Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, Cory Doctorow [big ebook reader .txt] 📗

/> monochromatic, a black-and-white clip from an old home movie.

Carefully, he proceeded. Carefully, slipping from doorway to doorway,
slipping up the alleyway to the next, to the corner that led to the
alley that led to Kurt's. Carefully, listening, watching.

And he managed to sneak up on Krishna and Davey, and he knew that for
once, he'd be in the position to throw the rocks.

Krishna sat with his back against the cinderblock wall near Kurt's back
door, knees and hands splayed, head down in a posture of
supplication. He had an unlit cigarette in his mouth, which he nervously
shifted from corner to corner, like a soggy toothpick. Behind him,
standing atop the dented and scabrous garbage cans, Dumont.

He rested his head on his folded arms, which he rested on the sill, and
he stood on tiptoe to see in the window.

"I'm hungry," Krishna said. "I want to go get some food. Can I go and
get food and come back?"

"Quiet," Dewayne said. "Not another fucking word, you sack of shit." He
said it quietly in a neutral tone that was belied by his words. He
settled his head back on his folded forearms like a babe settling its
head in a bosom and looked back through the window. "Ah," he said, like
he had taken a drink.

Krishna climbed slowly to his feet and stood off a pace or two, staring
at Drew. He reached into the pocket of his old bomber jacket and found a
lighter and flicked it nervously a couple times.

"Don't you light that cigarette," Davey said. "Don't you dare."

"How long are we going to be here?" Krishna's whine was utterly devoid
of his customary swagger.

"What kind of person is he?" Davey said. "What kind of person is he? He
is in love with my brother, looks at him with cow-eyes when he sees him,
hangs on his words like a love-struck girl." He laughed nastily. "Like
*your* love-struck girl, like she looks at him.

"I wonder if he's had her yet. Do you think he has?"

"I don't care," Krishna said petulantly, and levered himself to his
feet. He began to pace and Alan hastily backed himself into the doorway
he'd been hiding in. "She's mine, no matter who she's fucking. I *own*
her."

"Look at that," Darrel said. "Look at him talking to them, his little
army, like a general giving them a pep talk. He got that from my
brother, I'm sure. Everywhere he goes, he leaves a trail of manipulators
who run other people's lives."

Alan's stomach clenched in on itself, and his butt and thighs ached
suddenly, like he'd been running hard. He thought about his protégés
with their shops and their young employees, learning the trade from them
as they'd learned it from him. How long had Don been watching him?

"When are we going to do it?" Krishna spat out his cigarette and shook
another out of his pack and stuck it in his mouth.

"Don't light it," Drew said. "We're going to do it when I say it's time
to do it. You have to watch first -- watching is the most important
part. It's how you find out what needs doing and to whom. It's how you
find out where you can do the most damage."

"I know what needs doing," Krishna said. "We can just go in there and
trash the place and fuck him up. That'd suit me just fine. Send the
right message, too."

Danny hopped down off the trash can abruptly and Krishna froze in his
paces at the dry rasp of hard blackened skin on the pavement. Davey
walked toward him in a bowlegged, splay-hipped gait that was more a
scuttle than a walk, the motion of some inhuman creature not accustomed
to two legs.

"Have you ever watched your kind, ever? Do you understand them, even a
little? Just because you managed to get a little power over one of my
people, you think you understand it all. You don't. That one in there is
bone-loyal to my brother. If you vandalized his little shop, he'd just
go to my brother for protection and end up more loyal and more. Please
stop thinking you know anything, it'll make it much easier for us to get
along."

Krishna stiffened. "I know things," he said.

"Your pathetic little birdie girl is *nothing*," Davey said. He stumped
over to Krishna, stood almost on his toes, looking up at him. Krishna
took an involuntary step backward. "A little one-off, a changeling
without clan or magic of any kind."

Krishna stuck his balled fists into the pockets of his space-age
future-sarcastic jacket. "I know something about *you*," he said. "About
*your* kind."

"Oh, yes?" Davey's tone was low, dangerous.

"I know how to recognize you, even when you're passing for normal. I
know how to spot you in a crowd, in a second." He smiled. "You've been
watching my kind all your life, but I've been watching your kind for all
of *mine*. I've seen you on the subway and running corner stores,
teaching in classrooms and driving to work."

Davey smiled then, showing blackened stumps. "Yes, you can, you
certainly can." He reached out one small, delicate hand and stroked the
inside of Krishna's wrist. "You're very clever that way, you are."
Krishna closed his eyes and breathed heavily through his nose, as though
in pain or ecstasy. "That's a good skill to have."

They stood there for a moment while Davey slowly trailed his fingertips
over Krishna's wrist. Then, abruptly, he grabbed Krishna's thumb and
wrenched it far back. Krishna dropped abruptly to his knees, squeaking
in pain.

