After leaving the Stardust Diner, Kiara led the group down the street and then right past the garage — it was a fine autumn day in New York, so why not walk?
Instead of going down Broadway, she took them a block over to 6th Avenue and turned south. They walked past Radio City Music Hall, with its distinct red, blue, and gold marquee, and along one side of Rockefeller Center, but after those brief moments of excitement passed it was all banks. Banks for blocks. Block and blocks of banks. So many banks.
They walked for about twenty minutes, Aaron didn’t spend a lot of time staring at the dull, featureless skyscrapers along their path. Instead, he luxuriated in how effortless it was to walk at a brisk pace. It had been over a year since the last time he’d done any real exercise, so the ease of movement of his new and improved body was delightful.
He’d been in decent shape a few times in his life, but never like this. He wanted to run, to try to do cartwheels or handstands or any of the ridiculous things people with bodies like his did on the internet. Of course, even if he weren’t trying to keep a low profile to avoid assassins, he probably wouldn’t have been comfortable skipping around on the public sidewalks.
Finally, they came to a tiny, picturesque park on a busy corner. The buildings around the intersection were older and shorter than the big bank skyscrapers they’d left behind. The park was surrounded by a knee-high stone wall topped with wrought iron fencing and the space between the sidewalk and street was lined with irregular rough-cut stone blocks about three feet across and two feet high alternating with round stone planters.
A narrow clock tower, made of granite and forty or more feet tall, rose above the skinny trees of the park at the corner nearest them. There was even a little green building, barely larger than a glorified closet, with public restrooms on the edge of the park.
The trio of guardians stopped to take a seat at a little, round table just outside the gate to the pocket park, taking some time to relax in the shade. There was a yellow sun umbrella over the table, but most of the shade came from the trees in the park and clock tower just inside the gates. There was something odd about the brief rest stop — it was hardly warm this early in the day and the three of them were probably in even better shape than Aaron — so why the break?
Albert, Griffin, and Kiara had made a bit of a fuss about seating him with his back to the park when they’d sat down. Aaron initially thought it was just another security measure, but after he thought about it he realized it would be easier to hide an attack coming out of the busy park than coming from the open space of the street.
So am I supposed to be seeing something here on the corner or across one of the streets? he wondered.
After a few seconds of scanning the surroundings, Aaron’s eyes fell on the blue street signs announcing they were sitting at the corner of W 35th Street and Herald Square.
“Herald Square,” he mumbled. “Where have I heard that before?”
“Give my regards to Broadway,” Kiara sang, quietly but surprisingly well.
“Remember me to Herald Square,” Aaron finished, much less artfully. “And we’re also just one block up from 34th Street… Are we going to the original Macy’s?”
“Not the original, but definitely the most famous,” Albert said.
“Cool,” Aaron said.
A few minutes later, the group stood and walked through the park, crossing the street to the Macy’s at Herald Square. Aaron hadn’t been able to see it from the direction they came due to the trees in the park, but once they were closer he recognized the famous building from all the Christmas movies based there he’d seen over the years.
And here I am, he thought, arriving just in time for the Thanksgiving Day Parade and the lighting of the tree at Rockefeller Center.
Aaron spent several hours in the massive department store with Albert, Griffin, and Kiara. He wound up buying much more than a handful of new clothes; in fact, he bought enough clothes that the walk-in closet back at his apartment was going to be at least half full.
Trying on clothes reminded Aaron of his childhood, when he’d go into a dressing room and come out so his mother could critique whatever he’d selected. His three protectors were far less biting in their commentary and the whole thing wound up feeling more like some high school movie makeover montage.
The trio wasn’t shy about offering their opinions but, thankfully, Aaron’s new and magically-improved body looked good in pretty much everything he put on. Most of their squabbles were over their preferences for flashy and bold patterns coming up against Aaron’s fondness for subdued styles and solid colors.
They spent several hours in the department store, buying much more than Aaron’s new wardrobe. The entire thing was more of a hang-out session than a shopping trip, scored by friendly chit-chat and punctuated with trips outside to get drinks and smoke. Without their frequent stops to indulge in their awful habit, they probably would have been out of the store in half the time.
Although the four of them had an easy rapport, their time shopping wasn’t entirely lacking friction between them. Most of the tension came from Albert and Kiara trying to convince Aaron not to be so tightfisted with his purchases, which he struggled with. They repeatedly told him off for acting like they were shopping in a dollar store rather than the flagship of one of the most famous department stores in the world.
