The Dragons of Babel
“Will sat down between the paws of one to read the books he had just checked out. It was an unseasonably warm autumn day and, because the library fronted on the esplanade, the steps were in full sunshine.
Nat had a cold-water railroad flat not half a block from the El, but it was less than an ideal place for reading. The up-bound cog train rumbled by every ten minutes, shaking the apartment like thunder and bringing Esme running to gaze wonderingly out the window. The stairway smelled of cabbage...s and laundry and ancient lead paint. A clutch of trolls lived on the first floor, a pianist on the second, and lubberkins on the third, and if for a miracle they all fell silent at once, it would not be long before one or another were pounding on the ceiling, angry at some noise he had made. The street outside echoed with the shouts of children playing wall ball, flipping baseball cards, or quarreling over bottle caps. Young ellemays and their lemans, lacking lodgings of their own, sought out the shelter of the brownstone’s doorway in the evening to screw standing up.MoreLess
Nat had a cold-water railroad flat not half a block from the El, but it was less than an ideal place for reading. The up-bound cog train rumbled by every ten minutes, shaking the apartment like thunder and bringing Esme running to gaze wonderingly out the window. The stairway smelled of cabbage...s and laundry and ancient lead paint. A clutch of trolls lived on the first floor, a pianist on the second, and lubberkins on the third, and if for a miracle they all fell silent at once, it would not be long before one or another were pounding on the ceiling, angry at some noise he had made. The street outside echoed with the shouts of children playing wall ball, flipping baseball cards, or quarreling over bottle caps. Young ellemays and their lemans, lacking lodgings of their own, sought out the shelter of the brownstone’s doorway in the evening to screw standing up.MoreLess
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