Frank’s lobby Winner: Editor’s Choice Award
Tamas Dobozy The nights I couldn’t sleep, I held the baby, and watched the smear of lights on the Empire State Building—orange, magenta, green. We were on the thirteenth floor, off Washington Square Park, but we wouldn’t be in New York long. It gave the usual longing I feel in cities a fatal twist, as if transience itself was the source of feeling, or, worse, what I loved was passing because I loved it. Our night doorman, Frank, was from Queens. He said, seeing my sleep-deprived face, that no matter what time of night it was, I was welcome in the lobby. I liked Frank, he let me feel as if I was alone even when we were together. We could stay dead quiet, we didn’t need to talk, we could share our solitude and nothing more. My son, Henry, was three weeks old when we moved to Manhattan, and often woke at two, three, four a.m., crying for a breast, or a clean diaper, or someone to rub the pain in his gums, and after that I’d be up for hours, tossing and turning, my brain filled with thoughts so ugly that later, the next day, after the sun came up, I had a hard time believing it had been me, the morning light making it so easy to dismiss the old grievances. Once Henry was done feeding I’d sometimes carry him down to hang out with Frank, leaving my wife to her dreams. Frank would get up from his console and take the baby, though it was not a gesture that came naturally—Frank would have been a perfect extra in a Scorsese movie—as if he was trying to prove he could do it, supply consolation. You and me both, he’d say, telling me that