The Shambling Guide to New York City
Book 1:
The Shambling Guides
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Synopsis
A travel writer takes a job with a shady publishing company in New York, only to find that she must write a guide to the city – for the undead!
Because of the disaster that was her last job, Zoe is searching for a fresh start as a travel book editor in tourist-centric New York City. After stumbling across a seemingly perfect position though, Zoe is blocked at every turn because of the one thing she can't take off her resume – human.
Not to be put off by anything – especially not her blood-drinking boss or death-goddess coworker – Zoe delves deep into the monster world. But her job turns deadly when the careful balance between human and monsters starts to crumble – with Zoe right in the middle.
A Hachette Audio production.
Release date: May 28, 2013
Publisher: Orbit
Print pages: 300
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The Shambling Guide to New York City
Mur Lafferty
The bookstore was sandwiched between a dry cleaner’s and a shifty-looking accounting office. Mannegishi’s Tricks wasn’t in the guidebook, but Zoë Norris knew enough about guidebooks to know they often missed the best places.
This clearly was not one of those places.
The store was, to put it bluntly, filthy. It reminded Zoë of an abandoned mechanic’s garage, with grime and grease coating the walls and bookshelves. She pulled her arms in to avoid brushing against anything. Long strips of paint dotted with mold peeled away from the walls as if they could no longer stand to adhere to such filth. Zoë couldn’t blame them. She felt a bizarre desire to wave to them as they bobbed lazily to herald her passing. Her shoes stuck slightly to the floor, making her trek through the store louder than she would have liked.
She always enjoyed looking at cities—even her hometown—through the eyes of a tourist. She owned guidebooks of every city she had visited and used them extensively. It made her usual urban exploration feel more thorough.
It also allowed her to look at the competition, or it had when she’d worked in travel book publishing.
The store didn’t win her over with its stock, either. She’d never heard of most of the books; they had titles like How to Make Love, Marry, Devour, and Inherit in Eight Weeks in the Romance section and When Your Hound from Hell Outgrows His House—and Yours in the Pets section.
She picked the one about hounds and opened it to Chapter Four: “The Augean Stables: How to Pooper-Scoop Dung That Could Drown a Terrier.” She frowned. So, they’re really assuming your dog gets bigger than a house? It’s not tongue-in-cheek? If this is humor, it’s failing. Despite the humorous title, the front cover had a frightening drawing of a hulking white beast with red eyes. The cover was growing uncomfortably warm, and the leather had a sticky, alien feeling, not like cow or even snake leather. She switched the book to her left hand and wiped her right on her beige sweater. She immediately regretted it.
“One sweater ruined,” she muttered, looking at the grainy black smear. “What is this stuff?”
The cashier’s desk faced the door from the back of the store, and was staffed by an unsmiling teen girl in a dirty gray sundress. She had olive skin and big round eyes, and her head had the fuzz of the somewhat-recently shaved. Piercings dotted her face at her nose, eyebrow, lip, and cheek, and all the way up her ears. Despite her slouchy body language, she watched Zoë with a bright, sharp gaze that looked almost hungry.
Beside the desk was a bulletin board, blocked by a pudgy man hanging a flyer. He wore a T-shirt and jeans and looked to be in his mid-thirties. He looked completely out of place in this store; that is, he was clean.
“Can I help you?” the girl asked as Zoë approached the counter.
“Uh, you have a very interesting shop here,” Zoë said, smiling. She put the hound book on the counter and tried not to grimace as it stuck to her hand briefly. “How much is this one?”
The clerk didn’t return her smile. “We cater to a specific clientele.”
“OK… but how much is the book?” Zoë asked again.
“It’s not for sale. It’s a collectible.”
Zoë became aware of the man at the bulletin board turning and watching her. She began to sweat a little bit.
Jesus, calm down. Not everyone is out to get you.
“So it’s not for sale, or it’s a collectible. Which one?”
The girl reached over and took the book. “It’s not for sale to you, only to collectors.”
“How do you know I don’t collect dog books?” Zoë asked, bristling. “And what does it matter? All I wanted to know was how much it costs. Do you care where it goes as long as it’s paid for?”
“Are you a collector of rare books catering to the owners of… exotic pets?” the man interrupted, smiling. His voice was pleasant and mild, and she relaxed a little, despite his patronizing words. “Excuse me for butting in, but I know the owner of this shop and she considers these books her treasure. She is very particular about where they go when they leave her care.”
“Why should she…” Zoë trailed off when she got a closer look at the bulletin board to the man’s left. Several flyers stood out, many with phone numbers ripped from the bottom. One, advertising an exorcism service specializing in elemental demons, looked burned in a couple of places. The flyer that had caught her eye was pink, and the one the man had just secured with a thumbtack.
Underground Publishing is a new company writing travel guides for people like you. Since we’re writing for people like you, we need people like you to write for us.
Pluses: Experience in writing, publishing, or editing (in this life or any other), and knowledge of New York City.
Minuses: A life span shorter than an editorial cycle (in this case, nine months).
Call 212.555.1666 for more information or e-mail [email protected] for more information.
“Oh, hell yes,” said Zoë, and with the weird, dirty hound book forgotten, she pulled a battered notebook from her satchel. She needed a job. She was refusing to adhere to the stereotype of running home to New York, admitting failure at her attempts to leave her hometown. Her goal was a simple office job. She wasn’t waiting for her big break on Broadway and looking to wait tables or take on a leaflet-passing, taco-suit-wearing street-nuisance job in the meantime.
Office job. Simple. Uncomplicated.
As she scribbled down the information, the man looked her up and down and said, “Ah, I’m not sure if that’s a good idea for you to pursue.”
