Al walked straight up to Dino. He was shorter and skinnier than Dino, but it was Dino who backed a step away. “Lissen speedie,” Al said, “you wanna fight so bad, go uptown and fight th’ Muslims.”
Dino’s face went red. “Aww . . . don’t get hopped up. I was only—”
“You was shootin’ off yer mouth,” Al said. “As usual. Only time you keep it closed is when it’s fulla pills.”
Dino said nothing. But his face went dark with hatred.
And that was that. Ron started fixing machinery for other gangs, working longer hours and sleeping even less than he had before. Most times the other gang members would come into Gramercy turf under a white flag of truce, carrying the equipment they wanted fixed. Soon, when they saw how well Ron worked, they began asking him to come to their turfs to fix equipment that was too big for them to carry.
Ron began to move around the area, going into different turfs. Al put only one restriction on him: he was not allowed to fix guns for any other gang. Wherever Ron went, he was always accompanied by at least one other gang member. A warrior. And, usually, by Davey as well. He fixed generators and freezers, heaters and stoves, truck engines and street lamps. Once he even repaired an old movie projector in an empty, crumbling theater for a gang that had films to show.
Each of the gangs was very much like the Gramercy Association. Teen-aged guys and girls, a few smaller kids. Hardly any older people; no one over thirty. The City hadn’t been closed, officially, long enough for the gang kids to get that old. Also, gang life wasn’t conducive to old age. Everyone was poor, dirty, without education, without decent food, without medicines—it was like living in the Middle Ages. The constant raids had also helped to kill off many of the youngest and strongest warriors. But Al was working desperately to maintain the shaky truce that he had helped establish among the gangs.
One day Ron was walking back from an area called the East Village, after fixing a building’s heater. He passed a dozen kids Davey’s age playing on the littered, cracked sidewalk. They were running and laughing, making lots of noise, breathless happy grins on their dirty faces.
How can they be happy? Ron wondered. In the middle of all this, how can they laugh? Then he realized that the children didn’t know any other world. They’re like kids everywhere. All they want is a chance to live.
Then he saw that they were playing a war game, fighting a make-believe battle with sticks or fingers for guns. Feeling sick inside, Ron knew that none of those children would ever see thirty.
There were adults in the city, Ron discovered. Up in the market area, along Broadway above Times Square. You could buy food there, and clothes, and other things. This was the black market, with stalls set up on the sidewalks offering goods smuggled in from outside the Dome.
Walking along Broadway, under the sagging blank theater marquees, Ron passed long wooden counters heaped high with canned foods, clothes new and used, gadgets of all sorts, and even some jewelry. Behind the counters were adults, men mostly. Some of them were really old, Ron saw. As old as his father. He bought tools that he needed from some of these aging men. He saw that they all carried guns and had young assistants at their sides all the time; the assistants were also armed.
You needed money in the market. No bartering, no trading. Just cash. That’s why the kids worked so hard for money during the summer. The only way to get food after the city was officially closed for the year was to buy it at the market, or steal it from another gang. No gang had enough money to buy all the food it needed, not when a tiny can of peas cost five dollars. Ron suddenly realized that somebody on the Outside was getting rich off the teenaged gangs.
They smuggle food into the City and make a fortune doing it, Ron told himself. It’s all carefully organized and smoothly operated. Everybody profits . . . except the kids.
And the kids were almost always hungry. Ron knew that he was losing weight, getting as skinny and mean-looking as Dino or Al or any of the others. Even Sylvia was beginning to look gaunt, and she ate better than most. It wasn’t yet winter, either.
Ron had heard stories about gang raids on the market area. Soldiers had suddenly appeared inside the Dome, killing mercilessly, burning whole sections of the City where the gangs lived. Even the Army is part of the system.
Ron saw Sylvia just about every day. She smiled at him, talked with him, let it show very clearly that she liked him. But Ron never touched her, never even let himself get within arm’s reach of her. He wanted to hold her and love her again. Instead, he kept his distance.
When they talked, it was mostly about non-dangerous topics. Like Davey.
“He’s helping me a lot,” Ron would say. “He’ll be a good mechanic someday.”
And she would reply, “You oughtta see his room. He’s got it filled with stuff. Looks like th’ junkyards down by th’ river.”
True to Al’s word, the Chelsea gang let Ron roam through their warehouses and take anything he wanted. But when Ron couldn’t find things he needed there, he had to go up to the market area and search for them. If he could find what he wanted, he had to pay cash for it.
Dino didn’t like that at all. “He’s spendin’ money we need for food!” he complained.
Al snapped back, “We get th’ money back from th’ gang Ron buys the stuff for.”
Dino shook his head and muttered something.
“We gotta work t’gether with the other gangs, an’ stop fightin’ among outselves,” Al repeated to the gang council. The kids sat on the gravel of the rooftop in the evening darkness. They didn’t say much, and it was too dark to see their faces and figure out if they really agreed with Al or not.
Doggedly, Al went on trying to convince them. “Those Muslims uptown are organized. We gotta be jes’ as strong as they are or they’ll come down here and pick us off, one gang at a time.”
“Bullshit,” somebody said in the darkness. It sounded to Ron like Dino.
“That’s the way we’re gonna do things,” Al said firmly, “as long as I’m runnin’ this gang.”
The meeting broke up soon after, and the guys started filing down the stairs to their rooms for the night. Ron went up to Al.
“Maybe I shouldn’t buy things at the market. Maybe I should just tell the other gangs that if we can’t find what we need in the warehouses—”
“No,” Al said sharply. “Long as we’re not really takin’ money we need for food, why should we stop?”
“Well, Dino—”
“Dino can go suck his thumb.”
Ron said, “He’s going to make trouble for you.”
“I know,” Al answered quietly. With a shake of his head, he said, “Someday I’ll hafta stop him. Before he stops me.”
Then he walked past Ron and went to the stairs, leaving Ron standing there alone on the roof, wishing very much that he could be somewhere else, somewhere where he could see the stars and not be so close to death.
Al started letting Ron go to the market area alone, or with no one accompanying him except Davey. Dino protested, of course, and claimed that Ron would run away and hide. But Al overruled him.
Ron liked the market area. It was a connection with the world Outside, the safe, sane world of the Tracts and his parents and friends and the Exams and peace and plenty. The world that supplies this black market and lets the kids stay in here and die, he reminded himself.
The market area was busy and noisy, almost like the City during the summer tourist season, except that there were no cars or buses in the streets. And the people roaming the sidewalks were mostly kids, dressed in rags.
The adults who ran the sidewalk stands were dressed much better. Standing behind their makeshift wooden tables, heaped high with goods for sale, the adults looked well fed, even overweight. They were clean and healthy. Their eyes were clear and alert. They went home to Tracts outside the Dome every night and watched their own children growing fat and clean and healthy.
