Carlin stepped off the boat onto the stone pier, turning to watch as the coxswain hefted his trunk up beside him. There were maybe a hundred people standing around on the pier, all seemingly vying for his attention.
One of the other passengers seemed to quickly strike some sort of bargain with some of the standers-around, who hefted his several trunks onto various shoulders and heads and then squeezed his not-inconsiderable bulk into a palanquin and off they went.
The air was muggy and smelled like something had died or sweated on it right before it passed into his nostrils. The heat was oppressive, but he’d expected that; the crowds were no worse than they’d be in a similar stretch of the city where he’d embarked, though they were more... uniformly exotic.
Not, he supposed, that anyone from here wouldn’t think a similar group from back home exotic. He looked around, trying to see through the crowd of people at the city’s bones: brick and stone, same as home.
He reached into his inside jacket-pocket and pulled out a leather letter-case; the topmost letter had a street address in the letterhead. He turned to the man crowding closest to his right hand and thrust the letter under the man’s nose.
“Here,” he said, “I want to go here.” He placed his finger on the address and tapped.
The man said something long and complicated, involving a lot of seemingly extraneous head movement, and Carlin didn’t understand any of it; it wasn’t until the last couple of words that he realized that they were speaking the same language.
The words he recognized were a number and a unit of currency. Carlin realized that a deal was being struck; remembering conversations he’d had with men who’d been here before, he shook his head and named a number half the man’s proposal; one round of counter-offer and counter-counter-offer led to Carlin’s trunk being hefted between a pair of skinny men and Carlin himself being loaded into a box carried by another pair of skinny men; then off they went into the city.
Half an hour later, Carlin found himself standing on the sidewalk in front of the address on the letterhead, several copper coins poorer but aglow with the experience of the city, for which the term ‘exotic’ didn’t seem... strong enough.
The address he’d given the bearers, his destination across literally half the globe, was barely visible on the soot-blacked exterior of the building, which had evidently been gutted by fire and then boarded up. Beggars had already colonized the sidewalk in front of the storefront, drawn by the shade and the lack of people shooing them away.
Carlin checked the address again, making sure that he was in the right street; he was. The crest on the letterhead was mirrored through the smoke stains on the front of the building.
So.
The bearers had left as soon as he’d gotten out of the palanquin and paid them, eager, he supposed, to extract themselves from the story of the unfortunate traveler as soon as possible, and to avoid the inevitable casting about for a fall-back plan and consequent wandering back and forth around the city.
Unenterprising of them, in Carlin’s opinion; they’d have been able to soak him for several more rides, if they’d wanted to. He wondered if the man he’d negotiated with had known that his destination was gone before they’d started.
His expected place of employment had been on the high street, so it was relatively easy to hail a cab; the horse was dilapidated and sorry-looking, but no more so than the driver. Two minutes later, they came to a gradual stop before what was recognizable, if Carlin squinted, as a rooming house.
The room he was given wasn’t much, and the rent seemed outrageously high, but it was paid weekly so if he found he was being fleeced he could always find something different; and in the mean time, it gave him somewhere to stash his trunk and splash cold water on his face.
After a few minutes of getting his things settled, he was back down on the sidewalk, walking back toward the sea, which seemed to the be the direction of greatest density. Within a few minutes, he’d found something startling: A man selling newspapers on the street corner, the crest on the masthead of which matched that on the letterhead in his pocket. The paper had today’s date on it.
He quizzed the newspaper vendor closely, watching the man’s lips carefully and asking him to slow down several times and repeat himself before he could get directions; not an address, precisely, but definitely a place description that the paper vendor expected someone to be able to find.
Carlin repeated the place description back to the vendor several times until the man was looking annoyed while he nodded, and then thanked him, bought a paper, and hailed another cab.
Twenty minutes later, he was in what was clearly a much less swanky part of town, surrounded on all sides by brick warehouses; nobody was trying to sell him anything, which seemed to speak volumes about the area.
One of the warehouse doors was wide open; he could hear presses running inside. For the first time since he’d stepped off the boat, Carlin felt at home. A slow grin spread across his face.
He bounded into the open door, instantly engulfed in the chaos of a working pressroom. A few questions got him to an upstairs office with the word EDITOR printed in block letters on a piece of paper and nailed to its door. He knocked just below the ‘I’.
A shout of “What!” from inside was all the invitation he was going to get; he opened the door and carefully stepped around it. A fat man sat behind a table facing him, sleeves rolled up above his elbows and pen in hand, scribbling furiously.
Carlin waited a moment for any sign of acknowledgement of his presence, then cleared his throat, and finally simply spoke.
“Sir,” he said, “My name is Carlin, I’m to be the new...”
“Carlin,” said the man, looking up for the first time. “You’re early.”
“Yes, sir,” said Carlin. “Made some lucky connections.”
The man stared at him for a moment, blankly, as though he had no idea what to make of him.
“Sorry,” he said finally, “Can’t use you.” He went back to writing, but kept talking. “On a bit of a shoestring, as you can see. Try back in a couple of months.”
“But sir, I was promised...”
“Conditions have changed,” the man said firmly. “I’ve had to let half the staff go, practically writing the damned paper myself...”
“Because of the fire?” Carlin, not given to extraneous motion at any time, found himself standing especially still, as though waiting for stalking bad fortune to pass him by.
“The fire ain’t the half of it,” said the editor. “Now listen, I know you came a long way, but I got nothing for you. Try some of the other papers... a bunch of my people are with the Herald, now... and like I said, come back in a couple of months if you don’t find anything.”
The man continued to write, but stopped talking. Carlin supposed that that was as close to a dismissal as he was going to get; he turned toward the door, head already spinning new plans.
