The City Born Great by N.K. Jemisin Page B

even worth beating for pleasure. It works again; they roll on.
    Paulo ignores my suggestion. He sits down beside me and his gaze goes strange and unfocused for a moment. “Yes. The city is breathing easier,” he says. “You’re doing a good job, even without training.”
    â€œI try.”
    He looks amused. “I can’t tell if you don’t believe me, or if you just don’t care.”
    I shrug. “I believe you.” I also don’t care, not much, because I’m hungry. My stomach growls. I’ve still got that twenty he gave me, but I’ll take it to that church-plate sale I heard about over on Prospect, get chicken and rice and greens and cornbread for less than the cost of a free-trade small-batch-roasted latte.
    He glances down at my stomach when it growls. Huh. I pretend to stretch and scratch above my abs, making sure to pull up my shirt a little. The artist guy brought a model for us to draw once, and pointed to this little ridge of muscle above the hips called Apollo’s Belt. Paulo’s gaze goes right to it. Come on, come on, fishy fishy. I need somewhere to sleep.
    Then his eyes narrow and focus on mine again. “I had forgotten,” he says, in a faint wondering tone. “I almost … It’s been so long. Once, though, I was a boy of the favelas .”
    â€œNot a lot of Mexican food in New York,” I reply.
    He blinks and looks amused again. Then he sobers. “This city will die,” he says. He doesn’t raise his voice, but he doesn’t have to. I’m paying attention, now. Food, living: These things have meaning to me. “If you do not learn the things I have to teach you. If you do not help. The time will come and you will fail, and this city will join Pompeii and Atlantis and a dozen others whose names no one remembers, even though hundreds of thousands of people died with them. Or perhaps there will be a stillbirth—the shell of the city surviving to possibly grow again in the future but its vital spark snuffed for now, like New Orleans—but that will still kill you , either way. You are the catalyst, whether of strength or destruction.”
    He’s been talking like this since he showed up—places that never were, things that can’t be, omens and portents. I figure it’s bullshit because he’s telling it to me , a kid whose own mama kicked him out and prays for him to die every day and probably hates me. God hates me. And I fucking hate God back, so why would he choose me for anything? But that’s really why I start paying attention: because of God. I don’t have to believe in something for it to fuck up my life.
    â€œTell me what to do,” I say.
    Paulo nods, looking smug. Thinks he’s got my number. “Ah. You don’t want to die.”
    I stand up, stretch, feel the streets around me grow longer and more pliable in the rising heat of day. (Is that really happening, or am I imagining it, or is it happening and I’m imagining that it’s connected to me somehow?) “Fuck you. That ain’t it.”
    â€œThen you don’t even care about that.” He makes it a question with the tone of his voice.
    â€œAin’t about being alive.” I’ll starve to death someday, or freeze some winter night, or catch something that rots me away until the hospitals have to take me, even without money or an address. But I’ll sing and paint and dance and fuck and cry the city before I’m done, because it’s mine. It’s fucking mine . That’s why.
    â€œIt’s about living ,” I finish. And then I turn to glare at him. He can kiss my ass if he doesn’t understand. “Tell me what to do.”
    Something changes in Paulo’s face. He’s listening, now. To me. So he gets to his feet and leads me away for my first real lesson.
    *   *   *
    This is the lesson: Great cities are like any other living