A City Dreaming by Daniel Polansky Page A

such a state of disarray as to need saving was, M thought, largely attributable to Anais, whom Ibis had been dating for almost as long as M had known him, an amount of time the specifics of are not worth questioning. Ibis was handsome-ish and bearded and close with Abilene. Anais was sweet smiling and plump and far closer.
    Stepping out into the frigid evening, the three of them were bundled in a loose ram’s worth of wool, Anais and Ibis holding hands through three-inches of dyed fabric. On a temperate spring evening the walk to the goblin market would have been more than half a pleasure, but it wasn’t a temperate spring evening, and the peregrination was appropriately less than joyful. “I think our friend Salome is going to come,” Anais said offhandedly, her announcement half muffled by her handmade scarf.
    Hearing the snick of the trap just too late, M looked around frantically for egress or escape, wondering if he would survive the ordeal or if it might prove safer to bite off his wrist in the interests of freedom. “Damn it, Ibis . . .”
    â€œYou’ll like her,” Ibis said after just too long of a second. “She’s nice.”
    Which, to go by M’s romantic history, was just exactly the opposite of what he liked.
    â€œShe works in fashion,” Anais said.
    â€œBut she’s not obsessed with it,” Ibis added. “I mean, she’s not a fashion person. She has other interests.”
    â€œShe’s very interesting.”
    â€œShe does vinyasa yoga.”
    â€œIt’s not like the other sorts of yoga. It’s different, somehow.”
    â€œIt’s faster.”
    â€œIt’s more active.”
    â€œHave we met before?” M asked, gesturing furiously, lamenting the cold and shoving his hands back into his pockets. “Are you suffering from collective amnesia?”
    â€œJust give her a chance, M, for God’s sake.”
    â€œLike you’re so busy.”
    The goblin market was, this week, in this reality, contained within the basement of the Classon Avenue Episcopal Church just a few blocks from the G train. M remembered a time when the market’s employees would nothave come within a half mile of a church, even an Episcopal one, fearing the ring of church bells as they did cold iron. But it seemed in this part of the world the fae took religion no more seriously than their mortal counterparts. It was a pretty enough building, slate steeple towering over the surrounding brownstones. They passed a wrought iron gate, down a gravel path through etiolated shrubbery, stopping in front of a narrow set of stairs in the shadow of the belfry, waiting quietly for M’s potential future wife.
    She was twelve minutes late, which by New York standards was on time but was still twelve minutes longer than M wanted to be exposed to the frigid December elements. She hugged Anais and made an awkward attempt at kissing Ibis continental style. Anais looked at her brightly for a moment, then at M, then back at Salome.
    â€œM.”
    â€œSalome.”
    â€œNice to meet you.”
    â€œA distinct pleasure.”
    It was not going to work, M thought sadly, holding open the entrance and ushering them all downstairs. It was not that Salome was not pretty—she was quite pretty. She might have been, all things considered, a bit too pretty for M: modestly sized but voluptuous, apple-cheeked and melon-breasted, wearing an outfit that was too nice for a blind first date and altogether inappropriate for the season. M himself was sort of wishing he had known about the setup in time to have put on a fresh shirt or at least done something with his hair, though watching Salome’s ass, he knew it would not make any difference. Only two people who had been together as long as Anais and Ibis, grown blind with love and contentment, couples cataracts in the corners of their eyes, would have supposed that Salome and M were people who needed