Zoë looked up sharply. “What are you talking about? First I can’t buy the book, now I can’t apply for a job? I know you guys have some sort of weird vibe going on, ‘We’re so goth and special, let’s freak out the normals.’ But for a business that caters to, you know, customers, you’re certainly not welcoming.”
“I just think that particular business may be looking for someone with experience you may not have,” he said, his voice level and diplomatic. He held his hands out, placating her.
“But you don’t even know me. You don’t know my qualifications. I just left Misconceptions Publishing in Raleigh. You heard of them?” She hated name-dropping her old employer—she would have preferred to forget it entirely—but the second-biggest travel book publisher in the USA was her strongest credential in the job hunt.
The man shifted his weight and touched his chin. “Really. What did you do for them?”
Zoë stood a little taller. “Head researcher and writer. I wrote most of Raleigh Misconceptions, and was picked to head the project Tallahassee Misconceptions.”
He smiled a bit. “Impressive. But you do know Tallahassee is south of North Carolina, right? You went in the wrong direction entirely.”
Zoë clenched her jaw. “I was laid off. It wasn’t due to job performance. I took my severance and came back home to the city.”
The man rubbed his smooth, pudgy cheek. “What happened to cause the layoff? I thought Misconceptions was doing well.”
Zoë felt her cheeks get hot. Her boss, Godfrey, had happened. Then Godfrey’s wife—whom he had failed to mention until Zoë was well and truly in “other woman” territory—had happened. She swallowed. “Economy. You know how it goes.”
He stepped back and leaned against the wall, clearly not minding the cracked and peeling paint that broke off and stuck to his shirt. “Those are good credentials. However, you’re still probably not what they’re looking for.”
Zoë looked at her notebook and continued writing. “Luckily it’s not your decision, is it?”
“Actually, it is.”
She groaned and looked back up at him. “All right. Who are you?”
He extended his hand. “Phillip Rand. Owner, president, and CEO of Underground Publishing.”
She looked at his hand for a moment and shook it, her small fingers briefly engulfed in his grip. It was a cool handshake, but strong.
“Zoë Norris. And why, Mr. Phillip Rand, will you not let me even apply?”
“Well, Miss Zoë Norris, I don’t think you’d fit in with the staff. And fitting in with the staff is key to this company’s success.”
A vision of future months dressed as a dancing cell phone on the wintry streets pummeled Zoë’s psyche. She leaned forward in desperation. She was short, and used to looking up at people, but he was over six feet, and she was forced to crane her neck to look up at him. “Mr. Rand. How many other people experienced in researching and writing travel guides do you have with you?”
He considered for a moment. “With that specific qualification? I actually have none.”
“So if you have a full staff of people who fit into some kind of mystery mold, but don’t actually have experience writing travel books, how good do you think your books are going to be? You sound like you’re a kid trying to fill a club, not a working publishing company. You need a managing editor with experience to supervise your writers and researchers. I’m smart, hardworking, creative, and a hell of a lot of fun in the times I’m not blatantly begging for a job—obviously you’ll have to just take my word on that. I haven’t found a work environment I don’t fit in with. I don’t care if Underground Publishing is catering to eastern Europeans, or transsexuals, or Eskimos, or even Republicans. Just because I don’t fit in doesn’t mean I can’t be accepting as long as they accept me. Just give me a chance.”
Phillip Rand was unmoved. “Trust me. You would not fit in. You’re not our type.”
She finally deflated and sighed. “Isn’t this illegal?”
He actually had the audacity to laugh at that. “I’m not discriminating based on your gender or race or religion.”
“Then what are you basing it on?”
He licked his lips and looked at her again, studying her. “Call it a gut reaction.”
She deflated. “Oh well. It was worth a try. Have a good day.”
On her way out, she ran through her options: there were the few publishing companies she hadn’t yet applied to, the jobs that she had recently thought beneath her that she’d gladly take at this point. She paused a moment in the Self-Help section to see if anything there could help her better herself. She glanced at the covers for Reborn and Loving It, Second Life: Not Just on the Internet, and Get the Salary You Deserve! Negotiating Hell Notes in a Time of Economic Downturn. Nothing she could relate to, so she trudged out the door, contemplating a long bath when she got back to her apartment. Better than unpacking more boxes.
After the grimy door shut behind her, Zoë decided she had earned a tall caloric caffeine bomb to soothe her ego. She wasn’t sure what she’d done to deserve this, but it didn’t take much to make her leap for the comfort treats these days—which reminded her, she needed to recycle some wine bottles.
Mannegishi’s Tricks is the oldest bookstore in the Theater District. Established 1834 by Akilina, nicknamed “The Drakon Lady,” after she immigrated from Russia, the store has a stock that is lovingly picked from collections all over the world. Currently managed by Akilina’s great-grandaughter, Anastasiya, the store continues to offer some of the best finds for any book collector. Anastasiya upholds the old dragon lady’s practice of knowing just which book should go to which customer, and refuses to sell a book to the “wrong” person. Don’t try to argue with her; the drakon’s teeth remain sharp.
Mannegishi’s Tricks is one of the few shops that deliberately maintains a squalid appearance—dingy, smelly, with a strong “leave now” aura—in order to repel unwanted customers. In nearly 180 years, Akilina and her descendants have sold only three books to humans. She refuses to say to whom.
October seemed completely unaware that she was having a shit day. The crisp weather and the blue sky couldn’t help but cheer Zoë a little bit. She had simply loved coming home. Full of people and secrets, cities were three-dimensional, rising high in the sky and creating labyrinthine tunnels underground. She’d come from the suburbs of the Research Triangle in North Carolina, a sterile, impotent metropolitan area of three million people stretched over several counties. That was not a city.
