The City Between Us

The streets were still damp from the night before, glistening in the early morning light. Down here, in the oldest part of Manhattan, the air carried the weight of history—stone, and steel pressed tight, the ghosts of a thousand deals made and broken.

Elliot rolled his shoulders, adjusting to the feel of the running shoes he’d thrown on that morning. He was already regretting them.

Solomon, walking beside him, grinned. “A proper city man turned athlete.”

Elliot sighed. “You said my dress shoes wouldn’t make it.”

“I said your Italian shoes wouldn’t make it.”

Elliot shook his head. “I didn’t take you for a guy with strong opinions on footwear.”

Solomon tapped his cane against the pavement. “I have opinions on everything.”

They turned a corner, the sound of gulls overhead mingling with the early morning hum of downtown. Solomon lifted his chin slightly as if catching a familiar scent in the sea air that rolled across Battery Park.

“There’s a guy, Charlie, runs a little espresso stand at the edge of Battery Park,” he said. “Knows a good coffee bean.”

Elliot raised an eyebrow. “You have a preferred barista?”

“I have standards.” Solomon smirked. “Besides, first stop of the day ought to be coffee. You’re going to need it.”

Elliot scoffed but followed.

Just as Solomon had said, there was Charlie—an older man with sleeves rolled up, a weathered face, and a sharp eye for who actually knew their coffee from the tourists who drowned it in sugar. When he saw Solomon, he didn’t hesitate.

“Solomon, my man!”

“That must be Charlie. Charlie, this is my friend Elliot. Elliot, Charlie. I’m taking Elliot on the blind man’s tour of Manhattan today.”

“You don’t say! Well, what can I get for you gentlemen this morning?”

“You already know what I want, Charlie.”

Charlie laughed, then turned to Elliot. “And for you?”

Elliot hesitated. “Uh—black, I guess.”

Charlie gave him a look, unimpressed. “Guess?”

“Black,” Elliot repeated, firmer.

Charlie poured the coffee and handed it over. Solomon took his own cup, inhaled deeply, and let out a satisfied sigh. “Now that’s a cup of coffee.”

They walked on, the city beginning to wake around them. Elliot took a sip of his coffee, then glanced at Solomon.

“How’d you sleep?” he asked.

Solomon smirked. “That mattress in your guest room? Firm enough to break a man.”

Elliot laughed.

“Not that I’m complaining,” Solomon added. “Roof over my head, warm bed, and the kind of company that comes with expensive whiskey. I’ve had worse nights.”

Elliot didn’t ask where those worse nights had been.

Instead, he watched the city move—workers in suits moving with purpose, delivery trucks rumbling by, tourists already angling for the first ferry to the Statue of Liberty. Solomon walked at a steady pace, cane tapping in rhythm, moving through the streets as though he knew them better than Elliot ever could.

Elliot had to remind himself—Solomon was blind. And yet, he spoke as though he had seen it all. It was a peculiar thing that hung over their walk, an uncanny contradiction that Elliot couldn’t shake.

By the time they reached the Woolworth Building, the morning traffic had thickened. The air smelled of freshly brewed ambition, and Elliot was already questioning his life choices.

Solomon stopped, turning toward the towering neo-Gothic structure. “You know this one, don’t you?”

“Woolworth,” Elliot said. “Finished in 1913. The tallest in the world for a while.”

“‘The Cathedral of Commerce,’” Solomon murmured. “Cass Gilbert built it like a church because that’s what skyscrapers were back then—monuments to ambition.” He gestured toward it. “Look at those details. Gargoyles, vaulted arches, buttresses. A medieval castle built for businessmen.”

Elliot studied the façade, its intricate carvings, the way it felt crafted rather than just built. “They don’t make them like this anymore.”

“No,” Solomon said. “Because we stopped believing buildings should have souls.” He tilted his head. “What do you want yours to be? A monument? A machine? Or something alive?”

By the time they reached Bryant Park, Elliot had had enough. He exhaled sharply and slowed his pace, rolling his shoulders. “I need a break.”

Solomon snorted. “A break? We’re barely getting started.”

“Barely getting started?” Elliot shook his head and found an empty bench.

“We’ll never make it to Harlem by dinner.” Solomon smiled as he sat beside him. “Am I walking too fast for you?”

Elliot let out a dry laugh. “If anyone should be complaining, it’s you.”

Solomon stretched his legs out in front of him. “Why? Because I got age on you? Son, I ain’t old. Old is when you’re dead.”

Elliot smirked. “I didn’t mean to say you’re old. It’s just …”

Solomon tilted his head, listening to the city around him. “You know, my people were from the Caribbean. St. Kitts, specifically. They were travellers long before I got here. We got legs.”

Elliot was caught off guard. Solomon had never volunteered anything about himself before, not like this.

“They came to New York looking for something better. Something stable. A place to plant roots.” He smiled faintly. “It made me… genteel, I suppose. That’s what my mother used to call it. We had old manners in a new world.”

“Genteel?” Elliot said, half amused, half intrigued. “You don’t strike me as the polite society type.”

Solomon chuckled. “That’s because you think manners are about posture and silverware. It’s not that. It’s a way of holding yourself. A way of seeing the world, even when it refuses to see you back.” He gestured toward the park. “This place? This is genteel. Not because of who’s sitting here but because of what it offers. Space. Room to breathe. A kindness in a city that forgets kindness.”

Elliot followed Solomon’s gesture, watching as people sprawled on the grass, as others sat quietly on benches reading, sipping coffee. The city moved around them, but here, it softened.

“You know,” Elliot said, “New York keeps trying to bring more green into its architecture. Vertical gardens, rooftop parks, terraces. It’s a way to counterbalance the steel and glass.”

Solomon nodded. “It’s a start. But what’s at the base?”

Elliot frowned. “What do you mean?”

Solomon tapped his cane lightly against the ground. “A building grows like a tree. It needs roots, somewhere to pull breath from. If the bottom is nothing but concrete, you’re just stacking weight on dead space. No wonder so many buildings feel suffocating.”

Elliot considered this. “So, my tower—”

“I know you got your client and your partners to consider, but the skyscraper you design needs a park at its feet,” Solomon said simply.

Elliot looked back at Bryant Park. The way the buildings framed it, like they were guarding something delicate but vital. The park felt like a held breath, a moment of silence in the relentless noise of the city.

That’s when his eye caught something in the distance.

It shimmered in the midday sun, its spire slicing into the sky like the blade of a dagger. The details were faint from here, softened by the haze, but Elliot didn’t need to see them up close to know them by heart—the radiant crown, the intricate Art Deco flourishes, the unmistakable silhouette that set it apart from every other tower in Manhattan.

His pulse quickened.

“Quite a masterpiece,” Solomon murmured.

Elliot turned sharply. “How the hell do you know what I’m looking at?”

Solomon smirked. “What else would you be looking at, Mr. Van Alen?”

Elliot exhaled, shaking his head. The man was impossible.

They left the park and began walking east, the Chrysler Building growing larger with every step.

“The race to the sky in the 1920s was brutal. Everyone wanted to build the tallest tower. My grand-uncle had a rival—H. Craig Severance. They both kept redesigning their buildings to be taller, one-upping each other in secret.”

Solomon grinned. “And then came the spire.”

Elliot nodded. “October 23, 1929. He had it hidden inside the building the entire time, waiting. Then, in a single day, they assembled it, piece by piece, raising it from the inside out.”

“The ultimate architectural sleight of hand,” Solomon mused.

Elliot smirked. “Yeah. A last-minute trick to make sure it would be the tallest.” His smirk faded slightly. “For a moment, anyway.”

Solomon nodded knowingly. “The Empire State was already on the horizon.”

“The very next day—October 24, 1929—the stock market crashed. By the time the Chrysler Building opened the following Spring, the world had changed.”

They stopped at the base of the Chrysler Building, the late afternoon sun glinting off its steel arches, casting long shadows over the street. Elliot looked up, his jaw tightening. The building was magnificent—bold, defiant—but it also stood as a kind of monument to ambition’s quiet erasure.

“This was supposed to be his legacy,” Elliot murmured. “And yet, outside of architecture circles, almost no one even knows his name.”

Solomon said nothing at first. He turned his head slightly as if considering something distant, something only he could hear.

Then, finally: “And what about you?”

Elliot frowned. “What about me?”

Solomon’s voice was quiet but steady. “You trying to finish what he started?”

Elliot hesitated. He looked up again, past the intricate eagles jutting out from the building’s corners, past the spire that had once made it the tallest in the world. He had spent years chasing something—recognition, permanence, the idea that he could carve his name into the sky the way his grand-uncle once had.

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

Solomon smirked. “Then maybe it’s time you figured that out.” He let the words settle, then added, “How long are you gonna put off living your life in pursuit of something that might outlive you?” He let out a low chuckle. “Even a blind man can see that.”

A beat of silence stretched between them. Elliot exhaled slowly, his gaze still fixed upward, but he no longer felt sure of what he was looking for.

They stood there a moment longer, the past towering over them, before turning and walking on.

By the time they reached Harlem, the sky had deepened into a rich blue, the last traces of sunlight dissolving behind the skyline. Streetlights buzzed to life, and music—Latin jazz from one doorway, gospel from another—blended into the warm hum of the evening.

They walked west, past brownstones and neon-lit bodegas, until they reached the Manhattan School of Music. Solomon stopped in front of the building, resting both hands on his cane.

“I studied here once,” he said.

Elliot turned to him. “Piano, right?”

Solomon nodded, his fingers flexing slightly, as if they could still find their way over unseen keys. “A long time ago.” His voice had a different quality now—softer, like something held at a distance. “I was good. Not great, but good. Could’ve made something of it. But life has a way of deciding for you.”

Elliot said nothing. He had spent the whole day learning that Solomon rarely answered direct questions, that his past was something he revealed in glimpses, never in full. But standing there, in front of this place, it was the first time Solomon felt truly still.

Then, with a small exhale, Solomon tapped his cane against the pavement and turned away. “Come on. Let’s eat before you collapse.”

They found an old restaurant nearby, the kind that had been there for half a century, unchanged except for the faces behind the counter. The lighting was warm, the air thick with the smell of grilled meat and spices.

Solomon chuckled as they slid into a booth. “You held up better than I thought. For a man who spends most of his time in glass towers.”

Elliot smirked, but when he shifted in his seat, he winced. “Yeah, well. I think I have a blister the size of a subway token.”

Solomon laughed, shaking his head. “Amateur.”

They ordered, and the conversation meandered—back to the Woolworth Building, the pause of Bryant Park, the way the streets changed as they moved north. The day had been long, exhausting, but now, in the dim light of the restaurant, it felt like something permanent, something neither of them would ever quite leave behind.

At some point, between bites of food and sips of cold beer, Elliot realized something: they had created something together. Not a building, not a blueprint, but a day that would live on forever, a thing built out of steps and stories, out of silence and sound.

Solomon raised his glass slightly. “To your blister.”

Elliot clinked his glass against Solomon’s, shaking his head with a grin. “To the lasting memory of whatever the hell today was.”

Neither of them brought up legacies.

For once, the present was enough.

end of part three

© Michael Arturo 2025

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Welcome to Michael’s Newsletter. Writer of contemporary political/social commentary, parodies, parables, satire. Michael was born and raised in New York City and has a background in theater and film. His plays have been staged in New York, London, Boston, and Los Angeles.

Michael also writes short literary fiction. Below is a link to his first collection.

