked in years.
I scrambled through the crowd to a music store. It was deserted. I picked up a long-playing recorder and all the records I could carry. Then I came back. I had to walk to the fifteenth floor, because some guy was zooming up and down in one elevator, and the rest were out of order.
“Put on the Debussy,” I told Jane when I got back, throwing myself in an armchair. It was a joy and a pleasure to be off my feet.
That’s how we spent the rest of the day, and the evening. We played records. I had gotten some Bach, Debussy, Mozart, Hayden, and a few others I never heard of. I listened to more music in that day than I’d heard in five years previously.
We woke up late the next day, about one-thirty in the afternoon. I felt guilty. It didn’t seem right to sleep away the day before Judgment.
“Seems as good as any other way,” Jane said. Perhaps she was right. Anyhow, we were both ravenously hungry. Jane’s feet were blistered, because she hadn’t moved around so much since we were courting.
“Stay put,” I said. “Your shining knight will bring you lunch. My last good deed.”
“Your first,” she told me, smiling.
“Lock that door,” I said, and left. I just don’t trust people very much. I don’t know why. Even on the day before Judgment, I couldn’t trust everyone.
The streets were empty when I finally got down. A few people were walking around, peering nervously over their shoulders. A few more had joyous smiles on their faces. But the streets were very bare. Cars, taxis and buses had been left haphazardly all over the street. The traffic lights were still clicking red and green, but there was no traffic to regulate.
I saw no sign of a policeman, and remembered that I hadn’t seen any since shortly after the announcement. I didn’t know if I liked that, but I supposed that cops are human too. They might like to spend their last days with their families, also. And who was going to steal anything?
It might be a good idea, I thought, to drop into a church and offer up a prayer. Not that it would make any difference, or even that I especially wanted to. But I thought Jane would like me to. I tried three churches, but they were all packed, with hundreds waiting outside. Now I knew where everybody was.
I think I might have waited too, but Jane was expecting her lunch. I went on to a restaurant.
On my way back with a bundle of food, five people stopped me and tried to give me money. They seemed desperate. They explained that they had to get rid of it—and they had no idea how to. After working for it all their lives, it didn’t seem right just to throw it away. And no one would take it now. They were really perplexed.
One man in particular struck me.
“Please take it, old man,” he said. “I’ve been unfortunate—I’ve accumulated so much of it, it’s almost impossible to dispose of it all. And I
