The Stone War Read Online Free PDF Page A

and then there would be a fight about getting the bulbs changed, and eventually he’d wear them down and get the low-glo bulbs used on closed streets, but the fight would be a pain in the ass. The lamp nearest his own door worked, and cast a white moonish glow on the brownstone stoop and the steel grille set over the upstairs door. The basement tenant had had a steel plate welded over her outside door and used the inside stairway to go in and out of her apartment. In the front garden he could make out Maia sleeping, curled under a blanket in the shadow of the stoop; the street light glinted off the silver of her hair. “Hi, honey, I’m home,” he murmured.
    “About damned time,” her voice, a sweet whisper, came back at him. “I waited up,” she said. “I was just about to get worried about you.” She pulled the blanket down from her face with one finger and peered up at him. “How’re them boys?”
    Tietjen smiled. “They’re just what you called ’em, Maia. Little lambs.”
    She laughed in a whisper. “Those lambs kept you up till this hour? Or you just been walking out again?”
    “Taking the air.”
    “Well, air is free, I guess. Must be, I get enough. You get some sleep now, John.” Her finger curled around a corner of the blanket to pull it back over her face.
    Tietjen said, “You’re an angel, Maia.”
    She laughed again. “I know.”

    He didn’t turn on the light when he entered the apartment, just pulled off his jacket and tossed it in the direction of the sofa, locked the door behind him by the light of the streetlamp through his window, undressed and brushed his teeth by Braille in the bathroom, and found his way to his bed. The sheets were cool against his back, and he closed his eyes and let himself sink heavily into the mattress. A scent like a thousand things, like the day just gone, clung to him: the dusty, metallic tang of the subway; the warm smell of sun on trees; the perfume of women passing by; sun on brick and sun on asphalt; the river smell of the Hudson, and rain not far off. Air that tasted like everything, forever.
    As he fell asleep he thought, It will always be just like this, and I will live forever, just like this.

2

    IN September Tietjen helped Maia rebuild her lean-to in the front stairwell. Under city law squatters could build against, but their structures could not attach to, private property. It was a peculiar design challenge, constructing a weathertight shack in the six-by-six area without totally obstructing the downstairs tenant’s window, out of found material Maia had scavenged. He enjoyed the chance to use his architectural training almost as much as the chance to help his downstairs squatter. She wouldn’t take wood or shingles from Tietjen; nails, the loan of tools, and his expertise and the skill in his two whole hands were all she would accept.
    During a break they sat together on the stoop drinking lemonade Tietjen had brought downstairs. Food, Maia took without question.
    “You build houses like these?” Maia asked. She waved her clawed hands to include the brownstone and brick buildings that lined the street.
    He shook his head. “Nobody does houses like these anymore, Mai.”
    “Skyscratchers, then,” she said. “Like that big glass building with the gold net on top.”
    He knew the building she meant, one of the office towers built over Lincoln Center, its security grilles glittering like gold lace in the sunset. “I don’t do that either. This is about as much design as I’ve done in the last ten years.”
    “But you’re an architect? Why they wasting you?” Her tone was suspicious, a little protective.
    Tietjen shrugged. “I’m not a very good designer, actually. I’m better at getting them built than I am at designing them, so that’s what I do.”
    Maia looked at him shrewdly. “That okay with you?”
    Tietjen shrugged again and cracked his knuckles.
    While the hot weather lasted, and if he was home before midnight, he always