FLATIRON and other tall tales

other audio stories below and on the right-hand side of the screen

Rainspell

A lone cab sped along the wet asphalt, its reflection shimmering in the waterlogged street. Inside, Lena pressed her face to the window, watching the city blur into streaks of light—like memories she couldn’t quite hold. She had come here chasing a name, an echo of her grandfather’s whispered stories. He had spoken of the Brooklyn Bridge as if it were a…

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The stranger in a wide-brimmed hat seated next to me at the bar hadn’t said a word, but it felt like he was doing most of the talking since I was so drunk I couldn’t tell who said what or what any of what was said meant. And I couldn’t remember if he’d sat down next to me or if I’d sat down next to him, which was common in New York bars. Nevertheless, having a stranger as a neighbor at a bar is convenient when you want to share something you might not share with someone you know.

I might have told him my entire life’s story, precisely what a New Yorker would do to a stranger. Dump everything on them, knowing they’d never see them again. I might have told him about the stories I’d written or intended to write. But I couldn’t recall if I had written them or intended to write them. Not in the state I was in. I couldn’t even recognize the bar I was in. It looked like the old Lions Head, a writer’s bar on Christopher Street, but that place had been closed for years. There was a mirror over the bar and the reflection of another mirror that must have been somewhere over my shoulder, but I was too mesmerized by the first mirror’s reflection of the second to bother to look. Besides, I was stuck on where I was.

Once I realized that I did not recognize the place or that the place reminded me of a place that closed years ago, despair began to set in. And whenever despair sets in, I go to a place I seldom go. And if one lives in New York long enough, one often goes to places one seldom goes. Not the same place, mind you, but places adjacent to the place one seldom goes to. And that’s where I was headed.

To cut myself off at the pass, I maneuvered deftly to engage the stranger in the wide-brimmed hat in conversation.

“You wanna hear something I’ve never told anyone?” I started, slurring my words sloppily. “One of my deepest secrets? If I could go back in time twenty-something years, I’d kill myself. I mean it. I’d save myself from all the misery,” I whined, unsure of where what I said was coming from.

The stranger didn’t react.

Not with a nod, not with a blink.

He simply sat there, a dark silhouette in the mirror’s refracted gaze, as if I hadn’t spoken at all. Because maybe I hadn’t. Maybe I had only thought it. Words have a way of collapsing into thoughts when you’ve had enough to drink, and thoughts have a way of unraveling into the past when you’re staring into mirrors.

I tried again.

“You ever think about that? Going back, changing things?”

This time, he turned his head slightly, just enough for me to catch the faintest glimmer of his eye beneath the brim's shadow.

“Regret is memory’s trick. Makes you think there was ever a choice.” His voice was slow, deliberate, like the way an old clock ticks in a quiet house.

I let that sink in. It was the kind of answer I might have given someone once, back when I was younger, sharper, more inclined toward philosophy than self-pity. But tonight, it stung.

“Then what’s the point of regret?” I asked, gesturing vaguely at nothing in particular.

The stranger reached for his drink and took a long, careful sip. “Ask yourself that in twenty-something years.”

Something about that sentence made me shudder. Maybe it was the way he said it, or maybe it was the creeping suspicion that he was right. That all the roads I thought I had taken, or not taken, had been illusions of choice, mere footnotes in a story already written. That even sitting here, speaking to him, was just another chapter I was reading, not writing.

“Then what the hell am I doing here?” I muttered, mostly to myself.

For the first time, the stranger smiled. Not a warm smile. Not cruel, either. Just something in between, like an old man watching a younger man make a familiar mistake.

“You tell me,” he said.

And for a moment, I thought I could. But when I opened my mouth, all that came out was a dry, bitter laugh.

“Truth is,” I began as if I knew the truth, “the only way to prevent the twenty-something years of misery the future held would be to find my younger self and kill him. Kill me as well, but him for sure. Because he’s the one who made all the mistakes that led to my life of misery, I’m partly responsible, don’t get me wrong. And yes, he was innocent, full of hope and all that nonsense. Gullible, taking the wrong people at their word. But killing him would just end it before it began,” I said as I pounded down another drink.

The stranger held his glass up to toast. But in my slap-happy stupor, I saw him hold up two, no, three glasses and kept missing the actual toast target. After four or five attempts, I quit. Besides, my glass was already empty again, and not only was it bad luck to toast with an empty glass, but it was incredibly inconvenient to clink glasses with the room spinning as it was.

“You wanna know how I’d do it?” I burped. “Bare hands! Sneak up from behind and put my bare hands around the base of his neck. Then I’d wrestle him to the ground and strangle the life out of him.” The stranger peered at me again from beneath the brim of his wide-brimmed hat, his expression inscrutable.

I signaled to the bartender for yet another round. As the glass was replenished, I forged ahead. “Time travel. The only way to do it," I continued, my voice tinged with bitterness, "is to travel back in time, and since that’s impossible, why am I considering it?”

“It won’t be impossible in twenty-something years,” the stranger said as he tipped back his wide-brimmed hat.

“What?”

The stranger showed me a pistol he was holding inside his rain vest. “Let’s take a walk.”

“Walk? Where? Who are you?”

Maybe ‘Who are you?’ was the wrong question to ask. The stranger took off his wide-brimmed hat to reveal his face. Lo and behold! He was me, but much older! I knew I had much to drink, but I was beside myself!

The stranger in the wide-brimmed hat was me, from the future, here, in the present, to kill me, just as I imagined myself returning to the past to kill the younger me.

Wow, they have time travel in the future, was my first thought. I guess that’s something to look forward to. My second thought was if I make it that far.

“Wait, we can talk about this, can’t we? I have stories to write.”

“Too late, I’ve already written them.”

“Oh really? How did they turn out?”

“Never mind.”

“You’re not going to tell me how my own stories turn out? I feel somewhat betrayed.” I suppose I’d already know how my stories would turn out if I hadn’t put off writing them, with all the time I’ve wasted in bars searching for inspiration by engaging strangers in circular conversations.

“Besides, it’s not “ME” you’re after —it’s the younger ME! He’s the one who started this!” I implored, trying a different tact.

“Get moving,” he said.

He was succinct. I liked that about the older me. He was in good shape for an old guy; he could almost pass for a better version of the present me. I wonder if he’s aware that if he kills me, he’ll cease to exist as well.

“Why don’t we just have another drink and forget about this?”

“You talk too much. Let’s go.”

I could usually get out of any situation just by sounding like I knew what I was talking about, but not when I’m pitted against someone who does that themselves and has had twenty-something years more experience at it than I have! I was at the end of my rope. Whether by my own hand or that of my future self, the outcome will be the same — a life of regret erased before it had the chance to become even more regretful.

With my older self’s pistol from inside his rain vest trained on me, we marched out of the bar. “What happened to the plan to strangle me from behind?” I asked. It must have evolved over the last twenty-something years. Or the next twenty-something, as it were.

Once we got out in the street, I turned and asked, “Have you thought this through? You’ll die too, while our younger self gets to screw up our life and live at least as long as I did!”

“Do you ever listen to yourself?”

“No. Well, not until tonight, as it were.”

“Over the years, I had to eliminate so much of your nonsense to make your stories make sense,” my older self said with disdain before raising the pistol and aiming it at me.

Done in by my own nonsense. I knew I had that coming. I should have stuck to the trite sentimentality and canned laughter I was spoon-fed as a twenty-something.

Just then, out of the shadows, a figure emerged, a much older man with a long white beard whose face was concealed by the dark of night. He moved like an octogenarian super-human, lunging at the stranger and placing his bare hands on the base of his neck, wrestling him to the ground. Oh my God, just in the nick of time! Who is this old, old guy?

Wait a minute. Old, old guy? Could it be that an even older version of my older self had come to rescue me? Do I have nothing better to do with my future life but time travel back to the past?

I took an immediate liking to the Grand-Dad version of me. First of all, he reverted to my original style of murder—bare hands.

“Shall I kill him?” Grand-Dad asked, holding my older self down on the ground.

“Well, we might need him to publish our stories.”

“No, I already took care of that.”

“Okay, how did that turn out?”

“Never mind.”

“Not you, too!”

“Too much nonsense.”

“Still? Well, that’s good news, I suppose. I’ve always said that nonsense is the glue! All right then, kill him! I still have a drink on the bar.”

I no sooner turned to go when I realized that if both the older me and the old-old me perish, no one would be left to write my stories. Or, at the very least, no one left to go light on the nonsense. Then I realized that the chore was left to me and me alone. With this insight, I saw the path for the next twenty-something years laid out before me. I decided to put my nose to the grindstone and stop procrastinating. But first things first, let’s not forget the drink I left at the bar.

I hurried back to the bar, but upon my return, I found an unattended baby carriage at the entrance. Now, who could have possibly left a baby carriage unattended at this hour of the night? My curiosity got the better of me. I took a quick peek inside and found an infant no more than twenty-something weeks old. I looked closely at the infant and discovered an uncanny family resemblance.

“Well, I’ll be! This child is me!”

Immediately, I began putting the pieces together—an infant, an older ME, an old-old ME—who’s missing?

I’d better scan the bar for a twenty-something. He might be gunning for me. We need to end this cycle. We need to come to terms. I know—I’ll reason with him. I’ll just cut him some slack. I’ll impart wisdom upon him. Yes, that’s it!

I’ll say: “Look! Where’s this going to get us but dead? We have stories to write. Unless you’ve already written them.”

Then what? What if he’s already written them? Far better than I could ever imagine? I could be dealing with a twenty-something boy-genius psychopath. What if he murders me and claims all the fame and glory for himself?

What fame and glory am I talking about? He’s more of an idiot than I am. Besides, what if he’s not even here? What if he’s out there—who knows where? What if he doesn’t even care? What if he’s procrastinating just like I’ve done my entire life?

I’m so confused. And yet, I’ve never seen things more clearly. I suppose I’ll have to tread carefully, then. Balance things. Stay focused. Look over my shoulder when I see a reflection. Don’t get stuck on where I am. Plow forward; it’s worth the effort. Or I’ll have nothing but these thoughts haunt me for the next twenty-something years.

© Michael Arturo, 2025

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Welcome to Michael’s Newsletter. Writer of contemporary political/social commentary, parodies, parables, satire. Michael was born and raised in New York City and has a background in theater and film. His plays have been staged in New York, London, Boston, and Los Angeles.

Michael also writes short literary fiction. Below is a link to his first collection.

FLATIRON and other tall tales

Other stories …

Solomon came and went, night after night. He never revealed too much about himself—where he came from, where he slept. He seemed to belong everywhere and nowhere at once, slipping effortlessly between the city’s forgotten spaces and its most rarefied heights. There was something about Solomon that Elliot couldn’t quite grasp—something that made him feel both drawn in and unsettled. Elliot stopped questioning how Solomon fit into the world. Instead, they talked about other things. Art. Music. The city, always the city.

It had started on that first night with the Basquiat that hung in Elliot’s apartment. After that, conversations about architecture gave way to discussions about color and form, the fury of Pollock’s splatters, and the aching precision of Hopper’s loneliness.

“You think blindness cuts you off from beauty. But it doesn’t. It forces you to remember it more clearly.”

Music was the same. Solomon had played piano once—Elliot still wasn’t sure if he believed him—but his knowledge of classical music was encyclopedic. From memory, he could hum the second movement of a Mahler symphony, explaining why Chopin’s Nocturnes always sounded like regret. They would sit in Elliot’s apartment, whiskey between them, as Bach or Coltrane drifted through the speakers, dissolving the gap between their lives.

