Newford - 01 - Dreams Underfoot by Charles de Lint

Author:Charles de Lint [Lint, Charles de]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 1992-12-31T23:00:00+00:00

SMALL DEATHS

What unites us universally is our emotions, our feelings in the face of experience, and not necessarily the actual experiences themselves.

—Anais Nin

“I FEEL LIKE I should know you.”

Zoe Brill looked up. The line was familiar, but it usually came only after she’d spoken—that was the down side of being an all-night DJ in a city with too many people awake and having nothing to do between midnight and dawn. Everybody felt they knew you, everybody was your friend. Most of the time that suited her fine, since she genuinely liked people, but as her mother used to tell her, every family has its black sheep. Sometimes it seemed that every one of them tended to gravitate to her at one point or another in their lives.

The man who’d paused by the cafe railing to speak to Zoe this evening reminded her of a fox. He had lean, pointy features, dark eyes, the corners of his lips constantly lifted in a sly smile, hair as red as her own, if not as long. Unlike her, he had a dark complexion, as though swimming somewhere back in the gene pool of his fore-bears was an Italian, an Arab, or a Native American. His self-assurance radiated a touch too shrill for Zoe’s taste, but he seemed basically harmless. Just your average single male yuppie on the prowl, heading out for an evening in clubland—she could almost hear the Full Force—produced dance number kick up as a soundtrack to the moment. Move your body all night long.

He was well-dressed, as all Lotharios should be, casual, but with flair; she doubted there was a single item in his wardrobe worth under two hundred dollars. Maybe the socks.

“I think I’d remember if we’d met before,” she said.

He ignored the wryness in her voice and took what she’d said as a compliment.

“Most people do,” he agreed.

“Lucky them.”

It was one of those rare, supernaturally perfect November evenings, warm with a light breeze, wedged in between a week of sub-zero temperatures with similar weather to follow. All up and down Lee Street, from one end of the Market to the other, the restaurants and cafes had opened their patios for one last outdoor fling.

“No, no,” the man said, finally picking up on her lack of interest. “it’s not like what you’re thinking.”

Zoe tapped a long finger lightly against the page of the opened book that lay on her table beside a glass of red wine.

“I’m kind of busy,” she said. “Maybe some other time.”

He leaned closer to read the running head at the top of the book’s left-hand page: Disappearing Through the Skylight.

“That’s by O. B. Hardison, isn’t it?” he asked. “Didn’t he also write Entering the Maze?”

Zoe gave a reluctant nod and upgraded her opinion of him. Fine. So he was a well-read single male yuppie on the prowl, but she still wasn’t interested.

“Technology,” he said, “is a perfect example of evolution, don’t you think? Take the camera. If you compare present models to the best they had just thirty years ago, you can see—”

“Look,” Zoe said.

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