The Deavys (14 page)

XII

Like a seventeen-year old boy who's just learned that his girlfriend has dumped him for another guy, the sky was trying to weep but could not. Clouds hung heavy over the great city, gravid with moisture but not yet delivering on the threat of rain. It left all the millions and millions of inhabitants, human and plant and animal, a bit nervous and on edge. Whenever a slight drizzle began, the eternal question formed in the minds of the bipedal citizens: to umbrella, or not to umbrella.

Examining the east side of the block slowly and methodically as they paced off its length from 67th to 68th Street, the Deavy clan failed to discover anything resembling a street, or even a service alley. There were numerous entrances to buildings, but no street. Stumped, they paused before the roll-up metal delivery door to an exclusive apartment building.

“C'mon, Pithfwid,” Rose urged their cat. “Can't you see a sign, or anything?”

“Yeah,” Amber added. “I thought cats could go anywhere.”

“Most of us can,” Pithfwid retorted. “But first we have to have a defined anywhere to go to. And the kind of sign we need is not the sort that is mounted on a pole.” Lowering his nose, he began sniffing along the line where the foundation of the apartment building met the concrete of the sidewalk, looking, for all the world, like a miniature and very oddly proportioned bloodhound as he did so.

Pithfwid halted so abruptly that a momentarily distracted Simwan, on the other end of the leash, was nearly yanked off his feet. How such a normal-size feline could destabilize a far heavier human was something no onlooker could have understood. The Deavys knew the reason, however. Pithfwid was considerably bigger than he looked.

“Got it,” the cat murmured with satisfaction. “In any big city, it can be hard to find these little side streets. Half streets are more difficult still. Then there are quarter streets, and eighth streets, of which this city in particular has more than its share.”

Simwan and his sisters stared. Pithfwid had stopped and was gazing down a crack between two tall buildings. There was maybe enough space between the massive, towering walls of stone for an agile grasshopper to squeeze through.

“
That's
67½ Street?” Rose looked dubious.

“That's not even wide enough to be just the ½ part,” Amber commented.

The cat looked up at them and grinned. It is a rare and wonderful thing to see a cat grin. “Come now, girls. Surely you haven't put on
that
much weight?” He eyed Amber's thighs meaningfully. “Although, all that holiday chocolate you've all been eating your way through lately …”

“Why you spiteful little
katze
!” An angry Amber reached for the fluffy tail. Pithfwid skipped effortlessly back out of reach, she followed—and both of them disappeared.
No
, a startled Simwan realized. They hadn't disappeared. They'd just gone down 67½ Street. N/Ice was right on their tail—well, Pithfwid's, anyway. He glanced at Rose, then back at the river of pedestrians. Absorbed in themselves, they took no notice of the remaining Deavys. Taking each other's hand, and deep breaths, Simwan and Rose took a step toward the barely visible crack between the two buildings.

Half expecting to smack his nose against unyielding granite, Simwan was pleasantly surprised to find that he had merely stepped onto another sidewalk laid perpendicular to the one he had just left. Letting go of his sister's hand as hastily as if he had been holding onto a burning stovetop, he turned to look back behind him. What he saw was a crack between two buildings. Except that instead of being built of stone, one was made of used brick and the other of green glass. Fish swam to and fro within the glass wall, through which he could see several mermaids busy at ballet rehearsal.

The stories one heard were right on, he mused. You
could
find everything in New York.

East 67½ Street was narrow, but on balance not all that much different from East 67th Street or East 68th Street. Like all good Manhattan streets, it ran straight and true. Traffic flowed in the direction of the East River. Tall buildings lined both sides. The street itself was frantic with taxis, delivery vans, flying carpets of varying size piled high with goods, messenger pixies, elves on smoke break, mounted police on unicorns: all the usual occupants of an active Upper East Side block.

Well, Simwan decided as he took in the scene, maybe a little more than usual.

“We're looking for Tybolt the Butcher,” N/Ice reminded them as she drifted alongside, and sometimes through, her sisters. She was already checking out the storefronts that lined both sides of the street. “No wonder the Witch Trish couldn't give us a number.”

