"The night is the time for calls across the ocean. Alone in the hours past midnight in a foreign city, a man’s thoughts center on another continent, he remembers loved voices far away, he calculates differences in time zones (It is eight o’clock in New York, the taxis are bumper to bumper, all the lights are lit), he promises himself that there will be a general savings on such things as cigarettes, liquor and restaurants to make up for the sweet extravagance of several moments of conversation across the three thousand miles of space."
Tip of the cap to Irwin Shaw, a master of the short story.
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What lovely prose. Irwin Shaw was a great writer and really isn't given the respect he deserves.
It's crazy now to many folks I'm sure, that "several moments of conversation across three thousand miles of space" would have ever been considered extravagant, but it was to me as a young man in the late eighties. Things are a lot different today. Pretty much any phone call is cheap.
In exquisite remembrance of those precious conversations that I once enjoyed, over three thousand miles of space.
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