Read Online The City Still Breathing by Matthew Heiti - Free Book Online Page A

taking a sip, slowing this down to make sure he’s heard, ‘can I find him?’
    â€˜Listen, man, I don’t know the kid.’
    Milly watches Foisey in the mirror as he dips his teabag in and out of the mug, letting the silence sit, smelling the stink of the other man’s nerves.
    â€˜Where can I find him?’
    â€˜What the fuck d’you want with him anyway?’
    Milly feels the words come up from his gut, flopping heavy onto the bar for Foisey to see. ‘Where can I find him?’
    The glass Foisey is polishing breaks and he breathes in sharply, grabbing at his hand. ‘Look – I know his mother. She works over at that cop diner on Larch.’ He wraps the towel around his hand.
    Milly takes one final sip and puts a dollar bill on the counter. ‘Thanks for the tea.’
    As Milly pushes through the door he bumps into someone coming in. A big fella, half a foot taller than him. Head like a brick. Familiar. Wiping blood off his face with a sleeve. Just a bump, an inch of skin, and normally he’d give this guy a look to fuck off, but that inch gives him a chill like his grave’s been trampled all over. Or maybe it’s just this day he’s stepping out into. This day that started three days ago with Lemmy walking off.
    He stands on the steps outside the Nickel Bin. The snow is laid out so white and pure you almost forget the city underneath it. Almost forget that by tomorrow everything will be grey sludge kicked up by cars.
    A squeaking and here comes some cart rolling down the street. Normando pushing his popcorn cart. He hasn’t been down here for he doesn’t know how long and it’s all the same. That scrawny crow as ancient now as he was years ago. When Mom used to make them cross the street when they saw Normando coming. Nothing ever changes. Same potholes, same burnt-out street lights, same graffitied brick, same sad-faced businessmen, same whores on Elgin, same Normando pushing that same cart same time every morning heading for the same corner. Nothing changes. He’s only been in the city for an hour and already he feels it leaning in on him from all corners like it always did, and he just wants to be free of it. The city, yeah, but all the rest too.
    The clouds are moving above him. Layers and layers of grey crawling over one another. Grey for days on end. But for a moment, a hole opens, clouds shifting to allow a single patch of blue. Vibrant. And he thinks about lying in the top bunk and Lemmy saying, Tell me bout the oh shine, Yershey. And he wouldn’t yell, he’d tell him about water and whales and sailboats and submarines and starfish and coral reefs and mountains and the people you’ll meet, good people and the space, oh god, so much space. Above them a galaxy of glow-in-the-dark stickers across the ceiling.
    Can we go Yershey?
    Yes.
    Today Yershey?
    Yes, today, Lemmy.
    And they’d be free. Free in the ocean. Free from their awkward bodies and histories. From this hard unforgiving sidewalk slab. Free. His feet are coming off the ground and he’s falling slowly up toward that blue, Lemmy beside him smiling. Looking back to see the city fading out. Floating up so high he’s leaving behind the dead farm in Spanish, Ukki waving from the porch, the wreck of their parents’ car. High over everything, finally splashing into all that blue. Like Lemmy in the water. Free. Released.
    Then crashing back to that patch of miserable concrete outside the bar and he looks up to see Lemmy going up and up. Leaving him like everyone leaves him, to deal with the mess. Leaving him behind. Going on. Going gone.

6
    N ormando pushes the damned cart, squeaksqueak, squeaksqueak , down Durham to the corner of Larch. Sets up right underneath the yellow canopy of the news shop. People walk by. Businessmen going to work, hookers going to bed. It’s a morning routine. The way a downtown shakes off sleep like some old dog.
    Light the