The Age of Cities by Brett Josef Grubisic Read Free Book Online

and women employees and even revealed the cloak and dagger troubles upstairs in Management.
    Closer now to Winston, he confided that certain pervy customers would try on suits and then make lewd motions while being measured. In a barrage of squints and raised brows and popped eyes, he said there are ways to determine when a man is not wearing proper undergarments. Dickie was obviously at home in this warehouse of salacious details. Winston decided he would have to be careful about what moments from his life he would share with this odd man.
    After the career peccadilloes, Dickie diverted the gush of thoughts homeward.
    His pets, twin Pomeranians—“the exact colour of cedar chips,” he said, and later, “a hellish hue, I swear to God. Right now they’re gnawing on the legs of my chesterfield, I just know it”—were his pride and yet the very bane of his existence as well. He called them his brats and exclaimed more than once that they need to be taught a lesson. Their high-strung temperaments threatened to drive him to Essondale —and at this moment he shook imaginary iron bars and crossed his eyes as though he already had intimate knowledge of inmate life in that lunatic asylum. No white froth at the corner of his mouth appeared, but Winston would not have been shocked if Dickie’s fervor conjured some.
    Caught off-guard by the performance, Winston did not know if laughter would be a response his acquaintance would welcome. Dickie described his collection of objets , telling his captive audience that such a collection is possible—providing that one is discerning enough—to gather on a modest salary: “You need to train your uncouth eye, that’s all.”
    After Winston told Dickie, “You ought to write a newspaper column called ‘Just Ask Dickie.’ You should be making money off your ideas,” Dickie looked at him askance and retorted, “Are you making a joke?” His tone was cold, as though he’d been subject to a grave insult. Winston decided that Dickie craved attention, not the conversation of equals. He kept mum.
    Dickie was describing his plans for a grand tour through Europe when he gestured around himself with a flourish and pronounced words that sounded like Versailles of the Eastside to Winston’s baffled ears. Winston saw nothing out the ordinary, and conjectured that Dickie might be scared and that his animated chatter was his peculiar variation on whistling in the graveyard; certainly the streets had grown emptier and noticeably unkempt. Dickie pointed to the street’s oyster shell fragment litter and said that it had been dropped there by gulls. “They’re as smart as dogs, you see,” was the vague explanation he gave.
    Dickie announced that at long last they had reached their destination. The Port-Land was no different from the other past-their-prime storefronts on the quiet street. Unprepossessing, Winston thought to say, now there’s the best word. He held his tongue. This man had made a special effort to show him a local sight, after all. And besides, the dull brick face might be just that. A front. Winston looked at its undistinguished proportions and weathered paint and predicted a future of broken windowpanes covered by boards and a perennial For Sale sign that proved magnetic to no one. Even the Belle-Vu, easily the rattiest tavern in the Bend, gave the Port-Land’s forlorn air no competition. The brackish air was its natural complement.
    Dickie had claimed he’d never guess their destination, and now Winston conjured a den of sluggish drug addicts. Ladies of the night seemed unlikely. What else could it be? Despite all the talk, Dickie hadn’t given him the least peep of a clue. Was there any other possibility? Burlesque dancers? There had been news stories about police raids of narcotic distributors recently. When Alberta did not supply him with the gritty details, he’d read about