Read Online Face by Aimee Liu, Daniel McNeill - Free Book Online

central wall that continued up the spire and took my packages from Tommy, held them in my
     lap as anchors.
    He went over and leaned against the barrier, the upper half of his body floating a hundred stories high. He looked directly
     down.
    “My parents brought me here on my fifth birthday in weather just like this,” he called over his shoulder. “Pop called it the
     Emperor State Building.”
    “I really am afraid of heights,” I yelled.
    “He said the reason the clouds look solid when you get this far up is because of the Emperor of the Western Skies. He uses
     the clouds to teach us mortals about humility; if a man climbs high enough, he’ll think he can just walk across and enter
     the gates of heaven, but when he tries he’ll find out pretty quick, his path to heaven is a fast trip back to earth.”
    He came away from the railing. A sudden gust flattened his shirt against his narrow chest, but he walked through the wind.
    I’d be a perfect victim for Tommy’s Emperor. I knew the impossibility of the illusion, the end of the dream, but I felt the
     alternative. If not yet completely for myself, then for Johnny. I used to look out the windows of planes expecting to see
     him striding along with his feet in the clouds, wings spread. I never caught him, but I never stopped believing I would.
    “You still bite your fingernails.”
    Instinctively I curled my paws.
    “That’s an observation, not an insult.”
    His hands hung open by his sides. He had long, ringless fingers, no torn edges.
    “What’s the ‘T’ for?”
    “What T?”
    “You signed your letter ‘T. Tommy.’”
    “I call myself Tai now. But you wouldn’t have known me if I didn’t write ‘Tommy.’”
    I let that digest for a moment.
    “My sister calls herself Aneela. I still call her Anna.”
    He sat at the other end of the bench and began to talk about his work. Social history, he called it. People in places. I thought
     of my father’s photographs. People in places, as if there were an alternative. Places without people, yes. As my own pictures
     proved. But not the reverse.
    He crossed his legs, ankle to knee. The heel of his shoe was worn straight across the back. Mine always give along the outer
     edges, reminding me of a certain crookedness to my gait. Not Tommy.
    Social history seemed an unlikely vocation for a poulterer’s son. I wondered if it had something to do with his name change.
     But there was Anna chiding, no, it’s not about abandonment, it’s a matter of finding the truth. Truth my ass. People who shuffle
     their identity like a deck of cards make me suspicious. That goes for Tommy, too. Or Tai.
    “Did my mother put you up to this?”
    “Your mother doesn’t know me from a sewer rat. Never has.”
    He got up and returned to the railing. I saw him flipping backward, over and down, falling silently into the great gray gauze
     below.
    “You’re giving me vertigo. Please don’t stand so close to the edge.”
    He removed his arms from the railing and took a single step toward me. I began to shiver, but I was damned if I’d beg him.
    “So. Will you help an old friend out?”
    “Old friend?”
    “Friend of your brother’s, then.” He hesitated. “And Li’s.”
    “You haven’t spoken to Henry in years. And Li’s dead.” Though even as I said it I could see Lao Li, his gaunt face nodding,
     one spidery hand lifted in amused benediction. I said, “It doesn’t make sense.”
    “I told you, I was impressed by your work.”
    “My work’s shit.”
    “All right. I can’t pay. But I thought you might be interested, anyway.”
    My teeth chattered. Strange noises jerked and rolled up my throat. The shivering grew into something akin to a seizure. He
     didn’t seem to notice.
    “I have a publisher, but the advance is nothing. I can pay expenses, that’s it. Of course, you’d share in any royalties…”
    I turned away from him and the field of gray beyond him, and gripped the back of the bench. Still I