“You hear this?” Solomon once asked as Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue filled the room.

“Of course,” Elliot said.

“No,” Solomon had said. “You listen to it. But do you hear it?”

Elliot frowned. “What’s the difference?”

Solomon smiled, that cryptic, knowing smile. “One is passive. The other requires surrender.”

Solomon had become a fixture in Elliot's life without either of them acknowledging it. A presence that arrived without warning disappeared without explanation, but somehow always returned.

Neither of them said the word friendship.

As Solomon stood by the window of Elliot’s apartment, high above the city, his blind eyes turned toward the skyline, and as if he could see it, he asked Elliot to join him.

“Are you hearing it?” Solomon asked.

“Hearing what?”

Solomon smiled, his reflection wavering in the darkened glass. “You know. The city, man.”

Elliot inhaled. The hum had always been there, but he had never truly noticed it until now. It pulsed beneath the noise of car horns and distant sirens, beneath the wind threading its way through the steel canyons of Manhattan. A vibration, deep and endless.

For a moment, neither of them spoke. The city stretched out before them, sprawling, infinite.

As the weeks passed, their conversations deepened, turning into something more. Solomon spoke of architecture the way poets spoke of love, with reverence, with hunger.

“Why do we build up? The pyramids, the cathedrals, the skyscrapers—why is height always the goal?” Solomon asked, slouched comfortably in a chair. “You think it’s about reaching heaven, don’t you?” he said finally. “Some grand spiritual instinct, some old primal urge to get closer to God.”

Elliot smirked. “Isn’t it?”

Solomon chuckled. “No, man. It’s about ego. Every empire builds higher than the last. Height is proof of dominance. Proof that we were here.” He gestured toward the skyline beyond the window. “You see a city. I see an obituary. All of this was built by men who are long dead.”

Elliot frowned. “That’s a bleak way to look at it.”

“Is it?” Solomon’s voice was smooth, unhurried. “You think a straight line is order? That a steel frame makes sense of the world?” He tilted his head toward the window, as if seeing something beyond the glass. “People don’t move in straight lines, Elliot. They twist, they turn, they double back. They hesitate, they rush, they stumble. The buildings that last—the ones that work—understand that.”

Elliot crossed his arms. “Architecture is about reason. It’s about control.”

Solomon laughed, a low, knowing sound. “Yeah? And tell me, how’s that working out for the towers full of empty offices?”

Elliot blinked.

Solomon tapped his cane against the floor. “Look around. The world don’t move like it did fifty years ago. People don’t work like they did fifty years ago. You think glass and steel impress anyone anymore? A hundred million square feet of dead air? That’s not a city—it’s a graveyard.”

Elliot glanced back at the skyline, his gaze catching on buildings he had always admired. He saw them differently now.

“The spaces people want,” Solomon continued, “are the ones that give something back. The High Line—an old rail track, turned into a place where people walk. Little Island—built over the water, curves, no hard edges, no grid to keep you locked in. The Guggenheim—you ever notice how it moves with you? That spiral draws you in, makes you a part of it. Those buildings invite life. They breathe.”

Elliot exhaled, his arms uncrossing. “You’re saying my design doesn’t.”

“I’m saying if you’re trying to build for the future, you can’t build for the past.” Solomon leaned in slightly. “So what’s it gonna be, Van Alen? A monument to yourself? Or something people will actually live in?”

Elliot stared at the blueprint on the table. He had been so focused on making a statement, he hadn’t considered whether his building would listen—whether it would adapt, shift, invite movement instead of imposing it.

For the first time, he wasn’t entirely sure the building had come from him at all.

Elliot had grown up under the long shadow of his name. Van Alen. It carried weight, history, expectation. It was inked into the bones of New York itself, carved into the ribs of the Chrysler Building, the gleaming spire that stood defiant among the city’s giants. His granduncle, William Van Alen, had dreamed it into being—a cathedral of modernity, an Art Deco exclamation point piercing the sky.

And then, nothing.

William had never built again.

A lawsuit was filed against Walter Chrysler—a dispute over fees. The greatest triumph of Van Alen’s career had been followed by silence, by decades of invisibility. It was the kind of story that should have been a cautionary tale, a reminder that even the most audacious visionaries could be discarded by the city they sought to define.

But for Elliot, it had always been a haunting.

He had spent years telling himself that he was different. That his work would not be reduced to a single masterpiece. That he would not be forgotten.

“It has to be different,” he told Solomon one evening. “Not just taller. Not just shinier.”

Solomon tapped his fingers idly against the hardwood of his chair’s armrest. “Then what does it need to be?”

Elliot exhaled, rubbing his forehead. “It has to move.”

Solomon smiled. “Ah. You’re starting to understand.”

“I don’t mean literally,” Elliot said quickly, though part of him wasn’t sure. “I mean… buildings today, they’re all rigid, predictable. Boxes stacked on boxes. This one—it should feel alive. Like it’s part of the city’s breath, not just a monument to someone’s ego.”

Solomon tilted his head, as if listening to something just out of reach. “And what will they say about you when it’s done?”

Elliot hesitated. “That I didn’t just build another tower.” He looked down at his hands. “That I changed the skyline.”

“The skyline,” Solomon murmured. “A second horizon. A man-made constellation.” He leaned back, his blind eyes unfocused. “You ever think about how buildings outlast their creators? How a man can spend his whole life shaping the world around him, but in the end, the world moves on without him?”

Elliot thought of William Van Alen, of the Chrysler Building still standing, gleaming in the afternoon light, while its architect had been forgotten, reduced to footnotes and trivia.

“Every architect thinks about that,” Elliot admitted.

Solomon nodded. “Then the real question is: does it matter?”

Just before leaving Elliot’s apartment for the night, Solomon stopped by the door and put a firm hand on Elliot’s shoulder. His touch was light but unmistakably steady, the kind of grip that didn’t ask for permission.

“I’d like you to take a walk with me.”

“A walk?”

“From point A to point B,” Solomon said. “We’ll start at sunrise and finish by sunset.”

Elliot frowned. “Where?”

“From the bottom of Manhattan to the top. Battery Park to Inwood.”

Elliot let out a short laugh, leaning back in his chair. “Yeah, that’s not happening. I’ve got meetings tomorrow.”

“Cancel them,” Solomon said, his voice light, but not joking.

Elliot shook his head. “I don’t have time for some—some pilgrimage. If you have ideas for the building, just tell me.”

Solomon tilted his head, as if listening to something just out of reach. “Ideas,” he repeated, amused. “That’s what you think this is about?”

Elliot’s irritation flared. “That’s what you said it was about.”

Solomon faced him fully now. “How do you plan to design something for this city when you don’t even know what it is?”

Elliot’s frown deepened. “I know the city.”

Solomon smirked. “No. You see the city. Through windows, from penthouse parties, from the back of a cab. That’s not knowing. That’s glancing.”

Elliot said nothing, because it was mostly true.

“You want to build something that belongs to the skyline?” Solomon continued. “Then you need to understand what it stands on. The streets, the people, the rhythm of it all. You need to feel it under your feet. Like I do.” He tapped his cane lightly against the hardwood.

Elliot exhaled sharply, shaking his head. “And you think walking the whole damn island will give me that?”

Solomon took a step closer. “I think the reason you’re resisting so hard is because you’re afraid you’ve never actually known the place you claim to love.”

That stung.

“You ever hear of Helen Keller? Of course you have. Blind, deaf, and dumb. And yet, she could tell the Brooklyn Bridge from the Queensborough just by standing on them. You know what she said about skyscrapers?”

Elliot shook his head.

“She called them fairy palaces at dawn. Imagine that. A woman who never saw light, never heard the hum of the city, describing the skyline like something out of myth. Because she felt them. She understood the weight of them, the way they stood against the sky, how the world shifted around them.” Solomon turned his head slightly. “And you, a man with sight, can only tell me about numbers. Heights. Materials. Ideas.”

Elliot stared at him, feeling his pulse quicken in that uncomfortable way Solomon had a habit of provoking. The man was always a step ahead, always peeling away the layers Elliot didn’t realize he had wrapped around himself.

“Where did you say—Battery Park?”

“Battery Park to Inwood,” Solomon said. “We stop along the way. You listen, you learn, and maybe—just maybe—you start to hear what the city is trying to tell you.” He let a small, knowing smile tug at the corner of his mouth. “By the way, those Italian shoes you got on aren’t gonna make it. And don’t ask me how I know they Italian. A player like you don’t wear less.”

Elliot looked down at his polished dress shoes, then back at the skyline beyond the window.

“Fine,” he muttered. “Let’s walk.”

Solomon nodded as if he had expected no other answer, then turned to leave.

Elliot surprised himself by stopping him. “Wait.”

Solomon paused, tilting his head slightly.

“Stay,” Elliot said. He didn’t know why he said it, but once the word was out, it felt right.

Solomon was silent for a moment. Then, with an almost imperceptible nod, he set his cane against the wall. “Alright. But you don’t have to do this.”

Elliot gestured toward the second bedroom down the hall. “I know. But I got a guest room and I never have a guest.”

Solomon smiled, that same unreadable expression. “Luxury accommodations? You know, I can get used to that, Elliot.”

Elliot poured himself another whiskey and muttered, “You may know the layout of the city, but not this apartment. Let me show you the way.”

As Elliot guided him, Solomon let his fingers drift along the hallway wall, lightly skimming the paint, the wood—mapping the space through touch alone.

“Good bones,” Solomon murmured. “Oh, I’m an early riser.”

“So am I. 5 AM. Good night.”

Elliot, sipping his drink, watched Solomon disappear into the room.

Tomorrow, they would walk the city together.

And Elliot wasn’t sure who would be leading whom.

end of part two

© 2025 Michael Arturo

“Skyline” will return in two weeks with Part 3

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Welcome to Michael’s Newsletter. Writer of contemporary political/social commentary, parodies, parables, satire. Michael was born and raised in New York City and has a background in theater and film. His plays have been staged in New York, London, Boston, and Los Angeles.

Michael also writes short literary fiction. Below is a link to his first collection.

FLATIRON and other tall tales

Other stories …

(“Skyline” was a Top in Fiction’s selection for the month of February, 2025)

Elliot Van Alen leaned against the window of his Park Avenue apartment; his forehead pressed to the cold glass. Fifty-four stories below, the city churned—a grid of relentless motion, lights flickering like neurons firing in the collective brain of Manhattan.

But tonight, the view offered no solace. Where he once saw triumphs of steel and ambition, he now saw a fractured landscape, its gleaming towers reduced to crumbling blocks in his mind. His thoughts were fixated on the building he’d spent the last year designing, a sleek, modern tower meant to crown the Midtown skyline. It had been rejected that morning, dismissed with a single, devastating word.

“Derivative,” the client had said, his voice thin with the brittle authority of disappointment. “We wanted something timeless, and this… well, it just isn’t it.”

Elliot hadn’t argued. He’d learned there was no point. Once the industry branded you a has-been, you became invisible—your ideas, no matter how bold or beautiful, drowned out by the hum of younger voices. At forty-three, he was in freefall; his last two projects were scrapped, and his name was whispered with pity at gala dinners.

He closed his eyes and tried to summon a sense of direction, but his thoughts spiraled instead, circling the same nagging truth: maybe they were right. Maybe his best ideas were behind him.

That was when he found Solomon—hunched by the subway grate across the street. He was wrapped in a battered coat; his head tilted slightly upward as though he were listening to the city.

