Prose – Page 2 – THE CITY KEY

“Through Different Eyes” by John B. Mahaffie

Henry Aaron Makes History in Atlanta

ATLANTA, April 8, 1974–Atlanta Braves slugger Henry “Hank” Aaron edged into the record books tonight, passing the legend Babe Ruth as the leading home‐run hitter in baseball history. He slugged his 715th home run before a national television audience and 53,775 persons in Atlanta Stadium. Many hailed the achievement, but controversy emerged as some baseball analysts claimed the two sluggers did not face equal conditions, that in Babe Ruth’s time, the baseball itself was different, and that it was harder to hit home runs.

A white teenage boy waited for the Third Avenue bus. He was dressed in a Catholic school uniform and had a book bag over his shoulder. A grey-haired black man joined him at the bus stop. He carried a scuffed and dented lunch box in one hand, and the Daily News in the other. The man’s newspaper blazed in four-inch type, “715. Henry Does It!” The picture spread over half the front page, Hank Aaron, his dark skin against the white Braves uniform, arms driving the bat out and away.

The boy shrugged the bag off his shoulder and set it on the bus shelter bench. He flicked dark blond hair out of his eyes and smiled at the old man.

“Wasn’t that something last night?” he said.

“Oh my goodness yes.”

The man’s tired eyes twinkled alive.

They stepped back from the curb as an express bus hissed by. The boy leaned in for a moment to admire the front of the newspaper with the man. The man opened his paper and studied the article inside, a smile fixed in place.

The boy fiddled with his school tie, and looked up the street, then back at the man.

“Of course, it’s apples and oranges compared to Babe Ruth,” the boy said.

The man’s smile erased.

“What do you mean?”

The boy’s cheeks pinked. He swallowed.

“Well. . . it’s just. . . they say it’s not as hard. . . it was harder when Babe Ruth did it.”

The man sighed through tight lips. He squared to look at the boy.

“You think this man had it easy?”

He tapped the cover of the Daily News with thick fingers.

The boy looked away. He raked the hair out of his eyes with his hand.

“Well it’s what people are saying.”

He stared off for a bus.

The man eyed the boy and folded his newspaper.

“It sure seems like as soon as a man does something great folk want to take it away from him,” the man said in a low voice.

The boy’s shoulders sagged. He looked back at the man in a sideways glance. He pushed his hands into his pockets.

“Well,” the boy said, “it’s because the ball was different then, it was harder. . .” His voice faded and he stopped at the man’s look.

“Young man, I don’t think you understand.”

The man tucked his paper under his arm and edged to the curb, looking down the street for a bus.

The boy reached for the strap of his book bag, his shin barking against the edge of the bench. He stayed back.

They waited, neither speaking.

A bus slid up. The man climbed slowly on and moved toward the back. The boy got on and dropped into a side-facing seat near the front. He pinched his jacket collar closed at his neck. He studied the flecked linoleum between his loafers.

The old man gazed into the distance and they rode for a while.

The boy closed his eyes and then opened them and glanced back at the old man. He stared back down at his shoes. The bus whisked along.

Then the boy grabbed the stop request cord and yanked it. The bus jerked over to the curb. He looped on his book bag and stood. He eyed the man a last time, but when the man looked up he dropped his eyes and turned and got off the bus.

The old man watched him leave. He shook his head and opened his paper and began to read. The smile returned to his face.

John B. Mahaffie is a futurist with a love of the past. He writes short fiction and flash, and is at work on a novel. John’s fiction often explores the past. John lives and works in Washington, DC.

“1952 – The Biltmore Hotel” by DC Diamondopolous

For the past year, Irene had stayed home grieving for her husband. Now, she was ready to live again, but without Robert. Her new life would begin tonight in downtown Los Angeles at one of her favorite places, the Biltmore Hotel.

The lavender tails of her Hermès scarf fluttered as she entered the limousine and slid in beside her best friend. The fragrance of Beatrice’s White Shoulders perfume gave her comfort.

