Pop, Pop, Pop

Many times Maggie thought she heard gunshots when they were only fireworks, lit in the streets, far too long before and after the Fourth of July.  Did anyone lighting those dumb things even feel remotely patriotic, she wondered, or just playing at war or arson.  Real gunshots didn't go on for as long.  Real gunshots didn't seem to echo as much.  Pop, pop, pop.  Triplets.  One, two, three.  One broke the glass.  Two cracked a mirror.  Three killed a baby.

Who do you think is responsible for the U.S. energy crisis?

Niagara Falls, New York doesn't have a whole lot going for it, excepting one of the natural wonders of the world, that is.  The city dug itself into a hole with mobsters, corruption, and the giant sucking sound industry makes when it leaves.  Yeah, a giant sucking sound helped dig a hole; this is a picture being painted, and it's not Rembrandt, but it should be enough for you to see.  Empty houses turning into empty lots.  Weeds and garbage.  Gangs and alcoholics and psychos.  Leftover goomba "businessmen" who don't even live there using empty buildings as tax breaks and the people who do live there turning them into public urinals.

The last of the owners who owner-occupied died of old age.  Renters begged and scraped until they could afford to get out, too.  The rash of disturbing killings gave a lot of residents the motivation to get out.  Tourists still came, but they stuck to the path of light and shopped on the Canadian side.  Nikolai Tesla's statue was always a favorite of tourists, which is probably why they moved it out of Niagara Falls.

Tesla.  It's why you're reading about this forsaken city.  Stan was the reincarnation of Nikolai Tesla.

What do you look for in a role model?

In Grand Park's Magician's Corner, mages were allowed to busk, license prominently displayed, of course.  Licenses were cheap, but not easy to come by as there were a limited number given each season.  Auditions were held every year, and everyone had to reapply, even the veteran performers.  Sometimes they didn't get in.  Competition was fierce for those spots, and some years, fights broke out in the audition lines.  Magicians were known to have disappeared after not getting in, too.  Sometimes they reappeared other years, and sometimes... they performed the ultimate vanishing act.

Holly loved to take her lunch breaks from Nova, the upscale clothier, in Magician's Corner.  Grand Park was only a five minute walk from Nova, which was in line with the other major clothiers on Parkview Avenue.  She was a relatively new salesgirl in Gloves, brought on when Messiah Blanchett wore long, elegant gloves to King's Court.  Messiah was always fashion-forward.  But Holly had been coming here far longer than her most recent job.  Her grandfather had been Maurice and Magnificent, back in the day, and performed here in his youth, before he hit the big times, which was decades before Holly was even a glimmer in her parents' eyes.  She had adored Papa Maury and followed him like a puppy.  Holly learned a lot about magic, the art of performance, and magicians.  She still kept in touch with most of them, and they waved or said hello or stopped by to show off their most recent creations when she sat on the steps of Benedict's Statue to eat her bagged lunch.

Today was the third day, however, that Holly came with butterflies in her stomach, hoping to catch a glimpse of a new magician.

Pageant Question: Tell me a story about your family.

There was nothing more that could be done other than screaming the word "TOURIST!" to make the family of four look more like tourists in the big city.  Saving money by parking outside the city, the two adult and the preteen daughter and son had to ride a subway into the heart of New York while carrying their overstuffed, frame backpacks.  Dad trying to keep his cool.  Mom consulting a map.  Daughter ogling everyone in the car.  Son playing it tough even though he clutched his pack whenever the lights flickered.

Upon reaching the surface, the family made an unfortunate turn left seeing as their hotel was to the right.  Like ducklings crossing a freeway, they followed Dad at a brisk pace while Mom made a weak effort to point the other way.  The street began looking worse and worse, and the family felt like children in a fairy tale wandering too deeply into the forbidden woods.  Their packs became even heavier with the stares of native New Yorkers.  TOURIST!  TOURIST!  TOURIST!

The kids knew better than to say anything when their father and mother abruptly turned back and marched them the other way.  By now, the family of four had condensed, parents' hands guiding, eyes darting.  The daughter would always remember seeing a man walking towards them, his coat open enough to see glittering necklaces.  As he neared, she could hear his accented voice repeating in a drone, "Gold chains, gold chains for sale.  Gold chains, gold chains for sale."

Pageant Question: Tell me a joke.

It was the fourth time the city inspector had been out, and it was wearing on Joshua's nerves.  Every time the guy showed, there was another repair that needed to be made, urgently, and with a follow-up required.  Joshua had purchased the Victorian mansion at auction, and it had been a mess.  It had been chopped up into seven apartments and was suffering from being uninhabited for three years while in the city's dubious "care".  Replacing windows, plumbing, electric, hot water tank, furnace, and roof had taken Joshua a long time and a lot more money.  He managed to pick up the surrounding lots, emptied of their houses years ago, for only a dollar apiece.  Now he was trying to become self-sufficient and was building himself a rather large garden, complete with chickens.