Elliot didn’t know what made him go down there. He didn’t have a history of gestures like that and didn’t drop coins in guitar cases or pause at the sight of cardboard signs. But something about the man held him. Perhaps it was the contrast between his blind eyes, clouded and searching, and the oddly serene expression on his face.

“You need help?” Elliot asked, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his overcoat.

Solomon turned his head slightly. “Don’t we all?”

Elliot laughed, a sharp, tired sound. “Fair enough. I’m serious, though. What do you need?”

“Coffee would be nice.” Soloman’s voice was gravelly, but there was a lilt to it, almost like a song.

They ended up at the diner around the corner, seated across from each other in a booth. Elliot ordered pancakes and eggs for the man, who introduced himself as Solomon. The name suited him, Elliot thought, regal and ancient.

“You live around here?” Solomon asked, running his fingers lightly over the rim of his coffee cup.

“Park Avenue,” Elliot said, then immediately regretted it. Solomon gave a low chuckle.

“Must be nice,” he said.

“It’s alright,” Elliot replied. He felt ridiculous, sitting in his tailored coat, trying to converse with someone whose life he couldn’t begin to imagine.

But then Solomon said something that stopped him.

“This city,” he murmured, “it’s always talking if you know how to listen. The hum of it, the way the sounds stack on each other, like a rhythm. It’s all structure, you know? A kind of architecture.”

Elliot stared at him. “Architecture,” he repeated.

“Sure. Everything has a shape. Even sound.” Solomon tapped his fingers against the table's edge, a staccato beat. “I might be blind but I can see. If you know what I mean,” Solomon chuckled.

Elliot shifted on his seat, and Solomon sat quietly for the moment, his blind eyes still and unblinking, the faintest hint of a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

“Elliot Van Alen,” Solomon said, as though tasting the name. “That’s you, right?”

Elliot’s brow furrowed. “That’s right,” he said cautiously. “How did you know?”

“You told me,” Solomon replied.

Elliot blinked, searching his memory. “I don’t recall telling you.”

“Maybe you didn’t,” Solomon said, shrugging. “Maybe you did. Doesn’t matter.” He leaned back slightly, tilting his head. “Reason I ask is… you’re not related to the Van Alen who designed the Chrysler Building, are you?”

The air between them seemed to thicken, the question landing with a weight Elliot hadn’t expected. He leaned forward slightly, his voice low. “As a matter of fact, I am. William Van Alen was my granduncle. How did you know that?”

Solomon chuckled softly, his fingers idly tracing the edge of his coffee cup. “Everyone knows about William Van Alen. He’s a piece of the skyline. People like me, we don’t forget that kind of thing.”

“People like you?”

“People who pay attention,” Solomon said simply. “It’s all still up there, you know. The Empire State, the Chrysler, the bridges. They don’t just belong to the city; they belong to time itself. You ever think about that? The weight of it, carrying a name like Van Alen?”

Elliot’s mouth went dry. The question struck somewhere deeper than he cared to admit. He nodded stiffly. “I’ve thought about it.”

“Of course you have,” Solomon said, his smile widening just enough to unsettle. “It’s in your blood, after all. You can’t escape it, no matter how much you try.”

Elliot stared at him, the man’s words curling like smoke in his mind. “You seem to know a lot about me for someone I just met,” he said finally, his tone sharper than he intended.

“Do I?” Solomon said. “Or maybe you’re just surprised by how much of yourself you’ve given away without noticing.” He paused, letting the thought linger. “That’s the thing about names like Van Alen. They carry a lot of weight, but they’re not exactly subtle. It’s like walking around with a neon sign over your head.”

Elliot couldn’t decide whether to laugh or get up and leave. But something about Solomon, something in his deliberate calm, held him in place. “You’re an unusual guy,” Elliot said, leaning back in his chair.

“Maybe,” Solomon replied. He gestured toward the window, where the city lights blurred into streaks against the glass. “But this place? This city? It’s full of unusual people. You don’t survive here otherwise.”

Elliot studied the man, the lines etched into his face, the odd serenity in his voice. He still couldn’t explain why he’d stopped to talk to him, why he was still sitting here, and yet…

“You want to come up? Hang out, talk a bit?” Elliot heard himself say.

Solomon cocked his head slightly, as though considering. “Park Avenue? Damn!”

Elliot nodded, his voice quieter now. “Why not?”

For a moment, Solomon didn’t move, and Elliot thought he’d refuse. But then Solomon stood, sliding his chair back with a faint scrape.

“Alright,” Solomon said. “Lead the way.”

Elliot dropped a twenty on the table and rose to his feet, his pulse quickening as they stepped out into the cool night air. He told himself it was nothing, just a strange, impulsive decision to indulge a blind man’s curiosity. But deep down, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was stepping into something much larger than himself—a vortex he couldn’t see, but that was already pulling him in.

Solomon moved cautiously about Elliot’s apartment, his fingers grazing surfaces as though reading them like Braille. He stopped at a framed piece hanging low on the wall and tilted his head.

“What’s this one?” he asked.

Elliot glanced over. “That’s Basquiat,” he said. “From his ‘SAMO’ days.”

“Basquiat.” Solomon repeated the name slowly, tasting it. “I like that. Young Brooklyn boy, right? Didn’t make it to thirty.”

Elliot nodded reflexively, then remembered and said, “Yeah. He was part of the whole ‘80s downtown scene. You know, Warhol, Keith Haring… it was chaos, but brilliant chaos. The city felt alive then. Like anything was possible.”

Solomon smiled faintly. “That’s why I came here. 1984. Back when this city still had dirt under its nails. You could smell the struggle, and the ambition.”

Elliot looked at him, intrigued. “What did you come here for?”

Solomon traced the edge of a shelf with his hand. “Music,” he said simply. “Classical, mostly. I was a pianist, back then.”

“You were?”

“Not a great one,” Solomon admitted. “But good enough to get by. I’d play gigs in little cafes and hotel lobbies, pick up session work here and there. At night, I’d go out, wander the clubs, meet people. Women.” He laughed, a low, rich sound. “There were always women.”

“Sounds like quite a life,” Elliot said.

“It was,” Solomon said, and his voice softened. He moved to the window, standing close to the glass, though his unseeing eyes stared past the city lights. “Then I lost it.”

Elliot hesitated. “How?”

Solomon leaned his forehead against the glass, as though he could feel the pulse of the city through it. “Detachment of the retina,” he said. “It started in one eye, then the other. By the time I saw a doctor, it was too late to save either. I was twenty-nine.”

Elliot felt the weight of it settle between them. “I’m sorry,” he said finally.

Solomon shrugged. “Life doesn’t care if you’re sorry.” He paused, then turned, his cloudy eyes seeming to fix on Elliot. “You ever think about what it means to lose something you love? Not just to misplace it, but to have it ripped away? Something that’s part of you?”

Elliot thought of the skyscraper that had been rejected that morning, of the hollow ache it left in his chest. But he knew better than to compare. “I’m not sure,” he admitted.

“I think about it all the time,” Solomon said. “Losing my sight meant losing the piano, losing music. I’d spent my whole life believing music was my purpose. And then, just like that…” He snapped his fingers. “Gone. I didn’t know who I was anymore. I could have learned to play blind, I suppose. But I didn’t want that. That’s the thing about losing something—it forces you to look for something else. Or someone else.”

Solomon turned toward the floor-to-ceiling window, his movements deliberate, as though he were conserving energy for something that mattered. “Mind if I check out the view from up here?” he asked. “A man of my means doesn’t get to the 54th floor very often.”

"Of course,” Elliot said, stepping closer to him. “I’ll help you. We’re looking at the best view in the city. Midtown right at our feet, Downtown further on. You can see all the way —”

“Lady Liberty in the harbor?” Solomon interrupted.

“Yes,” Elliot replied, smiling.

“Hold on,” Solomon tilted his head slightly as though listening to the skyline itself. “Let me help you. The Empire State Building should be… right about there. And over to the west…the Hudson Yards. You’ve got those new glass-and-steel giants like someone dropped ice cubes into the skyline.”

Elliot stepped closer, watching him intently.

“Your granduncle’s Chrysler Building’s further over, east side, of course. You can’t miss the spire. Stroke of genius, if you ask me. You’ve got Grand Central tucked down there, don’t you? Those train tracks running like veins under the skin of the city.”

Elliot stared at him, amazed. “How… how are you doing this? You can’t see any of it.”

“But I’ve got the map right here.” Solomon said, tapping the side of his head with two fingers. “When you’ve lived in this city long enough, it gets inside you. You know the rhythm of the streets, the way things fit together. I might not see the skyline, but I’ve walked through it a thousand times. The Empire State on 34th, Chrysler a little higher up. You go west, you hit the Hudson; east, the river and the bridges. It’s all there.”

Elliot shook his head, impressed. “Still. That’s uncanny. You’ve got the layout memorized.”

“Not memorized,” Solomon corrected. “It’s… felt. You don’t need eyes to know this city. You just have to listen to it, feel its pulse. The way the wind shifts—it’s not random, you know. It’s channeled between the buildings. The city talks to you if you let it.”

Elliot turned back to the window, looking out at the glittering expanse of Manhattan. For all the hours he’d spent staring at this view, he realized he’d never seen it the way Solomon described it: not just as a collection of towers and lights, but as something alive, breathing, stitched together by invisible threads.

“You architects build the skeletons, but the city fills them in—people, sound, stories. It’s never really yours, you know.”

Elliot looked at Solomon again, trying to imagine what it was like to navigate the world without sight, relying only on memory, intuition, and sound. He felt a pang of something he couldn’t name—admiration, maybe, or envy.

“You really don’t miss a thing, do you?” Elliot said.

“Tell me now. That building your client told you was trash. Describe it to me. I’ll help you redesign it.”

Elliot leaned against the dining table, staring at the blind man who had somehow slipped into his life and now sat before him, speaking with the quiet confidence of someone who knew things Elliot couldn’t begin to grasp. The absurdity of it struck him like a jolt—what kind of architect takes advice from a stranger who can’t even see? And yet, there was something about Solomon, about the deliberate way he spoke, his words like measured steps on uneven ground.

Elliot opened his mouth to protest, to brush off the offer as ridiculous, but the words wouldn’t come. Instead, he felt an odd pull, the same sensation that had made him stop on the street earlier that day, the same strange gravity that had brought Solomon into his apartment. Who was this man, really? A drifter? A relic of some forgotten version of New York? Or something else entirely?

“I don’t even know why I told you all that,” Elliot said finally, his voice low.

Solomon smiled faintly, his clouded eyes fixed on some unseen point beyond the room. “Maybe you’re tired of hearing your own excuses,” he said. “Now, tell me about the building. What did you want it to be before you let them talk you out of it?”

end of part one

© Michael Arturo, 2025

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Support by hitting the like button or leaving a comment.

Welcome to Michael’s Newsletter. Writer of contemporary political/social commentary, parodies, parables, satire. Michael was born and raised in New York City and has a background in theater and film. His plays have been staged in New York, London, Boston, and Los Angeles.

Michael also writes short literary fiction. Below is a link to his first collection.

FLATIRON and other tall tales

“‘Crosstown"

6:42 AMGreta Van der Linden wakes to the sound of music. His music.Thelonious Monk, drifting up through the floorboards from 4B. The notes coil into her dreams, pulling her out of sleep like a slow, insistent hand at the nape of her neck.

