Read Online City on Fire by Garth Risk Hallberg - Free Book Online
Authors: Garth Risk Hallberg
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now if it wasn’t rather that he was afraid it was only this, the blackness, that William saw when he looked at him. Of people thinking he was some kind of trophy. The best times had been right here in this apartment, where they performed for no one but each other: dreams recounted, games of Scrabble played, sporting events enjoyed (William) or tolerated (Mercer). Behind him in the mirror lay the parched Christmas tree. And on the radiator, that goddamned envelope.
He hadn’t touched it since Christmas, but now he picked it up: creamy, densely grained, redolent (amid the kitty-litter funk of the loft) of some substance so precious it only existed in books—myrrh, maybe, or mandragora. The iron was still hot enough to steam it open. The card was, as he’d suspected, an invitation. The richly escutcheoned Goulds, William had said of his stepmother and -uncle, the one time he’d ever spoken of him, the week Mercer had discovered he was indeed the Hamilton-Sweeney heir, albeit disowned. A golf club rampant on a field azure. He copied down the address, sealed it back up. On the wire-spool coffeetable, William had left out a bottle of rye, which for Mercer had always had literary connotations, Robert Burns by way of Salinger connotations. He took an exploratory nip, and then another. He was unable to report any of the rumored sensations of suavity and sophistication. Gradually, though, a garment of grim resolve slipped down over him.
He squeezed himself into his lover’s tuxedo and the chesterfield coat William had left behind in favor of his motorcycle jacket—almost as if he’d known. Mercer twisted William’s bow tie around his hand, wanting it, somehow, to hurt. He sipped. When the person in the mirror looked suitably remote, he went down in a hurry, lest he change his mind. It was impossible to find a cab in Hell’s Kitchen after dark, especially when you were, yourself, dark. But the cold turned everything crisp, so that he could see from two long blocks off the train’s half-shattered green globe. The branches of a lone surviving tree, a fruitless Callery pear, were etched in white. Beyond them, through a swirl of snow, the crown of the Empire State Building floated on gossamer light, and Mercer could feel something inside him floating, too—his hopes, he guessed. The year of living passively was over. Tonight, he was taking matters into his own hands, and something big would come of it. Had to come of it. Yes, this year, the Year of Mercer, was going to be different.
6
REGAN HAD BEEN TOO FAR INSIDE what it was to be a Hamilton-Sweeney to see it clearly. To her, the Sutton Place townhouse where she’d grown up had been no different than the homes of her classmates: roomy, sure, but not conspicuously so. Daddy worked long hours, and she and William had the run of the place. By freshman year of high school, she’d known every inch of it, its safest hiding spots and which windows admitted the most sun at which times of day, and it might have gone on this way forever, like a village inside a snowglobe, just the three of them (or four, counting Doonie, their cook and de facto nanny) sealed up in the hermetic clarity her mother’s death left, had the Goulds not had different ideas.
She’d come to see them this way, as a package deal—the Goulds—even though Felicia had appeared first. One evening the table was set for four, and there she’d been in the foyer: a tiny, birdlike woman whose coat Daddy took himself. He introduced his “friend” to Regan, who watched from the stairs, and she didn’t need to be told any more—didn’t need Felicia’s avid hands skimming chairbacks and tables, already sorting the expensive from the merely sentimental, or Doonie’s significant looks, the tight-lipped shake of her head. Then, a few months later, Amory was produced, like a fist from a kid glove. He would be joining the firm, Daddy announced, after several uncharacteristic glasses of wine. William, across
He hadn’t touched it since Christmas, but now he picked it up: creamy, densely grained, redolent (amid the kitty-litter funk of the loft) of some substance so precious it only existed in books—myrrh, maybe, or mandragora. The iron was still hot enough to steam it open. The card was, as he’d suspected, an invitation. The richly escutcheoned Goulds, William had said of his stepmother and -uncle, the one time he’d ever spoken of him, the week Mercer had discovered he was indeed the Hamilton-Sweeney heir, albeit disowned. A golf club rampant on a field azure. He copied down the address, sealed it back up. On the wire-spool coffeetable, William had left out a bottle of rye, which for Mercer had always had literary connotations, Robert Burns by way of Salinger connotations. He took an exploratory nip, and then another. He was unable to report any of the rumored sensations of suavity and sophistication. Gradually, though, a garment of grim resolve slipped down over him.
He squeezed himself into his lover’s tuxedo and the chesterfield coat William had left behind in favor of his motorcycle jacket—almost as if he’d known. Mercer twisted William’s bow tie around his hand, wanting it, somehow, to hurt. He sipped. When the person in the mirror looked suitably remote, he went down in a hurry, lest he change his mind. It was impossible to find a cab in Hell’s Kitchen after dark, especially when you were, yourself, dark. But the cold turned everything crisp, so that he could see from two long blocks off the train’s half-shattered green globe. The branches of a lone surviving tree, a fruitless Callery pear, were etched in white. Beyond them, through a swirl of snow, the crown of the Empire State Building floated on gossamer light, and Mercer could feel something inside him floating, too—his hopes, he guessed. The year of living passively was over. Tonight, he was taking matters into his own hands, and something big would come of it. Had to come of it. Yes, this year, the Year of Mercer, was going to be different.
6
REGAN HAD BEEN TOO FAR INSIDE what it was to be a Hamilton-Sweeney to see it clearly. To her, the Sutton Place townhouse where she’d grown up had been no different than the homes of her classmates: roomy, sure, but not conspicuously so. Daddy worked long hours, and she and William had the run of the place. By freshman year of high school, she’d known every inch of it, its safest hiding spots and which windows admitted the most sun at which times of day, and it might have gone on this way forever, like a village inside a snowglobe, just the three of them (or four, counting Doonie, their cook and de facto nanny) sealed up in the hermetic clarity her mother’s death left, had the Goulds not had different ideas.
She’d come to see them this way, as a package deal—the Goulds—even though Felicia had appeared first. One evening the table was set for four, and there she’d been in the foyer: a tiny, birdlike woman whose coat Daddy took himself. He introduced his “friend” to Regan, who watched from the stairs, and she didn’t need to be told any more—didn’t need Felicia’s avid hands skimming chairbacks and tables, already sorting the expensive from the merely sentimental, or Doonie’s significant looks, the tight-lipped shake of her head. Then, a few months later, Amory was produced, like a fist from a kid glove. He would be joining the firm, Daddy announced, after several uncharacteristic glasses of wine. William, across
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