The Silver Age Read Online Free PDF

member, brandished a grey plastic key fob and the door clicked
open to reveal a bleak stairwell and cramped elevator, like something out of a
Coen Brothers movie. The elevator carried them (barely) to the top of the
building, its creaking door opening directly onto the club’s sleek, modernist
interior.
    Magazine people seemed to have taken over the entire
establishment – it was a repeat of the awards themselves, minus the more mature
and less socially aggressive guests. Competing cliques stood in discrete
groups, their eyes rolling enviously towards each other. If one of the members
of Urbanista had defied the tribal codes and chatted up a staffer from This
City, a massacre might have ensued. Until such a provocation occurred, the
only thing to do was to find out which group could consume more martinis and/or
exchange wittier banter.
    After an hour or so in dutiful conversation with his
clan-mates, Stephan slipped on his suit jacket, which he’d been holding tucked
under an arm, and stepped out onto the Stem’s half-dark rooftop patio to get
some air. It was cool outside, and quieter now, the ranks of party-goers
thinned by slow attrition. Here and there small groups of stalwarts clustered
in talk, forming dark islands of activity demarcated by cigarette-ember
lighthouse beacons.
    He went to the edge of the balcony and stood gazing out
over the city. The sky above had turned a sickly grey, and the handful of stars
able to compete with the city lights were fading fast. Down below, the clustered
office towers of the financial district were lit up like Christmas, even though
they would be abandoned now by all but a few cleaners, security guards, and
perhaps the occasional insomniac MBA gearing up for a big PowerPoint
extravaganza the next day.
    From an invisible condo in a tower across the road there
came the sound of a stereo playing an old Smiths album from the late 1980s. A
faint breeze wafted in off the lake, tousled his hair. The night air was
somehow almost fresh, at least by smog-ridden downtown standards. The song the
stereo was playing at that moment had been a favourite of Stephan’s when he was
in high school. He’d owned the vinyl record, and later the cassette tape. His
friends had made fun of him for liking such an obviously prissy Brit band, had
serenaded him in imitation of Morrissey’s moany falsetto. But he hadn’t cared –
in fact, he’d been secretly gratified by their mockery. The sound of Johnny
Marr’s layered guitars, jangling mournfully in a minor key, put him in a
wistful mood. It seemed as if something had just clicked into place, and for
once the life he was living was identical to the one he daydreamed for himself.
     
     
    A ghostly figure broke away from a group that had been
standing in the shadows on the far side of the patio and made its way over to
the railing near him, where it lit a cigarette. How strange, he would think,
years later, whenever he looked back on the scene, that people still smoked in
those days. A few years later, and the story might never have unfolded.
    It was her.
    The flare of pale yellow flame from her lighter
illuminated her features for a second or two before fading. Then her face was
dark again and she was blowing smoke rings out over the railing. He watched as
each ring stood perfect and solid for a few seconds before evaporating into
nothingness, swallowed up by the hot night.
    Something about her posture made him think that she
hadn’t seen him. He wondered if he should make some sound to let her know,
without startling her, that she wasn’t alone. He might have slipped away
unseen, but her position along the railing blocked him into a dead-end corner
of the balcony, so that he couldn’t leave without passing directly behind her.
But before he could make any sign she turned to him, unalarmed, her face in darkness
but a halo of golden light on her hair.
    “Who’s that over by the potted plant?” she called.
“Raymond? Is that you?”
    He emerged,