Dark City Lights Read online

  I didn’t know what to say—I was embarrassed, and proud—but it was one of those defining moments, something in my mind that I could not yet grasp, an inchoate longing to be appreciated, noticed by people, people who mattered—and to be famous one day.

  Marilyn said she had a cold and kept dabbing at her nose with a tissue and my father said, “I know what will make you feel better,” then disappeared and reappeared with Izzy’s champagne and Marilyn made a Lorelei Lee sort of “Ooooh” as he opened a bottle and poured her a glass and she kicked off her shoes and tucked her bare feet under her and settled onto the couch. She downed a glass or two and then, for the next few hours, with my father’s assistance, tried on dresses.

  “Try this one, dah-ling,” he’d say in his Jewish-garmento way, not Izzy-darling way, handing her a dress.

  Marilyn would go behind the changing screen, unzip her pants and slip off her blouse—and she was naked, no underwear, no nothing. She didn’t parade around, but the mirrors broadcast her refection in multiple CinemaScope views and I caught glimpses of her breasts (smaller than I’d imagined), and flashes of blond pubic hair, and it was startling, like trying to hold onto lightning, exciting and dangerous.

  Marilyn would emerge hugging a dress to her body so that she was covered but half exposed, study herself in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors that lined two of the showroom walls, lost and dreamy for several minutes, fluffing her white-blonde hair, trying on a variety of expressions and staring hard as if she were looking for someone or something, then duck behind the screen and come back with another dress, this one slipped over her head, zipper open, and she’d turn to my father and ask in her small soft voice, “Lou, do you mind?”

  Lou?

  He’d zip her up and she’d trill a laugh and he’d throw me a look, once even a wink (a first) and later made a point of saying, “Your mother need not know about the zip.”

  The whole time I sat on one of the showroom’s two couches and watched, hands tucked under my thighs. Each time Marilyn emerged from behind the screen it was a little vignette though pretty much the same. She would stare in the mirror turning this way and that, fluff her hair, smile, frown, lick her lips, occasionally cup her naked breasts under the dress, then turn around to assess her rear end. Her expressions changed often but in slow motion: happy to sad to mad to determined or lost. A couple of times she turned to me and asked my opinion about a dress and I always said she looked beautiful.

  “Really?” she’d say, as if no one had ever said that to her before and I’d bob my head up and down like a puppy and say, “Really,” and she’d throw me a smile like a bunch of wild flowers tossed into the air.

  A couple of times she called my father over and cupped a hand to his ear and whispered like a child would, and when I think about it now that’s exactly how she seemed: childlike.

  At one point she sagged onto the couch beside me in a half-unzipped dress and sipped champagne and asked me more questions—if I liked school, if I had siblings, what I liked to read (I could not come up with a single title, not even one of my Hardy Boys books or Classic Comics), so I turned it around and asked her, “What’s your favorite movie you ever made?” and she thought a while before saying, “Bus Stop, because . . . Cherie was a . . . real girl, you know, sad but . . . trying to be happy,” her pale face inches from mine, and I said, “Oh, you were great in that,” though I hadn’t seen it and again she said “Really?” as if my opinion mattered, and I said, “Yes!” and she smiled and asked me if I got along with my sister and I said “sort of,” and I asked her if she had any kids and she blinked and pulled back as if slapped and her eyes welled up with tears and in a quivering whisper said, “I . . . have not been . . . lucky,” and my father cut in and said, “Kids? Who need kids? Brats, all of ’em!” and swatted me on the head a little too hard and forced a laugh, then quickly fetched a new dress. Marilyn dashed behind the screen looking as though she might shatter to pieces but emerged in less than a minute in a white satin dress with a tight bodice of white lace and the same lace trim along the bottom, all smiles and absolutely radiant, the movie star, Marilyn Monroe.

  After the usual posing she asked, “How about some color, Lou? Or a pattern?”

  “No patterns,” my father said shaking his head, “We make only white, black, or red cocktail dresses. It’s about elegance, darling. This isn’t Hollywood.”

  “Well,” she said, “Hollywood is anything but elegant,” and sounded tough for the first time, though she followed it up with a high-pitched laugh.

