Across the ragged vacant lots to the west a vast sunset processional marched down the sky. It had not been visible from their flat, which looked across East River to the tame grassy shore of a real-estate boomer’s suburb. “Gee!” he mourned, “it’s the first time I’ve noticed a sunset for a month! I used to see knights’ flags and Mandalay and all sorts of stuff in sunsets!”
Wistfully the exile gazed at his lost kingdom, till the October chill aroused him.
But he learned a new way to cook eggs from the proprietor of the delicatessen store; and his plans for spending the evening playing pinochle with Nelly, and reading the evening paper aloud, set him chuckling softly to himself as he hurried home through the brisk autumn breeze with seven cents’ worth of potato salad.
THE END