She stretches, the silk sheets cold against her bare legs. Outside, the February wind howls down Beekman Place, rattling against the generous windows of her brownstone apartment.

Frederick never wakes this early. Which means—someone else must be there.

She closes her eyes, listens. No voices. No laughter. But that means nothing.

She rolls onto her side, willing herself back into oblivion. She cannot start the day like this.

But the seed has been planted.

—

8:23 AMIn the lobby, they pass one another.

He is stepping out, fastening his coat, that damn smirk already on his lips. "Miss Van der Linden," he murmurs, the mock formality curling around her name like smoke.

She tilts her head. "Frederick."

He does not stop walking, does not turn back. Just disappears out the door and into the city, leaving her standing there, hands tightening around her leather gloves.

Once, he would have kissed her cheek in greeting. Once, he would have brushed a strand of auburn hair from her face, whispering things he never meant.

That was before.

Before the doubts. Before the nights she lay awake listening to him entertaining someone else. Before she convinced herself she could live with the uncertainty.

Before she knew what he truly was.

—

3:17 PMThe tenant meeting is a tedious affair. The building is old, elegant, but crumbling at its edges. The staircase—a grand, sweeping thing of polished oak—has begun to loosen. The railing wobbles under a firm grip.

Mrs. Leland from 2A complains, her voice reedy and anxious. "It’s a hazard. Someone’s going to get hurt."

Frederick, lounging in a chair, exhales cigarette smoke and shrugs. "Then don’t lean so hard."

A chuckle ripples through the room. Not everyone laughs. Greta does not.

She studies him. The carelessness. The indifference. The way he dismisses real concerns because none of this touches him. He is untouchable. Untamed. Unconcerned with the consequences of his actions.

A thought stirs in her mind.

Quiet. Seductive.

What if he wasn’t untouchable?

—

6:42 PMThe envelope. Slipped under her door, like a secret meant to wound.

She lifts it with two fingers, already knowing.

His handwriting. F.

She unfolds the card. Cream-colored. Embossed.

Happy Valentine’s, darling.

No signature.

Just an address. A time. 9:00 PM. The St. Regis.

She presses the card to her lips. Why?

A reconciliation? A confession? A proposal?

Or a final, deliberate cruelty?

She already knows the answer.

—

8:58 PMShe glides through the gilded halls of the St. Regis, past chandeliers dripping with light, past men who stare and women who whisper.

She sees him.

Frederick.

Whiskey in hand, laughing in that slow, easy way. And beside him—her.

The red lips. The gardenia perfume.

The woman who was never supposed to matter.

The woman who is still here.

Greta does not react. She does not throw the drink she orders. She does not break the delicate glass stem in her hands.

She only watches. Watches Frederick lean close, whisper in the woman’s ear. Watches his hand trace along her wrist, the way it once traced Greta’s.

She leaves before he sees her.

—

10:12 PMBeekman Place is silent.

Greta reaches her door. Pauses. Turns. Looks up.

A single light burning in 4B.

She steps inside, unbuttons her coat, pours herself a drink.

The card from Frederick flickers in the fire.

The ache in her bones turns to something else.

Resolve.

—

11:47 PMShe descends the stairs, slow, careful. The old wood creaks beneath her feet, the polished banister cool beneath her gloved hand.

She crouches. Works quickly.

A small adjustment. A loosening.

It will not break. Not immediately. But the next person to descend in a rush, unthinking, perhaps a little drunk—they will falter.

She returns to her apartment. Waits.

—

12:06 AMLaughter. The jangle of keys.

Frederick and his Valentine.

Footsteps on the stairs. A sudden shift in rhythm.

A snap.

A sharp crack of wood.

A sharp, tumbling fall.

A scream.

Then—silence.

—

12:09 AMGreta Vanderlinden takes a slow sip of whiskey, staring out the window.

Did it happen?

Did she imagine it?

She does not check.

She simply listens to the February wind, howling its approval through the streets of Beekman Place.

© Michael Arturo, 2025

If you enjoy the content and would like to buy me a coffee

other stories

Welcome to Michael’s Newsletter. Writer of contemporary political/social commentary, parodies, parables, satire. Michael was born and raised in New York City and has a background in theater and film. His plays have been staged in New York, London, Boston, and Los Angeles.

Michael also writes short literary fiction. Below is a link to his first collection.

FLATIRON and other tall tales

Back in his cluttered office, Giordano propped his feet up on his desk, greeted by the unexpected sight of his name plastered across the afternoon paper. Yet, to his dismay, the article painted him as a bumbling fool, courtesy of the sensationalism typical of yellow journalism. According to the piece, the democratization of literature—where books transitioned from exclusive hardcovers to accessible paperbacks—spelled doom for storytelling. It was a stark departure from Gutenberg’s vision, marking a demise foretold by the proliferation of literature in all corners of society. However, amidst the ashes of storytelling’s demise, the article argued, truth in journalism stood as a beacon of integrity and reliability.

Suddenly, the door to his office swung open, and in walked a woman who made Giordano do an immediate double-take. Her name was Dolores Weingarten. She was a woman who could make even a seasoned detective like Philly Giordano go silly and lose his train of thought. A red-headed siren with sea-green eyes that held secrets deeper than the East River and were just as polluted. She had an alluring presence that could make a weak man even weaker. But that’s not all. Her legs seemed to stretch on forever, and her derriere—well, let’s say it was hard not to notice. Giordano couldn’t help but drool and sweat bullets like a schoolboy with an insatiable crush on his home economics teacher.

“Detective Giordano, I presume,” she hushed.

“Yes, at your uh service, Madam. What can I do for you?”

“I’m the widow of late great Harold Weingarten.”

“The famous novelist?”

Her ex, it turns out, was a hard-drinking Pulitzer prize-winning novelist with a penchant for self-destruction. Harold Weingarten took a fatal plunge off the Brooklyn Bridge just a month prior. He was the talk of every literary circle in town but led a hard-scrabbled life accompanied by a seething temper, a virtual swirling vortex of talent and torment.

A week or two before his untimely exit, he returned home to their Gramercy Park brownstone in a drunken stupor, his words slurred but his intentions clear. He threw Dolores down on the bed, which set her off. Not that she didn’t like it rough, but the kinky stuff was on her terms and her terms alone.

“You wanna know the truth about fiction, Dolores?!” he shouted in a fit of rage. “It’s all a damn lie! For centuries, writers have been covering it up! Everyone from Shakespeare to Hemingway. From Euripedes to Norman Mailer! They were all in on it! Literature? It’s all a bunch of hogwash! Atticus Finch, Madam Bovary, Captain Ahab, Lady Macbeth, and The Mad Hatter! None of them were real! It’s about time someone did something about it!”

The words echoed in Giordano’s mind as he sat across from Dolores in his office, the air thick with the scent of old books and lingering questions. Could her ex’s mad ramblings hold a clue to who killed storytelling? Was he a victim or a perpetrator in this literary homicide? And what role did Dolores play in this intricate cat-and-mouse game?

Giordano looked into her sea-green eyes, searching for a sign, a glimmer of truth in a world drowning in lies. And as he did, he realized that the answer lay not in what was said but in what was left unsaid—in the spaces between words, in the margins of the text, in the silent depths of a gaze.

At that moment, Giordano understood that storytelling was not just an act of creation but also an act of revelation—a mirror that reflected what we wanted and needed to see. And as he delved deeper, he found himself investigating the death of storytelling and its rebirth and resurrection from the ashes of cynicism and despair.

With her enigmatic beauty and tragic past, Dolores was both a muse and a mystery, a key to a lock he had yet to find. And as he unraveled the threads of her story, Giordano discovered that the line between fiction and reality was not a boundary but a bridge. This bridge led to the heart of the human condition, to the essence of what it means to live, love, and tell a tale worth telling.

And so, in a city of endless noise, Detective Giordano found a story that spoke in whispers, a narrative that defied easy answers but demanded to be heard. It was a story that reminded him why he became a detective in the first place—not just to solve crimes but to shine a light on the essence of the soul and the darkest corners of the human psyche.

As Dolores sashayed out of his office, her perfume lingering like the faintest echo of a siren’s goodbye, Giordano leaned back in his chair. The city outside his window pulsed with its usual rhythm, horns blaring, engines growling, lives unraveling. But something was different now. The case wasn’t closed, but his resolve was sealed tighter than a paperback on a dusty shelf. The death of storytelling wasn’t inevitable, no matter how many villains had conspired to choke the life out of it. Stories—real stories—were messy, flawed, and unruly, much like the city he called home. And just like New York, they refused to die.

But irony, that sly devil, had one more trick in store. Chief Schmidt, the man Giordano had trusted to shepherd the investigation, had sold the case for a mere hundred dollars—a “tell-all” book deal that would tell nothing. The chief’s silence had been bought, his pen turned against the cause, leaving Giordano to shoulder the weight of the truth alone. Giordano could see the bitter humor of it all. A book, a supposed vessel of revelation, transformed into a tomb for the narrative it claimed to illuminate. Yet this betrayal only steeled him further. If storytelling was to be saved, it couldn’t be bought, bribed, or buried. It had to fight its way back, tooth and nail, word by word.

With this knowledge, Giordano returned to his typewriter, where a blank sheet of paper sat waiting like a challenge. But as he began his slow revival of the written word, life found a way to interrupt—life, in the form of Jane.

It had been years since they’d shared cigarettes and stolen kisses in dim Greenwich Village cafes. Back then, she’d been the muse to his ambitions, an idealist who believed words could shake the world. But time had weathered them both, the idealism giving way to something quieter, steadier. Jane had resurfaced one night at a poetry reading, her eyes alight with the same spark that once drew him in. Over coffee, she spoke of her own disillusionment—how the world had drowned her stories in deadlines and marketability. Yet here they were again, back in each other’s orbit, two wounded storytellers circling the same flame.

Now, Jane sat across from him at the office desk, her presence grounding him as he worked through drafts. She teased him for his habit of quoting dead authors mid-sentence and laughed when he growled at a jammed typewriter key. They were two imperfect people trying to rewrite a story that had once ended too soon. And in the flicker of her smile, Giordano saw something he hadn’t felt in years: hope, not just for storytelling but for himself.

As the night deepened, the city lights painting the room in streaks of amber and gray, Giordano typed with purpose. The ghosts of Faulkner, Thoreau, Steinbeck, and the rest loomed over him from the shelves, their voices whispering through the ink-stained air. He wrote not as a detective solving a case but as a witness testifying to the resilience of humanity. He wrote of villains who sought to destroy, of heroes who refused to yield, and of a love that rekindled even in the darkest hours. The words came fast, raw and imperfect, but alive. Every keystroke felt like a small rebellion against the creeping void.

Then came the revelation. In the quiet hum of the typewriter, Giordano understood what had eluded him all along. The killer he sought wasn’t a person, a corporation, or even a machine—it was an idea, a corrosive notion that stories no longer mattered. The only way to defeat it was with a better idea, a narrative strong enough to remind the world why storytelling was vital, why it bound humanity together across time and space.

His sanctuary became a battleground, the typewriter his weapon. He struck keys like blows against complacency, crafting a story that dared to confront the forces of silence and stagnation. And through the haze of effort and exhaustion, Jane became his steadying force, her quiet presence reminding him that storytelling wasn’t just about heroes and villains. It was about connection. It was about love. It was about finding the threads that tied one soul to another and weaving them into something greater.

As dawn broke over the city, Giordano sat back and surveyed the pages before him. It wasn’t perfect, but it was alive. The story—his story—was ready to be told.

