The Age of Cities Read Online Free PDF

secrets safe in the staff room of River Bend Senior Secondary School. I was wondering if I could impose on you? There’s this delightful fabric shop that sells a veritable rainbow of embroidery yarns. They stock a Belgian brand that I have never been able to find out here. Jewel colours, remarkable. It is a few quick steps from Eaton’s.”
    â€œOf course, I’d be happy to.”
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    Winston felt satisfied to reach the address on the map the porter had drawn for him; he was closer still to winning the bet he’d made with Alberta. It was childish, he admitted, but he was filled with a quiver of pleasure in proving his mother wrong. He’d collect the two-dollar bill from her—the clasp of her purse a vise of prudence—the moment he arrived home. And now he’d found the place on his first try. Her prediction had him losing his way twice during the time that he was away.
    Craning his neck upward, he imagined the constant stream of ailments that would lead to the building of an entire skyscraper stacked basement to penthouse with doctors’ offices, all reflecting what must amount to scores of specialties. Winston wondered whether all the excesses city living paved the way for—hazards and conveniences alike—opened the door to such medical industriousness. And all that close living: population density had been the reason London, England was so devastated by influenza during the Great War. Naïve people sneezing, spitting, coughing, and spreading germs in their sardine-packed neighbourhoods and to myriad strangers on the streets. Who needed goose-stepping Germans to wreak havoc? Beyond the constant city noise and the vertical clutter of buildings, he caught glimpses of soaring grey seabirds and yet greyer water.
    He pulled the door open and walked into the veined black marble foyer. Seeing no attendant, Winston found himself excited to be pressing 7 and DOOR CLOSE inside the elevator car. He thought of telling Alberta about it and then chastised himself for playing the country hick. “Cripes, it’s only an elevator,” he said to no one but himself.
    The office receptionist was near Alberta’s age, though her years of service had rendered her yielding and grandmotherly. An automatic smile hinted at her beneficence. Her familiarity with the room and her job seemed so established that for a moment Winston was gripped by the certainty that this woman was the doctor’s mother. She asked him questions gently and filled out the requisite forms with a confident hand, then showed him to a room and requested that he remove his shoes and stockings after indicating the squat leather stool for patients. Winston crossed his legs, but changed his mind and placed both feet firmly on the cool linoleum floor. Instantly tense in the sterile broom closet of a room, he began to count the mottled tiles.
    The doctor arrived holding a black wire-spine notepad in his mouth. He nodded to his water glass to mime that he needed the spare hand to open the door. His hopeful raised brow prompted Winston to think of the beleaguered door-to-door salesmen his mother shooed away only after allowing them in to fully pitch their truly invaluable, Madame wares. Regardless of what was being sold, she’d inform him, “We had a visit from the Fuller Brush man today,” and regale Winston with her story of the threadbare underdog’s earnest attempt to scrape together a living. She’d never purchased so much as a pencil.
    At times, Winston thought that Alberta seemed little different than a cat that has caught some hapless mouse; she’d draw out the game for as long as it kept her amused. He reminded himself to bring up her vindictiveness the next time she got on her high horse about civility and man’s unqualified march of progress. When in the spirit to banter, Winston wagged his finger and asked her to see the bigger picture: that the man had a family to support, she