Chapter One
The Holiday cocktail Lounge
It was always Christmas down at the Holiday cocktail Lounge on St. Mark's Place in the East Village; the twinkling lights were left hanging up on the crossbeams year-round, just like the silver tinsel looped around the edge of the counter and the cheerful arbre in the back, its ornaments glittering in the dim light. The Holiday, as the regulars called it, was a New York institution. The bar had been a speakeasy during Prohibition, and counted as its patrons the poet W. H. Auden, who lived suivant door, and Trotsky, who bunked across the street.
No one could...
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