  “With your coloring you should only be in black or white,” my father said, and he was right, I could see it, her white hair, skin, the dress, her reflection in the showroom mirrors shimmering like a ghost, there and not there, like something imagined or remembered.

  He brought her a black dress next with thin straps and a snug torso, the bottom edged with black ostrich feathers, and the contrast was startling, her face and arms and legs like an alabaster statue against all that black.

  Marilyn seemed to know it, too. She stood perfectly still, her finger slowly tracing the edge of the black neckline over and over and over.

  She bought that dress and three others, gave my father a check and asked that he send them to her home in California, which she said was her first and explained how she was decorating it Mexican-style and asked my father if he’d ever been to Mexico and he said no but he’d been to Cuba and she talked more about the house, obviously proud, though her voice sounded nervous, edgy.

  “Nothing like a new home to cheer you up,” my father said as if he’d bought dozens of homes in his lifetime, and she said, “Thank you, Lou,” with so much emotion it was almost embarrassing, then hugged him.

  She wrote her address on a piece of paper after making my father promise never to divulge it to anyone and he crossed his heart, a meaningless gesture for a Jew. He told her he would have the dresses altered to her “specifics” and she said that she’d recently lost a lot of weight and asked how he knew her size and he said, “Darling, I’ve been in the schmatta business since I was sixteen, I know exactly what needs to be done,” and she trilled another laugh and kissed his cheek and said, “Oh, I shouldn’t have done that—my cold,” and he swatted her sentence away and it was the only time I ever saw him blush.

  Marilyn changed back into her green pants and sleeveless blouse, then stopped to look at my sketches again.

  “They’re really . . . good,” she said. “You must promise me that you will keep making them.” I nodded and meant it and she said, “And you’ll let me see them, won’t you?” and I said, “Sure!” and she kissed my cheek, got her sunglasses in place and hugged my father once more. At the door she turned back and said, “Don’t forget, I want to see those new sketches,” and I nodded and smiled and bobbed my head up and down and she gave a little girl wave and I waved back and then she was gone, taking all of the light with her.

  My father pinned some notes to the dresses she’d chosen, put them aside, then locked up, and we walked to Penn Station in our usual silence. The city streets were less crowded now, the air sticky hot, the top of the Empire State Building dissolving into a fuzzy pewter sky.

  On the train, we sat opposite one another, my father behind the Post, me replaying everything Marilyn had said and daydreaming about the new drawings I would make and show Marilyn and how one day I was going to be a famous artist.

  Halfway home, my father lowered his paper and said, “Nice girl,” and I said, “Really nice.” A moment later I asked, “What did she whisper to you, Dad?” and he said, “I can’t remember,” and that was all we said until we got home where my mother and sister were waiting, fidgety with questions.

  “Was she beautiful?” my sister asked.

  “Kind of,” I said. Then corrected myself, “Sometimes.”

  “What does that mean?” my sister asked.

  “She changed a lot,” I said.

  “You mean her clothes?” she asked.

  “Yes,”
my father said.

  “That’s not what I meant,” I said, seeing Marilyn’s face in my mind morph from happy to sad, from plain to beautiful.

  “She tried on lots of dresses,” my father said, “and is buying four.”

  “How exciting,” my mother said. “Did you think she was pretty?”

  “Sure,” my father said, “but not nearly as pretty you.”

  My mother waved a hand at him, but smiled.

  “Was she nice?” my sister asked.

  “Yes,” my father said. “A sweet girl. Without airs.”

  Then he told them how Marilyn had admired my artwork and had kissed my cheek (neglecting to tell them she’d kissed and hugged him several times or that he’d zipped her up more than once) and after that my mother and sister teased me by referring to Marilyn as my “girlfriend.” But not for long.

  It was only two or three weeks later that my mother awakened me with the words, “I’ve got bad news. Your girlfriend died.”

  “What?” I said, still groggy.

  “Marilyn,” she said, and I could see she regretted the flip remark and was struggling to figure out what to say next. “It’s—all over the news. She was so young. Only thirty-six.”

  “Really?” I said, images of the freckled, fuzzy-cheeked blonde hugging dresses to her naked body playing in my halfasleep mind. “I thought she was a lot younger.”