In the days that followed, Giordano’s work began to ripple out into the world. It wasn’t just his words that rekindled the flame but the spirit behind them. Others, inspired by his defiance, began to pick up their pens and pound their keyboards. Stories began to flow again, defying the algorithms and market trends that had sought to silence them. The Minotaur that threatened to devour storytelling wasn’t slain in a single stroke but weakened, forced back into the shadows by the light of collective creativity.

And as for Giordano and Jane, their story continued, an imperfect romance in a world of imperfection. Together, they walked the streets of the city that never slept, trading lines of poetry and prose like promises. They didn’t need to solve every mystery or conquer every foe. They only needed to keep telling the story, to keep the flame alive.

In the end, Giordano realized that storytelling was not dead; it had only been sleeping, waiting for someone brave—or foolish—enough to wake it. The pen, after all, was not just mightier than the sword. It was a beacon, a weapon, and a lifeline. And as long as there were people willing to wield it, the world would never go dark.

The End

© Michael Arturo 2025

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Welcome to Michael’s Newsletter. Writer of contemporary political/social commentary, parodies, parables, satire. Michael was born and raised in New York City and has a background in theater and film. His plays have been staged in New York, London, Boston, and Los Angeles.

Other stories …

Giordano returned home to his precinct; he told Chief Schmidt his trip was eye-opening, but he still needed solid leads. The Chief advised him to keep plugging. Giordano was not one to give up easily. He returned to his office and did what any hard-boiled detective in his shoes would do—brewed himself a pot of hot coffee. And even though he had preground the beans before he left, and they had gone stale in his absence, it didn’t matter; stale coffee was merely a bitter reminder of the arduous task ahead.

Giordano determined he couldn’t do it alone; he needed allies, fellow travelers who understood that the essence of storytelling was the human connection, the sacred contract between the writer and the reader. He reached for his antiquated rotary phone and dialed a number of some contacts he made during his time at NYU in Greenwich Village—a network of intellectuals, writers, poets, musicians, critics, philosophers, and espresso drinkers who still believed in the power of the written word.

Giordano got New York’s foremost intellectual, Norm Minsky, on the line. No one remembered how he came by the title of New York’s foremost intellectual; everyone just agreed he was.

“Professor Minsky, it’s Detective Philly Giordano. We’ve got a killer on the loose. Storytelling is dead. It may be an individual, but more likely, an underworld organization bent on stigmatizing an entire generation. You guys know the ins and outs. What have you heard?”

“Nonfiction is the new fiction, Detective,” Minsky said, his voice tinged with a gravitas that belied his years. “Where have you been? That and history’s been rewritten. It may have been full of lies in the first place. And there ain’t even nothing you or anyone else can do about it. Oh, and get yourself an iPhone like everyone else has. ’Cause no one reads anything but their social media feeds.”

As he hung up the phone, Giordano felt a strange despair. “There ain’t even nothing you or anyone else can do about it?” Even proper English looked like it was doomed. If they could dumb down a towering intellectual like Norm Minsky, who knows where they would stop? Giordano thought the battle ahead was genuinely daunting, but it was a battle worth fighting. Ultimately, what was at stake was not just the future of literature but intellectual expression and the soul of humanity. If nonfiction is the new fiction, Giordano contemplated, what becomes of storytelling? What happens to the grand tapestry of human imagination, woven over millennia by poets, playwrights, and novelists?

The answer, he realized, is both unsettling and liberating. In a world where reality often outpaced the wildest flights of imagination, where the headlines read like dystopian novels and social media feeds resembled postmodern pastiches, nonfiction had become the arena where the human drama unfolds in all its messy complexity. It’s where the existential dilemmas of our time—identity, truth, power—are played out in real time, with real stakes.

Chief Schimdt called Philly into his office. “We got a tip from an informant. Name’s Percival Maddox, jazz musician; he did some time at Rikers on a heroin rap and says he might know something.”

“Percival Maddox? Plays the sax?”

“You know him?”

“Sure, I’ve heard of him. Used to make the rounds on the circuit.”

“Be-bop?”

“Nah, it was more syncopation. Experimental.”

“That’s the trouble with the world today. Everyone’s experimenting. Anyway, I don’t know what he knows, but …”

“I’ll track him down, Chief.”

“You won’t have to. I got his address.”

The address Schmidt gave Giordano led him to a nightclub on West Third Street called the Village Purple Onion. The joint was owned by Mike and Joe, brothers whom Giordano used to pal around with after Sunday Mass at Our Lady of Pompeii.

“Long time no see, Philly,” Mike said, answering the club door.

“How’s Joe doin’?” Giordano replied, shaking Mike’s hand.

“He’s in debt as always. I hear you’re a big-shot detective these days.”

“Pays the bills. I’m here to talk to Percival.”

“Sure, he’s in the back.”

Percival Maddox had fallen on hard times since his release from Rikers; he couldn’t find work other than mopping floors and washing dishes. He was a sweetheart of a man who spoke with a smoky drawl from down New Orleans, where he learned to play the saxophone with the best jazz ensembles anywhere. He came to New York to cut a record and make it big before it all came tumbling down.

“I know who kilt storytellin’,” Percival started, “the same sonavabitches who kilt jazz. That’s right! You wanna talk about the most innovative, fluid, spontaneous, and combustible music ever conceived on God’s green Earth? Life at its core is improvisational, such as jazz! Charlie Parker, Coltrane, Bird, Monk, Lester Young! What we got now? Folk ballads? Man, that ain’t music! Sound like a bunch’a cry babies crawled up in a fetal position moanin’ to they mamas! See, the world ain’t no place for the avant-garde. That’s why they kilt jazz!”

“Who did it?” Giordano pleaded.

“Everyone. They all complicit! You wanna find who kilt storytellin’, you start right dere, Mister!” Percival sobbed.

Giordano took a moment to process the weight of Maddox’s lament. It wasn’t just one killer—it was death by a thousand compromises. Maddox looked at the Detective with hollow eyes. “There’s a place, though. A place where real storytellin’ still breathes—barely. But I’m warnin’ ya, man—it’s dangerous.”

Maddox scrawled an address on a napkin: Lower East Side—The Written Word Speakeasy.

The Written Word Speakeasy was housed in a decaying brownstone down on the Bowery, its unassuming exterior masking a sanctum dedicated to literature. Inside, the air was thick with pipe smoke and prose. Shelves lined the walls, holding volumes by Steinbeck, Faulkner, and Fitzgerald. Jazz played softly from an antique record player. Giordano felt as though he’d stumbled into Eden after the Fall.

The speakeasy’s patrons, a mix of literary purists and revolutionaries, murmured in reverent tones. A man in wire-rimmed glasses quoted The Great Gatsby: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness.”

Giordano surveyed the scene. It was a haven—but also a target.

That’s when he heard it—the metallic click of a timer.

“Get out!” he shouted, instinct firing before reason could catch up.

The explosion ripped through the room, sending shelves, pages, and people flying. Fitzgerald’s words disintegrated into ash. The scent of burning leather and paper filled the air. Giordano dragged a coughing poet toward the exit as flames consumed the works of genius.

Once outside, he collapsed on the pavement, coughing up dust and dread. In the distance, sirens wailed, impotent against the inferno. The speakeasy—the last bastion of pure storytelling—was gone.

Giordano took off in the direction of the nearest train, his trench coat billowing like a war-torn flag in retreat. As he pushed past rubberneckers craning their necks to get a glimpse of the speakeasy’s wreckage, a pair of uniformed cops intercepted him near the edge of the caution tape.

"Detective, what the hell happened in there?" one of them asked, his voice taut with shock.

Giordano pulled a cigarette from his pocket, lit it with shaking fingers, and took a long drag. "What happened?" he repeated bitterly. "Somebody decided storytelling wasn’t just obsolete—it was dangerous. And they’re not content to kill it quietly."

The officer scribbled something in his notepad, but Giordano wasn’t in the mood to educate the city’s finest on the stakes of cultural warfare. "Write this down," he said flatly. "Start looking for who benefits when people stop reading. Follow the paper trails. Somebody’s funding this crusade against imagination."

The officer exchanged a worried glance with his partner, but Giordano didn’t wait for a response. He tossed the cigarette to the curb, and continued toward the subway entrance. He passed a nearby newsstand, grabbed an afternoon paper, and dropped a crumpled bill on the counter without waiting for change.

The flight of stairs leading to the subway seemed longer than usual. Giordano reached the platform just as a train screamed into the station, its brakes shrieking like a B-flat wail from Maddox's saxophone. The doors opened with a pneumatic gasp, and Giordano stepped into the metal box filled with passengers glued to their phones. Their faces glowed with the cold, bluish light of headlines and memes—modern hieroglyphics of a civilization too busy scrolling to notice its collapse.

He sank into an empty seat, the subway lurching forward as Maddox’s words kept riffing in his brain: “Everyone’s complicit.”

The memory of that smoky drawl unsettled him. Maddox wasn’t wrong—at least, not entirely. The problem wasn’t just the suits in boardrooms who commodified art until it was unrecognizable. It was the readers who stopped searching for complexity, the listeners who traded Monk’s dissonance for Spotify playlists labeled "Chill Vibes." Stories, like jazz, needed friction, risk, and spontaneity. And yet, somehow, they’d been reduced to background noise.

The subway rumbled beneath the city, its rhythmic clatter echoing the beats of Giordano’s frustration. The parallel was too clear to ignore—jazz and fiction, both reduced to artifacts for curated nostalgia and corporate curation. Miles Davis didn’t curate. Faulkner didn’t write to go viral. They created to disturb, to provoke, to make people feel alive. And in doing so, they’d made themselves targets.

The train jolted to a stop at the next station, the lurch snapping Giordano out of his spiraling thoughts. He stared at the chipped mosaic tiles. For a moment, he imagined the tiles reshaping into words, fragments of wisdom left behind like breadcrumbs from authors who knew that truth never came easy. “The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable,” sneered Sinclair Lewis. Just above that, he could almost see Fitzgerald’s warning, “Show me a hero, and I’ll write you a tragedy.”

The pieces fit together like clues in a labyrinth. Stories weren’t killed outright—they were suffocated slowly, smothered by complacency, greed, and distraction. The subway doors hissed shut, and the train surged forward, the hum beneath his feet vibrating like the muted heartbeat of something that refused to die. Giordano shut his eyes, Maddox’s smoky drawl echoing in his mind as he braced for whatever came next. If stories were fading into ash, it was up to him to sift through the ruin and find the embers before they went cold. The city blurred past the windows as he headed toward the precinct, toward answers—or, more likely, toward the next explosion waiting to silence something beautiful.

end of part three

© Michael Arturo 2025

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Welcome to Michael’s Newsletter. Writer of contemporary political/social commentary, parodies, parables, satire. Michael was born and raised in New York City and has a background in theater and film. His plays have been staged in New York, London, Boston, and Los Angeles.

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The ride from JFK dragged, the city inching closer in hesitant strides. Rain fell in silver sheets, blurring the skyline into something half-remembered and half-forgotten.

Inside the cab, Lena pressed her fingers against the cold glass.

She shouldn’t have been here. She shouldn’t have come back.

But last week, an email arrived—unexpected, impossible to ignore. It carried the weight of a decision she had been too afraid to make.

An appointment. A chance.

Or just another dead end.

She closed her eyes. The cab hummed down the FDR, slicing through the rain. Beside them, the East River churned, its surface never still.

