She still lords it over Madison Square, the Flat-iron does, with her solitary, peculiar silhouette and her fussy stone face, all of which, at the time she was built, had architects and critics going at each other tooth and nail. The Metropolitan Life Tower across the park may be taller, but it doesn’t have near the style or presence; and next to the Flatiron, buildings like Madison Square Garden, topped by its once-shocking statue of naked Diana, just seem like hangovers from another age, an age that, looking back, feels like it passed in the space of a night. It was a gay night, many folks’d say; but for some of us, it was a strange and dangerous time, when we learned things about human behavior that most sensible people would never want to know. Even the few that might’ve been curious got all the grimness they could stand from the Great War. What people want now’s a good time, and they want it with a vengeance.

Certainly that drive is what’ll be powering the type of folks who’ll be on their way over to my shop to try and buy the smokes they’ll need for long hours at the city’s gaming tables and dance halls. The weather alone would rule out any darker motivations. The breezy, light arms of the night air will wrap themselves around all those keen, hopeful souls, and they’ll tear into the town like a meat district dog who’s smelled out a bit of bone at the bottom of an ash heap. Most of their activities won’t amount to nothing, of course, but that doesn’t matter; part of the strange fun of getting rooked into thinking that anything’s possible on the beaten, dirty streets of this Big Onion is knowing that if you don’t find what you’re looking for tonight, it’s all that much more important that you try again tomorrow.

I remember that feeling; I had it many times myself before I reached my present lamentable state.