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This ain’t the kind of city where you can start from nothing anymore and have a real chance, and I started with less than nothing. American Dream been a sucker bet.
That’s my Manhattan: neat and proper on the surface, walking near-death experience underneath.
“Fuck off,” she says again, “and kiss my fat brown ass. Nobody’s taking a job from you! Or if they are, maybe it’s because you spend all your time shitting on other people? Fix yourself, you stupid son of a bitch, and leave me the fuck alone!” Someone nearby laughs. Someone else claps.
You’re a colonizer. All the way from another fucking dimension and still just like the worst people from right here.” She shakes her head. “There’s probably a way we can coexist. If we worked together on it, we could come up with some compromise that’s acceptable to both our peoples. You don’t want compromise, tho, do you? That’s how equals work out problems, but you don’t think of us as equals. Everything you’ve described—segregating us, manipulating us, stealing our fucking children, remaking us—is what people do when they are absolutely convinced of their own superiority. That’s what makes
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The Enemy doesn’t have to erase New York, only make the world forget what New York is. New York cannot remain New York if it loses its art, its diversity, its welcome of outsiders, its daring. That means—
There’s an idea in her head. She doesn’t let herself think about it much, because that’s how her best ideas work. Better just to let the creativity flow; trying to steer the energy in specific directions only clots everything up.
Veneza is rapidly getting tired of tap-dancing around this woman’s fragility.
Veneza stares at her, incredulous. “Do you actually believe nobody tries to be better in the other boroughs?— Oh, hell, don’t start crying.” To her dubious credit, Aislyn doesn’t go full-on White Woman Tears breakdown. She just sniffs a little, rummages in her purse, then dabs her eyes with a tissue held in one shaking hand.
Aislyn’s expression contorts into pure fury. “I don’t even think she likes Wu-Tang!” That’s. Wow. Veneza blinks. Bites her bottom lip. It doesn’t help. She starts grinning. “Oh, well, especially fuck her, then.”
Right to business is for enemies and the untrusted; friends catch up first, and family gets all the gossip.
“Constructs are the problem,” London calls to them. She raises her fists in some kind of old-fashioned boxer’s stance. “Those can only carry a small portion of a city’s essence; concepts work better. Use a bigger gun!”
But naturally, New York will not take attempted murder lying down.
the manhole covers blow off and the subway grates pop up, and R’lyeh’s footmonsters are suddenly met by an equally vast flood of—oh, God, rats and pigeons and cockroaches, and pigeons carrying rats holding cockroaches! She’s never seen anything so nasty, and she’s a Lovecraftian horror.
The rats chitter with his attitude: We caused the Black Plague, bitch, who the fuck you think you are?
That’s the thing I finally figured out, see, from all that shit about physics and math that Padmini was spouting: cities are seeds.
“Don’t leave,” I say. It’s soft. He looks at me for a moment. I scuff my foot and play it off like I’m not tense. “Okay,” he says. That’s all it takes.
I should probably also thank current NYC mayor Eric Adams for motivating me to finish the book because that way my city at least gets a good mayor in my imagination, but nah fuck him.
