The Inner City Read Free Page B

says.
    She doesn’t like his eyes, they’re too sharp. She smiles and holds the smile, uncertain about giving him her name.
    He winks. “Not to worry,” he says. “I’m not the bogeyman.”
    She un-snares her smile. “Sorry. Sometimes I’m such a New Yorker. My name is Lena.”
    “Lovely name; I don’t hear that often enough. Who are you going to see?”
    “Harry Biskabit.” It’s the only name she knows. Aside, of course, from the supposedly fired Philip Tarrey.
    “That’s good, that’s very good!” Bossephalus chortles. “We both start with B, that’ll be easy.”
    “Of course,” she says, trying to sound like this makes perfect sense. They pass a doorway into a large open room with electronic maps displayed along the walls. There are little red beeping lights moving, and people are talking into headsets and clicking on little handheld computers. “Is that what I think it is?” she asks with interest. She has no idea what it is, really, but it seems like a good way to go.
    Bossephalus beams and pats her shoulder. “Parking department, downtown unit. Look,” he says, pointing as a red light moves closer to a blue light. “Got him!” The blue light disappears and the red moves on. “He thought he had that spot!” Bossephalus claps his hands. “I love that. Drives them crazy upstairs. Parking to kill for! That’s what the motto is. I bet that red was driving around for an hour. Those are the ones that are very dear to us.”
    Lena’s mind is racing. The maps on the wall are street maps? They must be street maps. Then the reds are cars looking for parking spots and, if she understands Bossephalus, the blues are parking spots. They disappear in one street and appear in another. There are green lights as well, and the greens always get the spots.
    “You’re controlling the parking spaces?” she asks. “You’re moving your own cars around?”
    “That’s it! We take the spaces ourselves or sometimes we give them to the luckies. The unluckies
almost
get it, but at the last minute they get stopped by someone crossing the street or a light changes, or a bus blocks the way, and then they can actually see someone else getting the spot they were heading for. Or we put cones up and it suddenly becomes illegal.”
    “Nice,” she says neutrally. “Smooth.” She doesn’t have a car, doesn’t like cars—why would anyone have a car in New York?—but it’s not nice, not a bit. What kind of place is this?
    Bossephalus taps her on the elbow and they go back into the corridor.
    “So you’re seeing Biskabit,” he says. “Didn’t know he was hiring. I could use some help myself. What do you do?”
    “Programmer,” she tells him. “Strong in html and design.”
    “Very useful,” he says. “We’re always looking for web designers. We put a lot of them in startup companies, but now we’re branching into corporate.”
    “The startups didn’t do so well,” she says cautiously.
    “No? We thought it went splendidly.”
    Splendid? Who could think that all those bankruptcies were a good thing? He must be terribly uninformed. “Where do you work?” Lena asks politely.
    He looks at her and smiles. “I’m in Information,” he says.
    There’s something about his smile that’s nasty, though she tries to talk herself out of it. Maybe he’s just a friendly man showing a newcomer around, she thinks. Maybe.
    They come to a wider corridor. She can hear drilling and hammering.
    “We’re expanding,” Bossephalus says, sweeping his hand along the corridor. “Our job keeps getting bigger, and there’s a limit to how much we can squeeze into our limited space. So—up we go.” He’s very cheerful about it.
    She squints at the corridor. “Up?”
    “They can’t have it all,” he says easily. “We’re willing to put up with a lot, since we like what we do. But as they grow we grow, so we’re forced to have some additional entries and vents and a window here and there. Very modest when you