City on Fire Read Online Free PDF Page A

the movies, slightly too wide, from which her smoke-coarsened voice—her best thing—now came. “Long time no see.”
    “Yeah, well. I’ve been keeping busy.”
    “I thought you were grounded, Charlie.”
    “That, too.”
    She reached for the fur hat. Charlie’s cheeks burned as she inspected the self-inflicted hair trauma that had led indirectly to his exile. You look like a mental patient, his mother had said. It had grown back, mostly. Meantime, Sam had done a thing to her own hair, chopping it boyishly short and dyeing it from amber to black. She was almost as tall as Charlie, and with a dark blazer hiding her curves, she looked like Patti Smith on the cover of Horses—their second-favorite album. Though who knew what she listened to now that she’d gone off to college in the City. Asked about dorm life, she said it was a drag. He offered the hat. “You wanna wear it? It’s warm.”
    “It’s only been fifteen minutes.”
    “The road’s pretty slick. And I had to stop for coffee. Sorry no car.” He never mentioned how terrible her chain-smoking was for his asthma, and she, reciprocally, now pretended not to notice him suck down a chemical lungful from the dorky inhaler. “My mom thinks I’m staying at Mickey Sullivan’s, which tells you what planet she’s on.” But Sam had already turned to where the track curved into darkness. A light glided toward them like a cool white slider homing in on the plate. The 8:33 to Penn Station. In a few hours the ball would drop over Times Square and men and women all over New York would turn to whoever was nearest for an innocent kiss, or a not-so-innocent. He pretended the tightness in his chest as they boarded was just caffeine. “Like I care what Mickey thinks anyway. That jerk won’t even like nod at me in the lunchroom anymore.” The three of them—Mickey, Charlie, and Samantha—should have been in the same class at the high school. But Sam’s terrifying dad, the fireworks genius, had sent her to the nuns for elementary, and then to private school in New York proper. It must have worked; Sam was only six months older, but had been smart enough to skip sixth grade, and was now at NYU. Whereas he and Mickey were C students, and no longer friends. Maybe he should have found someone more willing to serve as tonight’s alibi, actually, because if Mom called the Sullivans in the a.m. to thank them (not that she would remember, but if), he’d be in big trouble, a ripe steaming mound of it. And what if she found out where he’d gotten the money to cover two round-trips into the City? He’d be locked in his room till like 1980. “You got the tickets?”
    “I thought you were buying,” she said.
    “I mean for Ex Post Facto.”
    She pulled a crumpled flier from her pocket. “It’s Ex Nihilo now. Different frontman, different name.” For a moment, her mood seemed to darken. “But anyway, this isn’t the opera. It’s not like a ticketed event.”
    He followed her down the aisle, under fluttery lights, waiting as long as possible before reminding her that he couldn’t sit backward, on account of his stomach. Again, her face grew pinched; he worried for a second he’d already jinxed their (he couldn’t help thinking) date. But she’d pushed the door open and was leading him toward the next car.
    The LIRR belonged to kids that night. Even the grown-ups were kids. There were few enough of them that each little band of revelers could leave several rows of Bicentennial red-and-blue seats on each side as a buffer. They talked much louder than adults would have, and you could tell it was meant to be overheard, as a means of preemption, a way of saying, I am not afraid of you. Charlie wondered how many Nassau County moms tonight had no idea where their kids were—how many mothers had simply granted them their freedom. As soon as the conductor had passed through, beers began to circulate. Someone had a transistor radio, but the speaker was cruddy, and at that