Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem Read Free Book Online

or not. Traffic was a nightmare. The cabbie was saying something about that escaped tiger getting loose again on Lexington Avenue.”
    “One hears continually of this… tiger,” said Georgina Hawkmanaji. “It is supposedly of a tremendous size.” She spoke as if this represented some personal provocation, from which adequate skepticism could offer insulation. I sympathized. I’d heard of the tiger perhaps three or four times now myself, yet found it difficult to bring into focus as a real and ongoing problem, something capable of bollixing traffic on Lexington. My fault. It was too long since I’d read a newspaper.
    “See, they should let a few of us who know what we’re doing track that baby down,” said Thatcher Woodrow. “I ought to give Arnheim a call and suggest it. Can’t imagine what’s taking so long with one little old tiger.” He raised his arms and squinted one eye like a five-year-old to mime bagging a moving target with a blunderbuss or elephant gun, alluding, I suppose, to facts we were supposed to have absorbed during some earlier dinner, about Thatcher’s record of accomplishments up against big game. I thought I remembered something Hemingwayesque in his background, and maybe, god knew, a room full of pelts and heads lurked in the duplex some-where,quarantined by Maud in favor of Diane Arbus and Gregory Crewdson prints and studies for sculptures by Laird Noteless.
    “It isn’t that kind of tiger,” said Richard Abneg. His tone was dismissive. These two, Thatcher and Abneg, were going to be at it all night long, I saw. They’d find materials over which to dispute through the dessert, and through the round of Cuban cigars Thatcher always loved to personally distribute, and the seemingly spontaneous offerings of brandy and Armagnac Thatcher would haul out after the cigars, to distend the evening into a contented, blithering haze, meanwhile instructing the staff to do the final clearing in the morning, to Maud’s disgust. (This was Thatcher’s real enmity, anyway. Maud’s conversational prerogatives ruled while conversation was possible, so Thatcher worked steadily to numb our tongues with stimulants, until we were reduced to the humming and grunting and Morse-code glances he preferred.)
    “What’s that supposed to mean?” asked not Thatcher but Naomi Kandel.
    “Just that it isn’t that kind of tiger, where you can, you know, kill it with a well-placed shot between the eyes or something.”
    “I have heard it is quite … sizable,” murmured Georgina, allying herself with Abneg.
    “Yeah, it’s big. A big problem is what it is. You have no idea.” Was Richard Abneg implying that as a mayor’s aide he was privy to facts about the tiger not printed in the Times? His heavy glances seemed to say Yes I am . He adjusted the collar of his shirt, grimacing sweatily, as if adding and I’ve got claw marks on my back, they itch like hell . Thatcher Woodrow seemed to take this as a signal to depart, without explanation, for a visit to the bathroom, or possibly to his humidor, to poison Abneg’s cigar in advance.

    Of course, there was no poison in Thatcher’s cigars. Or, only a kind of poison we craved. An hour later, with all of us sprung from the vise of Maud’s table, sprawled on her white couches, snifters hovering at the level of our heads, hostilities were forgotten. Or drowned. Thatcher, in his absurd maroon dinner jacket with its college emblem, was our champion, keeping those snifters full of colored fluids with magical properties. He always had another exotic bottle that cried to be sampled, always with a name I instantly forgot, thinking instead: Funky Monkey, Blueberry Kush, Chronic .
    Now we all loved one another to death. Which is to say, until the end of the evening. There was no other place to be, it was unimaginable not to float on our backs in this ocean of luxury, an archipelago of personalities lobbing witticisms across one another’s beaches. Only I’d lately become