A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

Thus the walk passed. It was a fairly long walk, for it made a slow, wheeling turn as it descended toward downtown, but it seemed to fly by on dazzling wings of promise, for this was the greatest half-hour of their week, this Saturday night walk downtown. Fulfilment, the actuality at the end of it, never seemed to quite catch up to the anticipation produced along the way, somehow. Bruce wondered why that was. He used to wonder, coming back afterward with Warren, if it was always going to be that way, later on in life. Or was it only now, when you were young?

The street-lamps on their tall hooked posts spit violet-white needles of light drowsily down upon the roadway. Cars went shushing by, hilarity-bound. A cricket chirping behind a billboard seemed to say, “You’re grown-ups now, you’re going downtown, you’re going to have the same kind of fun the older people do,” as they passed by it. The whole world spun on a new axis.

Saturday night, this was Saturday night. Only a few brief months ago, less than a year, a night distinguished from the other six simply by a few minor concessions: no homework to do, latitude to stay out a little later than on week-day nights, perhaps a movie-show. Home by half-past eleven, no other wishes, no other horizon. And then suddenly, as if overnight, it had become something esoteric, set apart, had taken on the same meaning to them it had to the older world — celebration, deviltry, love-adventure. Downtown to do things, things you didn’t talk about at home.

They hadn’t spoken about it in that way, between themselves. They hadn’t spoken about it at all. They wouldn’t have known how to express it. Too many words wasn’t for boys, too many words was for girls. It was just something that they’d felt between them: and that each knew the other was feeling along with him. Just that, no more than that. A wordless spark between two kindred identities — and childhood had given up the ghost.

The last of the genteel, spaced, lawn-surrounded houses, windows glowing topaze and amber, dropped behind them. Hillside Avenue crossed the tracks over a sleek, white, stone viaduct and became Main Street.

A preliminary block or two of chunky, less-genteel flats, buzzing with radios and television-sets, and suddenly downtown had engulfed them, swept over their heads like a mercurial, incandescent tide. They were in its midst, its glare and its sounds and its bustle were all around them. They both began to breathe quicker, without knowing it or knowing why.

These lights blazed like a solid field of fireflies, or a bed of white-hot coals. They made the buildings seem to be burning, made the sidewalks seem to be noon. People walking cast no shadows. And pleasure was everywhere, but only if you bought it, not given away free. The marquee-sign of the Acme moved continuously around in a long oblong, like a belt studded with golden nails. The marquee-sign of the Paradise Hashed off and on. The marquee-sign of the State was the cleverest of the lot. First it was out altogether for a few short seconds. Then the letters came on in white. Then a red frame came on around them. Then a green frame came on around the red frame. Then everything went out at once and started over again.

There was magic in the air.

They strolled Main Street through to its opposite end, where again there were railroad tracks to bisect it, but this time on the same level between two protective zebra-striped barriers. It continued on beyond, but there the lights began to dim and dinginess to set in.

They turned and started back again on the opposite side. The show-windows for the most part left them uninterested, except for an occasional sporting-goods display. They paused briefly to listen to the blare of a record emitted through a loudspeaker from a music-store, went on again. “We have that one at home,” Bruce mentioned dispraisingly.

A girl passed them. A girl who was older than they were and whom neither of them knew. She paid no slightest attention to them, her eyes didn’t even glance their way, although they both gazed lingeringly at her. They were evidently of an age-bracket beneath her interest.

“She puts out,” said Warren, glancing back after her.

“Aw, how do you know so much about it?” said Bruce irritably. He resented his friend’s assumption of a vaster and superior knowledge to his own in such matters, particularly when he knew it could not possibly have been gained at first hand.

“I c’n tell,” said Warren, still pontificating.

Somewhere behind them a car-horn gave a little interrogative tap. This brought both their heads around. A tar had glided to an insinuating halt with its door open. The girl veered aside and got in. The door made a sound (from where they were) like a twig snapping and the car went on again, with a great red coruscation of its tail-light panels.

“See? What did I tell you?” crowed Warren, as jubilantly as though he himself had been the car-owner favored.