‘I’ll have to stop here, lady,’ the taxi driver said, turning around.
‘Where are we?’ Miss Morgan said.
‘Times Square,’ the driver said. ‘No cars getting through downtown on account of the parade.’
He opened the door and held out his hand for her money. Unable to think of anything else to do, Miss Morgan paid him and gathered her hatbox and package together and stepped out of the taxi. The street ahead was roped off and policemen were guarding the ropes. Miss Morgan tried to get through the crowd of people, but there were too many of them and she was forced to stand still. While she was wondering what to do, she heard the sound of a band and realized that the parade was approaching. Just then the policeman guarding the curb opened the ropes to let traffic cross the street for the last time before the parade, and all the people who had been standing with Miss Morgan crossed to the other side and all the people who had been on the other side crossed to stand on Miss Morgan’s side, turning in order to cross again on the side street at right angles to the way they had crossed before, but the policemen and the crowds held them back and they waited, impatient for the next crossing. Miss Morgan had been forced to the curb and now she could see the parade coming downtown. The band was leading the parade; twelve drum majorettes in scarlet jackets and skirts and wearing silver boots and carrying silver batons marched six abreast down the street, stepping high and flinging their batons into the air in unison; following them was the band, all dressed in scarlet, and on each of the big drums was written a huge X in scarlet. Following the band were twelve heralds dressed in black velvet, blowing on silver trumpets, and they were followed by a man dressed in black velvet on a white horse with red plumes on its head; the man was shouting, ‘Find Miss X, find Miss X, find Miss X.’
Then followed a float preceded by two girls in scarlet who carried a banner inscribed in red, ‘Win magnificent prizes’, and the float represented, in miniature, a full symphony orchestra; all the performers were children in tiny dress suits, and the leader, who was very tiny, stood on a small platform on the float and led the orchestra in a small rendition of ‘Afternoon of a Faun’; following this float was one bearing a new refrigerator, fifty times larger than life, with the door swinging open to show its shelves stocked with food. Then a float bearing a model of an airplane, with twelve lovely girls dressed as clouds. Then a float holding a golden barrel full of enormous dollar bills, with a grinning mannequin who dipped into the barrel, brought up a handful of the great dollar bills, and ate them, then dipped into the barrel again.
Following this float were all the Manhattan troops of Boy Scouts; they marched in perfect line, their leaders going along beside and calling occasionally, ‘Keep it up, men, keep that step even.’
At this point the side street was allowed open for cross traffic, and all the people standing near Miss Morgan crossed immediately, while all the people on the other side crossed also. Miss Morgan went along with the people she had been standing with, and once on the other side, all these people continued walking downtown until they reached the next corner and were stopped. The parade had halted here, and Miss Morgan found that she had caught up with the float representing the giant refrigerator. Farther back, the Boy Scouts had fallen out of their even lines, and were pushing and laughing. One of the children on the orchestra float was crying. While the parade halted, Miss Morgan and all the people she stood with were allowed to cross through the parade to the other side of the avenue. Once there, they waited to cross the next side street.
The parade started again. The Boy Scouts came even with Miss Morgan, their lines straightening, and then the cause of the delay became known; twelve elephants, draped in blue, moved ponderously down the street; on the head of each was a girl wearing blue, with a great plume of blue feathers on her head; the girls swayed and rocked with the motion of the elephants. Another band followed, this one dressed in blue and gold, but the big drums still said X in blue. A new banner followed, reading ‘Find Miss X,’ with twelve more heralds dressed in white, blowing on gold trumpets, and a man on a black horse who shouted through a megaphone, ‘Miss X is walking the streets of the city, she is watching the parade. Look around you, folks.’
Then came a line of twelve girls, arm in arm, each one dressed as Miss X, with a red and gray hat, a red and gray tweed topcoat, and blue shoes. They were followed by twelve men each carrying two packages, the large brown package Miss Morgan was carrying, and the hatbox. They were all singing, a song of which Miss Morgan caught only the words ‘Find Miss X, get all those checks.’
Leaning far out over the curb, Miss Morgan could see that the parade continued for blocks; she could see green and orange and purple, and far far away, yellow. Miss Morgan pulled uneasily at the sleeve of the woman next to her. ‘What’s the parade for?’ she asked, and the woman looked at her.
‘Can’t hear you,’ the woman said. She was a little woman, and had a pleasant face, and Miss Morgan smiled, and raised her voice to say, ‘I said, how long is this parade going to last?’
‘What parade?’ she asked. ‘That one?’ She nodded at the street. ‘I haven’t any idea, miss. I’m trying to get to Macy’s.’
‘Do you know anything about this Miss X?’ Miss Morgan said daringly.
The woman laughed. ‘It was over the radio,’ she said. ‘Someone’s going to get a lot of prizes. You have to do some kind of a puzzle or something.’
‘What’s it for?’ Miss Morgan asked.
‘Advertising,’ the woman said, surprised.
‘Are you looking for Miss X?’ Miss Morgan asked daringly.
