Harmony by Marjorie B. Kellogg Page A

furniture, from generation to generation. But bikes were one Harmonic eccentricity that my boss steadfastly refused to adopt. Probably he wasn’t much good on a bike, and his refusal indicated how highly he valued his personal dignity.
    So highly that we stood pressed like sardines in the narrow, bright-lit car, suffering the one-way conversation of a skin-headed young man visiting from BosDome, where he attended a school which from his account was teaching him everything there was to be known in the universe and beyond. He had seen Micah’s design for
Grasses
last season at the New Avon on the other side of Town. He had a great deal to say about how marvelous the production was, but you know, he
could
offer a few ideas for how it could have been done better, no offense of course.
    I looked for the chance, during a convenient lurch, to crush his foot as flat as his nasal twang. But Harmony’s Tube is magnetic. It doesn’t lurch like the Chicago monoel, or clatter madly enough to drown out conversation. And Micah, however much he avoided converse with tourists and strangers, once accosted was unfailingly polite. He even contrived to look placidly entertained, which I thought was carrying civilization just a little too far.
    “What an asshole,” I breathed, when we had been released from our torment at Fetching Station.
    “Just another theatre critic in the making,” replied Micah, stepping heavily onto the escalator.
    At street level, we crossed the broad circular plaza ringed with booksellers’ stalls and picture galleries. Only through great exercise of the will did Micah pass the rare-book dealers by. I would have happily lingered in the galleries. Two-dimensional black-and-white photography was undergoing a major renaissance. Reproductions of old work and new originals were both selling well. During one of our weekend wanders, I spotted an ancient picture postcard of the Wrigley Building in one of these shops. Crispin bargained persuasively enough to be able to buy it for my birthday, even promising to remember the dealer after he became famous. He complained about it afterward, but I knew he’d enjoyed the contest and its victory. He hadn’t gone to all that trouble just for me. Anyway, it was good for him. No matter how much his father leaves him or how famous he becomes, there’ll always be this bit of Crispin’s life when he knew what it meant to have no money.
    The sun always felt hotter to me in Fetching Green, perhaps having something to do with Fetching not being all that green anymore—another vote for BardClyffe’s runaway plant life. The market plaza was paved in alternating circles of bright red and white marble. I couldn’t look at it without thinking of the expense. Heat shimmered above the polished stone, which never seemed to age or crack. Had we been anywhere but Harmony, I’d have wondered if the stone was genuine.
    The august edifice on the far side of this marble ocean was the Arkadie, tall, cylindrical, and white, very much the image of a cultural citadel. The facade was windowless and faced with smooth curved stone. The only detail was in the fluted columns flanking the pedimented entrance, consciously classical in both style and scale, scrupulously weathered as if flown in from the Parthenon itself. The name “Arkadie” was chiseled in block Roman above the door. No gaudy posters, no informational marquee. Nothing. I never could quite decide whether this plainness was the ultimate in taste or presumption.
    In the center of the plaza, a clutch of street cleaners were hard at work scrubbing the already gleaming marble. As we passed, I caught, with a jolt of déjà vu, a glimpse of big red lettering disappearing under their push brooms.
    I slowed. “… lose the… oor?” Not enough to make sense of, but clearly it had read the same as the graffito on the sign in BardClyffe. “Micah, you ever seen graffiti in Harmony before?”
    “Tourists sometimes carve their names on the trees,