Read Online Emerald City by Jennifer Egan - Free Book Online Page A

flicked away. And it struck him that this was New York: a place that glittered from a distance even when you reached it.
    They climbed the four flights of steps to Rory’s apartment. A slit of light shone under the door, which meant Charles was back. They found him standing at the kitchen table, wiping a slab of red meat with a paper towel. He had a blowtorch plugged into the wall, and a dismantled smoke alarm lay at his feet.
    “You poor thing,” Stacey said, kissing him on the cheek. “You never stop working.”
    Charles’s mouth was like a cat’s, small and upturned at the corners. It made him seem happy even when he wasn’t. “Meat is my weak point,” he said. “I’ve got a job tomorrow doing steak.”
    He was prematurely balding, and Rory admired the look of hardship and triumph this gave him. Lately he’d searched his own hairline for signs of recession, but the blond surfer’s mane seemed even more prolific. Most cruel of all, it was Charles who’d been born and raised in Santa Cruz.
    “Here goes,” Charles said, firing up the blowtorch. They watched as he moved the flame slowly over the meat, back and forth as if he were mowing a lawn. Its surface turned a pale gray. When the entire side was done, he flipped the steak over and lightly cooked its other side.
    “Ugh,” said Stacey. “It’s still completely raw.”
    “Wait,” Charles said.
    He held a long metal spit to the flame until it glowed red. Then he pressed the spit to the meat. There was a hiss, a smell of cooking, and when he lifted the spit, a long black stripe branded the steak. He heated the spit several more times and pressed it to the meat at parallel intervals. Soon it was indistinguishable from a medium-rare steak straight off the grill. Rory felt an irrational surge of appetite, a longing to eat the meat in spite of knowing it was raw and cold.
    Stacey opened the refrigerator. Rory always kept a supply of Cokes for her in there; Diet, of course, but also some regulars in case she had earned one that day and not yet rewarded herself. To his surprise, she pulled out a can of regular now.
    “What the hell,” she said. “I mean, really, what difference does it make?”
    Rory stared at her. She had never said anything like this before. “What about Vesuvi?” he asked, regretting it even as he spoke.
    “Vesuvi won’t hire me. You know it perfectly well.”
    She was smiling at him, and Rory felt as if she had peered into the lying depths of his soul. “Vesuvi doesn’t know shit,” he said, but it sounded lame even to himself.
    Stacey slid open the window and climbed out onto the fire escape. The sky was a strange, sulfurous yellow—beautiful, yet seemingly disconnected from nature. The shabby tree behind Rory’s building was empty of leaves, and made a pattern of cracked glass against the sky. Stacey drank her Coke in tiny, careful sips. Rorystood helplessly inside the window, watching her. He needed to say something to her, he knew that, but he wasn’t sure how.
    He shook a cigarette from his pack and placed it in his mouth. Charles was working on a second steak. “By the way,” Charles said, pointing with his chin at a spot near Rory’s head, “I baked us a cake—a real one.”
    Rory turned in surprise and lifted a plate from above the refrigerator. It was a tall, elegant cake with giant dollops of whipped cream along its edges. “Charles,” Rory said, confused, “haven’t you been doing this all week?”
    “Yeah,” Charles said, “but always for strangers. And never to eat.”
    He bent over the steak, his blowtorch hissing on the damp meat. He looked embarrassed, as if his preference for real cake were a weakness he rarely confided. Charles’s honesty shamed Rory—he said what he felt, not caring how it sounded.
    Rory climbed out the window and sat beside Stacey. The bars of the fire escape felt cold through his jeans. Stacey held her Coke in one hand and took Rory’s hand in the other. They looked at the