“Oh, Carlin,” said the editor, as Carlin’s hand touched the doorknob. Carlin turned to face him again.
“Welcome to New York.”
One of the other passengers seemed to quickly strike some sort of bargain with some of the standers-around, who hefted his several trunks onto various shoulders and heads and then squeezed his not-inconsiderable bulk into a palanquin and off they went.
The air was muggy and smelled like something had died or sweated on it right before it passed into his nostrils. The heat was oppressive, but he’d expected that; the crowds were no worse than they’d be in a similar stretch of the city where he’d embarked, though they were more... uniformly exotic.
Not, he supposed, that anyone from here wouldn’t think a similar group from back home exotic. He looked around, trying to see through the crowd of people at the city’s bones: brick and stone, same as home.
He reached into his inside jacket-pocket and pulled out a leather letter-case; the topmost letter had a street address in the letterhead. He turned to the man crowding closest to his right hand and thrust the letter under the man’s nose.
“Here,” he said, “I want to go here.” He placed his finger on the address and tapped.
The man said something long and complicated, involving a lot of seemingly extraneous head movement, and Carlin didn’t understand any of it; it wasn’t until the last couple of words that he realized that they were speaking the same language.
The words he recognized were a number and a unit of currency. Carlin realized that a deal was being struck; remembering conversations he’d had with men who’d been here before, he shook his head and named a number half the man’s proposal; one round of counter-offer and counter-counter-offer led to Carlin’s trunk being hefted between a pair of skinny men and Carlin himself being loaded into a box carried by another pair of skinny men; then off they went into the city.
Half an hour later, Carlin found himself standing on the sidewalk in front of the address on the letterhead, several copper coins poorer but aglow with the experience of the city, for which the term ‘exotic’ didn’t seem... strong enough.
The address he’d given the bearers, his destination across literally half the globe, was barely visible on the soot-blacked exterior of the building, which had evidently been gutted by fire and then boarded up. Beggars had already colonized the sidewalk in front of the storefront, drawn by the shade and the lack of people shooing them away.
Carlin checked the address again, making sure that he was in the right street; he was. The crest on the letterhead was mirrored through the smoke stains on the front of the building.
So.
The bearers had left as soon as he’d gotten out of the palanquin and paid them, eager, he supposed, to extract themselves from the story of the unfortunate traveler as soon as possible, and to avoid the inevitable casting about for a fall-back plan and consequent wandering back and forth around the city.
Unenterprising of them, in Carlin’s opinion; they’d have been able to soak him for several more rides, if they’d wanted to. He wondered if the man he’d negotiated with had known that his destination was gone before they’d started.
His expected place of employment had been on the high street, so it was relatively easy to hail a cab; the horse was dilapidated and sorry-looking, but no more so than the driver. Two minutes later, they came to a gradual stop before what was recognizable, if Carlin squinted, as a rooming house.
The room he was given wasn’t much, and the rent seemed outrageously high, but it was paid weekly so if he found he was being fleeced he could always find something different; and in the mean time, it gave him somewhere to stash his trunk and splash cold water on his face.
After a few minutes of getting his things settled, he was back down on the sidewalk, walking back toward the sea, which seemed to the be the direction of greatest density. Within a few minutes, he’d found something startling: A man selling newspapers on the street corner, the crest on the masthead of which matched that on the letterhead in his pocket. The paper had today’s date on it.
He quizzed the newspaper vendor closely, watching the man’s lips carefully and asking him to slow down several times and repeat himself before he could get directions; not an address, precisely, but definitely a place description that the paper vendor expected someone to be able to find.
Carlin repeated the place description back to the vendor several times until the man was looking annoyed while he nodded, and then thanked him, bought a paper, and hailed another cab.
Twenty minutes later, he was in what was clearly a much less swanky part of town, surrounded on all sides by brick warehouses; nobody was trying to sell him anything, which seemed to speak volumes about the area.
One of the warehouse doors was wide open; he could hear presses running inside. For the first time since he’d stepped off the boat, Carlin felt at home. A slow grin spread across his face.
He bounded into the open door, instantly engulfed in the chaos of a working pressroom. A few questions got him to an upstairs office with the word EDITOR printed in block letters on a piece of paper and nailed to its door. He knocked just below the ‘I’.
A shout of “What!” from inside was all the invitation he was going to get; he opened the door and carefully stepped around it. A fat man sat behind a table facing him, sleeves rolled up above his elbows and pen in hand, scribbling furiously.
Carlin waited a moment for any sign of acknowledgement of his presence, then cleared his throat, and finally simply spoke.
“Sir,” he said, “My name is Carlin, I’m to be the new...”
“Carlin,” said the man, looking up for the first time. “You’re early.”
“Yes, sir,” said Carlin. “Made some lucky connections.”
The man stared at him for a moment, blankly, as though he had no idea what to make of him.
“Sorry,” he said finally, “Can’t use you.” He went back to writing, but kept talking. “On a bit of a shoestring, as you can see. Try back in a couple of months.”
“But sir, I was promised...”
“Conditions have changed,” the man said firmly. “I’ve had to let half the staff go, practically writing the damned paper myself...”
“Because of the fire?” Carlin, not given to extraneous motion at any time, found himself standing especially still, as though waiting for stalking bad fortune to pass him by.
“The fire ain’t the half of it,” said the editor. “Now listen, I know you came a long way, but I got nothing for you. Try some of the other papers... a bunch of my people are with the Herald, now... and like I said, come back in a couple of months if you don’t find anything.”
The man continued to write, but stopped talking. Carlin supposed that that was as close to a dismissal as he was going to get; he turned toward the door, head already spinning new plans.
“Oh, Carlin,” said the editor, as Carlin’s hand touched the doorknob. Carlin turned to face him again.
“Welcome to New York.”
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