This week’s issue has been postponed, as I’ve spent the last few days working feverishly to complete final edits on the third Gilda Carr mystery: Westside Lights, coming your way next March.

If that’s too long to wait, well, have you considered grabbing yourself a copy of Critical Hit, my new mystery, whose hero is every inch as stubborn, sarcastic, and strange as Gilda Carr? To whet your appetite, I’ve included a very Strange Times-y excerpt below, followed by a classic story from our archives. Regular service resumes next week. Enjoy!

A Depression-era mechanic’s shop, LB’s studio was at the back of a sloping lot covered with garbage and twisted iron. It was just two rooms: an old forge on the first floor and a rat’s nest of papers and art supplies on the second. It was where he went, he said, when he needed to make art that was too personal to make at the college, or when he just wanted the world to leave him be.

All of it was on fire.

It was hard to see where the building had been. It was curling in on itself, like a paper bag in a campfire. The fire truck was halfway up the hill, spraying water on the house next door. The studio, they’d quit trying to save.

Doc’s car sat at the bottom of the hill, front doors open, engine running. I saw her, gray ponytail silhouetted by the flame, manning one of the jets. With what little strength I had left, I ran up the driveway. Matty leapt out of the truck’s cab, fireman’s coat still unbuttoned, and grabbed me by the shoulder.

“Is he inside?” I said.

“Get out of here.”

“God damn it, if he’s in there, we have to get him out!”

“It’s too hot. Nobody’s going near it.”

Matty rested his hand on my shoulder, and I tried to keep still. I wanted to push him, to charge inside, to look for LB, but that would have been against the rules.

We were watching together when my brother’s massive body exploded out of the window, wrapped in a cloak of flame.

LB screamed something. Maybe it was words, maybe it was just pain.

It stopped quick.

I didn’t flinch. I didn’t run to him. Even from behind the barricade, it was obvious he was dead.

This story included because it’s one of the sweetest ever published in this here newspaper, and we could all use a little sweetness in our life. The Sheriff’s defense of public canoodling is eloquent and heartfelt—if only law enforcement of today could come out as strongly in favor of love.

Sheriff Knott made public yesterday correspondence between himself and a person writing on Hotel Pennsylvania note paper under the pen name of "Pro Bono Publico," relating to a matter concerning the public morals, which the correspondent thinks the Sheriff should take up at once.

The writer has observed "spooning" by occupants of the upper decks of the Fifth Avenue buses, and recommends that the Sheriff's Deputies, and possibly members of the three panels of his jury, including the most prominent men in the city, be delegated to the work of "stamping out the nuisance." The letter said:

"Dear Sheriff: I have read in the daily papers that the Fifth Avenue Coach Company, which operates the buses on Fifth Avenue, refuses to heed the objection made about the spooning on top of its vehicles. As a citizen, I wish to protest against a continuance of this public nuisance. If these young people must spoon, let them do so in the privacy of their own homes.

"It seems to me that this is a matter meriting public attention. There is no hope that the police will do anything about it, for the traffic policemen on Fifth Avenue are witnesses to the public spooning that goes on, but take no action. I therefore write to you, as Sheriff, and ask that you appoint Deputies to take this urgent matter in hand."

The Sheriff answered:

"Dear Sir: Since you continue to hide your identity, I am unable to address you as courtesy demands. I know you will accept my apology for addressing you through the newspapers, from which you gleaned the information which you make the subject of your letter.

"I cannot answer your objections about public spooning and the suggestion that I take official cognizance of it without also speaking as a private citizen. As such i wish to say that I do not sympathize with your complaint.

"Dear Pro Bono Publico, have you no sentiment or human sympathy? Have you never been out in the country in the Springtime and watched the birds in the tree-tops bill and coo? Of course, if you have not, there is not much use in pursuing the subject further. But apparently (I judge this from your present address), New York is only your temporary domicile and very likely you come from outside. 

"However, no matter where you come from, you have observed that beautiful exemplification of spooning, when a fond mother holds her offspring in her arms and the two exchange sweet, affectionate salutations; a heart to heart talk as it were. Such observation, my dear sir, should have given you a more sympathetic view of life. It seems to me that a man must be either a crabbed old bachelor or has been disappointed in love, who seeks to invoke official aid in putting an end to a heritage of nature that is as old as the world. Certainly there is nothing clandestine in spooning atop a bus. Perhaps you know the old proverb, 'Honi soit,' etc.!

"My advice to men who cannot stand the sight of the loving meeting of minds and eyes—and in some cases lips—on a Fifth Avenue bus, is that they ride in the subway. A trip or two in the rush hours there ought to cure them, for in the subway, men and women, boys and girls, are thrown together indiscriminately and even without the formality of an introduction or acquaintance. They are compelled to occupy about the same proximity to each other that the lovers do on the buses, sometimes more so. The difference is that in the subway this attention is forced on them and instead of billing and cooing, one hears bickering and cussing. Let the spooners spoon. They always did. They always will.

"Now, talking to you as Sheriff, I want to say that I must refuse to designate deputies or appoint a posse comitatus to stop what you call a nuisance. That statement by you, I think, represents only a conclusion—a state of mind."

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