Mr. Giambro, Joshua hadn't learned the man's first name, paced around the enclosure intended to hold the city's maximum allowed five chickens.  Joshua had built it himself and was rather proud.  He realized it was part of the reason why he felt so annoyed right now; the inspector didn't "ooh" and "ahh" the way his friends did when shown his handiwork.  Mr. Giambro instead made notes and made ticking sounds with his tongue.  Joshua bit his lip and waited.  The inspector looked out of place in the garden, wearing his wrinkled brown suit and vintage 1980s loafers, and pacing off the distance from the house to the enclosure.  He paused, then took out a small measuring tape and circled the enclosure again, making more notes on height, length and width.  Mr. Giambro peered up at the house.  "This is a multi-family?"

Joshua took a breath.  The inspector knew full well he had converted it back into a single.  "No, I..."

"Oh, wait, yes, I see it here."

Joshua felt his jaw muscles straining.

"It appears as if this complies with 341-11 through 341-14.  It will have to be approved by the City Clerk, of course."

"Of course."  Joshua rubbed his face muscles and tried to loosen up.

The inspector walked back over to the enclosure and unlatched one of the doors.  "Do you know why chicken coops have two doors?"

Joshua was surprised by the question.  Was he supposed to prove his knowledge of chicken husbandry?  Now?  He took a gamble.  "No, Mr. Giambro.  I don't know why chicken coops have two doors.  In case of fire?"

"Because," Mr. Giambro latched the door.  "If they had four doors, they'd be chicken sedans."  Joshua's jaw loosened enough to hang open.  "The City Clerk should make a decision within two to three weeks."  The inspector picked his way carefully out of Joshua's yard.  "Have a nice day."

Pageant Question: When you look into the mirror, what do you see?

The big, yellow wrecking machines were at it again, this time on the next street over, but Jenny still jumped when she heard their diesel engines roar to life.  It was her street that had been the most recent victim of the city's progress.  Her block, which in its heyday had shoulder to shoulder houses, was now toothless and grey.  Rocky lots with the tops of filled-in cellars poking through the third-rate fill the demolition crews used to fulfill their city contracts were more common than living houses.  Now the block behind Jenny's house was getting the same treatment; onward the machines would churn, block by block, until they hit the expressway that decades ago replaced what had been an award-winning park.  On the other side of the cement scar, people still prospered.  On Jenny's side, people hung on.

Jenny was lucky that she owned her house without a mortgage and she had enough to pay taxes and bills on time through her unconventional work.  She spent most of her personal days on the upper floors as her front rooms were devoted to her business: fortune telling.  Jenny shoved her feet into work boots and threw on a sweater before setting the house alarm.  Even a lived-in house wasn't safe from copper pipe thieves, even in the daylight.  The early morning dew from a devastated former front lawn dampened her boots as she scanned the last and newest empty lot on her street, created only a week ago.  While she liked to get to the demolition sites before the crews were completely done, she hadn't been able to get out because of a sudden string of appointments.  It seemed like the word-of-mouth was finally gaining momentum.

A sudden sparkle in  the mud caught her eye.  It was a fragment of mirror.  Jenny freed it with her right hand and planted her boots firmly against the rocky clods.  Angling it over her left shoulder, she rotated the piece from side to side, up and down, peering beyond the reflection.

317

The neighborhood used to be wealthy, and well-to-do families had lived in their grand city houses, sipping iced tea on their wrap-around porches and walking downtown to watch the boats glide down the canal.  Once traveling by boat on the canal was replaced first by trains and then by the thruway, the city had experienced an exodus of wealth.  The grand city houses became rundown apartments, chopped into bits with flimsy walls and crammed-in kitchens and baths.

It was easy to tell which were apartments without even counting the number of electric meters on the side.  The apartments were painted in whatever had been on sale in order to comply with housing codes that didn't want peeling.  The attics were often a different color because the ladders only went so high.  The carved porch balustrades and railings of old had rotted and were not replaced in kind, but rather with two-by-fours.  Porches sagged, chipboard patched, and windows shrunk, surrounded by unpainted, mismatched wood.  You could also tell by the strollers on the lawn, the upholstered furniture and rugs covering holes on the porch, and the small, cheap yard decorations clustered and broken near the cement replacement stairs.  Trash and mud clung to the yard.  Because inside doors leading to different apartments had been installed in what had used to be magnificent foyers, the front doors remained open to the elements.

299

Jesse had a thousand dollars in cash in a small fabric purse tied around her neck and tucked into her camisole under her shirt, under her sweater, under her jacket.  She knew she shouldn't keep touching it, announcing to every thief where she had her valuables, but it was almost all the cash she had in the world and she had to keep reassuring herself it was there.

She walked to the convention center from the parking ramp and recognized that most of the people on the street this early in the morning must be going to or coming from the same housing auction.  Nearly all men and nearly all dressed like contractors.  They talked in groups and laughed and stole looks at Jesse as she hurried by.  Jesse imagined all the cash that these people must be holding.  Every person at the auction, pockets stuffed with cash.  More money than she had ever had, carried in fat leather wallets.

The auction was crowded, and the men gathered at the list on the wall, comparing their notes with the properties still remaining.  Jesse only had one house on her list, and she hoped it was enough.  Of all the thousands of homes and properties up for auction, Jesse had painstakingly narrowed it down to this one.  Not idea, certainly, but so much better than where she was.