From the Empire State Building I walked downtown. I walked all the way to my home in Greenwich Village, to Resi’s and my and Kraft’s old home. I smoked cigarettes all the way, began to think of myself as a lightning bug.

I encountered many fellow lightning bugs. Sometimes I gave the cheery red signal first, sometimes they. And I left the seashell roar and the aurora borealis of the city’s heart farther and farther behind me.

The hour was late, I began to catch signals of fellow lightning bugs trapped in upper stories.

Somewhere a siren, a tax-supported mourner, wailed.

When I got to my building, my home, all windows were dark save one on the second floor, one window in the apartment of young Dr. Abraham Epstein.

He, too, was a lightning bug.

He glowed; I glowed back.