Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves TownDoctorow, Cory
Science
Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town
Doctorow, Cory
Internet -- Fiction; Science fiction; Toronto (Ont.) -- Fiction
Andrew sat in his office by his laptop and watched the sun come out. He
needed to find Ed, needed to find Frank, needed to find Grant, but he
was out of practice when it came to the ways of the mountain and its
sons. Whenever he tried to imagine a thing to do next, his mind spun and
the worldless howling thing inside him stirred. The more he tried to
remember what it was like to be a son of the mountain, the more he felt
something he'd worked very hard for, his delicate normalcy, slipping
away.
So he put his soaked clothes in the dryer, clamped his laptop under his
arm, and went out. He moped around the park and the fountain, but the
stroller moms whose tots were splashing in the wading pool gave him
sufficient dirty looks that he walked up to the Greek's, took a table on
the patio, and ordered a murderously strong cup of coffee.
He opened up the screen and rotated around the little café table until
the screen was in the shade and his wireless card was aligned for best
reception from the yagi antenna poking out of his back window. He opened
up a browser and hit MapQuest, then brought up a street-detailed map of
the Market. He pasted it into his CAD app and started to mark it up,
noting all the different approaches to his house that Davey might take
the next time he came. The maps soothed him, made him feel like a part
of the known world.
Augusta Avenue and Oxford were both out; even after midnight, when the
stores were all shuttered, there was far too much foot traffic for Davey
to pass by unnoticed. But the alleys that mazed the back ways were
ideal. Some were fenced off, some were too narrow to pass, but most of
them -- he'd tried to navigate them by bicycle once and found himself
utterly lost. He'd had to turn around slowly until he spotted the CN
Tower and use it to get his bearings.
He poked at the map, sipping the coffee, then ordering another from the
Greek's son, who hadn't yet figured out that he was a regular and so
sneered at his laptop with undisguised contempt. "Computers, huh?" he
said. "Doesn't anyone just read a book anymore?"
"I used to own a bookstore," Alan said, then held up a finger and moused
over to his photo album and brought up the thumbnails of his old
bookstore. "See?"
The Greek's son, thirty with a paunch and sweat-rings under the pits of
his white "The Greek's" T-shirt, sat down and looked at the photos. "I
remember that place, on Harbord Street, right?"
Alan smiled. "Yup. We lost the store when they blew up the abortion
clinic next door," he said. "Insurance paid out, but I wasn't ready to
start over with another bookstore."
The Greek's son shook his head. "Another coffee, right?"
"Right," Alan said.
Alan went back to the map, realigning the laptop for optimal reception
again.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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