She’d moved with her parents when she was in grade school, but nowhere had ever felt like home the way the city did. She reflected she should have returned when she got out of school, but she got a job traveling for a magazine, and then got the job in Raleigh with Misconceptions and decided that was worth it.
After that ended, it seemed obvious that there was nowhere else to go except home. Ever since she was a child, she had felt cities, especially New York, were alive. Cities had a heartbeat. When she wasn’t in a city, she felt soulless, with an ever-present itch telling her something was missing.
New York was a city.
Zoë prided herself in her ability to seek out the perfect hidden gems in a city. She fancied herself an urban explorer of a sort, and desperately avoided chain restaurants and stores. She enjoyed getting to know cities as if they were friends; you visited the Targets of your acquaintances, but the mom-and-pop stores of your friends.
Her fifteen or so years out of New York had seen the city change a lot, both from time and from 9/11. She loved wandering the streets, getting to know it again.
So what if she’d left Raleigh in shame and now counted on one hand the unemployed weeks she had left in her savings account before she had to give up and move out? She was where she’d always wanted to be.
When she spied the little café a few doors down from the bookstore, she knew where she wanted to be right then: Bakery Under Starlight. It was perfectly placed, facing south on Fifty-First Street so that the fading afternoon sun of early autumn cut through the trees and into the café. The café had orange-red walls with antique, mismatched chairs and tables. Behind the counter a cappuccino machine hissed. Racks of bread and pastries assaulted Zoë’s nose, and she took an appreciative whiff of freshly baked goodies.
“Suck it, Starbucks,” she muttered as she got in line.
The only people Zoë saw working the shop were a mountain of a man whose baker’s jacket said “Carl” and a petite woman who shouted obscenities at the customers when their coffees were ready.
Zoë stood in line behind a fat man with sallow skin and limp brown hair. He wore a very nicely tailored pinstripe suit, but it was ill-fitting, straining at the buttons and baggy in the shoulders. She felt a little sorry for the suit, thinking that if it had had any say in the matter, it would not have chosen this man to fill it.
Carl greeted the customer by name. “ ’Morning, John, you’re looking well.”
John smiled and winked at Carl. “I found a new club the other night. Things are looking up.”
“Oh really? I’d check it out, but, you know.” Carl gestured widely, encompassing the café, and John nodded as if he understood.
The John person got his coffee and scone—“Latte for the son of a demon and a whore!” the small woman cried out in accented English—and nodded again to Carl before taking a table against the wall.
Zoë nodded to the barista as she approached the counter. “Doesn’t that drive away customers?” she asked Carl.
Carl shrugged. “Tenagne’s Ethiopian,” he said, as if that explained it.
“That’s a little stereotypical,” Zoë said.
Carl glanced at Tenagne, who steamed milk with her back to him. “Not for her family, which is pretty large. Don’t worry, she only yells obscenities at people she likes. You should be safe. Now what can we get you?” Zoë blushed and gave her order—plain coffee and a croissant—and then snagged the only free table by a window, which happened to be along the wall next to John’s.
On the wall above her hung another corkboard with missing-cat notices and job postings. She saw the Underground Publishing flyer, and snatched the whole thing off.
As she contemplated the job description again, she caught John staring at her. She tried to ignore him, reading the flyer a couple of times, looking for any clue that would lead her to what Underground Publishing wanted, but finding nothing.
When she looked up, the man was still staring at her. She sighed. “Do you have a problem?”
He did not flinch at the obvious irritation in her voice, but instead put down his coffee and wiped his mouth, a silver bracelet peeking from inside his cuff. Despite his lugubrious appearance, he sat up straight and met her eyes with no sense of shyness. He gestured toward the flyer. “I’m not sure if that’s a good idea for you to pursue.”
Zoë pursed her lips. “So I’ve heard. Is there a campaign against me? You don’t even know me. Neither does that Phillip guy.”
John raised an eyebrow at her. “You know Phil?”
She nodded. “I just met Phillip Rand at that nasty bookstore down the street, and he told me the same thing. So what is the problem? Why are you people following me to make sure I don’t apply? Why do you fucking care?”
The fat man considered her for a moment, smiling. “Paranoid, and quick to anger. That’s very attractive.” He didn’t sound sarcastic, and his tone made her squirm slightly inside. “To answer your question, Phil is my boss. Our office is nearby. We’re hanging flyers in area businesses. Your encountering both of us is nothing but a happy coincidence.” He ignored her snort of derision. “And about your qualifications, Phil is looking for someone with experience you may not have,” he said, seeming to choose his words carefully.
Zoë sighed. “Why not? I’ve got experience, I’m a native, I’m an excellent researcher, surely I’m worth an interview at least.”
He sipped at his coffee again, sizing her up over the mug’s rim. His muddy brown eyes weren’t undressing her, but she still had the uncomfortable feeling that she was a slab of beef and John was a butcher, deciding where to make the first cut. “You’re still probably not what they’re looking for.”
“So what do you do? What makes you so perfect for the job?”
He extended his hand. “John Dickens. Public relations, Underground Publishing.”
She shook it, his warm hand strangely dainty in her own.
“Zoë Norris.”
“Well, I’m not in editorial; it’s not my decision. Go ahead and apply. Who knows? Phil might change his mind and take a liking to you. You’re… appealing.”
Zoë didn’t like the way he said that. Did she want to work with this asshole? “Thanks for the advice, I guess.” She sat at her table and pushed her chair pointedly to put her back to John. She got out her BlackBerry and pulled up the template for her standard job query. She made some pertinent changes, attached her résumé, double-checked for mistakes, and then sent it to Phil’s e-mail address as given on the sheet.
