Shades: And Other Short Pieces

By Gary Alexander Azerier

Short-story writer Gary Alexander Azerier has gathered this collection of tales and tidbits certain to delight and intrigue all the way from the chilling and uniquely spooky Shade and Cordovan to the gripping nostalgic tales of Bob Shepherd and the Little Man, Stevens Window, and Auld Acquaintance to the very funny but red alerts of Password and Security. This singular anthology is for the discriminating reader who will also be privy to the authors exclusive Most Difficult Test in the World! A must-read!

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Dec 30, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524657390

Gary Alexander Azerier

Gary Alexander Azerier is a former broadcaster and journalist who also taught English and communications on the university level in Boston, Westchester County, and New York City. He served as radio correspondent for the Second Marine Division and lives with his wife, Rose Ann, in New York and Pennsylvania.

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© 2016 Gary Alexander Azerier. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 01/17/2017

ISBN: 978-1-5246-5740-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-5739-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016921394

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Shade

Speed Trap

Steven’s Window

All about Nothing

Bob Shepherd and the Little Man

Gobi

Chock Full

Pluto

Cordovan

Password

Auld Acquaintance

Apartment

MacDonald’s Rainbow

Another Time

A Question of Time

Security

Smoke

Anyone… Somewhere

Devolution

Reunion

Reunion Explained

The Most Difficult Test in the World and Entrance Exam into the Alexandrian Institute for the Unreasonably Insane

Other published books by Gary Alexander Azerier:

Shade

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S OMETIME AGO THERE WAS A wonderful place just south of Bleecker Street on Sixth Avenue in New York’s Greenwich Village called Welcome to New York. It was wonderful because it housed thousands of old photographs, maps, pieces of memorabilia, and assorted tidbits having to do with a New York City long gone. You could spend an entire afternoon rummaging through the many shelves and bins in this emporium until your feet ached and you needed to visit a restroom. But the very dust in the place was wonderful.

I don’t think I’d ever emerged from a visit to this dark little shop without bags of things, envelopes of photographs, books, postcards, and odd maps of people, places, and institutions that no longer existed. I had always overspent far beyond what I had intended, often pointlessly, and my fingers were filthy as a result of handling the hundred-plus-year-old merchandise. The treasures to be discovered, uncovered, and buried in this shop’s cabinets and on her tables were endless and unknown until excavated.

It was a joy to get home with these parcels and unload the lot, the likes of which, despite the ripe age of any item, probably had not been seen by too many people aside from a few inveterate collectors of New Yorkiana! There were rare postcards, photos, cartoons, and linens of Coney Island and her Steeplechase, eight-by-tens of the 1939 World’s Fair, the last good time before World War II, glossies of the crowds at Yankee Stadium in its heyday, as well as original shots of bygone city eateries, hotels, buildings, and streets—all from a forgotten era. Much of the material spoke of products vanished as well as the advertisements boasting of those miracle items no longer extant. And, of course, there were the trinkets: buttons, badges, pins, and assorted souvenirs. And on a rare day you found something even rarer, more arcane, more of an esoteric surprise than you anticipated. This was one such day.

Aside from subway maps and booklets showing stops where today’s trains, buses, and trolleys no longer stopped and charts of a city quite evolved with designations that were now not only no longer used but considered quite inappropriate (such as asylums), there were those rare shots of New York’s infamous and dark Third Avenue elevated line—rare because it was too physically dim to photograph easily but also spiritually dark with few surroundings other than taverns, pawn shops, and shadows. This cheerless configuration was taken down in the 1960s with very little remaining to remind the tourist or native of that chilly gloom. And there were also photos of the city’s other, earlier, elevated, now decimated structures on Sixth, Ninth, and Second Avenues.

Throughout the historical hovel there were bits of the past: pictures of crowds of only men; only men wearing hats; gentlemen nicely dressed in shirts and ties; and ladies in finery, dresses, and heels. There were stereographic photos where images of the city would leap out at the viewer through its housing stereopticon into all three dimensions—and a fantastic set of photographs revealing either new and crisply detailed likenesses of original advertisements painted on buildings or the faded remains of those depictions. (Often these remnants were so faint that discerning the original ad was nearly impossible, but trying, or seeking a photo of the fresh original, made for an interesting pastime.) There before you on some obscure street where a building had recently been torn down, adjacent to it, stood revealed, on a five-story wall, the flecks of what once was a bright, garish message… today quite indiscernible. But there on one of Welcome to New York’s dusty bins was a clear, sharp eight-by-ten glossy of the original advertisement: Dutch Boy… Lead-Based Paint, Broadway Central Hotel, Mail Pouch Tobacco, or Hotel San Rafael. There were the billboards surrounding the neatly clad crowd of all men (hats, white shirts, ties, and vests) circling Yankee Stadium: Drink Canada Dry, Vat 69, Call for Phillip Morris, Brushless Burma Shave, and Calvert Whiskey.

And when you looked at the glossies of the frolicking boys and girls at the 1939 World’s Fair, you had to wonder how many of these boys were destined to disappear into the future darkness of World War II never to return.

It was on one such excursion to Welcome to New York that I came upon two spectacularly sharp and detailed daguerreotypes. The pictures had been taken from one of the towers of the Metropolitan Life building in downtown Manhattan. They were of nothing in particular, but I fell in love with their age and clarity. They cried out for closer scrutiny and examination. I thought perhaps I could find the buildings that preceded my current lodgings and perhaps, with sufficient magnification, some of those original building sign paintings. The two photographs were outrageously expensive, but I had to have them.

Because of the great height from which they’d been taken and the incredible clarity defining the detail and overwhelming density of the city, the images somehow seemed worth their price, and part of that worth was also because of the challenge I felt accompanied each—the wealth of available information in each exposure.

It was on the following morning I examined each piece carefully with a powerful loupe. The detail was extraordinary, and I thought I was able, after some time, to locate the exact avenue and cross street of where I now had my residence. In its place, though not nearly as tall, was a large tenement, some of whose side windows faced the camera’s lens. I carefully studied the view from what seemed to be the perspective of the window I thought might eventually have been mine until I was convinced that was more than a possibility! And it was after more than two hours I thought I discerned what appeared to be a shadow through the open window. I got a stronger loupe and pored over the photograph until my eye began to smart. The quality of the photograph was so perfect and its grain so fine the sharpness of the image persisted through my staring, and separation or distortion of the pixels hardly occurred. Again, the shape and image of what gave the appearance of a shadow presented its distinct outline. It could have been a person looking directly at the camera lens.

Throughout the afternoon and evening I studied my photo, consulting additional maps and charts of the city that year. I cross-referenced with other pictures to triangulate and home in on the street. Although none of the photographs were as sharp and distinctly detailed as my daguerreotype, the area seemed the same, but I had no similar view of that window. It was on the next morning something strange occurred.

I took the loupe and the image, which I now protected with a piece of clear, thin Lucite and tabs for gripping the