It was true, Simwan saw as they advanced down the sidewalk. None of the storefronts had any numbers on them, just names. The Deavys walked carefully around the sawhorses and yellow tape that delineated the borders of an excavation in progress. A team of grumbling, grunting trolls was repairing a broken water line. Each wore a yellow hard hat, dirty jeans, and shirts that proclaimed “City of New York—Dept. of Water and Powers.” One of the smaller, younger workers leaning on his shovel noticed the Deavy clan approaching and started to whistle through his tusks. Somewhat to the girls' disappointment, he caught himself hastily when he saw that they were way underage, and quickly turned back to his work.

Well behind them now, and unremarked upon, a puff of black smoke oozed out of the crack that led to Fifth Avenue.

The notion that one could buy anything, absolutely anything, in New York was never more apparent than on 67½ Street. Shops sold unusual cooking ware, unique clothing, remarkable furniture, gourmet imported food, and a great deal more. A rambling used bookstore offered not only publications of recent vintage but incunabula, scrolls, delicately painted papyrus, inscribed cuneiform tablets (including the rare paperback editions), and petroglyphs of particular significance. In the window, held in place by a spell that served the same purpose as a paper book jacket did for more mundane publications, was a supposedly lost poem by the famed Sufi master Ismandar. It floated in the air like colored smoke.

Resuming their walk, the Deavys passed more shops. Reaching the intersection of 67½ and Stark Avenue, they paused before the flow of thundering cross traffic, watching the streetlight. Only when it put out a double field of force, holding back the ferocious, snarling traffic on Stark, did they and their fellow pedestrians cross in response to the backlit sign that instead of
Go
or
Walk
declaimed clearly
Hurry or Die
.

And then, there it was, halfway down the next block, nestled snugly in between a hardwhere store—a travel agency for the metaphysically challenged—on one side and a bakery—“No matter who or what it is, we can make flour out of it.”—on the other.

“‘Tybolt the Butcher.'” Rose read the sign aloud. Her gaze dropped to the leaded glass front window. The display behind it featured a tasteful, even elegantly arranged selection of choice chops, steaks, sausage both cased and ground, bacon, poultry, and seafood. One sign shouted a cut-price sale on fresh calamari, which should have rung a bell in Simwan's memory, but did not. There was also a Grade-A sticker from the City of New York Health Department, a couple of framed reviews (one from the
Alternate Times
, the other from
Rampant Carnivore
magazine), and a small map of the world known and unknown with tiny hovering stars marking the sources of the shop's more exotic cuts.

“I'm getting hungry,” Amber announced after studying the offerings in the window. “Maybe they serve sandwiches, or something.”

“I'm hungry, too,” Simwan admitted. Ordering lunch would give them more time to study their surroundings and decide how best to proceed, as well as providing an excuse for lingering inside.

The interior of the butcher shop was a mix of the ultramodern and the ancient. The slats that made up the wooden floor were thick as ceiling beams and covered with a coating of fine sawdust. “To soak up any errant liquids,” the ever-knowledgeable Pithfwid tactfully pointed out. On the other hand, the glass-fronted refrigerated compartments were made of spotless stainless steel, as were the several towering, jammed-together, front-opening freezers that formed a wall near the back of the shop.

Sandwiches were indeed offered, and there was a tall cooler cabinet from which one could purchase sodas and other drinks. There were only three tables near the back of the store, suggesting that the majority of sandwiches on offer were made up for takeout by busy New Yorkers to eat on the run or back at the office. As it was still comparatively early for nearby businesses to break for lunch, all of the tables were vacant.

“Yob, whats can I do for you?” As the goblin—surprisingly clean—behind the counter leaned forward to peer over the case of cold cuts, his slitted eyes traveling from one Deavy to another. “Three of you want to eats the fourth? I can fix.” The goblin gaze fell still lower. “Or maybe you wants me divvy up that cat?” Pithfwid bristled, but held his tongue.

“No thanks, we're all eating together,” Simwan responded to the butcher's assistant with admirable matter-of-factness, as if he dealt every day with suggestions for the dissection and consumption of the family pet. Not to mention his sisters. He smiled. “Early lunch.” He made an effort to sound as sophisticated as any long-time New Yorker. “Is your glop eel fresh?”