  “Thirty-six is young,” my mother said, and I realize now that at the time my mother was thirty-seven. “It’s so sad,” she said.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Sleeping pills,” my mother said. “She overdosed.” She sighed and I pictured Marilyn staring into the showroom mirrors looking for something or someone, and her eyes filling with tears.

  It was a weekend and my father was off playing golf and I wondered if he had heard the news and was thinking of the nice girl who didn’t put on airs, who had called him Lou and kissed his cheek. He never said a word, but that Monday I saw him looking at the dresses Marilyn had bought. The alterations had been finished but they were never shipped and he never cashed her check.

  HANNIBAL’S ELEPHANTS

  BY ROBERT SILVERBERG

  THE DAY THE ALIENS LANDED in New York was, of course, the 5th of May, 2003. That’s one of those historical dates nobody can ever forget, like July 4, 1776 and October 12, 1492 and—maybe more to the point—December 7, 1941. At the time of the invasion I was working for MGM-CBS as a beam calibrator in the tightware division and married to Elaine and living over on East Thirty-sixth Street in one of the first of the fold-up condos, one room by day and three by night, a terrific deal at $3,750 a month. Our partner in the time/space-sharing contract was a show-biz programmer named Bobby Christie who worked midnight to dawn, very convenient for all concerned. Every morning before Elaine and I left for our offices I’d push the button and the walls would shift and five hundred square feet of our apartment would swing around and become Bobby’s for the next twelve hours. Elaine hated that. “I can’t stand having all the goddamn furniture on tracks!” she would say. “That isn’t how I was brought up to live.” We veered perilously close to divorce every morning at wall-shift time. But, then, it wasn’t really what you’d call a stable relationship in most other respects, and I guess having an unstable condo, too, was more instability than she could handle.

  I spent the morning of the day the aliens came setting up a ricochet data transfer between Akron, Ohio and Colombo, Sri Lanka, involving, as I remember, Gone With the Wind, Cleopatra, and the Johnny Carson retrospective. Then I walked up to the park to meet Maranta for our Monday picnic. Maranta and I had been lovers for about six months then. She was Elaine’s roommate at Bennington and had married my best friend Tim, so you might say we had been fated all along to become lovers; there are never any surprises in these things. At that time we lunched together very romantically in the park, weather permitting, every Monday and Friday, and every Wednesday we had ninety minutes’ breathless use of my cousin Nicholas’s hot-pillow cubicle over on the far West Side at Thirty-ninth and Koch Plaza. I had been married three-and-a-half years and this was my first affair. For me, what was going on between Maranta and me just then was the most important event taking place anywhere in the known universe.

  It was one of those glorious gold-and-blue dance-and-sing days that New York will give you in May, when that little window opens between the season of cold-and-nasty and the season of hot-and-sticky. I was legging up Seventh Avenue toward the park with a song in my heart and a cold bottle of Chardonnay in my hand, thinking pleasant thoughts of Maranta’s small, round breasts. And gradually I became aware of some ruckus taking place up ahead.

  I could hear sirens. Horns were honking, too: not the ordinary routine everyday exasperated when-do-things-start-to-move honks, but the special rhythmic New York City oh-for-Christ’s-sake-what-now kind of honk that arouses terror in your heart. People with berserk expressions on their faces were running wildly down Seventh as though King Kong had just emerged from the monkey house at the Central Park Zoo and was personally coming after them. And other people were running just as hard in the opposite direction, toward the park, as though they absolutely had to see what was happening. You know: New Yorkers.

  Maranta would be waiting for me near the pond, as usual. That seemed to be right where the disturbance was. I had a flash of myself clambering up the side of the Empire State Building—or at the very least Temple Emanu-el—to pry her free of the big ape’s clutches. The great beast pausing, delicately setting her down on some precarious ledge, glaring at me, furiously pounding his chest—Kong! Kong! Kong!

  I stepped into the path of one of the southbound runners and said, “Hey, what the hell’s going on?” He was a suit-and-tie man, popeyed and puffy-faced. He slowed but he didn’t stop. I thought he would run me down. “It’s an invasion!” he yelled. “Space creatures! In the park!” Another passing business type loping breathlessly by with a briefcase in each hand was shouting, “The police are there! They’re sealing everything off!”

