The Thieves of Manhattan Read Free Page B

it’s a real page-turner. Ian here digs it too.”
    “Does he?” asked the man.
    “Let it go,” I told Faye. I was feeling stressed out. Anya had told me that she’d have a
“fonny sooprise”
for me when we went out later, but I wasn’t in the mood for
sooprises
. Lately, I seemed to be getting more rejection slips in the mail than ever; the adjunct creative-writing lectureship positions I had applied for weren’t panning out; neither the New York Foundation for the Arts nor the NEA was going to give me a grant. Anya had recently been named one of
American Review’s
“31 Most Promising Writers Under 31”; this year, I was too old to qualify. Sure, I could survive for another few months on my meager savings and the few hundred bucks a week I was making at the café, but I needed another plan fast. And the fact that the only tangible plan I had involved secretly hoping Anya would sell her book already so she could buy an apartment and I could move in with her showed how desperate and pathetic I was becoming.
    “Didn’t you know? Ian is Blade Markham’s biggest fan,” Faye told the Confident Man. He smiled patronizingly in my direction as if he thought I was the moron for liking Blade Markham, even though he was the one reading Blade’s book. Still, the man didn’t say anything else. He just slipped a twentyinto the tip jar, the way he always did, went back to his table, and cracked open his book.
    “Told you that guy craves ya,” Faye said, cocking her head in the direction of the new twenty-dollar bill atop the loose change in our jar. She raised an eyebrow. “Bet he’s gonna ask you out,” she said.
    “Jesus Christ, Faye.” I was about to finally let her really have it, ask why she didn’t do some work instead of just busting my balls, doodling, working on her laptop, and using Joseph’s printer to make flyers and postcards for her gallery opening—Joseph always let Faye get away with shit he would have fired me for on the spot. But then I heard someone rap on the front window: Anya.
    “Ee-yen!”
    My elation at seeing Anya was followed closely by a sense of impending doom as I noted her snappy, black Holly Golightly cocktail dress. I didn’t know where she and I might be going, but I was sure that wherever it was, I would be underdressed.
    “Your Ukrainian’s here for ya,” Faye said and smiled—she always acted as if she thought Anya was a pain in her ass. It never occurred to me that she might have been jealous.
    “Romanian,” I corrected. I took off my Morningside Coffee smock and visor, hung them up in back, and started to head out.
    “Have it your way,” said Faye, but then she reached into the tip jar, pulled out the twenty that the Confident Man had put there, and handed it to me.
    “Shouldn’t we split it three ways?” I asked.
    “Nah, take it, you earned it tonight,” said Faye. I feared she was mocking me, but then I realized she was telling the truth—she’d come in late and had been working on her computer ever since she’d arrived, while Joseph had been binge-eating and moping. I’d been the only one doing any work, and besides, wherever Anya was taking me tonight, I was sure I could use at least a twenty.
    I thanked Faye, and told her that was probably the nicest thing anyone had ever done for me at a job. She smiled at me and said,
“Sayonara, tomodachi,”
as I walked outside onto Broadway where Anya was waiting, a guilty Cheshire-cat grin on her face.
    “Where’re we going?” I asked, and when she didn’t answer immediately, I asked if I might hate her after we were done with whatever we would be doing.
    “Only for
leetle
while,” Anya said.

BLADE BY BLADE
    The Blade Markham reading and Q and A at Big Box Books’s flagship Upper West Side store had been moved to Symphony Space to accommodate the overflow crowd, and you needed a pink wristband to get in. Anya and I were fifteen minutes late, and I felt a surge of hope when I saw the NO MORE TICKETS