She sat back and relaxed. Despite the comments to the contrary, she felt good about this one. Of course, she’d felt good about all the jobs she’d applied for; she’d been convinced that every publishing house in the city had at least one open job whose description read so perfectly the ad might as well have said, “WANTED: Thirtysomething woman from Raleigh, NC, petite, heartbroken, fleeing a scandal at a publishing company. Names starting with ‘Z’ preferred.” But she had been overqualified for one, under-qualified for another, and too laid-back for a third—although she was pretty sure her lack of any structured religion was the real reason, even though by law they couldn’t say that. That was her worry about Underground Publishing: that it was focused toward Jews or Christians or bisexuals or people who had lived through the heartbreak of psoriasis or some other group that she didn’t belong to. But why were John and Phil so secretive?
Zoë fiddled with her phone, ignoring the other patrons, especially the man behind her. She went through news feeds, reading her favorite websites, checking in at the weirder science news sites just for fun, and then checked publishing blogs. She was tsking at another book deal for another celebrity who’d made a name for herself by doing drugs and sleeping with producers and now felt qualified to write, when she realized that an old Kool & the Gang song was playing very loudly.
No, Carl hadn’t cranked the volume. Instead, everyone in the café had stopped talking. Zoë looked up and saw a dirty, wide-eyed woman standing in the middle of the café. She looked to be older, like seventy, and had white hair and Asian features. She wore a pink shawl, a grimy T-shirt that said “I 8 NY” over a silhouette of Godzilla, and dirty jeans. Out of place on her ragged form was a pair of very high-quality black combat boots. She pirouetted slowly and stared at the patrons in the café. The patrons stared back.
“Well, this should be interesting,” John whispered behind her.
Zoë frowned. The tension in the café was palpable; there was none of the usual discomfort or pointed ignoring reactions New Yorkers did when faced with something or someone they didn’t want to deal with. The people in the café seemed completely terrified of the old woman, even though her thick braided hair swinging at her hip was the strongest-looking thing about her. Zoë felt a sudden kinship with this woman, feeling outcast and friendless as she had been. She stood up and glanced around the coffee shop. Even Carl looked petrified.
No one moved to talk to the woman, to take her order, or to usher her out. Zoë couldn’t take the tension any more, so she turned on what she had learned of Southern charm. She heard a small gasp behind her as she approached the woman.
“Hi, honey, can I help you? Are you meeting a friend, or do you need a cup of coffee?”
The woman fixed her wide brown eyes on Zoë and seemed to think for a moment. “You want to buy Granny Good Mae a cup of coffee?” Her accent was flat and difficult to place, almost the generic American accent Hollywood actors had.
Zoë shrugged. “Sure, why not?”
“I always knew you were a good one,” she said, glaring at Carl, who blanched, his dark skin turning ashy. “I don’t do coffee. I drink tea.”
“Sure.” Zoë walked to the counter. She waved her hand in front of Carl’s face. “It’s OK, she won’t bite. Just get her some hot tea. I’ll pay for it and get her out of here.”
“That’s Granny Good Mae,” Carl whispered, but he moved to fill a to-go cup with hot water. “She’s not welcome here.”
Zoë shook her head in amazement. “She’s not hurting anyone. What’s your problem?”
“You both batshit crazy,” Tenagne said to Zoë, tossing Carl a tea bag. “Her ’cause she talk to the air, and you ’cause you listen to her.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Zoë said. She paid Carl for the tea. The customers still watched Granny Good Mae, who looked them over as if she were a general surveying the enemy. Neither seemed willing to make the first strike.
Zoë walked up to the old woman and put her hand on her elbow. “I’m sorry, ma’am, I’m not really sure why they don’t want you here, but I think it might be best if you go. Here’s your tea.”
“I got what I came here for,” Granny Good Mae said, turning to leave.
“Does this café have especially good tea?” Zoë asked, opening the door for the woman.
Granny Good Mae looked at her, startled. “What? No, the tea here is garbage tea. Comes in bags. Like garbage. And goldfish crackers. I came here to see how you’ve grown up.” She tossed the full cup of tea into a garbage can on the street. “And you grew up real nice.”
Bemused, Zoë said, “Uh, OK. I’m Zoë. Nice to meet you.”
“Life! Life! This city needs life!” Granny Good Mae cackled as if she’d made a good joke, then her face fell. “Remember, Zoë-Life, watch your back. Some people in this city will eat you right up.”
Before Zoë could ask anything more, the old woman turned and wandered down the street, laughing again about “Zoë-Life.”
Zoë shrugged and went back into the café. A couple of the patrons shot her sidelong glances, but the room had returned to its former light and friendly atmosphere.
“You’re really not looking to make friends, are you?” John asked as she sat down.
“I don’t know what the problem is. She’s just a harmless old woman. She didn’t even shout obscenities or urinate on the wall,” Zoë said, not looking at him and taking her phone out of her pocket. The light on top was blinking, and she switched it on to read her messages.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, but that’s not your fault,” John said. He retrieved his own mobile phone and started typing something on the screen.
“Holy crap,” Zoë said, as she read her messages. She had already gotten a reply from Underground Publishing. She read the e-mail quickly.
She finally looked at John, a triumphant smile on her face. “Phil wants to talk to me. I’ve got an interview.”
John nodded absently, checking his own phone. “Yeah, but don’t worry. We have time for another cup of coffee. You want a refill on me?”
Zoë blinked at him, her triumph melting into a feeling of stupidity. “Uh, what?”
“Didn’t you read your e-mail? Phil wants to see you at four o’clock. It’s three fifteen now.”
