A Glimpse of Scarlet:
And Other Stories

     The week before Labor Day is the quietest of the year in New York. Everyone is somewhere else, holding on to the last loose days of summer, the last glimmer of freedom. In the city, it’s like being on the bottom of a lake: a deep, dreaming moment. The air is hushed and motionless, sounds are close and intimate, the plants and trees are huge and luxuriant from the summer in the solar greenhouse of the city.
     There was a teachers’ meeting at school that week, so I was in town, and Guy was at work, so he was there. The meeting was over around four-thirty, and I walked home across town. Those shady, quiet streets in the East Seventies were deserted. The brownstones had been closed up since June.
     I started up the block between Third and Lexington. There were young sycamore trees in neat planted squares along the sidewalk. Wisteria and trumpet vines hung in swooping tangles across the houses, and impatiens plants stood in damp jungles around the tree trunks. Everything was hot and lush and quiet. I walked slowly. It was strange, being in the city like that. The boys were still out in the county, staying with friends. With no children, no friends there I felt adrift, as though I were alone in a foreign city. Anything might happen, in that heat and silence.
     One of the front doors opened ahead of me, and a man stepped out onto the stoop. His shoulders were hunched and protective, and he moved gently, as though he were trying to be invisible. He did not look around, he was afraid of catching an eye. It was the urgency of this, his not wanting to be seen, that caught my attention. He was rigid with it. He turned to close the door, and as he did so he looked back at someone just inside. I caught a glimpse of something red, a violent color, vivid and hot. It was a sleeve, a scarf – I couldn’t see – but the man in his rumpled gray suit leaned toward it, and was taken in a kiss. That was clear, the way he leaned in, the way his body longed inward.