“Blind?”
“Yup. In another year or so I’ll be blind as a mole. I have to make sure I keep everything in here exactly in place, so I don’t bump into things.”
Ron didn’t know what to say.
“The City,” Dewey said, leaning back on the sofa. “She used to be ablaze with light! Outshone all the stars in the sky!” He was suddenly shouting. “Lights everywhere. The Great White Way. All gone . . . dead and gone.”
There were tears in the old man’s eyes.
“How did it happen?” Ron asked. “Were you here when they closed the City?”
“You never saw her the way she was, boy. You’re too young. I was here. She was a beautiful city. Beautiful—but sick. Corrupt and dirty.”
He took a huge swallow of brandy. “Damn city just got dirtier and sicker and sicker and dirtier. Every day was worse. People died from the poisons in the air. Nobody did their jobs, they just argued and went on strike and fought everybody else. City ran out of money, had to sell its soul to Albany and Washington. They put that stupid Dome up to make things better and it just made everything worse. Everybody was going crazy. You couldn’t walk down the street without getting shot at.”
He finished his glass and reached for the bottle. “Too many people crowded too close together. People started falling over in the streets, dead from pollution or mugging or just plain brain fever. The Mayor was busy running for President. The City Council was busy stuffing its pockets with money and arguing with the unions. The banks threw up their hands and said the city was a bad investment. Eight million bad investments. Then the Federal Health people came in and said the environment inside the Dome had sunk below the level needed to sustain human life. Inside of a year everybody would be dead.”
“Wow!” said Ron.
“You should have seen the rush! It was like a riot and an earthquake and a war, all at once. Went on for months. Families separated. Kids left behind. Banks closing their doors, and mobs breakin’ ’em down, only to find their money’d been taken out long ago. People running every which way. When the dust finally cleared, the City was declared officially abandoned—empty, nobody here. So they sealed it off.”
“Then how did you get in? And the others?”
Dewey laughed. “We never left! I sat here and watched ’em boiling out of the City. I figured I had plenty of time. And anyway, the more of ’em left, the better for me. I’d have the whole City to myself. Pick up a few things the others had left behind.”
“Is that how—”
But the old man wasn’t listening to Ron. “After a couple months, Manhattan got to be right livable, with everybody gone. I knew there was a few others like me; a couple thousand of us, at least. We never got out of the City, and as far as the Government was concerned, they wasn’t going to come in looking for us. They had enough to do, handling the eight million or so who had come screaming out. So the Government wrote us off their records. Officially, I’m dead. You’re talking to a dead man!”
“Not really,” Ron said.
Dewey shrugged. “Somewhere Outside there’s a Government computer with my death certificate coded into its memory banks, signed and official and everything. Just like all the kids that got stuck inside here. Officially, none of us exist. No social security, no IRS identification number, nothing. We don’t exist. None of us.”
But I’ve got an ID record, Ron insisted to himself. They know I exist!
“That was twenty years ago,” Dewey said, his voice sinking to a dark muttering. “Had a woman with me then. She was awful pretty. She died the first winter . . . got sick . . . couldn’t find a doctor, no medicine . . .”
The old man slumped against the back of the sofa, eyes closed, head down against his chest, empty glass slipping from his thick fingers. Ron took the glass and placed it quietly on the table next to the nearly empty bottle.
“I’ll help you to your bed,” Ron said softly. He couldn’t tell if Dewey was already asleep or not.
“Thanks, but I can make it by myself,” the old man replied, without opening his eyes. “Been getting myself to bed without help for twenty years now. Won’t be able to do it much longer, though.” Dewey’s eyes snapped open and he stared at Ron fiercely. “Tell you what. How’d you like to be my partner? I’m getting too old to keep alive all by myself. The eyes are getting real bad. You could live right here. We could fix a place upstairs for you, deck it out with furniture . . .”
Without even thinking about it, Ron said, “But I’ve got to get back to my home. As soon as they open the gates next summer—”
Dewey put a hand on Ron’s shoulder. “Son, they’re never going to let you out. You’re not the first kid to get stuck in here. If you show up at a gate without your ID, you’ll go straight to the Tombs. If you’re lucky, you’ll end up in the Army. If you’re lucky.”
Ron shook his head stubbornly at the old man, but his mind whispered to him, Forever. You’re going to be stuck in here forever. He turned and stared out the broad windows at the darkened City, where only a pitiful few glimmers of light broke the darkness. Forever.
Dewey showed Ron to a bedroom. The old man walked very straight and sure-footed, in spite of all he had drunk. Ron felt as if he were the one who was staggering.
“Good night, son,” Dewey said, leaving Ron at the doorway to a small, clean, and well-lit bedroom.
Ron said, “If . . . if I come here to work with you—live with you—could I bring a girl with me?”
Dewey seemed to hold his breath for a moment or two. Then he let it out with a long sigh. “Some kinds of girls are nothing but trouble, you know.”
“She’s not like that.”
“You sure?”
Nodding, Rod added, “She’s got a brother, too. Six or seven years old. He’s a good kid. Interested in machinery.”
Dewey ran a hand through his shaggy white hair. “I ask for a partner and I get a family. Okay . . . I’m probably crazy, but—bring ’em along. We’ll see how it works out.”
“Thanks! Thanks an awful lot!”
“Good night. Get some sleep,” Dewey said. He started to turn away, then he looked back at Ron. “You’re really sure now?”
“About Sylvia?”
“About our partnership. You’ll come back? You won’t disappoint an old man?”
“I’ll come back,” Ron said firmly. “Don’t worry.”
Ron stayed with Dewey all the next day. Toward evening, the Muslims’ trucks started to pull out of the market area. They were loaded with food and supplies. A smudge of smoke rose toward the south, somewhere downtown of the market area, in the direction of the Gramercy turf.
“Trouble,” said Dewey. “One of the white gangs must have had a run-in with the Muslims.”