Zoë gasped and called up the e-mail again. There it was, four o’clock. She looked down at herself. She wore her favorite (read: old) beige sweater, which now had a grimy streak across the front from that foul bookstore. Underneath that she wore an old Pearl Jam T-shirt with an ink stain on the shoulder and a hole by the neck seam. Jeans, purple Chuck Taylor sneakers, and her vintage denim jacket completed her wardrobe. She hadn’t even washed her hair that morning. “I’m not dressed for an interview.”
John shrugged. “Phil is likely trying to catch you off guard. I told you, you won’t fit in with us. He’s go. . .
This clearly was not one of those places.
The store was, to put it bluntly, filthy. It reminded Zoë of an abandoned mechanic’s garage, with grime and grease coating the walls and bookshelves. She pulled her arms in to avoid brushing against anything. Long strips of paint dotted with mold peeled away from the walls as if they could no longer stand to adhere to such filth. Zoë couldn’t blame them. She felt a bizarre desire to wave to them as they bobbed lazily to herald her passing. Her shoes stuck slightly to the floor, making her trek through the store louder than she would have liked.
She always enjoyed looking at cities—even her hometown—through the eyes of a tourist. She owned guidebooks of every city she had visited and used them extensively. It made her usual urban exploration feel more thorough.
It also allowed her to look at the competition, or it had when she’d worked in travel book publishing.
The store didn’t win her over with its stock, either. She’d never heard of most of the books; they had titles like How to Make Love, Marry, Devour, and Inherit in Eight Weeks in the Romance section and When Your Hound from Hell Outgrows His House—and Yours in the Pets section.
She picked the one about hounds and opened it to Chapter Four: “The Augean Stables: How to Pooper-Scoop Dung That Could Drown a Terrier.” She frowned. So, they’re really assuming your dog gets bigger than a house? It’s not tongue-in-cheek? If this is humor, it’s failing. Despite the humorous title, the front cover had a frightening drawing of a hulking white beast with red eyes. The cover was growing uncomfortably warm, and the leather had a sticky, alien feeling, not like cow or even snake leather. She switched the book to her left hand and wiped her right on her beige sweater. She immediately regretted it.
“One sweater ruined,” she muttered, looking at the grainy black smear. “What is this stuff?”
The cashier’s desk faced the door from the back of the store, and was staffed by an unsmiling teen girl in a dirty gray sundress. She had olive skin and big round eyes, and her head had the fuzz of the somewhat-recently shaved. Piercings dotted her face at her nose, eyebrow, lip, and cheek, and all the way up her ears. Despite her slouchy body language, she watched Zoë with a bright, sharp gaze that looked almost hungry.
Beside the desk was a bulletin board, blocked by a pudgy man hanging a flyer. He wore a T-shirt and jeans and looked to be in his mid-thirties. He looked completely out of place in this store; that is, he was clean.
“Can I help you?” the girl asked as Zoë approached the counter.
“Uh, you have a very interesting shop here,” Zoë said, smiling. She put the hound book on the counter and tried not to grimace as it stuck to her hand briefly. “How much is this one?”
The clerk didn’t return her smile. “We cater to a specific clientele.”
“OK… but how much is the book?” Zoë asked again.
“It’s not for sale. It’s a collectible.”
Zoë became aware of the man at the bulletin board turning and watching her. She began to sweat a little bit.
Jesus, calm down. Not everyone is out to get you.
“So it’s not for sale, or it’s a collectible. Which one?”
The girl reached over and took the book. “It’s not for sale to you, only to collectors.”
“How do you know I don’t collect dog books?” Zoë asked, bristling. “And what does it matter? All I wanted to know was how much it costs. Do you care where it goes as long as it’s paid for?”
“Are you a collector of rare books catering to the owners of… exotic pets?” the man interrupted, smiling. His voice was pleasant and mild, and she relaxed a little, despite his patronizing words. “Excuse me for butting in, but I know the owner of this shop and she considers these books her treasure. She is very particular about where they go when they leave her care.”
“Why should she…” Zoë trailed off when she got a closer look at the bulletin board to the man’s left. Several flyers stood out, many with phone numbers ripped from the bottom. One, advertising an exorcism service specializing in elemental demons, looked burned in a couple of places. The flyer that had caught her eye was pink, and the one the man had just secured with a thumbtack.
Underground Publishing is a new company writing travel guides for people like you. Since we’re writing for people like you, we need people like you to write for us.
Pluses: Experience in writing, publishing, or editing (in this life or any other), and knowledge of New York City.
Minuses: A life span shorter than an editorial cycle (in this case, nine months).
Call 212.555.1666 for more information or e-mail [email protected] for more information.
“Oh, hell yes,” said Zoë, and with the weird, dirty hound book forgotten, she pulled a battered notebook from her satchel. She needed a job. She was refusing to adhere to the stereotype of running home to New York, admitting failure at her attempts to leave her hometown. Her goal was a simple office job. She wasn’t waiting for her big break on Broadway and looking to wait tables or take on a leaflet-passing, taco-suit-wearing street-nuisance job in the meantime.
Office job. Simple. Uncomplicated.
As she scribbled down the information, the man looked her up and down and said, “Ah, I’m not sure if that’s a good idea for you to pursue.”
Zoë looked up sharply. “What are you talking about? First I can’t buy the book, now I can’t apply for a job? I know you guys have some sort of weird vibe going on, ‘We’re so goth and special, let’s freak out the normals.’ But for a business that caters to, you know, customers, you’re certainly not welcoming.”
“I just think that particular business may be looking for someone with experience you may not have,” he said, his voice level and diplomatic. He held his hands out, placating her.
“But you don’t even know me. You don’t know my qualifications. I just left Misconceptions Publishing in Raleigh. You heard of them?” She hated name-dropping her old employer—she would have preferred to forget it entirely—but the second-biggest travel book publisher in the USA was her strongest credential in the job hunt.
