Arm in arm with Gypsy Rose Lee, Carson McCullers bursts out of the door of 7 Middagh Street and into the cool, sweet, smoky night. Somewhere nearby, a ship is coming into harbor, and its horn spills long, low notes that reverberate through the narrow blocks of Brooklyn Heights. Somewhere nearby, drunken sailors are laughing, sneaking out of the Navy Yard perhaps, or returning home from a day’s leave spent whooping and wooing on the roller coasters at Coney Island. Somewhere nearby are some 2.7 million people—the teeming mass of Brooklyn; Brooklyn the Great, second city of the Empire, as some call it.
Anywhere else in the world, the two women would make an odd pair: the statuesque burlesque queen, and the gangly literary genius. Some say Carson dresses like a man; some say Gypsy secretly is one. They couldn’t give a fig. In Brooklyn, they are best of friends, sisters in search of adventure, unable to resist the siren call of a fire alarm sounding, even though it’s Thanksgiving and their house is filled with some of the most famous artists in the world, from the poet W. H. Auden to a good portion of the corps of the Russian ballet.
The two don’t make it far from home before McCullers stops dead, smacked by a sudden revelation: she has figured out the central crux of her next book, the story that has been nagging at her all fall, which will soon become the novel The Member of the Wedding. She stops in the street, laughing, as Gypsy runs back to her, grabs her hand, and pulls her forward. This is the perfect moment; the perfect place; McCullers is the most perfect version of herself she will ever be. Their future is illimitable.
Except that in a year, they will both be gone from Brooklyn. In five, the very house they lived in—along with a good chunk of the block—will be destroyed. And in ten, Brooklyn itself will begin to shrink, collapsing inward after 150 years of unparalleled prosperity. The two women stand on a precipice, one that has nothing to do with the coming World War. Brooklyn as they know it—queer Brooklyn—is already under attack.
But tonight, there is a fire to be found, a party to return to, sherry to drink, and stories to tell. There is life to be lived. Brooklyn is waiting.
Arm in arm, they run.