Metropolis by Elizabeth Gaffney Read Free Book Online Page B

name no one can read, and you can’t even tell when they’re trying to? It just won’t do, that name. Or the handwriting either.”
    “But it’s my name,” the stableman said and then smiled faintly to himself because in fact it wasn’t.
    “No, no, forget it. I’m going to do you a favor here. I’m just going to put you down as . . . yeah, that’ll do . . . that was my father’s name, why not? And then there’s the prince. Mr. William ‘Willin’ to Work at Night’ Williams. Or Prince William of Prince Street, if you’d rather.” He tittered to himself, but the man he was naming was slow on the uptake.
    “Wilhelm is your father’s name?”
    “Yeah, but no—not
Vil-helm.
Just
Will.
See, it’s a free country over here—you don’t have to be a German. You can be whoever you want to be.”
    Will,
the former stableman thought.
Will Williams. All right.
He looked up at the clerk with gratitude and was disconcerted to see the man staring straight at him. It might have been an unpleasant feeling for some men, but for him to be looked at, at all, was a rare intimacy, a comfort—certainly not an affront. This man had named him, he thought, and after his own father. This man would not forget his face. If they met again, they would trade nods of recognition, smiles even, hellos.
    He was still slightly skeptical as he took the new name into his mouth—gingerly, like a bite of sausage with mustard. He let it rise to the back of his throat and his sinuses, opened his mouth a crack to let it mingle with his breath.
    “Will ‘Willin’ to Work at Night’ Williams,” he said, mimicking the clerk so closely that his accent almost vanished. He had a good ear, the stableman.
    The clerk raised his eyebrows and laughed. “Oh, so now you’re a quick study, eh? I guess you’ll do all right.”
    And maybe he would. At least he had a name now.
    Call him Will.

5.
    TO SQUAT SAVES THE BACK
    H is luck had turned again. In fact, he realized, it had turned for the better several hours, maybe even days, before. He’d only failed to notice it, by failing to hear his name when it was called. It was a lesson he told himself to keep in mind. Now he had to get to work, but where on such a night could a man who knew no one in the whole metropolis find a handful of able-bodied men? He had no idea. It didn’t matter. He would find them.
    His employer was the city itself, a curious idea to him. He was to hand his documents over to the night manager at the Street Cleaning office, once he had his men—if he could assemble twenty men. The street was entirely depopulated. The city was shut down, which was at once his problem and his opportunity. Clearly he wouldn’t have gotten this job if the storm hadn’t worsened, if he hadn’t been the last man there. And yet his assignment was made difficult by the very fact that there was no one abroad. He wished he knew where to find the men from Barnum’s, even the ones who’d let him sleep while the stable burned, the ones who now suspected him. They would all be out of work, too, and needing money. He imagined being in a position to offer them work—to offer them anything, really—and wondered what it would take, exactly, to convert the weak bond of acquaintance he had with them into something stronger. But none of them had been forthcoming enough before the fire for him to know where they lived, much less where they might hole up to drink for the night. He thought of the thin German, the one with the beautiful voice, and the odd look he’d gotten from him when he saw him up at Barnum’s. His name was something like Ludwig, if he remembered correctly. What he would have given, just then, for a conversation in German. Now and then he heard a female voice speaking German on the street, and he thought of Maria. If only he knew where to look for her. He had thought about going to a German church and asking, but he remembered that she wasn’t religious as far as he knew. He hadn’t the