The man shifted his weight and touched his chin. “Really. What did you do for them?”
Zoë stood a little taller. “Head researcher and writer. I wrote most of Raleigh Misconceptions, and was picked to head the project Tallahassee Misconceptions.”
He smiled a bit. “Impressive. But you do know Tallahassee is south of North Carolina, right? You went in the wrong direction entirely.”
Zoë clenched her jaw. “I was laid off. It wasn’t due to job performance. I took my severance and came back home to the city.”
The man rubbed his smooth, pudgy cheek. “What happened to cause the layoff? I thought Misconceptions was doing well.”
Zoë felt her cheeks get hot. Her boss, Godfrey, had happened. Then Godfrey’s wife—whom he had failed to mention until Zoë was well and truly in “other woman” territory—had happened. She swallowed. “Economy. You know how it goes.”
He stepped back and leaned against the wall, clearly not minding the cracked and peeling paint that broke off and stuck to his shirt. “Those are good credentials. However, you’re still probably not what they’re looking for.”
Zoë looked at her notebook and continued writing. “Luckily it’s not your decision, is it?”
“Actually, it is.”
She groaned and looked back up at him. “All right. Who are you?”
He extended his hand. “Phillip Rand. Owner, president, and CEO of Underground Publishing.”
She looked at his hand for a moment and shook it, her small fingers briefly engulfed in his grip. It was a cool handshake, but strong.
“Zoë Norris. And why, Mr. Phillip Rand, will you not let me even apply?”
“Well, Miss Zoë Norris, I don’t think you’d fit in with the staff. And fitting in with the staff is key to this company’s success.”
A vision of future months dressed as a dancing cell phone on the wintry streets pummeled Zoë’s psyche. She leaned forward in desperation. She was short, and used to looking up at people, but he was over six feet, and she was forced to crane her neck to look up at him. “Mr. Rand. How many other people experienced in researching and writing travel guides do you have with you?”
He considered for a moment. “With that specific qualification? I actually have none.”
“So if you have a full staff of people who fit into some kind of mystery mold, but don’t actually have experience writing travel books, how good do you think your books are going to be? You sound like you’re a kid trying to fill a club, not a working publishing company. You need a managing editor with experience to supervise your writers and researchers. I’m smart, hardworking, creative, and a hell of a lot of fun in the times I’m not blatantly begging for a job—obviously you’ll have to just take my word on that. I haven’t found a work environment I don’t fit in with. I don’t care if Underground Publishing is catering to eastern Europeans, or transsexuals, or Eskimos, or even Republicans. Just because I don’t fit in doesn’t mean I can’t be accepting as long as they accept me. Just give me a chance.”
Phillip Rand was unmoved. “Trust me. You would not fit in. You’re not our type.”
She finally deflated and sighed. “Isn’t this illegal?”
He actually had the audacity to laugh at that. “I’m not discriminating based on your gender or race or religion.”
“Then what are you basing it on?”
He licked his lips and looked at her again, studying her. “Call it a gut reaction.”
She deflated. “Oh well. It was worth a try. Have a good day.”
On her way out, she ran through her options: there were the few publishing companies she hadn’t yet applied to, the jobs that she had recently thought beneath her that she’d gladly take at this point. She paused a moment in the Self-Help section to see if anything there could help her better herself. She glanced at the covers for Reborn and Loving It, Second Life: Not Just on the Internet, and Get the Salary You Deserve! Negotiating Hell Notes in a Time of Economic Downturn. Nothing she could relate to, so she trudged out the door, contemplating a long bath when she got back to her apartment. Better than unpacking more boxes.
After the grimy door shut behind her, Zoë decided she had earned a tall caloric caffeine bomb to soothe her ego. She wasn’t sure what she’d done to deserve this, but it didn’t take much to make her leap for the comfort treats these days—which reminded her, she needed to recycle some wine bottles.
Mannegishi’s Tricks is the oldest bookstore in the Theater District. Established 1834 by Akilina, nicknamed “The Drakon Lady,” after she immigrated from Russia, the store has a stock that is lovingly picked from collections all over the world. Currently managed by Akilina’s great-grandaughter, Anastasiya, the store continues to offer some of the best finds for any book collector. Anastasiya upholds the old dragon lady’s practice of knowing just which book should go to which customer, and refuses to sell a book to the “wrong” person. Don’t try to argue with her; the drakon’s teeth remain sharp.
Mannegishi’s Tricks is one of the few shops that deliberately maintains a squalid appearance—dingy, smelly, with a strong “leave now” aura—in order to repel unwanted customers. In nearly 180 years, Akilina and her descendants have sold only three books to humans. She refuses to say to whom.
October seemed completely unaware that she was having a shit day. The crisp weather and the blue sky couldn’t help but cheer Zoë a little bit. She had simply loved coming home. Full of people and secrets, cities were three-dimensional, rising high in the sky and creating labyrinthine tunnels underground. She’d come from the suburbs of the Research Triangle in North Carolina, a sterile, impotent metropolitan area of three million people stretched over several counties. That was not a city.
She’d moved with her parents when she was in grade school, but nowhere had ever felt like home the way the city did. She reflected she should have returned when she got out of school, but she got a job traveling for a magazine, and then got the job in Raleigh with Misconceptions and decided that was worth it.
After that ended, it seemed obvious that there was nowhere else to go except home. Ever since she was a child, she had felt cities, especially New York, were alive. Cities had a heartbeat. When she wasn’t in a city, she felt soulless, with an ever-present itch telling her something was missing.
New York was a city.
