Читать книгу The Paper Man - Gallagher Lawson - Страница 14

7

THAT AFTERNOON, ARMED WITH JARS OF WHEAT PASTE, MICHAEL and Maiko plastered flyers advertising his services as an accountant on telephone poles and trees, streetlights and street signs. Without paying much attention, they covered posters advertising cigarettes and records and hamburgers. They hid posters insisting the south Stay Independent! They buried fliers declaring Annexation is the Only Way. He felt self-conscious, at first, but no one seemed to mind. Flyering was a way of life in the city—and for the first time, Michael felt like he belonged.

Two teenagers in filthy clothes lingered on the steps of an empty shopfront. One of them, a boy with red hair, carried a backpack. The other, a girl dressed in black and wearing a beret and black gloves, motioned for Michael to come closer. He could no longer see Maiko across the street and hesitated. They had been flyering for hours and he was tired.

“Hey, you,” the red-haired boy said.

He nearly dropped the glass jar of wheat paste. The wooden applicator was becoming soggy. “Me?” he asked.

“Yes, you! Come here. We have a question for you,” the girl said.

Michael took a few wary steps in their direction. “Yes?”

“What are you doing?”

Michael thought about the trouble with the inspectors on the bus, and then the one-eyed man. He didn’t know how to answer these two now. Anything he said could make the situation worse. So he stood. Why were no other pedestrians on the street?

“What is that?”

“It’s paste,” Michael said. “I’m trying to start my own business.”

“Do you need help?” the girl with the beret said. Her hand reached for the jar of paste. Michael stepped off the curb and stood in the gutter.

“Careful, you might get hit,” the red-headed boy said.

“You should listen to my brother,” the girl said. Michael nodded. He wished just then he had had a sister instead of two brothers. He liked how the two were a team.

“Maybe you can help me,” he said. “Do you happen to know a one-eyed man?”

They shook their heads.

“Or where the radio station is?”

“Near the lighthouse,” the boy said. “You can’t miss it. Look, do you mind if we borrow some of your paste?”

“We’re not really borrowing it if we’re going to use it,” the girl said. “Borrowing means you’re going to give it back!”

They all laughed.

“What do you want it for?”

“We’re trying to start a business too.”

“What kind?”

“Hey, what’s wrong with your face?”

Michael turned away. He dropped a sheaf of flyers. The adolescents ran to him and picked up the sheets of paper. Michael was secretly thankful, and when they put their hands on his shoulders, comforting him, he had an intense desire to make them his new friends. And they had given him critical information to help locate his notebooks. He was already planning to draw them once he got his things back.

“I can’t give you all of it,” he said, motioning to the paste.

“That’s okay. Half should be enough.”

The boy with the backpack produced a small empty container for butter. They used the wooden applicator to plop in half of the paste.

“Thanks.”

Michael eyed the boy’s hand—he was holding an elegant pen.

“What about your pen?”

They looked at each other. Bargaining was essential here, in the city. He couldn’t let people, even kids, simply walk all over him.

“Give it to him,” the hatted girl said.

They handed Michael the pen. It was beautiful: black metal and with a fine nib. Michael was already imagining the things he could draw.

“See you around,” the red headed boy blurted with a laugh.

The two ran off. Michael was pleased. He went along several more blocks, posting more flyers. When he was out of paste, he headed back. Eventually, he saw Maiko and crossed the street to meet up with her.

“You still have a lot of flyers left,” she said.

“I ran out of paste.”

“You must have used too much, then. Oh well, let’s move on. But first, let’s stop at a pudding shop. There’s one a few blocks that way.”

They walked on her side of the street, past jewelers, laundries, seed companies, and lithographers. Michael warmed inside. What would it be like to have his own friends to visit? His reverie broke when Maiko gasped.

Across the way, he recognized parts of his flyers by the corners of blue paper, but now they were covered by new flyers, scrawled in calligraphy: THE NORTH IS RIGHT!

There were hundreds of them; overwhelming the telephone poles and streetlights and clipped under the windshield wipers of parked cars.

“I can’t believe this!” Maiko said. “They won’t leave us alone.”

Michael was stunned. Ashamed, he didn’t say anything.

In the pudding shop, they sat at a table in the back, encased in shadows. Maiko scooped tiny bites from her bowl of rice pudding while Michael stirred in a page of shredded comics into his.

“Can you tell me something? What’s all this business with the north? What are they trying to do to the city?”

“Don’t you read the papers?”

“I try to avoid politics.”

“The north,” Maiko began, but then glanced in each direction. She lowered her voice. “They’re very interested in annexing the city.”

“But why?”

“Many reasons. This peninsula has a natural harbor, and if it was controlled by the north, they would be able to tax all the goods that enter. And then there’s the fish market. There’s a lot opportunity to make money from the city. And of course on the south end of the peninsula are the beaches. Right now, fishermen use it each fall. People from surrounding fishing villages show up for a week and try to marry off their daughters. But if the north had the beach, it could become a resort for northerners, and you know what kind of money that would generate. There are lots of rich northerners.”

“Have you been to the north?”

“Don’t tell anyone this,” she said, “but I’m from there. My parents still live there with my sister. They keep asking me to move home, but there’s nothing there. There are no pudding shops. Only ice cream shops, and they all serve the same boring flavors. That’s the saddest thing—if the city is taken over by the north, sure there will be good things that come of it, but all the stuff that makes the city unique will disappear. Things are already disappearing. Like fur models.”

“Do mushrooms grow in the north?”

“Don’t make fun of me.”

Maiko grew serious. “I’ll tell you this: the north is infiltrating the city, buying our officials. They are also starting to hassle people who stand out. It’s not safe to be different.”

“I see,” he said, and nearly choked on his last, large bite.