Beatrice reached over and squeezed her hand. “It’s good to see you, dear. Thank you for inviting me to this important occasion.”

“It’s good to be with you too,” Irene said.

“I can’t wait to hear Yogananda speak.”

For the past seven years, Beatrice had been a patron of the Indian guru and studied yoga and meditation at his headquarters in Mount Washington.

Beatrice patted her poodle cut with the palm of her hand. “Do you think it’s too short, dear?”

“It becomes you.”

The chauffeur navigated the driveway of Irene’s South Pasadena estate. As she surveyed the grounds, the feathers in her hat swept across the roof. The jacaranda tree had dropped its winter leaves, a golden buttery hue. In two months it would bloom purple. Robert would never see that splendid display again.

“I’ve missed you, dear. The French twist is so attractive, especially with that hat. And the scarf goes beautifully with your auburn hair.”

“I feel fragile. Like I’ll break.”

Beatrice moved her matronly body next to Irene’s and put her hand on top of hers. “Of course you do.”

Irene drew strength from her friend’s closeness. They had met ten years before when they were docents at the Huntington Hartford Museum.

“You’ve been so kind. The baskets of food and flowers were lovely,” Irene said. “And the phone calls. Brief as I made them.”

“I’ve missed our afternoon teas at the Biltmore, and here we are,” Beatrice chuckled, “on our way there.” She removed her hand. “I’m glad you chose to come out for Ambassador Sen. You’ve done so much to help the people of India.”

“Helping others is what saved me from despair.”

“Post Angeles” by Joshua Ginsberg

The big one had been coming for as long as anyone could remember. Forever, it seemed. Evidence of its impending arrival was predicted and measured by the space between spiderweb cracks in the foundations upon which the city stood. The way the dense net of veins on maps and satellite imagery rearranged itself.

When it finally happened though, hardly anyone noticed; when at last, the great illusion could no longer hold itself together. For the city, after all, was just that – a self-perpetuating illusion sustained by the power of its own fascination with itself, its brightly lit dreams of gold-paved sidewalks, and its dark, treacherous alleyways; from its palatial mansions and estates up in the hills to its squalid housing projects and everything in between.

The end had begun when people stopped thinking of the city as the terminus of their ambitions and dreams; its unraveling accelerated as those who already resided there stopped dreaming of what it was and could be. The invisible machinery fed by the hopes and despair and desires of it masses ground slowly to a halt. The projection flickered and started to fail, and little by little the city unbecame.

It happened first on the fringes, as such things often do, in those liminal places where the line between what was city and what was not had always been blurry at best. From there, change worked its way towards the center. The last illegible headstone in a small, weed-choked cemetery, a broken, uneven sidewalk, a mailbox no longer associated with any structure, sometimes even an unmarked side street would go missing. Then a house, an intersection, an apartment complex. Eventually entire neighborhoods ceased to exist, wiped clean from individual and collective memory. The vanishing of landmarks, cultural institutions, universities, airports, and stadiums accelerated until it swallowed every last bit of what had been Los Angeles. People sought treatment for medical conditions, flights arrived and departed, bankers banked, and sports teams played each other as they had before – They just did it from somewhere else, nearby. The major west coast studios continued to produce their films, just like they always had, from places like San Diego, Bakersfield and Henderson, Nevada.

On that last night, power went out across what remained, and when the light returned it was provided by the sun rather than the electrical grid. The highways, high rises, the massive subterranean tunnel system and infrastructure, all forgotten. Erased from ever having been.

There were the people of course. Some small number continued to reside there, in huts and hovels, hotels and hostels. But most simply ambled back to their cars and drove off to wherever they were now from. Some went for long hikes or pitched tents and camped out under the stars, because really, what else was there to do in unincorporated Angel’s Valley?

Less fortunate were others (though how many will never be known), who had become inseparable from the city itself, the ones who had lived most or all of their lives completely immersed in the river of fantasy that gave form and flesh to blueprints and engineering diagrams. The ones who had trafficked for so long in illusions that they had, in one way or another and for reasons each their own, sacrificed or traded away what was most substantial in themselves for whispers, promises and possibilities – They went along with the city that they were of and from. Together as one, people and place faded from photos, paintings and email marketing lists.

