Read Online Atlantis: Three Tales by Samuel R. Delany - Free Book Online

alley-scape—crossed and recrossed by catenaries of clotheslines piled with white. The only things not silver, gray, or black were three windows in the wall across from him, behind the ropes and fire escapes . . . One had the yellowish hue of incandescent light. Two had the dimmer yellow from hidden kerosene lamps, flaming quietly and darkly. In one of these, the light came through cloth no thicker than a bedsheet, hanging in folds behind the glass. Even as Sam noticed, a shadow moved on it.
    Yes, on the rippled textile was the shadow of a body—a woman’s body. A woman with hair, and breasts—he started—and, he was certain, wearing nothing! The slim darkness of an arm raised on ivory cloth; on the hanging folds, her silhouette turned. The sill was at her thigh, and as she strained to do something behind, he could see the apex of light between her legs as one went back. The line of a hip—her breast again. Body of shadow, body of light, held a moment—and the illumination that articulated her dimmed . . . then puffed out!
    Within gray stone, the window’s rectangle was black.
    The surprise of her vanishing made him gasp. With thudding chest,slowly he went down on the knees of his union suit before the painted wainscot beneath his own sill. The drape fell against his jacket shoulder, slid behind him.
    Her window remained dark.
    Cold air leaked under the edge of his own.
    After a moment, down on his knees, Sam lifted his elbows out and up, grasped the metal handles on the lower sash, and raised it. Over the tiny chill real cold fell in under his thumbs, wrapped its feathery tickle around his chin and neck, pried inside his long-john top. Beyond the wooden trough—a black, splintered canyon in water-rotted wood—out on the dry stone a snow pillow curved away, glittering. He raised the sash another inch, then a foot—then six more inches; raised himself to look again toward that black window. His breathing had become so shallow that, now, he gasped a chest full of icy air. On his knees, it made him reel. Rising again, he leaned forward, thrust his face under the sash—brought his mouth slowly to the snow.
    And kissed it.
    Crystals melted before his lips—he closed his eyes—and a water bead ran along the crevice between. He opened his mouth just a little—and a cold drop rolled within, warming. Mouthing snow, he took in only the tiniest bit of air through lattices of white fire.
    Two days later on his third trip underground to Times Square and Forty-second Street specifically to find it, almost by accident Sam turned to see the window full of false noses, exploding cigars, and sneezing powder—more jokes in the window, actually, than the magic tricks that had first caught his attention. The shop’s exotic name was Cathay. It also had lots of Chinese boxes for sale, and ivory carvings with black wood bases, Japanese fans and Oriental scarves that were not particularly magic at all. Maybe he had passed it before and, for all the other things there, hadn’t recognized it. But there was the top hat, the wand . . . Inside, the bearded man with the bottle-bottom glasses was a Mr. Horstein, who, soon as they got to talking, explained how he’d been a magician back in the ’nineties—oh, yes, the magic was the first reasonfor Cathay’s existence. The rest was all because sailors on leave and sometimes tourists liked to buy them. Clearly Mr. Horstein loved to talk to his customers. He talked about the great Harry Houdini, who, no, never came to Cathay. But Mr. Horstein had met him in Chicago and then again in Syracuse. Apparently they were acquaintances. “Not friends. But we say ‘Hello,’ as men who share the same profession.” Last year when Houdini had played the Jackson Theater, Sam and Lewy had not been allowed to go—because neither Papa nor Lewy’s stepfather would allow his children