Dark Sky (The Misadventures of Max Bowman Book 1) Read Free

Howard.”
    “Yeah, but I try to exist in the current millennium. Another thing you might wanna try.”
    Another pause. I decided to try again. What the hell.
    “So – this whole “something has changed” business. Does that have to do with my new client?”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about. And, by the way, you’re still not on a secure line.”
    “Which means you do know what I’m talking about.”
    “Max. I don’t have time for this.”
    “You don’t want to have time for this.”
    “Gotta go, the other line’s blinking.”
    “Color me perplexed.”
    “Color you disconnected.”
    Click.
    I turned to see a squirrel running up a cherry tree followed by an angry beagle trying to climb up after it. It was too soon to tell which one of those I was about to be. At the very least, I received confirmation that shit was weird. Sometimes, it’s enough to know that you’re paranoid for a reason. But that big, fat envelope in my coat pocket was starting to feel like it weighed three tons.
    Time to keep walking. Time to get home. On Roosevelt Island, that never takes too long.
     
    Roosevelt Island is about two miles long and a tenth of one across. It’s got parks on either end, the one at the top has an ancient lighthouse near a huge ancient hospital, the one at the bottom has a brand new giant cement statue of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s disembodied head. There are exactly three ways to get to Roosevelt Island unless you’re a fucking bird; the tram from the Manhattan side, the Roosevelt Island Bridge from the Queens side, and the subway from both sides. You can’t walk or drive directly to the city itself from the Island – which is why most New Yorkers don’t make the effort.
    Why the fuck would they?
    First of all, there’s no place to eat. Yeah, there’s a Subway, and mediocre-to-poor sushi, Chinese and pizza places, and a sports bar where you can get a decent burger, and a Starbucks, but that’s about it. No great neighborhood places like in the rest of the five boroughs. And don’t think about getting anything better brought to your door. You can only get delivery from Queens and only from the places desperate enough to want to send a delivery guy across the bridge on a bike. You call and ask a place if it delivers to Roosevelt Island, and you can time the pause with a stopwatch. They don’t want to say no, but eventually they will.
    Second of all, the population is half Chinese and the other half is disabled and/or elderly. Why so many Chinese? There must be some kind of flyer circulating around Beijing touting the wonders of Roosevelt Island, otherwise I can’t explain it. As for those who are no longer able to walk, I guess it’s appropriate that an island filled with people in wheelchairs should be named after Roosevelt. To me, they serve as a daily reminder that I don’t need or want that my time is running out.
    Third, there’s the problematic history of this place.  When it was called Welfare Island, it hosted a notorious overcrowded asylum, a workhouse populated by irredeemable convicts and a smallpox hospital you could enter any time you liked but never leave. In other words, if you’re looking for Paradise, keep moving – this chunk of land has always been seen as a dumping ground for the exiled, the demented and the doomed.
    I loved the fucking place.
    Clearly, I had the personality of a demented and doomed exile, especially since the events of twelve years ago. Plus it was quiet in a way Manhattan never could be and it was manageable in a way Manhattan never wanted to be. Fifteen minutes away from La Guardia, twenty minutes from JFK and a great bodega at the bottom of my building that sold organic milk, so I wouldn’t grow tits from synthetic cow hormones.
    My building. It resembled the projects you’d see in the opening credits of that seventies TV show, Good Times. Most of the residents in my building had their rent subsidized by the government; old-timers, poor