Kiana was one of the few who witnessed the city’s great and final disappearing act with her own eyes, from her family’s fishing boat. “Look! It’s happening,” she called to her uncle and two brothers in the cabin, “the city, it’s finally gone!” But there was no response, as there was no one else aboard the boat that had suddenly always been hers alone.

Joshua Ginsberg is a writer, entrepreneur, and curiosity seeker who relocated from Chicago to Tampa Bay in 2016. He is the author of “Secret Tampa Bay: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful and Obscure,” (Reedy Press, 2020), and his poetry, fiction, and non-fiction has appeared in various print and digital publications. He maintains a blog, Terra Incognita Americanus and has been a business proposal and resume writer for over 10 years. He currently resides in Tampa’s Town and Country neighborhood with his wife, Jen, and their Shih Tzu, Tinker Bell.

“A Quality of Silence” by David M. Rubin

Slumped on a ratty couch three feet from the fifty-five-inch screen, Kovlov sighed along with Ryu. His cell buzzed and he hit green to Elaine’s midflight yelling that he had better Venmo $1200 as she had to pay her rent. Kovlov grunted, tapped the red icon, and refocused on the movie where an elderly woman, a middle-aged man, a young woman, and two young children sat on individual tatami mats around a low wooden table. The elderly woman scooped rice slowly into bowls. The doorbell rang. Kovlov’s roommate Sal popped from the kitchen, crossed between him and the screen. He opened the door to a man in a suit who queried, “Eugene Kovlov?” and dropped a sizable envelope on the floor. “Consider yourself served.” The family held their bowls, gently shoveling at their portions. A teapot marked the foreground.

Sal closed the door and kicked the envelope toward the couch. “Kovlov, you’re wastin’ away. Maybe eat some Ramen or something.”

When the movie ended, he clicked off the TV, headed into his room and flopped onto the futon.

Moonlight guided a SEPTA train as it emerged from underground and clanked up onto the elevated tracks that ran alongside Route 95 above Northern Liberties, Fishtown, and Kensington row homes, soot blonde brick schools, and entropy riddled factories.

“Wakey up!”

One-eye took in the clock which was mostly hidden behind tipping piles of Japanese cinema books. Why the hell was Sal waking him up? A red neon 1. Maybe 1:00 PM? Could be 10, 11 or 12? Or maybe any hour at all and the one a minute’s digit. He’d hold still within the warm comforter, thwarting any consideration of least bad choices that would hurl him into the world. He might wait until the 1 changed to a 2, which meant waiting on average 30 seconds to 30 minutes, but his concentration broke and he slipped back into oblivion.

“Kovlov! Wake up and listen good. You owe me $1400.”

“The Rocks Beneath the Same River” by David M. Rubin

Steven Rothstein perseverated four sub-stories, base code for his translation.

Dad handed Stevie, 8, and his brother Mark, 5, two one-dollar bills, enough for the Sunday New York Times and either two packs of baseball cards with cardboard flat sticks of bubblegum or two comic books. They would walk an unimaginably long distance along West 5^th Street past three high rise apartment buildings and turn left into the strip mall. They would pass six stores, walk in the Village Stationary, browse the comic book carousel for new Captain America, Invincible Iron Man, and Mighty Thor comics. They would pick up a perfectly arranged Sunday Times from among the many stacks on the floor, carefully check for the presence of each section from Arts & Leisure to Travel. They would go to the counter, if they had chosen no comic books grab two packs of waxy baseball card packs, and pay. They would walk back home without dilly-dallying. Intimidating but doable. They would then be free to watch Bugs Bunny and Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

Everything went according to plan. Long walk. Check for new comics. None. Pick up and inventory a paper. Grab baseball cards. Pay. Walk home. They made it back to West Brighton Avenue, where a monstrous clanking rollercoaster D-train crossed above, and Stevie shifted his grasp on the paper that must have weighed as much as Mark. The massive construct called a New York Sunday Times slipped free and pages from every section caught the unforgiving ocean wind and fluttered into the street and parking lot. He remembered glancing at happy-go-lucky Mark mid bubble, carefully gripping baseball cards in each hand; it would be hard to blame him for this fiasco.