Zoë prided herself in her ability to seek out the perfect hidden gems in a city. She fancied herself an urban explorer of a sort, and desperately avoided chain restaurants and stores. She enjoyed getting to know cities as if they were friends; you visited the Targets of your acquaintances, but the mom-and-pop stores of your friends.
Her fifteen or so years out of New York had seen the city change a lot, both from time and from 9/11. She loved wandering the streets, getting to know it again.
So what if she’d left Raleigh in shame and now counted on one hand the unemployed weeks she had left in her savings account before she had to give up and move out? She was where she’d always wanted to be.
When she spied the little café a few doors down from the bookstore, she knew where she wanted to be right then: Bakery Under Starlight. It was perfectly placed, facing south on Fifty-First Street so that the fading afternoon sun of early autumn cut through the trees and into the café. The café had orange-red walls with antique, mismatched chairs and tables. Behind the counter a cappuccino machine hissed. Racks of bread and pastries assaulted Zoë’s nose, and she took an appreciative whiff of freshly baked goodies.
“Suck it, Starbucks,” she muttered as she got in line.
The only people Zoë saw working the shop were a mountain of a man whose baker’s jacket said “Carl” and a petite woman who shouted obscenities at the customers when their coffees were ready.
Zoë stood in line behind a fat man with sallow skin and limp brown hair. He wore a very nicely tailored pinstripe suit, but it was ill-fitting, straining at the buttons and baggy in the shoulders. She felt a little sorry for the suit, thinking that if it had had any say in the matter, it would not have chosen this man to fill it.
Carl greeted the customer by name. “ ’Morning, John, you’re looking well.”
John smiled and winked at Carl. “I found a new club the other night. Things are looking up.”
“Oh really? I’d check it out, but, you know.” Carl gestured widely, encompassing the café, and John nodded as if he understood.
The John person got his coffee and scone—“Latte for the son of a demon and a whore!” the small woman cried out in accented English—and nodded again to Carl before taking a table against the wall.
Zoë nodded to the barista as she approached the counter. “Doesn’t that drive away customers?” she asked Carl.
Carl shrugged. “Tenagne’s Ethiopian,” he said, as if that explained it.
“That’s a little stereotypical,” Zoë said.
Carl glanced at Tenagne, who steamed milk with her back to him. “Not for her family, which is pretty large. Don’t worry, she only yells obscenities at people she likes. You should be safe. Now what can we get you?” Zoë blushed and gave her order—plain coffee and a croissant—and then snagged the only free table by a window, which happened to be along the wall next to John’s.
On the wall above her hung another corkboard with missing-cat notices and job postings. She saw the Underground Publishing flyer, and snatched the whole thing off.
As she contemplated the job description again, she caught John staring at her. She tried to ignore him, reading the flyer a couple of times, looking for any clue that would lead her to what Underground Publishing wanted, but finding nothing.
When she looked up, the man was still staring at her. She sighed. “Do you have a problem?”
He did not flinch at the obvious irritation in her voice, but instead put down his coffee and wiped his mouth, a silver bracelet peeking from inside his cuff. Despite his lugubrious appearance, he sat up straight and met her eyes with no sense of shyness. He gestured toward the flyer. “I’m not sure if that’s a good idea for you to pursue.”
Zoë pursed her lips. “So I’ve heard. Is there a campaign against me? You don’t even know me. Neither does that Phillip guy.”
John raised an eyebrow at her. “You know Phil?”
She nodded. “I just met Phillip Rand at that nasty bookstore down the street, and he told me the same thing. So what is the problem? Why are you people following me to make sure I don’t apply? Why do you fucking care?”
The fat man considered her for a moment, smiling. “Paranoid, and quick to anger. That’s very attractive.” He didn’t sound sarcastic, and his tone made her squirm slightly inside. “To answer your question, Phil is my boss. Our office is nearby. We’re hanging flyers in area businesses. Your encountering both of us is nothing but a happy coincidence.” He ignored her snort of derision. “And about your qualifications, Phil is looking for someone with experience you may not have,” he said, seeming to choose his words carefully.
Zoë sighed. “Why not? I’ve got experience, I’m a native, I’m an excellent researcher, surely I’m worth an interview at least.”
He sipped at his coffee again, sizing her up over the mug’s rim. His muddy brown eyes weren’t undressing her, but she still had the uncomfortable feeling that she was a slab of beef and John was a butcher, deciding where to make the first cut. “You’re still probably not what they’re looking for.”
“So what do you do? What makes you so perfect for the job?”
He extended his hand. “John Dickens. Public relations, Underground Publishing.”
She shook it, his warm hand strangely dainty in her own.
“Zoë Norris.”
“Well, I’m not in editorial; it’s not my decision. Go ahead and apply. Who knows? Phil might change his mind and take a liking to you. You’re… appealing.”
Zoë didn’t like the way he said that. Did she want to work with this asshole? “Thanks for the advice, I guess.” She sat at her table and pushed her chair pointedly to put her back to John. She got out her BlackBerry and pulled up the template for her standard job query. She made some pertinent changes, attached her résumé, double-checked for mistakes, and then sent it to Phil’s e-mail address as given on the sheet.
She sat back and relaxed. Despite the comments to the contrary, she felt good about this one. Of course, she’d felt good about all the jobs she’d applied for; she’d been convinced that every publishing house in the city had at least one open job whose description read so perfectly the ad might as well have said, “WANTED: Thirtysomething woman from Raleigh, NC, petite, heartbroken, fleeing a scandal at a publishing company. Names starting with ‘Z’ preferred.” But she had been overqualified for one, under-qualified for another, and too laid-back for a third—although she was pretty sure her lack of any structured religion was the real reason, even though by law they couldn’t say that. That was her worry about Underground Publishing: that it was focused toward Jews or Christians or bisexuals or people who had lived through the heartbreak of psoriasis or some other group that she didn’t belong to. But why were John and Phil so secretive?
