NIGHT COURT
BY NORMAN ARKAWY
With a new cast nightly, it was
the best show in town. Gay crowds
mobbed the box office for tickets;
but few went back more than twice....
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, June 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The old courthouse was in the unreconstructed part of town. No busesran out here, and the only way that Stan and Julie could reach thecourt was on foot, threading their way through the debris of neglectand vandalism that littered the narrow streets.
This was a part of New York that Julie had never seen. Twentiethcentury tenements, dimly illuminated by ancient incandescent lamps,lined the rubble-filled streets, where garbage and the decayingcarcasses of poisoned rats lay stinking in the gutters. The night waswarm, but Julie shivered. She hurried along at Stan's side, trying tohold her breath to shut out the unpleasant smells.
They stopped at the edge of the sidewalk across the street from thecourt and watched a crowd of people milling about the entrance,anxiously pressing to the box office to try to get hard-to-get tickets.
"Look at that mob!" Julie said. "We'll never get in!" She tried tosound disappointed, but she knew that she could not hide her feeling ofrelief. She didn't want to go in. She wanted to go away, back to theclean, pretty city she knew.
Stan smiled and patted her hand. "You underestimate me, honey. LittleStanley knows how to take care of himself. I knew there'd be a crowdtonight, so...." He drew two tickets from his pocket. "If you don'treserve 'em, you don't deserve 'em, I always say!"
He took her hand, and they started across the street toward thecourthouse. It was a bleak, gray, stone-faced building whose ornatesculptured trim was weather worn and darkened with age. Once anaspiration to architectural beauty, it was pathetically ugly, amelancholy reminder of a bygone and possibly better era.
A modern theater marquee had been incongruously added to the oldstructure and, atop the shiny new addition, huge letters of lightspelled out NIGHT COURT. Smaller cast aluminum letters protruded upwardfrom the metal rim of the arcing canopy and formed the words of amotto: "Judge not, that ye be not judged". Bold type plastered acrossthe gleaming glass facade of the marquee loudly proclaimed: "NEW SHOWNIGHTLY".
Stan and Julie pushed through the congestion outside the entrance ofthe court. A dizzying confusion of elbows and backs and sweating,eager faces surrounded them. Stan squeezed through the seething massof people and, holding tightly to his hand, Julie followed. For thetenth—or hundredth—time, she was sorry that she had come. But it wastoo late to turn back now.
Stan showed his tickets to the guard at the door, and they were usheredpolitely inside where a uniformed woman with a military bearing guidedthem to their seats.
"Your ID cards, please," the young woman said.
Julie was startled by the request, and alarmed. A confiscated ID cardmeant trouble—police trouble! "Why?" she asked, nervously, "What didwe do?"
Stan smiled knowingly. "It's just a formality," he assured her. "Theygive it back to you when you leave." He handed the usher his card.
"And yours, miss?"
Hesitantly, Julie took out her wallet. A cold premonition urged her tostop, to leave now, before it was too late. Then she saw Stan's amusedeyes grinning at her and she reminde