Free Place in the City by Howard Fast

a new song brimming over with new consciousness. Wrapped in his coat, he strode back and forth in the little room.
    Dying—well, he was not dying any more. He coughed, doubled up, and then smiled at the pain. Of course it pained; he was suffering from consumption, but he wasn’t dying. There was too much will in him to live. Now they couldn’t kill him. He wasn’t afraid, he wasn’t even doubtful; he was sure of himself, terribly sure of himself.
    The picture of life was as broad as it was amazing. Anna was there, always, but there were other things, so many things that a comprehensive view of it bewildered him. It was a force marching on to a triumphant finish. You knew why you lived, and you lived. It was like a wine glass, appreciated and drained deep to the bottom.
    He spoke to himself, eagerly and rapidly, because he was amazed at himself. This John Edwards was a new man, flushed with living and good to know.
    â€œTonight,” he said quickly, “all tonight, the wedding night and the birth night. Everything happens tonight. Tonight we live.”
    When he opened the door to go out, the blast of cold air struck him in the face like a living thing. For a moment, he wavered and swayed. It was a shock; it hit you and hurt you, and left you gasping for breath. But it was good and cold and clean. It struck deep, to the marrow.
    At first, he stepped gingerly, put his head down, letting his hat take the force of the wind and the snow. But then, as he walked, the exercise sent the blood pounding through his veins, flushed his cheeks, and gave him a buoyant sense of exhilaration and well-being.
    He tired easily. When he reached the corner, it seemed to him that he had walked a mile, and he stopped in the light of Meyer’s cigar store to rest. When he took out a cigarette and held it to his lips, he saw that his hands were trembling. Well, that was only to be expected. He would have to find himself, put muscle where there was none, make a man’s being out of his frail form. It was a big task, a tremendous task, but it didn’t frighten him. He knew that he was capable of it, that he would do it, and come out of the struggle smiling. Striking a match, he made a small circle of light, in which his white hands with the blue veins standing up from the skin were clearly visible.
    Blowing biting clouds of smoke through his nostrils, the poet smiled. They were clever hands, splendid nimble hands, and he could still clench them and feel the force of his grip. Yet the life in them had almost flickered out. He would have done it; he would have blown himself out, the same way you blow out a candle.
    The deep puffs on the cigarette hurt his throat, but now all pain was good. He sent his laugh out into the night.
    Crossing the avenue, he walked on into the night with long strides, and the night and the snow closed over him.
    In his mind, he was making a song, and it seemed to him that the song kept time with his steps.

T HOMAS O’LACY went because some had told him to and some had dared him to. He was seventeen, and he knew that down in his heart he was afraid of nothing except his father. The double risk lay in the fact that the house was on his father’s beat; and even if he had known another place, he wouldn’t have known how to go about it. As it was, he knew Shutzey and he knew a few of the girls who worked for Shutzey.
    Why tonight? The tale is like a web; the snow is a blanket in the darkness that binds everything together. When the snow falls at night in the city, people stay close to their homes, and those that have business in the street move furtively. The night in New York is a deep, silent master.
    Thomas was glad of the snow. The snow made it hard to see for more than a few yards in front of you; it concealed you, like a long white robe: and anyway, why shouldn’t he do what all his friends had done? It made a man of you, and, geesus Christ, he was a man in everything