Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

by Cory Doctorow

fat as housecats, with the same sense ofgrace and inertia in their swinging bellies and wobbling chins.

  Alan welcomed them in. Edward was wearing a pair of wool trousers pullednearly up to his nipples and short suspenders that were taut over hissweat-stained white shirt. He was grinning fleshily, his hair damp withsweat and curled with the humidity.

  He opened his mouth, and George's voice emerged. "This place is..." Hestood with his mouth open, while inside him, Georgethought. "*Incredible.* I'd never..." He closed his mouth, then openedit again. "*Dreamed*. What a..."

  Now Ed spoke. "Jesus, figure out what you're going to say before you sayit, willya? This is just plain --"

  "Rude," came Fede's voice from his mouth.

  "I'm sorry," came George's voice.

  Ed was working on his suspenders, then unbuttoning his shirt anddropping his pants, so that he stood in grimy jockeys with his slick,tight, hairy belly before Alan. He tipped himself over, and then Alanwas face-to-face with Freddy, who was wearing a T-shirt and a pair ofboxer shorts with blue and white stripes. Freddy was scowling comically,and Alan hid a grin behind his hand.

  Freddy tipped to one side and there was George, short and delicatelyformed and pale as a frozen french fry. He grabbed Freddy's hips likehandles and scrambled out of him, springing into the air and coming downon the balls of his feet, holding his soccer-ball-sized gut over hisHulk Underoos.

  "It's incredible," he hooted, dancing from one foot to the other. "It'sbrilliant! God! I'm never, ever going home!"

  "Oh, yes?" Alan said, not bothering to hide his smile as Frederick andGeorge separated and righted themselves. "And where will you sleep,then?"

  "Here!" he said, running around the tiny apartment, opening the fridgeand the stove and the toaster oven, flushing the toilet, turning on theshower faucets.

  "Sorry," Alan called as he ran by. "No vacancies at the Hotel Anders!"

  "Then I won't sleep!" he cried on his next pass. "I'll play all nightand all day in the streets. I'll knock on every door on every street andintroduce myself to every person and learn their stories and read theirbooks and meet their kids and pet their dogs!"

  "You're bonkers," Alan said, using the word that the lunch lady back atschool had used when chastising them for tearing around the cafeteria.

  "Easy for you to say," Greg said, skidding to a stop in front ofhim. "Easy for you -- you're *here*, you got *away*, you don't have todeal with *Davey* --" He closed his mouth and his hand went to his lips.

  Alan was still young and had a penchant for the dramatic, so he wentaround to the kitchen and pulled a bottle of vodka out of the freezerand banged it down on the counter, pouring out four shots. He tossedback his shot and returned the bottle to the freezer.

  George followed suit and choked and turned purple, but managed to keephis expression neutral. Fred and Ed each took a sip, then set the drinksdown with a sour face.

  "How's home?" Alan said quietly, sliding back to sit on the minusculecounter surface in his kitchenette.

  "It's okay," Ed mumbled, perching on the arm of the Goodwill sofa thatcame with the apartment. Without his brothers within him, he movedsprightly and lightly.

  "It's fine," Fred said, looking out the window at the street below,craning his neck to see Bloor Street and the kids smoking out front ofthe Brunswick House.

  "It's awful," Greg said, and pulled himself back up on the counter withthem. "And I'm not going back."

  The two older brothers looked balefully at him, then mutely appealed toAlan. This was new -- since infancy, Earl-Frank-Geoff had acted withcomplete unity of will. When they were in the first grade, Alan hadwondered if they were really just one person in three parts -- that washow close their agreements were.

  "Brian left last week," Greg said, and drummed his heels on thegrease-streaked cabinet doors. "Didn't say a word to any of us, justleft. He comes and goes like that all the time. Sometimes for weeks."

  Craig was halfway around the world, he was in Toronto, and Brian wasGod-knew-where. That left just Ed-Fred-George and Davey, alone in thecave. No wonder they were here on his doorstep.

