You follow Esme who leads you back upstairs and into a little kitchen. Its the only room you've seen so far up here that has a window; albeit a small one. She puts a kettle on a wood burning stove and starts making some toast in a skillet so you wander over to the window and stare out. The world outside looks quite different from this height and in this light. Dark gray buildings streaked with rain stains and soot stretch out to the harbor where the water glitters in the morning sun, a deep shade of blue. Countless thin pillars of smoke rise from the rooftop chimneys and the stacks of the distant ships. The sky is still stormy and the snow blowing past the window is stained with soot. The city seems some great ruin of progress, the jagged pointed rooftops like the shattered foundation of something larger and more meaningful.
"Do you want anything?"
You wave the offer away. You're still not sure how your body handles food and you don't want a belly of toast slowly molding. Esme sits down and you wander over and sit across from her. You ask about the forger and she considers while chewing.
"We use him for all of our forging work. He's in the basement of a bar a few blocks from here, doing work as a printmaker for the government. Illustrations for their posters and pamphlets and what not."
She jams the tip of her butter knife into the remaining slice of toast. "He's a little too good at it, if you ask me." She says with a grimace. "You can see one his posters out there." She gestures back to the window and down, to the streets below. You get up and take another look: the poster is in the next street, on the blank wall of an building, its colors mostly faded from sunlight and soot. Still, the image is clear. Had you the knowledge of such things you might compare it to art nouveau or the works of Alphonse Mucha: Flowing, richly detailed yet ethereal and dreamlike. Art which contains aspects of indefinable beauty and heroism, which seems both old and new at once. It depicts the state as a woman wrapped in flowing white carrying a flowing flag above her head and striding forwards towards the viewer. Great towers loom behind her and the caption at her feet reads "Ever Forward!"
...
Esme knocks for the third time, shivering as another gust of icy wind whips down the alley and stirs little flurries of snow in the sunken basement entryway.
"Damn it Bruce, open up." She mutters as her fist pounds out a dull rhythm on the metal door. She's just about to start knocking for the fourth time when the door swings open. The man that opened it is not quite what you expected. He looks like a retired boxer: square head, barrel chest, stocky frame and thick callused hands. He has hasn't shaved in days and looks like he was asleep until a few moments ago, his short cropped hair somehow still messy. He looks you both up and down with an angry squint and then steps aside for you to enter. You follow Esme and the man slams the door shut behind you. Esme and the man -whose name must be Bruce- Launch off into tirades about leaving people out in the cold or waking someone up at the ungodly hour of 11am. You wander away as they argue. The underground room is basically just one large space with a the only separate room being a little bathroom off to the side. A kitchen area and a bed are shoved into one corner of the room while the rest of the space is filled with artist paraphernalia. Tubes of paint, blocks of linoleum, a printer's press, etching tub, sheets of metal, canvases, boxes of what look like stage props and a modeling area with a tree stump and great heaps of cloth flowers in garlands draped over it or hanging from above. A woman, most likely the model judging from the tunic and discarded crown of flowers, is curled up and still asleep in a large arm chair next to the still smoldering wood burning stove.
You're shaken from your examinations when Bruce puts a heavy hand on your shoulder and grunts "What name?"
You stare at him for a moment, confused.
"What name do you want on your papers." He says, clearly losing patience, "And I ain't putting Alexander Kelley. Would ruin my reputation."
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Topic: The Left-Hand Path (Read 118853 times)