TOO LATE
It was getting late when I learned how much I liked the redbrick buildings; here’s one with an octagonal tower! I cried to myself; and although it was cold, the round light-balls of a Christmas tree far within the dark reflections of towers in the panes of brass doors on Yonge Street made me feel vaguely expectant, as if somebody might want to give me a present. Well, the phony snow and plastic evergreens in the window which announced RETAIL OPPORTUNITIES got me over it. I felt colder than ever; in fact, it was so chilly that I could only be warmed by a woman with the sleek fat rounded thighs of a Maillol sculpture. None of the parka’d prostitutes on Wellesley Street were shaped like that, but I followed one for thirteen blocks, just to be certain, and her availability made me happy. What were my fantasies but fantasies? All the same, when she finally got into a man’s car I felt sadder than ever.
In the door of a once ornate storefront now concealed behind brown papers, a puffyhaired Asian teenager smoked his cigarette. Nodding at him, I went to ZANZIBAR — The Girls Never Stop — IS NUDE HOT EROTIC LADIES SMOKING ROOM INSIDE and stood at the door waiting to see if the sign could be true, and before it got much later I had to admit that it was, for a woman in a camelhair coat clicked rapidly down the street, gripping both shiny black gloves in her naked right hand. The NUDE HOT EROTIC LADIES SMOKING ROOM tempted me, but, fearing the cover charge, I chose instead to stroll along University Avenue, adding my mite to the crowds with folded arms, Santa Claus caps, jackets and red balloons, awaiting the Santa Claus Parade! In their perambulators, babies outstretched their lobster-red mitts at the sun, and I thought: What if they’re right? — So I returned to the octagonal tower, determined to go up in the world.
The lobby resembled the wide-waisted skirts of a fifteenth-century German cruet, brass or bronze, polished almost to gold, like a creek bottom when the sun strikes right; and the elevator arrived at once — and almost too late just the same, I had better add, for it would soon be closing time. But I pushed the button, and soared so rapidly that the instants nearly went backward! If only I could have gone a trifle faster and higher, I might have lived forever.