  "What's he doing?"

  "He just sits there and watches us, but that's enough. We're almostfinished with school." He dropped his chin to his chest. "I thought wecould finish here. Find a job. A place to live." He blushedfuriously. "A girl."

  Ed and Fred were staring at their laps. Alan tried to picture thelogistics, but he couldn't, not really. There was no scenario in whichhe could see his brothers carrying on with --

  "Don't be an idiot," Ed said. He sounded surprisingly bitter. He wasusually a cheerful person -- or at least a fat and smiling person. Alanrealized for the first time that the two weren't equivalent.

  George jutted his chin toward the sofa and his brothers. "They don'tknow what they want to do. They think that, 'cause it'll be hard to livehere, we should hide out in the cave forever."

  "Alan, talk to him," Fred said. "He's nuts."

  "Look," George said. "You're gone. You're *all* gone. The king under themountain now is Davey. If we stay there, we'll end up his slaves or hisvictims. Let him keep it. There's a whole world out here we can live in.

  "I don't see any reason to let my handicap keep me down."

  "It's not a handicap," Edward said patiently. "It's just how weare. We're different. We're not like the rest of them."

  "Neither is Alan," George said. "And here he is, in the big city, livingwith them. Working. Meeting people. Out of the mountain."

  "Alan's more like them than he is like us," Frederick said. "We're notlike them. We can't pass for them."

  Alan's jaw hung slack. Handicapped? Passing? Like them? Not like them?He'd never thought of his brothers this way. They were just hisbrothers. Just his family. They could communicate with the outsideworld. They were people. Different, but the same.

  "You're just as good as they are," he said.

  And that shut them up. They all regarded him, as if waiting for him togo on. He didn't know what to say. Were they, really? Was he? Was hebetter?

  "What are we, Alan?" Edward said it, but Frederick and George mouthedthe words after he'd said them.

  "You're my brothers," he said. "You're. . ."

  "I want to see the city," George said. "You two can come with me, or youcan meet me when I come back."

  "You *can't* go without us," Frederick said. "What if we get hungry?"

  "You mean, what if I don't come back, right?"

  "No," Frederick said, his face turning red.

  "Well, how hungry are you going to get in a couple hours? You're justworried that I'm going to wander off and not come back. Fall into ahole. Meet a girl. Get drunk. And you won't ever be able to eat again."He was pacing again.

  Ed and Fred looked imploringly at him.

  "Why don't we all go together?" Alan said. "We'll go out and dosomething fun -- how about ice-skating?"

  "Skating?" George said. "Jesus, I didn't ride a bus for 30 hours just togo *skating*."

  Edward said, "I want to sleep."

  Frederick said, "I want dinner."

  Perfect, Alan thought. "Perfect. We'll all be equally displeased withthis, then. The skating's out in front of City Hall. There are lots ofpeople there, and we can take the subway down. We'll have dinnerafterward on Queen Street, then turn in early and get a good night'ssleep. Tomorrow, we'll negotiate something else. Maybe Chinatown and thezoo."

  They are stared at him.

  "This is a limited-time offer," Alan said. "I had other plans tonight,you know. Going once, going twice --"

  "Let's go," George said. He went and took his brothers' hands. "Let'sgo, okay?"

  They had a really good time.

  #

  George's body was propped up at the foot of the bed. He was white andwrinkled as a big toe in a bathtub, skin pulled tight in his face sothat his hairline and eyebrows and cheeks seemed raised in surprise.

  Alan smelled him now, a stink like a mouse dead between the gyprock inthe walls, the worst smell i
maginable. He felt Mimi breathing behindhim, her chest heaving against his back. He reached out and pushed asidethe wings, moving them by their translucent membranes, fingers brushingthe tiny fingerlets at the wingtips, recognizing in their touch someevolutionary connection with his own hands.

  George toppled over as Alan stepped off the bed, moving in