  “No shit,” I murmured.

  But all I could think was Maranta, picnic, sunshine, Chardonnay, disappointment. What a goddamned nuisance, is what I thought. Why the fuck couldn’t they come on a Tuesday, is what I thought.

  WHEN I GOT TO THE top of Seventh Avenue the police had a sealfield across the park entrance and buzz-blinkers were set up along Central Park South from the Plaza to Columbus Circle, with horrendous consequences for traffic. “But I have to find my girlfriend,” I blurted. “She was waiting for me in the park.” The cop stared at me. His cold gray eyes said, I am a decent Catholic and I am not going to facilitate your extramarital activities, you decadent overpaid bastard. What he said out loud was, “No way can you cross that sealfield, and anyhow you absolutely don’t want to go in the park right now, mister. Believe me.” And he also said, “You don’t have to worry about your girlfriend. The park’s been cleared of all human beings.” That’s what he said, cleared of all human beings. For a while I wandered around in some sort of daze. Finally I went back to my office and found a message from Maranta, who had left the park the moment the trouble began. Good quick Maranta. She hadn’t had any idea of what was occurring, though she had found out by the time she reached her office. She had simply sensed trouble and scrammed. We agreed to meet for drinks at the Ras Tafari at half past five. The Ras was one of our regular places, Twelfth and Fifty-third.

  THERE WERE SEVENTEEN WITNESSES TO the onset of the invasion. There were more than seventeen people on the meadow when the aliens arrived, of course, but most of them didn’t seem to have been paying attention. It had started, so said the seventeen, with a strange pale-blue shimmering about thirty feet off the ground. The shimmering rapidly became a churning, like water going down a drain. Then a light breeze began to blow and very quickly turned into a brisk gale. It lifted people’s hats and whirled them in a startling corkscrew spiral around the churning shimmering blue place. At the same time you had a sense of r
ising tension, a something’s-got-to-give feeling. All this lasted perhaps forty-five seconds.

  Then came a pop and a whoosh and a ping and a thunk—everybody agreed on the sequence of the sound effects—and the instantly famous not-quite-egg-shaped spaceship of the invaders was there, hovering, as it would do for the next twenty-three days, about half an inch above the spring-green grass of Central Park. An absolutely unforgettable sight: the sleek silvery skin of it, the disturbing angle of the slope from its wide top to its narrow bottom, the odd and troublesome hieroglyphics on its flanks that tended to slide out of your field of vision if you stared at them for more than a moment.

  A hatch opened and a dozen of the invaders stepped out. Floated out, rather. Like their ship, they never came in contact with the ground.

  They looked strange. They looked exceedingly strange. Where we have feet they had a single oval pedestal, maybe five inches thick and a yard in diameter, that drifted an inch or so above ground level. From this fleshy base their wraithlike bodies sprouted like tethered balloons. They had no arms, no legs, not even discernible heads: just a broad domeshaped summit, dwindling away to a rope-like termination that was attached to the pedestal. Their lavender skins were glossy, with a metallic sheen. Dark eye-like spots sometimes formed on them but didn’t last long. We saw no mouths. As they moved about they seemed to exercise great care never to touch one another.

  The first thing they did was to seize half a dozen squirrels, three stray dogs, a softball, and a baby carriage, unoccupied. We will never know what the second thing was that they did, because no one stayed around to watch. The park emptied with impressive rapidity, the police moved swiftly in with their sealfield, and for the next three hours the aliens had the meadow to themselves. Later in the day the networks sent up spy-eyes that recorded the scene for the evening news until the aliens figured out what they were and shot them down. Briefly we saw ghostly gleaming aliens wandering around within a radius of perhaps five hundred yards of their ship, collecting newspapers, soft-drink dispensers, discarded items of clothing, and something that was generally agreed to be a set of dentures. Whatever they picked up they wrapped in a sort of pillow made of a glowing fabric with the same shining texture as their own bodies, which immediately began floating off with its contents toward the hatch of the ship.