"You can spot my kind, but you know nothing about us. You *are* nothing,
do you understand me?" Krishna nodded slowly. Alan felt a sympathetic
ache in his thumb and a sympathetic grin on his face at the sight of
Krishna knelt down and made to acquiesce. "You understand me?" Krishna
nodded again.

Davey released him and he climbed slowly to his feet. Davey took his
wrist again, gently. "Let's get you something to eat," he said.

Before Alan knew it, they were nearly upon him, walking back down the
alley straight toward his hiding place. Blood roared in his ears and he
pressed his back up against the doorway. They were only a step or two
away, and after a couple of indiscreetly loud panting gasps, he clamped
his lips shut and held his breath.

There was no way they could miss him. He pressed his back harder against
the door, and it abruptly swung open and a cold hand wrapped itself
around his bicep and pulled his through into a darkened, oil- and
must-smelling garage.

He tripped over his own heel and started to go over, but a pair of hands
caught him and settled him gently to the floor.

"Quiet," came a hoarse whisper in a voice he could not place.

And then he knew who his rescuer was. He stood up silently and gave
Billy a long hug. He was as skinny as death.

#

Trey's phone number was still current in the video store's
database, so she called him.

"Hey, Trey," she said. "It's Lara."

"Lara, heeeeeeyyyy," he said, in a tone that left no doubt that
he was picturing her panties. "Sorry, your bro ain't here."

"Want to take me out to dinner tonight?"

The silence on the other end of the line made her want to laugh,
but she bit her lip and rolled her eyes and amused the girl
browsing the chop-socky epics and visibly eavesdropping.

"Trey?"

"Lara, uh, yes, I'd love to, sure. Is this like a group thing
or..."

"No, Trey, I thought I'd keep this between the two of us. I'll
be at the store until six -- meet me here?"

"Yeah, okay. Okay! Sure. I'll see you tonight."

#

Brad was so thin he looked like a corpse. He was still tall, though, and
his hair and beard were grown out into long, bad-smelling straggles of
knot and grime. In the half-light of the garage, he had the instantly
identifiable silhouette of a street person.

He gathered Adam up in a hug that reeked of piss and booze, a hug like a
bundle of twigs in his arms.

"I love you," he whispered.

Andrew backed away and held him at arm's length. His skin had gone to
deep creases lined with soot, his eyes filmed with something that looked
like pond scum.

"Brady. What are you doing here?"

He held a finger up to his lips, then opened the door again onto the
now-empty alley. Alan peered the way that Davey and Krishna had gone,
just in time to see them turn a distant corner.

"Give it another minute," Blake said, drawing the door nearly closed
again. A moment later, they heard another door open and then Kurt's
chain-draped boots jangled past, headed the other way. They listened to
them recede, and then Brian swung the door wide again.

"It's okay now," he said.

They stepped out into the sunlight and Bert started to walk slowly
away. Alan caught up with him and Bert took his arm with long bony
fingers, leaning on him. He had a slight limp.

"Where have you been?" Alan asked when they had gone halfway home
through deft, confident turnings led by Blake.

"Watching you," he said. "Of course. When I came to the city, I worked
out at the racetrack for a week and made enough money to live off of for
a couple months, and avoided the tough guys who watched me winning and
waited to catch me alone at the streetcar stop. I made enough and then I
went to watch you.

"I knew where you were, of course. Always knew where you were. I could
see you whenever I closed my eyes. I knew when you opened your shops and
I went by at night and in the busy parts of the day so that I could get
a better sense of them. I kept an eye on you, Alan, watched over you. I
had to get close enough to smell you and hear you and see you, though,
it wasn't enough to see you in my mind.

"Because I had to know the *why*. I could see the *what*, but I had to
know the *why* -- why were you opening your stores? Why were you saying
the things you said? I had to get close enough because from the outside,
it's impossible to tell if you're winking because you've got a secret,
or if you've got dust in your eye, or if you're making fun of someone
who's winking, or if you're trying out a wink to see how it might feel
later.

"It's been four years I've been watching you when I could, going back to
the track for more when I ran out of money, and you know what? I know
what you're doing."

Alan nodded. "Yeah," he said.

"You're watching. You're doing what I'm doing. You're watching them to
figure out what they're doing."

Alvin nodded. "Yeah," he said.

"You don't know any more about the world than I do."

Albert nodded. "Yeah," he said.

Billy shook his head and leaned more heavily on Alan's arm. "I want a
drink," he said.

"I've got some vodka in the freezer," Alan said.

"I'll take some of the Irish whiskey on the sideboard in the living
room."

Adam looked at him sharply and he shrugged and smiled an