On impulse, she asked the driver to take a detour. A view of the Brooklyn Bridge her father once crossed.

She remembered the first time he had brought her here. She was small, unsteady, clinging to his hand as the wind roared through the bridge’s cables.

"Look, solnyshko." His voice had been warm, steady. He had pointed west. “New York. The city that gave the world hope.”

She believed him.

Now, in the hush of rain, she mouthed the word to herself. Solnyshko. Little sun. A name meant to glow. The sound dissolved into the cold air, vanishing like breath on glass.

The New York of his stories had been vast but tender, full of quiet miracles. But the city she had come to know was different—a furnace of fire and loss, relentless in the way it carved people down to their essence.

She knew this now. She had been burned by love, by betrayal. The city had taken its share of her.

Watching the rain spill down the bridge cables, she wondered how many had crossed this stretch of steel believing they could become someone new—only to be swallowed whole.

She exhaled.

The downpour quickened its rhythm against the cab’s roof. The driver muttered in Spanish about the storm, about his wife waiting for him at home. His voice was steady, unbothered, as if reciting a prayer.

Survival, after all, was stitched from moments like these—small mercies, simple acts of care. A shared dinner. A phone call saying, I’m safe.

She wondered if survival was enough.

Her father had spoken that way, too, in quiet phrases that held entire worlds. He had once told her about his first meal in this city—a bowl of soup from a nameless shop on Mott Street, so hot it burned his tongue, so rich it made him believe he might survive.

"I had nothing in my pockets," he had said. "But I had a full belly. Sometimes, that’s enough."

The cab slowed at a red light. Lena’s gaze caught on a family huddled beneath the dim shelter of a bus stop. A mother cradled a baby against her chest, her coat wrapped tight around the child, shielding it from the rain. With her free hand, she held the small fingers of an older child, who blinked up at the sky, unafraid.

For a moment, the mother seemed timeless—part of a lineage of guardians stretching across centuries, holding their children against the world’s storms.

Lena felt something tighten, then release in her chest—a familiar ache.

When had she last felt truly protected? When had she last believed in resilience like that?

The light turned green. The cab rolled forward.

She caught a glimpse of herself in the window’s reflection—worn but alive. She studied the face, staring back as though seeing someone new. The shadows of the past were there, but something else, too.

Persistence. Defiance.

The rain softened into mist, hovering above the pavement like breath.

The cab reached her stop. She paid the driver, murmuring a quiet thank you before stepping out.

The mist touched her skin, light as a benediction. She tilted her face upward, letting the city’s breath meet her own.

Behind her, the lights pulsed and flickered—the heartbeat of those who had come before her, of those yet to arrive.

Tomorrow was waiting—a decision at the end of this journey.

She thought of her father—his calloused hands, his worn but steady voice. He had believed in reinvention. In second chances.

Somewhere, another cab sped through the rain, carrying another version of her—one who never left, one who never returned, one still waiting at the edge of a dream.

"Some stories are passed down," he had once told her. "And some you must find for yourself."

The rain picked up again, drumming against the pavement, weaving through gutters, swallowing footprints before they could set.

New York did not stop for the rain.

New York did not stop for anything.

And neither did she.

She stepped forward. The city rose to meet her.

Her reflection shimmered in the glass towers—fractured, shifting.

Whole.

© Michael Arturo, 2025

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Welcome to Michael’s Newsletter. Writer of contemporary political/social commentary, parodies, parables, satire. Michael was born and raised in New York City and has a background in theater and film. His plays have been staged in New York, London, Boston, and Los Angeles.

Michael also writes short literary fiction. Below is a link to his first collection.

FLATIRON and other tall tales

“Your Friends Are All Dead"

“Storm The Beachhead, Little B***h"

“‘Crosstown"

Giordano smelled conspiracy, so he made a rash decision to leave New York and go to the heart where stories were manufactured—Tinsel Town. The idea was to go large early in the investigation and whittle down the possibilities. So he snatched a copy of Nathanael West’s “The Day Of The Locust” off his bookshelf, caught a taxi, and hopped a red-eye out to the coast.

As soon as Giordano touched down in Los Angeles, he stumbled upon a haven for the lost and the hopeful—a fleabag hotel on Wilshire, where transients masqueraded as industry professionals, their dreams wrapped in hackneyed teleplays and decades-old headshots.

Tossing his suitcase onto a creaky bed, Giordano surveyed his dingy abode, a sanctuary for those with more ambition than sense. It was dinner time, and Giordano was jet-lagged, so he made his way to the tavern attached to the hotel, a dimly lit refuge for drink and greasy fare.

Seating himself at the bar, Giordano ordered a baseball steak and a beer, just the bare minimum to get himself through til morning. Just as his beer arrived, he felt the unwelcome presence of a shadow looming over him. He looked up to meet the gaze of Marlena, a platinum-blonde starlet whose innocence had long since been tarnished by the harsh glare of Hollywood’s spotlight.

“You a producer?” Marlena’s voice, a whisper laced with desperation and false hope, shattered the fragile illusion of anonymity that Giordano had sought in vain. “Producers hang out here, looking for unknowns,” she purred, leaning in closer and flashing him a smile as bright and empty as a Hollywood premiere, her words dripping with the honeyed venom of ambition.

“I’m a detective. Name’s Phil Giordano. You can call me Philly.”

“You’re not pulling my leg, are you?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Producers use subterfuge to dissuade us nobodys from unsolicited advances. I’m Marlena, by the way. I’m an actress, just in case you are a producer. Do I detect a New York accent in your voice?”

“I suppose. That’s where I’m from.”

“Wow. A grape stomper from New York.”

“Grape stomper?”

“You know, eye-talian,” Marlena whispered as if sharing some inside information. “Some folks anglicize their names not to be a dead giveaway. If they’re looking to go places.”

“I’m here on official business.”

“Hm. What sort of official business?”

“I’m investigating a murder if you really must know.”

“A murder? Like I haven’t heard that one before,” Marlena said, unimpressed.

“What’d ya’ mean by that?”

“Look, I’m not one for small talk, so if you wanna be left alone, why don’t you just come out with it? The whole ‘Yo, Tony, I’m a Private Dick from New York investigating a murder’ routine isn’t very original.”

“No?”

“If you’re a producer and you don’t wanna sleep with me, I don’t want to sleep with you either, but I’d still like a part in your next picture. There! The ball’s in your court now.”

“I really am a detective. And I’m famished,” Giordano said as his baseball steak arrived.

“Ever hear of Thelma Todd?” Marlena continued. “There’s a murder for you to investigate. Dead at 29 from carbon monoxide poisoning. Under suspicious circumstances to boot. Hm. Coincidentally, she was married to a grape stomper.”

Giordano looked up at Marlena after cutting into his baseball steak. “Look, if you don’t mind.”

“Okay, so you don’t find my whole two-bit floozy routine sexy. Or is it because I’m sexy that you think I’m a two-bit floozy? Which is it, Mister? I’m not just some girl you can pick up in a dump like this and have your way with. Or am I? Look me up sometime if you ever decide to grow a thicker hide.” Marlena said, sliding away from the bar.

Giordano’s encounter with Marlena left him somewhat perplexed but mildly amused. On the other hand, he felt like he had just watched the first reel of some second-rate B-flick that got canned. On the other, he realized a man’s worth in this town was nothing if not to fulfill someone else’s dream.

The very next day, Giordano hit the streets and dove headfirst into the murky underbelly of America’s Dream Factory, where six criminal enterprises headed by “The Big Cheese,” a mafioso mouse, controlled all of the content and reduced storytelling to a simulacrum with no soul. Business was good, but morgues all over the city were overflowing with the corpses of screenwriters, most of whom expired well before their time. Gone were the intricate plots, the multi-dimensional characters, and the moral dilemmas that provoke thought and spark debate. In their place, nothing but pulp distractions—franchise films that regurgitated the same tired tropes, reveling in the glorification of violence that appealed to the lowest common denominator.

Giordano let his presence be known almost immediately as he strolled unannounced onto a motion picture studio lot and began asking questions. Being a stranger in town, he wasn’t accustomed to protocol, so he’d knock on any door without hesitation. Within minutes, he met with Yankowitz and Yankowitz, a couple of high-powered motion picture executives lounging about with nothing to do. They were well known for their sword and sandal epics, but when asked by Giordano who killed storytelling, they looked at each other and laughed. They told the New York detective they worked off something that resembled a blueprint rather than a script and that if he were looking for storytelling per se, they had a stack of abandoned scripts he could sift through. But they were sure he wouldn’t find what he was looking for there. Giordano thanked them and started toward the door, but before he could go, they stopped him.

“Wait a second, you might be just the fella we’re looking for,” one Yankowitz said.

“Turn around, give us a profile,” the other Yankowitz chimed in.

Bewildered, Giordano turned and gave the executive a good look at his profile. The Yankowitz pair nodded and smiled in agreement. A star was born! They offered Giordano a role in the picture without a screen test based on his classical Roman-Greco looks alone. He was perfect! One Yankowitz said Giordano had a Tony Curtis quality about him. The other Yankowitz said he looked like a young Victor Mature.

“You mean an immature Mature?” said the one.

“More like a premature Mature. Without the square jaw,” replied the other.

“A jawless Mature who'll mature before Mature himself matures. Hire him! Mature audiences will eat it up!”

Giordano was shocked and flattered and asked what the role in the motion picture entailed. Overjoyed with enthusiasm, the executives described the scene to Giordano, where he would play a Roman destined to meet his grisly demise at the jaws of a ravenous lion. They said they were looking for just the right actor to embody sheer terror while being torn limb from limb. And one who could shriek in agony on cue. They said they couldn’t pay him anything, but it was a lot of screen time and could be his big break. But Giordano, despite the allure of the silver screen, politely declined the role and went on his way.

Giordano took a long walk along the Walk of Fame on Sunset Boulevard, where he met up with Marlena, looking rather sallow after giving a quart of blood earlier in the day to pay her rent. She was aghast when Giordano told her he turned down the role of a lifetime. “Fed to lions?! That’s nothing! I just gave a quart of blood!” She told him no one has ever said “no” to either Yankowitz and lived to tell about it. “You’re done in this town, and you just got here yesterday! Nice going! Something to think about when you go back to your crummy day job. What was the fantasy job you conjured up for yourself again? Oh-yeah, Detective! Catch any murderers today?”

Giordano offered to take Marlena to get something to eat, but not before his eye caught sight of a billboard of “The Big Cheese” promoting a new animated feature starring a porcupine and a squirrel. Giordano asked Marlena, “Do you know how I can get in to see the Big Cheese?”

“Same way you got in to see Yankowitz and Yankowitz, I suppose,” Marlena countered. “I don’t know what the big deal over who killed storytelling is anyway. No one gives a hoot if it isn’t based on a true story. Besides, all the writers I know are suicidal!” she said before giving Giordano a sidelong glance.

“Anyway, I’ll take you up on your offer to buy me dinner. Then...I’ll invite you to my place." Her voice dropped an octave, more promise than tease now."I’ve got a harsh light you can shine in my eyes." She stepped back, her eyes glinting with playful menace. "Interrogate me all night long, if you like. Let’s see what kind of detective you really are."

“I’ll buy you dinner,” Giordano offered, “but I’m kind of sweet on a girl back home."

“Oh, you’re one of those weak-kneed sentimentalists. Just my luck. The last grape-stomper I was with couldn’t get enough of me.” Marlena said, throwing her hair back.

