Star Trek DS9 - Far Beyond the Stars by Ira S. Behr & Hans Beimler & Steven Barnes

Author:Ira S. Behr & Hans Beimler & Steven Barnes [Ira S. Behr]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 9780671024307
Published: 2014-02-21T16:00:00+00:00

East 127th Street had been home to Benny for as long as he could remember: he knew the neighborhood like he knew the sound of his own pulse. He could sit on the stoop and tell you when the numbers runners would pass with their policy slips, when the milkman would make his deliveries, when the bakery truck would sputter past.

He knew the barbers and the liquor store owners. He knew the street preachers and the prostitutes.

He was fascinated by the latter, and knew that one day soon he would take the advice of his older, wiser friends, and invest some capital in one of the loudly-dressed, flashy, laughing women who flirted with him, with everyone. After that investment, there would be certain mysteries of life that would be known to him, certain curtains which would remain forever lifted.

Soon, but not today.

He was still confused about what had happened at the Fair, and wasn't certain whether to talk to his friends about it, or just keep it to himself. He certainly couldn't trust his fading memories to Aunt Ardelia—she would just squeal and try to find an entry in one of her dream books that would relate his experience to the upcoming number.

She hadn't always been like this; her world hadn't always revolved around the shadow-land of numbers betting. He remembered when she was a hardworking, loving woman, married to a good man. But she had lost that good man in one of the terrible fires that haunted this neighborhood, one of the roaring blazes over on the border of Spanish Harlem, supposedly started by a Cuban immigrant who didn't understand that you couldn't build a fire in the middle of the floor.

She had lost everything in that blaze, including the only man she loved. He supposed that soon after that she had ceased believing that human dreams or efforts could bend the hand of fate, and just gave in to the worship of blind fortune.

A good woman. Once, a church-going woman. Now, just someone who gave him a roof to sleep under.

She had already left this morning, heading down to the policy bank, counting slips. Making someone rich. That was just the way of the world. Once, a year ago, she had taken him to her boss man, her work place. It was hidden in a tenement building (hidden—hah! Every cop in town knew where all the policy banks were). It was a room piled high with change, dollar bills, and little slips of paper saying who had bet what and where.

She had worked in one of those joints since before his mother died, even before his Daddy had gone away, following the music that didn't seem to want him any more.

But before that, both Ardelia and her sister, his mother, Emma, had been dancers at the Cotton Club—the Geller sisters, and that was where Emma Geller had met his daddy.

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