The goblin looked offended. “All our seafoods is fresh. Glop eel caught in Maelstrom and flown in daily from North Sea.”

“Then I'd like a glop eel salad sandwich on a Kaiser roll, please. With mayo, hold the fickle.” He glanced back at his sisters. Ravenous as they were, they needed no encouragement to add their own orders.

“I'll have sliced roast jackalope on whole wheat toast,” Rose put in hungrily.

“Club sandwich with smoked roc instead of turkey,” Amber declared, making no attempt to hide her eagerness.

“Bagel with cream cheese, onion, lox, and caperers.” N/Ice had the most metropolitan taste of any member of the coubet.

As soon as he finished writing up the order, which appeared as small blood-red lettering floating in the air, the goblin expanded his cheeks like a bullfrog and blew the letters toward a taller, skinnier, slightly yellower version of himself working the back of the shop. That loathsome (but hygienic) entity sucked the drifting words into his eyes, nodded its acknowledgment of the order, and began assembling the requested sandwiches. Having four arms to work with instead of the usual two made the work go quickly.

There being no table service in the butcher shop, they selected their own drinks from the cooler and seated themselves at the table nearest the rear of the establishment. As befitted their individual tastes, Rose chose Coke, Amber opted for Pepsi, N/Ice picked Africola, and Simwan popped a can of Skull-Splitter Kola from the Firth O' Forever bottling plant that was located in a part of Scotland that is not to be found on most maps of the British Isles. As befitted a brewery that also bottled an idiosyncratic variant of Irn-Bru, the national soda of Scotland, the Firth O' Forever's kola had a distinctive metallic aftertaste.

Somewhat surprisingly, the goblin who had taken their order brought it out to them himself as soon as it was ready, balancing all four plates on a single tray. As the girls dug in and Amber picked off choice bits of roc to feed the finicky Pithfwid, the goblin lingered. “You foods okay?”

Dipping a French fry into the pool of ketchup she had squeezed out onto her plate, Rose shoved it into her mouth. This took a certain amount of effort since the French fry was exhibiting a disturbing tendency to try and push back.

“Everything's delicious,” she proclaimed honestly. Next to her, N/Ice smiled but did not reply, as she was busy trying to keep the caperers on her bagel from boogieing off her plate.

By way of reply, Simwan chomped down on a mouthful of sliced glop eel salad. It was, he had to confess, well made, though a little heavy on the dressing for his taste.

“Enjoy you foods.” Satisfied with their responses, the goblin turned and headed back to his station behind the counter.

From their seats near the back of the shop, the Deavys were able to watch the comings and goings and occasional vanishings of a wide assortment of customers. Clearly, Tybolt's was every bit as popular with the denizens of this singular part of New York as the goblin had claimed. Business was so good and so steady that he and his sisters were taken by surprise when a very short, stocky goblin of especially bilious hue waved his apron like a semaphore to darken the front windows. It then moved to the front door and threw a pair of security bolts. Recalling the well-meaning cautionary words of the Witch Trish (“Above all else make certain you stay safe on the right side of the counter”), Simwan hastily finished the last of his sandwich while quietly urging his sisters to do the same.

Licking salad dressing from his fingers, he rose and walked back to the counter, where he fumbled with his wallet. “Check, please.”

Nodding, the goblin wrote out a ticket in the air, puffed out his cheeks, and blew it in the customer's direction. Simwan read the last figure and dodged to his left as the list tried to enter his eyes. It drifted past him to dissolve in the air in the middle of the shop. Handing over payment, he smiled, nodded his thanks for the food and the service, and turned to go.

“Whats, no tip?” the goblin hissed. Pale red eyes glared across the counter from beneath protruding bony ridges.

“Oh, sorry.” Pausing, Simwan reached for his wallet again.

“Not moneys,” the goblin insisted. It was grinning in a way Simwan didn't like. Glancing uneasily to right and left, he saw that the rest of the store staff had set their work aside to gather together in twos and threes. Some of them still clutched their heavy butcher knives. They were whispering and gesturing in his direction.