Stevie sort of remembered crying on the elevator ride up to the apartment, a smack in the head, another smack for good measure, and being called a moron who can’t even do one little simple fucking thing like get a paper. He definitely remembered having to spit out his bubble gum and throw the baseball cards down the incinerator shoot, though he hid in his underpants waistband the rare Lerrin Lagrow that completed his 1975 Topps set. He was given money to get a new paper and bring back the fucking change.

“The Spectator Takes a Journey” by David M. Rubin

Looking back what seemed a stray puppy was actually an old little dog and coordinator of an incident that was still raw like the scrapes on his elbows and knees. He had no idea what to make of the even earlier incident with the crows but sensed all was connected.

Archer Fennis woke up that morning, reciting his mantra of “no humming”. Humming was a signal to his nervous system that there was something to be worried about, maybe everything. Then sweating. Then cold hands. Then pacing. Then anticipatory moaning. Then the full-fledged Munch-like scream. No humming, no humming, no humming.

The white living room walls were devoid of paintings or posters. The emptiness was unendurable, a continual incitement for Archer to Jackson Pollack his carefully curated red ceramic bowl of granola, almonds, blueberries, and soy milk against the wall. He had no coffee table and wondered what if one wanted to display art books, but had only one folding-table placed constitutively in front of the TV. He placed the cereal bowl gently on the blonde wood and consciously struck a pose of one intent on terraforming.

Archer laced up his Merrills, grabbed a baseball cap (orange with a Jayavarman II face), black pandemic mask, and a credit card. He would buy eight art books. Eight. He would keep them on a stack on the floor next to the folding table and each Sunday he would ritually rotate up a new one.

“A New York State of Mind” by Jill Veader

Last summer, my boyfriend, Ian, and I visited his grandmother, Elaine, who’d been living in the same apartment on Amsterdam Avenue for forty years. Elaine let us stay in her spare bedroom, from which we spied down at the sun-soaked street from eight stories up, surrounded by her bookshelves full of coffee table books and old photos. A trip to New York City was perfect because neither Ian nor I had much money; we both still worked at the grocery store where we’d first met.

The morning after we arrived on Amtrak, Elaine took us around the neighborhood on the Upper West Side. We got bagels and coffee at Zabar’s, met cats at bookstores, and made it as far as Roosevelt Island; we must’ve walked twenty miles that day. It was hot for June, and even in cutoff shorts and a t-shirt, I was sweating profusely—nevermind Ian, who’d opted for black jeans. Elaine, though, remained cool and dry, ready to move on while we sat on park benches, panting, and saying, “We just need a minute,” or “maybe some water.”

As we traversed block to block, Elaine stopped us every ten feet or so to tell us to look up. Squinting in the sunlight, we’d gaze past her pointed finger to be met with the stoic, Medusa-like stares of cherubs carved into limestone, or ornate seals of olive branches and shields painted onto brick above a stoop. Gilded terracotta blue and gold glinted in the sun but was almost hidden behind the trees lining the sidewalk. How many cherubs had watched over the same people for years, like Elaine; how many gazed at passersby, at couples just married with a good job and a baby on the way? They all had one thing in common; they reflected the sunlight on their faces like shining mirrors, watching you, guarding you, daring you to stare back at them. How many people had looked back into the eyes of those cherubs before me?

“Empire State to World Trade” by Natasha Cobb

In South Carolina, Ester spent years wondering what big cities were like – Visiting her cousin Tessa in New York City, Ester initially found that they could be overwhelming with smells of fuel and perfume mixed with the sounds of cars honking and people speaking quickly as they searched for their loved ones.