Giordano smirked, though deep down, he pitied Marlena—not that she’d ever accept anyone’s sympathy, least of all his. She was too jaded for that. She wore her charm like a mask, perfectly scripted, each laugh and lingering glance calibrated to keep people guessing. She was playing a role, and she expected Giordano to play along.

But Giordano wasn’t in the mood for games. He had only one thing in mind: tracking down The Big Cheese. And no dame, no matter how dazzling, would get in his way.

That resolve lasted about as long as the walk back to his dingy flop-house hotel. The second he reached his door, his instincts flared—something was off. A scrap of paper was taped crookedly to the peeling wood. Giordano’s smirk vanished as he tore the note free and read it:

"Get out of town if you don’t wanna end up on a slab of Gorgonzola. Signed, The Big Cheese."

The handwriting was jagged as if scrawled in haste or spite. He stared at it for a long moment, the weight of the words settling in. Word of his investigation had spread faster than he’d anticipated—and the capo di tutti capi had responded accordingly.

Giordano crumpled the note in his fist. They’d made their threat loud and clear. But there was one thing about Giordano they didn’t understand yet.

He wasn’t the kind of man who scared easy.

Before Giordano had the chance to enter his room, two men who’d been waiting in the hallway approached him from behind. One of them had a high-pitched cartoon-like voice and wore a pair of clown shoes, and the other one had a prosthetic nose and blubbered incomprehensible babble like a malfunctioning Speak & Spell. They told Giordano that if he needed any assistance understanding what the note they had just put on his door meant, they would gladly oblige. The one with the high-pitched voice then clubbed Giordano with an inflatable mallet while the other one ordered a cab for him to leave town.

“Schkip town, Schlub, on da double!”

Giordano collected his belongings from his room and did just that. As he got into the cab waiting to take him to the airport, Giordano got sick to his stomach and blew chunks of his dinner into a hanky. Giordano was no wimp; he was just shaken down by a couple of cartoon characters, which was probably the most unsettling experience of his life. Needless to say, it left a bad taste in his mouth.

On the cross-country flight home, Giordano picked up the Nathanael West novel to read but noticed the pages were blank. Identical to those found in Jane’s bookstore a week earlier. He quickly flipped through the book from front to back but found no trace of the narrative anywhere. The work of the killer, Giordano surmised. But words on a page there one day and gone the next couldn’t be attributed to the machinations of a lone individual, the scheming of a faceless corporation, or even the cold efficiency of a machine. A dawning realization crept over the seasoned Detective—a creeping suspicion that the culprit was not a “who” but a “what.” A pervasive zeitgeist, a collective malaise! Giordano’s mind took off in every direction. He asked for a double martini from a stewardess and downed it in one gulp once she delivered it. Giordano recalled his experiences in Hollywood, where he witnessed a pervasive pallor of apathy and cynicism, transforming storytellers into mere content creators and reducing avid readers and cinema enthusiasts to passive consumers. A post-literate world plagued by indifference! Could it be that the assassination of storytelling came at the cold hands of a collective complacency?

end of part 2

“Who Killed Storytelling?” Returns in two weeks with Part 3

“Who Killed Storytelling?” (Part 1)

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Welcome to Michael’s Newsletter. Writer of contemporary political/social commentary, parodies, parables, satire. Michael was born and raised in New York City and has a background in theater and film. His plays have been staged in New York, London, Boston, and Los Angeles.

Michael also writes short literary fiction. Below is a link to his first collection.

FLATIRON and other tall tales

“Your Friends Are All Dead"

“Storm The Beachhead, Little B***h"

“‘Crosstown"

The air around Detective Philly Giordano thickened with a sense of urgency he hadn’t felt in years the morning Police Chief William Schmidt called him into his office. “Philly, we’ve got a murder case unlike any other. Storytelling! It’s been slain!”

“Storytelling? That’s unheard of, Chief! Who did it?”

“We don’t know. No witnesses, no nothing. All we know is there’s a cold-blooded psychopath on the loose whose intent is to render everyone in New York illiterate! Storybooks, with their words ripped right out of them, strewn by the tens of thousands all over the city.”

“I could have never imagined anything like this, Chief!”

“That’s just it, no one could. I called every bookstore in Manhattan—no one’s got a clue. Word on the street is that the New York Public Library might close up shop altogether. The bottom line is that a world without storytelling is one with no past and no future. Now, I know you’re a reader and all that.”

“Yeah, sure, I’ve done my share of reading.”

“I haven’t read a story since I was knee-high to a fire plug. But you, you got all that college behind you.”

“Guilty as charged.”

Schmidt leaned back in his chair and lit a cigar. “I want this guy bad, Philly. When you think of all the little children—who’s gonna read them a bedtime story now?”

“Breaks your heart. Who’ll even take a book to the park on a sunny day anymore?”

“And the housewives and their romance novels—forget about it!”

“And you know how strap-hangers love a good mystery on their way to work in the morning, right?”

“Brings tears to your eyes. And what about the beatniks and their er …?”

“Jack Kerouac?”

“Right. And that exit thing!”

“Existentialism?”

“Yeah, I never understood it.”

“Part of understanding it, Chief—is not understanding it.”

“You’re a forward thinker, Philly, yet your mind works counterclockwise. I admire that about you. That’s why you’re the only man for this job!” Schmidt took a long draw from his cigar and let out a plume of smoke. “The city that never sleeps won’t sleep until the man who killed storytelling is brought to justice.”

Chief Schmidt’s words hung like a guillotine blade, poised to sever the last remaining threads of a world Giordano held dear. The Chief wasn’t one for hyperbole; if he said storytelling was dead, its heart had indeed stopped beating.

Giordano’s mind raced as he walked back to his office, each step descending into a complex web of possibilities. Who could commit such a heinous act? Was it the work of a lone madman, or was there a darker force at play? The suspects were many, but the clues were few.

Philly Giordano was a rare breed on the force, a fusion of book and street smarts that few could match. Whip-smart and intuitively savvy, a gumshoe who navigated the corridors of human psychology and dark alleyways with equal aplomb.

Before entering the realm of criminal justice, Giordano had briefly walked the halls of New York University’s Arts & Sciences Department. It was an Introduction to World Literature that ignited his intellectual curiosity. However, feeling a gravitational pull toward his family legacy, he dropped out of NYU. His father had studied criminology at John Jay, and Giordano felt a calling to follow in those footsteps. He earned an MA in Criminal Justice and embarked on a career in police work.

His office served as both sanctuary and shrine, lined with the works of literary titans like Faulkner, Dostoevsky, Joyce, Twain, and Poe. These authors, who wrestled with the complexities of the human soul in ink and paper, were his silent companions in a world increasingly devoid of meaningful dialogue. But, as time passed, reading the Masters took a backseat to the daily grind of police work.

His first lead took him to the hallowed halls of academia, where postmodern theorists spoke in riddles and paradoxes. They were the high priests of a new orthodoxy that questioned the very notion of authorial intent. But even they seemed like lost souls, wandering in a desert of their own making. They were not killers; they were exiles, banished from the kingdom of meaning.

Next, he delved into the bowels of the internet, where algorithms dictated the ebb and flow of human thought. Here, he found a more likely culprit: ChatGPT, the AI that promised to replicate human creativity but delivered only a hollow echo. It was a seductive villain—an elusive, shape-shifting demon that wore the mask of innovation—while gutting the essence of artistic expression.

Giordano lit a match and watched the flame fight against the cold New York air. The cigarette between his lips was more for effect than habit—something to punctuate his thoughts. The torn book page in his hand crumpled as he stared down at the bookstore's broken window.

Jane’s Bookstore.

It had been a while since he’d seen her—ten years, maybe more. She’d always had a cause bigger than the two of them. But seeing the glass shards glittering on the ground outside her bookstore in the Village brought something else to the surface—something raw.

The place was trashed.

Bookshelves were overturned. The air smelled of dust, ink, and something metallic. Philly stepped inside, careful not to make a sound even though the place was deserted. The books that hadn’t been destroyed were… blank.

“Who the hell prints blank pages?”

He picked up one of the hardcovers—The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir. Philly wasn’t a stranger to the name. Jane had underlined half the book when she first read it. He remembered the night she’d stormed into his apartment, quoting: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”

But this copy? The pages were empty. No quotes. No thoughts. No words. Just white nothingness.

That’s when he heard her.

“Philly.”

He turned.

Jane stood in the doorway, barefoot as usual, wearing loose jeans and a black turtleneck sweater. Her hair was a mess of dark curls, and she clutched a cigarette in one hand like it was the only thing holding her together.

He froze.

“Jane.”

She walked in slowly, stepping over the wreckage of her life like it didn’t faze her.

“You finally made it to the bookstore,” she said, half-smirking.

“Guess I needed an invite.”

She stopped at the counter, placed both hands flat on the wood, and sighed. “They’re gone, Philly.”

He nodded at the wreckage. “Books? Yeah, I noticed.”

“No.” Her eyes locked on his, wide and glassy. “The words.”

He frowned. “You’re serious.”

Jane walked to a fallen pile of books and picked one up—a poetry collection by Audre Lorde. She opened it. Blank. She grabbed another—Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. Nothing.

“They’re all like this,” she said, voice cracking. “Simone, Baldwin, Plath… Gone. Every story. Every word. Like someone... erased them.”

Philly felt a chill run down his spine. He was used to mysteries—dead bodies, stolen diamonds, missing persons. But this? This was... absurd. And terrifying.

“Who did this?” he asked, quieter than he meant to.

Jane shook her head. “I don’t know.”

He walked toward her and reached out, but she pulled away.

“You left,” she said bitterly. “You walked away from all of this—the protests, the arguments, the fight. You could’ve stayed. But you didn’t.”

“I was in love with you, Jane.”

“And I with you, you b*****d.”

“Things didn’t turn out,” he said, his voice soft. “Cops don’t get to live on poetry and philosophy.”

Jane laughed, but it was empty. “No. They live on rules and badges and lies.”

Philly exhaled slowly. The conversation was a familiar road—one they’d walked too many times. They once spent nights reading Finnegan’s Wake to each other aloud. And then walked barefoot through Washington Square Park discussing it ’til dawn.

“Look,” he said, motioning to the chaos around them. “Whatever this is, it’s bigger than you, me, or some fight we had.” He picked up a blank copy of Moby-Dick. “Someone is trying to erase everything—everything that matters.”

Jane sat down on the counter, her bare feet swinging like she was a kid again, reading On the Road on her fire escape. “Philly, do you ever wonder if…” She hesitated, staring at the blank book in her hands. “If maybe this is it? Maybe storytelling’s dead. People don’t read anymore.”

Philly’s jaw clenched. “No.” He shook his head. “Stories don’t just up and die. There’s got to be more to this.”

Jane’s eyes softened, but her walls didn’t come down. “You still think you’re some kind of hero, don’t you?” she scoffed.

“No.” He put on his fedora and adjusted his coat. “But I know a villain when I see one.”

End of Part One

© Michael Arturo, 2025

Support by hitting the like button or leaving a comment.

Welcome to Michael’s Newsletter. Writer of contemporary political/social commentary, parodies, parables, satire. Michael was born and raised in New York City and has a background in theater and film. His plays have been staged in New York, London, Boston, and Los Angeles.

Michael also writes short literary fiction. Below is a link to his first collection.

FLATIRON and other tall tales

“Your Friends Are All Dead"

“Storm The Beachhead, Little B***h"

“‘Crosstown"