The woman laughed again. ‘I’m no good at that sort of thing,’ she said. ‘Someone in the company of the people putting it on always wins those things, anyway.’
Just then they were allowed to cross again, and Miss Morgan and the woman hurried across, and on down the next block. Walking beside the woman, Miss Morgan said finally, ‘I think I’m the Miss X they’re talking about, but I don’t know why.’
The woman looked at her and said, ‘Don’t ask me,’ and then disappeared into the crowd of people ahead.
Out in the street a prominent cowboy movie star was going by on horseback, waving his hat.
Miss Morgan retreated along a quiet side street until she was far away from the crowds and the parade; she was lost, too far away from her office to get back without finding another taxi, and miles away from the address on the package. She saw a shoe repair shop, and struck by a sudden idea, went inside and sat down in one of the booths. The repairman came up to her and she handed him her shoes.
‘Shine?’ he said, looking at the shoes.
‘Yes,’ Miss Morgan said. ‘Shine.’ She leaned back in the booth, her eyes shut. She was vaguely aware that the repairman had gone into the back of the shop, that she was alone, when she heard a footstep and looked up to see a man in a blue suit coming toward her.
‘Are you Miss X?’ the man in the blue suit asked her.
Miss Morgan opened her mouth, and then said, ‘Yes,’ tiredly.
‘I’ve been looking all over for you,’ the man said. ‘How’d you get away from the sound truck?’
‘I don’t know,’ Miss Morgan said. ‘I ran.’
‘Listen,’ the man said, ‘this town’s no good. No one spotted you.’ He opened the door of the booth and waited for Miss Morgan to come.
‘My shoes,’ Miss Morgan said, and the man waved his hand impatiently. ‘You don’t need shoes,’ he said. ‘The car’s right outside.’
He looked at Miss Morgan with yellow cat eyes and said, ‘Come on, hurry up.’
She stood up and he took her arm and said, ‘We’ll have to do it again tomorrow in Chicago, this town stinks.’
That night, falling asleep in the big hotel, Miss Morgan thought briefly of Mr Lang and the undelivered package she had left, along with her hatbox, in the shoe repair shop. Smiling, she pulled the satin quilt up to her chin and fell asleep.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. · Letter fr
om Birmingham Jail
ALLEN GINSBERG · Television Was a Baby Crawling Toward That Deathchamber
DAPHNE DU MAURIER · The Breakthrough
DOROTHY PARKER · The Custard Heart
Three Japanese Short Stories
ANAÏS NIN · The Veiled Woman
GEORGE ORWELL · Notes on Nationalism
GERTRUDE STEIN · Food
STANISLAW LEM · The Three Electroknights
PATRICK KAVANAGH · The Great Hunger
DANILO KIŠ · The Legend of the Sleepers
RALPH ELLISON · The Black Ball
JEAN RHYS · Till September Petronella
FRANZ KAFKA · Investigations of a Dog
CLARICE LISPECTOR · Daydream and Drunkenness of a Young Lady
RYSZARD KAPUŚCIŃSKI · An Advertisement for Toothpaste
ALBERT CAMUS · Create Dangerously
JOHN STEINBECK · The Vigilante
FERNANDO PESSOA · I Have More Souls Than One
SHIRLEY JACKSON · The Missing Girl
Four Russian Short Stories
ITALO CALVINO · The Distance of the Moon
AUDRE LORDE · The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House
LEONORA CARRINGTON · The Skeleton’s Holiday
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS · The Finger
SAMUEL BECKETT · The End
KATHY ACKER · New York City in 1979
CHINUA ACHEBE · Africa’s Tarnished Name
SUSAN SONTAG · Notes on ‘Camp’
JOHN BERGER · The Red Tenda of Bologna
FRANÇOISE SAGAN · The Gigolo
CYPRIAN EKWENSI · Glittering City
JACK KEROUAC · Piers of the Homeless Night
HANS FALLADA · Why Do You Wear a Cheap Watch?
TRUMAN CAPOTE · The Duke in His Domain
SAUL BELLOW · Leaving the Yellow House
KATHERINE ANNE PORTER · The Cracked Looking-Glass
JAMES BALDWIN · Dark Days
GEORGES SIMENON · Letter to My Mother
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS · Death the Barber
BETTY FRIEDAN · The Problem that Has No Name
FEDERICO GARCÍA LORCA · The Dialogue of Two Snails
YUKO TSUSHIMA · Of Dogs and Walls
JAVIER MARÍAS · Madame du Deffand and the Idiots
CARSON MCCULLERS · The Haunted Boy
JORGE LUIS BORGES · The Garden of Forking Paths
PRIMO LEVI · The Survivor
VLADIMIR NABOKOV · Lance
WENDELL BERRY · Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer
THE BEGINNING
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This selection first published 2018
Copyright © Laurence Jackson Hyman, J. S. Holly, Sarah Hyman DeWitt and Barry Hyman, 1996
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
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ISBN: 978-0-241-33929-9