City on Fire Read Free Page A

beyond Mercer’s means, but a kind of enraptured rebellion or rebellious rapture carried him to the register, and thence to the gift-wrapping station, where they swaddled it in paper stamped with swarms of golden B’s. For a week and a half now, it had been hiding underneath the futon. Unable to wait any longer, Mercer staged a coughing fit, and soon enough William was up.
    After brewing the coffee and plugging in the tree, Mercer set the box on William’s lap.
    “Jesus, that’s heavy.”
    Mercer brushed away a dust bunny. “Open it.”
    He watched William closely as the lid made its little puff of air and the tissue paper crinkled back. “A coat.” William tried to muster an exclamation point, but stating the name of the gift, everyone knew, was what you did when you were disappointed.
    “Try it on.”
    “Over my robe?”
    “You’re going to have to sooner or later.”
    Only then did William begin to say the right things: that he’d needed a coat, that it was beautiful. He disappeared into the sleeping nook and lingered there an inordinate amount of time. Mercer could almost hear him turning in front of the skewed mirror, trying to decide how he felt. Finally, the beaded curtain parted again. “It’s great,” he said.
    It looked great, at least. With the collar turned up, it flattered William’s fine features, the natural aristocracy of his cheekbones. “You like it?”
    “The Technicolor dreamcoat.” William mimed a series of gestures, patting his pockets, turning for the camera. “It’s like wearing a Jacuzzi. But now it’s your turn, Merce.”
    Across the room, drugstore bulbs blinked dimly against the noon light. The tree skirt was bare, save for cat hairs and a few needles; Mercer had opened Mama’s present the night before, while on the phone with her, and he knew from the way she’d signed their names on the tag that C.L. and Pop had forgotten or declined to send separate gifts. He’d steeled himself for the likelihood that William hadn’t gotten him anything, either, but now William squired forth from the sleeping nook a parcel he had wrapped in newspaper, as though drunkenly. “Be gentle,” he said, setting it on the floor.
    Had Mercer ever been anything but? A gun-oil smell assaulted him as he removed the paper to reveal a grid of orderly white keys: a typewriter.
    “It’s electric. I found it in a pawnshop downtown, like new. It’s supposed to be much faster.”
    “You shouldn’t have,” Mercer said.
    “Your other one’s such a piece of junk. If it was a horse, you’d shoot it.”
    No, he really shouldn’t have. Though Mercer had yet to find the gumption to tell William, his slow progress on his work-in-progress—or rather, lack thereof—had nothing to do with his equipment, at least in any conventional sense. To avoid further dissembling, he put his arms around William. The heat of his body penetrated even through the sumptuous coat. Then William must have caught a glimpse of the oven clock. “Shit. You mind if I turn on the TV?”
    “Don’t tell me there’s a game on. It’s a holiday.”
    “I knew you’d understand.”
    Mercer tried for a few minutes to sit alongside and watch William’s beloved sport, but to him televised football was no more interesting, or even narratively intelligible, than a flea circus, so he got up and went to the kitchenette to do the other stations of the Yuletide cross. While the crowd whooshed and advertisers extolled the virtues of double-bladed razors and Velveeta shells and cheese, Mercer glazed the ham and chopped the sweet potatoes and opened the wine to let it breathe. He didn’t drink, himself—he’d seen what it had done to C.L.’s brain—but he’d thought Chianti might help put William in the spirit.
    Heat built over the two-burner stove. He went to crank open the window, startling some pigeons that had settled outside on his winter-bare geranium box. Well, cinderblock, really. They fled down the canyons of old factories,