The nighttime is the right time to be with the one you love, says Ray,but according to Hamlet, it’s when “churchyards yawn and hell itselfbreathes out contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot blood,”says Hamlet, “and do such bitter business as the day.”So who’s right, the soul singer? The melancholy Dane? Both?You and I were walking across the city one nighta bachelorette party of sexy young women pounding each otherwith big plastic penises and using them as swords, thrustingand parrying as did Hamlet and Laertes but collapsing in laughter,not because they’d been pierced with a poisoned foil.The next best thing to night is day, and the best day is one whereyou’re enjoying alcohol, music, and sunshine, otherwise knownas The Big Three, though at night you don’t need alcoholor music because the night generates enough endorphinsall by itself, and you certainly don’t want sunshine becausechances are you’re going to be doing something you don’t wantanyone else to see, but why take the chance, and here I’m thinkingabout the time I was coming out of the library, and I saw youcoming out of the library, and we talked for a while in front ofthe library, and then I asked you if you wanted a ride home.And you said sure, but instead of ending up at your house,we found ourselves on the other side of town in one of thoseneighborhoods where everybody goes to sleep at nine,and I parked at the end of the street where there weresome vacant lots and one lone streetlight that cast just enoughlight that I could see how lovely you were, and we kissedeach other’s mouths for the first time and did one or twoother things but, you know. Not that one. We saved that onefor another night, and every night since has been wonderful.All aboard … the night train! Faust meets Mephistophelesfor the first time at night, and you know what happens next.Danger, Will Robinson! Naked witches, warlocks,singing pigs, talking weathervanes, Lilith: at least Faust getsGretchen out of the deal. At the other end of the broomstickis Santa Lucia, who comes in the night with a wreath of candleson her head so her hands are free to bring as much foodas possible to the Christians hiding in the catacombs.Diocletian says give it up, Santa Lucia, but she says ix-nayand becomes a martyr. As for us, it’ll probably all end foreither you or me at night: a sample of 4,920 disease-related deathsin New York City shows a 60 percent rise in the death ratebeginning at 2 a.m. and reaching a peak at 8 a.m. That’s okay.What’re you going to do, stick around till you’re a thousandyears old and annoy the hell out of everybody who’s waitingfor you to die so they can collect the twelve dollars you planto leave them? O maidens of Florence, beat yourselves overthe head with your inflatable plastic penises! Soon enoughyour husbands will be sticking the real thingin your face, which happenstance you may welcome or not,though either way you’ll be able to handle it.O Faust, have fun, but be careful what you sign! O Santa Lucia,stay chaste! That’s your job. That’s what you doso the rest of us don’t have to. As for you and me, baby,let us be always as we were in that car at the endof that empty street that night as the sky went fromblack to dark blue, and the trees became trees, and the housesbecame houses again, and we didn’t know what our futurewould be like or if we’d even have a future, and our hairwas still dark then, and our faces didn’t have a lineor wrinkle, and our mouths were firetruck-red from kissing.
