The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem Read Free Book Online Page A

thought about it. And it certainly shouldn’t know her words— asshole , pothead , gay , pretentious , sexy , grass —nor should the bearers of nicknames know the nicknames: Mr. Memory , Pepe le Peu , Susie Cube , Captain Vague , Vendlemachine .
    His father’s nickname was The Collector .
    Vendlemachine stayed upstairs each Saturday morning while Dylan took out the foul, liquefied garbage in the tall pail in the basement kitchen and lined the pail with a new bag. Isabel couldn’t lift a bag of garbage herself and so the smell massed for seven days, waiting for Dylan to uncork it. Then the silent and massive orange cat would creep downstairs to watch. It had a skull like a Gila monster. Dylan couldn’t know whether the orange cat loathed him or Isabel or was indifferent, couldn’t know what it understood about Dylan’s situation, so it was useless as a witness. It might not even know that Isabel wasn’t meant to be bent the way she was, might instead regard Isabel as a standard for the human form and therefore find Dylan’s shape objectionable. Nevertheless the orange cat was the only witness. It seemed to live for the moment each week when the garbage was transferred and the room inflated with the stink of coffee grinds and orange peels and stale milk.
    “I don’t want to work for you anymore,” Dylan Ebdus said to Isabel Vendle now as she swam in the coverings of her bed, in the mustiness and shadow. The orange cat sat in a solitary pool of clean sunlight near the parlor windows, ducking its reptile head rhythmically against its paw.
    Isabel moaned softly into the silence.
    Dylan waited.
    Outside the Dean Street bus breathed down the block, took the pothole which served as home plate with a clunk, then shuddered on.
    “I need you to go to the store,” Isabel said at last. “Not Ramirez. Go to Mrs. Bugge’s on Bergen.” Isabel Vendle pronounced the name of the Norwegian immigrant woman Byu-gah . Everyone else on the block called the shop on the corner of Bergen and Bond, the bodega that wasn’t a bodega because instead of Puerto Ricans it was run by a fat white woman with tiny eyes, Buggy’s.
    Ho, snap—you lifted some cakes from Buggy’s? I heard Buggy’s German shepherd once bit a kid’s ass off.
    Isabel raised her arm from the bed and let her fingertips fall on the side table. Her nails rapped lightly. Dylan came close, crossing the invisible line into the aquarium light of Isabel’s parlor bedroom, to gather the bills which lay there.
    “Kraft American slices, Thomas’ muffins, and a quart of milk.” The old woman spoke as if describing a recurrent dream. “Five dollars should be enough.”
    Dylan crumpled Isabel’s money into his pocket, wondering now if he’d spoken aloud. “I, don’t, want, to, work—” he began again, softly, carefully, spacing the words.
    “ Skim milk,” said Isabel.
    “Idon’twanttoworkforyou,” Dylan said quickly.
    The orange cat blinked up.
    “It tastes like water,” Isabel mused. “White water.”
    The block was empty except for a couple of teenagers on Alberto’s stoop near the corner. Dylan didn’t know where the kids were. It was October, getting colder, everyone was wearing jackets and ranging away from the block. Henry left to play football in the schoolyard near Smith Street and Earl just didn’t come out. Somebody had left a bottle in a bag on the stoop of the abandoned house. Days before there’d been a guy sleeping on the stoop, one of those drinkers who just nested for a while. A stained paper bag was like a pissed pair of green pants, it was only a matter of where the leak showed. That’s why they called it a leak.
    Dylan cornered Bond Street, feeling how irrational a block was, one face so familiar, the housefronts and slate walk a surfaced iceberg, one with Dylan’s own flag planted on it, his chalk skully boards, the ghostly traces of his chasing down a ball or being tagged It . The rest of the block was under water. Dylan for years