A City Dreaming by Daniel Polansky Read Free Book Online

added.
    â€œMaybe they’ll just do some juggling.”
    â€œOr recite a poem.”
    â€œEven worse.”
    But when they got off the train five minutes later, M was smiling. “Credit due,” he said, “that was amazing.”
    â€œI didn’t think it was possible to fit a squirrel up there, let alone a badger,” Stockdale responded, lighter by twenty dollars.
    â€¢Â Â â€¢Â Â â€¢
    Our three adventurers were taking dinner at a bar in the vastness of St. Alban’s Station, which did not exist on any of the subway lines that M was aware of, though M very much thought it should have. A small establishment but bustling with folk of literally all sorts—day traders and MTA workers and Soviet cosmonauts and slumming international royalty, Brazilian vaqueros in leather chaps and bullwhips, spindly punk kids with safety pins stuck through their lips and eyebrows, white-clad Buddhist monks ordering red ale via hand signals so as not to violate their vows of silence. There was sawdust on the ground and a giant blackboard hanging over the bar read:
    Beer 5¢
    12 Oysters 10¢
    Fancy women, gnomes, and cyborgs not welcome
    â€œAn admirable entrance policy,” Stockdale observed to the barman as he brought over three more pulls of stout.
    â€œThese are the best goddamn oysters I’ve ever tasted,” D8mon said, slurping one out from its shell.
    â€œYour first time in here?” asked the man sitting next to them,bullet-headed, the chain of a watch coming out of one pocket and the butt of a revolver sticking out the other.
    â€œOur very first time,” Stockdale said, “though, Lord willing, not the last.”
    â€œWhere you from?”
    â€œCrown Heights,” M said.
    â€œCrown Heights? You aren’t from one of those New Yorks where the Brits won in ’76?”
    â€œIf you call disentangling yourself from a bunch of ungrateful provincials losing . . .” Stockdale began. It was Stockdale’s considered belief that the British Empire did right in leaving the subcontinent and wrong in leaving everywhere else.
    M cut over him. “Our New York is part of the United States, by the grace of God.”
    But this wasn’t quite enough for their new companion, who was staring over at Stockdale in the way that a person might stare at someone before hitting them. He was barely more than five feet, but every inch seemed made of hard oak and scrap metal. M was wondering if maybe he could convince D8mon to fight him and then eat all of D8mon’s oysters while he was so engaged.
    Though it didn’t come to that, because all of a sudden Stockdale raised his half-empty glass of beer toward the sky and said in his speaker’s corner voice, “To the Apple herself, the beating center of the human race, mad and fierce and lovely. There was never in all the worlds a woman more beautiful or more heartless.”
    â€œTo New York,” M said.
    â€œTo New York,” D8mon said.
    â€œTo New York,” the stranger added.
    Everyone drank what was left of their beer. In a fit of civic pride, everyone ordered another glass and drank that as well.
    â€œWhen did you say you were from, exactly?”
    â€œ2014,” Stockdale said.
    â€œ2016,” D8mon inserted.
    â€œYes, right—2016.”
    â€œHell’s bells, that’s a few years past expiration. I suppose you don’t see many of these, when you’re from?” he asked, pulling at the ends of his handlebar mustache.
    â€œActually, a lot more frequently than you’d think,” M said.
    The stranger didn’t quite know what that meant, but he was in a good enough humor to overlook it. “What are you boys here for, then?”
    â€œWe’re heading to the Nexus.” D8mon was drunk enough for his voice to carry a few stools down.
    â€œThat’s a ways.”
    â€œYou ever been there?”
    He shook his head. “The ¿