As Ester waited for Tessa at Kennedy Airport, she thought of how lucky Tessa was to be able to make it in N.Y.C. Ester looked forward to the week ahead because Tessa had promised her that she’d show her the best parts of the city. From the moment Ester placed her suitcase in the trunk of Tessa’s car, her cousin did not disappoint her. Tessa took Ester right into the heart of the city. They boarded a train at one of the main transportation hubs in the city, Atlantic Terminal, and then caught the three train to thirty-fourth street.

Tessa gave Ester a crash course in train etiquette before they got on the train.

“Don’t stare at anyone. Don’t talk to anyone, even if they say something to you. And if you accidently touch anyone in anyway apologize immediately, even if it is not your fault.”

Tessa knew that Ester would stick out as a tourist – It was March, but Ester had brought her winter coat, hat, and gloves. N.Y.C in March was too chilly for Ester, who was used to sixty as a low temperature in South Carolina at that time of year. Also, Ester would stop without warning, take out her camera. and take pictures of the most ordinary things like buildings and streets that didn’t stand out to Tessa at all.

“Brooklyn Royalty” by Steve Slavin

As someone born and bred in the borough, I am well acquainted with Brooklyn royalty. In fact, only great modesty prevents me from even mentioning my own royal blood.

Brooklyn, of course, was once part of the British Empire, and many reminders can still be found. I grew up just a block from our neighborhood’s main shopping strip, Kings Highway. Just off the Highway is a well preserved pre-Revolutionary farmhouse, the Wycoff-Bennett mansion. In recent decades, it was owned by Annette and Stu Mont, who sometimes called their home the Wycoff-Bennett-Mont house.

Annette and I met at James Madison High School and became friendly again about twenty years ago. She invited me to monthly political meetings and occasional parties at her home. She and her husband had restored the house to look much as it did during colonial times. There were even numerous oil portraits of the home’s earlier residents, as well as furniture and farm implements dating back to the eighteenth and nineteenth century.

When new guests arrived, Annette graciously showed them around. Sometimes I could not resist telling the more gullible among them that I too had descended from the Wycoffs or the Bennetts – or even both families. Annette smiled when she overheard me, but she never bothered setting the record straight.

Another structure surviving from colonial times was a store on Montague Street, in historic Brooklyn Heights. If you looked in a Brooklyn phone book from the 1970s, you’d find a listing for King George Pizza. It’s still whispered that after their victory in the Battle of Brooklyn, scores of Redcoats stopped in for a celebratory slice, while Washington’s army escaped to New Jersey to fight another day.

“John’s” by Ken Romanowski

Over ninety modest row homes occupied the two and three-hundred blocks of East Sheldon Street. Situated between C Street and Rising Sun Avenue, the homes formed a continuous line on either side of the street. The houses across from us were older, taller, and had a small flowerbed in front, whereas our homes, newer and smaller, had a small lawn in the front and back. Our block was flanked by C Street to the north and Rising Sun Avenue to the south.

Before we moved to Sheldon Street, we lived a few miles away on a block of even smaller row homes. It was there that Mom began to send me on errands. So, around five years of age, I started riding to the corner grocery store on my tricycle. Holding my little sister, Mom stood in the doorway with her red bandanna, light cardigan, and dark-colored slacks and watched me. I would ride my bike in my rolled-up dungarees and tee shirt and return with the goods in a basket secured behind me.

As I grew older, I graduated to the next level of independence and responsibility. So, when it was time for me to get a haircut when I turned eight, I could walk to the shop by myself. Nevertheless, there would be an impediment to reaching the barber shop — Rising Sun Avenue. John’s Barber Shop occupied a small storefront on Albanus Street near the other side of the Avenue. Albanus was not very wide, and its one-way traffic emptied onto Rising Sun, which was three times as wide as Sheldon with heavier and faster traffic. Driving it proved challenging to all because two sets of trolley tracks dominated its center lanes. Mom didn’t drive, so walking was my only option.