Zoë fiddled with her phone, ignoring the other patrons, especially the man behind her. She went through news feeds, reading her favorite websites, checking in at the weirder science news sites just for fun, and then checked publishing blogs. She was tsking at another book deal for another celebrity who’d made a name for herself by doing drugs and sleeping with producers and now felt qualified to write, when she realized that an old Kool & the Gang song was playing very loudly.
No, Carl hadn’t cranked the volume. Instead, everyone in the café had stopped talking. Zoë looked up and saw a dirty, wide-eyed woman standing in the middle of the café. She looked to be older, like seventy, and had white hair and Asian features. She wore a pink shawl, a grimy T-shirt that said “I 8 NY” over a silhouette of Godzilla, and dirty jeans. Out of place on her ragged form was a pair of very high-quality black combat boots. She pirouetted slowly and stared at the patrons in the café. The patrons stared back.
“Well, this should be interesting,” John whispered behind her.
Zoë frowned. The tension in the café was palpable; there was none of the usual discomfort or pointed ignoring reactions New Yorkers did when faced with something or someone they didn’t want to deal with. The people in the café seemed completely terrified of the old woman, even though her thick braided hair swinging at her hip was the strongest-looking thing about her. Zoë felt a sudden kinship with this woman, feeling outcast and friendless as she had been. She stood up and glanced around the coffee shop. Even Carl looked petrified.
No one moved to talk to the woman, to take her order, or to usher her out. Zoë couldn’t take the tension any more, so she turned on what she had learned of Southern charm. She heard a small gasp behind her as she approached the woman.
“Hi, honey, can I help you? Are you meeting a friend, or do you need a cup of coffee?”
The woman fixed her wide brown eyes on Zoë and seemed to think for a moment. “You want to buy Granny Good Mae a cup of coffee?” Her accent was flat and difficult to place, almost the generic American accent Hollywood actors had.
Zoë shrugged. “Sure, why not?”
“I always knew you were a good one,” she said, glaring at Carl, who blanched, his dark skin turning ashy. “I don’t do coffee. I drink tea.”
“Sure.” Zoë walked to the counter. She waved her hand in front of Carl’s face. “It’s OK, she won’t bite. Just get her some hot tea. I’ll pay for it and get her out of here.”
“That’s Granny Good Mae,” Carl whispered, but he moved to fill a to-go cup with hot water. “She’s not welcome here.”
Zoë shook her head in amazement. “She’s not hurting anyone. What’s your problem?”
“You both batshit crazy,” Tenagne said to Zoë, tossing Carl a tea bag. “Her ’cause she talk to the air, and you ’cause you listen to her.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Zoë said. She paid Carl for the tea. The customers still watched Granny Good Mae, who looked them over as if she were a general surveying the enemy. Neither seemed willing to make the first strike.
Zoë walked up to the old woman and put her hand on her elbow. “I’m sorry, ma’am, I’m not really sure why they don’t want you here, but I think it might be best if you go. Here’s your tea.”
“I got what I came here for,” Granny Good Mae said, turning to leave.
“Does this café have especially good tea?” Zoë asked, opening the door for the woman.
Granny Good Mae looked at her, startled. “What? No, the tea here is garbage tea. Comes in bags. Like garbage. And goldfish crackers. I came here to see how you’ve grown up.” She tossed the full cup of tea into a garbage can on the street. “And you grew up real nice.”
Bemused, Zoë said, “Uh, OK. I’m Zoë. Nice to meet you.”
“Life! Life! This city needs life!” Granny Good Mae cackled as if she’d made a good joke, then her face fell. “Remember, Zoë-Life, watch your back. Some people in this city will eat you right up.”
Before Zoë could ask anything more, the old woman turned and wandered down the street, laughing again about “Zoë-Life.”
Zoë shrugged and went back into the café. A couple of the patrons shot her sidelong glances, but the room had returned to its former light and friendly atmosphere.
“You’re really not looking to make friends, are you?” John asked as she sat down.
“I don’t know what the problem is. She’s just a harmless old woman. She didn’t even shout obscenities or urinate on the wall,” Zoë said, not looking at him and taking her phone out of her pocket. The light on top was blinking, and she switched it on to read her messages.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, but that’s not your fault,” John said. He retrieved his own mobile phone and started typing something on the screen.
“Holy crap,” Zoë said, as she read her messages. She had already gotten a reply from Underground Publishing. She read the e-mail quickly.
She finally looked at John, a triumphant smile on her face. “Phil wants to talk to me. I’ve got an interview.”
John nodded absently, checking his own phone. “Yeah, but don’t worry. We have time for another cup of coffee. You want a refill on me?”
Zoë blinked at him, her triumph melting into a feeling of stupidity. “Uh, what?”
“Didn’t you read your e-mail? Phil wants to see you at four o’clock. It’s three fifteen now.”
Zoë gasped and called up the e-mail again. There it was, four o’clock. She looked down at herself. She wore her favorite (read: old) beige sweater, which now had a grimy streak across the front from that foul bookstore. Underneath that she wore an old Pearl Jam T-shirt with an ink stain on the shoulder and a hole by the neck seam. Jeans, purple Chuck Taylor sneakers, and her vintage denim jacket completed her wardrobe. She hadn’t even washed her hair that morning. “I’m not dressed for an interview.”
John shrugged. “Phil is likely trying to catch you off guard. I told you, you won’t fit in with us. He’s go. . .
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The Shambling Guide to New York City
Mur Lafferty
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