Aaron hadn’t grown up poor, exactly, but had been so firmly in the working class that his dinner was more often made by Kraft, Nissin, or McDonald’s than anything else. He tended to look for the most inexpensive items with the fewest bells and whistles and generally only splurged on things that had immediate value, like getting food from a restaurant.
Even Griffin joined in on occasion, cajoling him into getting expensive bed sheets; he swore up and down Aaron would thank him later if he invested in a few sets of Egyptian cotton bedding. Once he agreed to that, Kiara badgered him into getting a bedspread or coverlet. That he only planned to get a couple blankets didn’t go over well. Kiara informed him he was an ‘idiot man-child’ and asked if he wanted to check if they had race car beds.
Albert rehashed Griffin’s arguments from the bedding department when they got to linens and bath towels, arguing as vehemently as the larger man that Aaron would be a fool not to drop some money for Egyptian or Turkish cotton on the stuff he’d be using to dry his ass.
The crux of the issue wasn’t that Aaron was reluctant to spend money, not really; it was that he’d never had money to spend and his tastes had adapted to the lack. They ran into the same issue buying dinnerware, flatware, and cutlery.
The only area they didn’t have to nudge Aaron to be less miserly was appliances — he was eager to spend on gadgets, doodads, and other tech. He was satisfied with the televisions installed in the apartment since they were about as big as they could be, but there was a wealth of other nonsense he wanted to fill the apartment with.
He got an air fryer — because who doesn’t want an air fryer? — a blender/juicer doohickey, a rice cooker, a soda-making contraption, and a few other things he was equally unlikely to get much use out of. The things he picked up that were likely to get actual use were the current generation of game consoles and the particularly extravagant purchase of a wall-mounted tablet case that was waterproof. You could install the thing right in the shower, slip your tablet in, and watch videos or listen to music while you showered.
It was, in a word, super dope. Well, two words.
When the time came to look at furniture, Aaron was determined not to sell himself short on what he wanted his new home to look like. After all the harassment he’d suffered over his conditioned instinct to settle or skimp, he was going to swing for the fences. After just a single circuit of the various items in the department store, he hadn’t really looked at anything for more than a few seconds.
“Not seeing anything you like?” Griffin asked.
Aaron shrugged. “They have a couple sofas I like and some okay chairs, but it’s not exactly what I’m looking for.”
“Show us what you had your eye on,” Griffin requested.
Aaron walked them back through the furniture sections, pointing out the few pieces he’d liked – a Princeton sofa and a Chesterfield living room set of sofa and chairs, all in rich brown leather. He passed over pretty much everything else. It was all either too plain, too metal, or too plastic. He didn’t quite know how to describe what he was looking for, interior design wasn’t a language he knew how to speak.
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“Okay, so it seems you’re looking for, like, wingback leather armchairs and two foot wide globes that have cognac-filled decanters hidden in them,” Albert said. “Is that about right?”
“I’ve never had cognac, but I bet it’s just as nasty as all the other supposedly fancy booze,” Aaron said, the image of the globe bar cementing the image forming in his head. “You’re on the right track, though. It’s like… it’s like the house in the Clue movie. Something like that.”
Kiara pursed her lips and nodded thoughtfully. “Mid-century with a heavy Colonial influence and a dash of Revival elements. Doing that right is going to take time either visiting antique shops or getting custom pieces.”
As he tried to picture his apartment, furnished precisely as he wanted it, a new complication occurred to Aaron. It was the kind of issue he’d have usually ignored because… well, because beggars can’t be choosers, as he saw it. He could practically hear his mother snorting derisively and telling him to quit his bitching before he said anything. Still, he had decided not to restrict himself on this furniture thing, so he might as well bring it up.
“I’m a little worried that getting exactly the furniture I want will look out of place in my apartment. Maybe even ugly. I feel like I’d need wood paneling on the walls or something.”
“That’s easy,” Griffin said. “We could get that installed in a day. The only thing you’d need to decide is if you want floor-to-ceiling or wainscotting, then pick a pattern.”
Albert patted Aaron on the shoulder. “Yeah, that’ll be no problem at all, Professor Plum. The Society has craftsmen of all kinds and I’m pretty sure there’s some remodel and refit folks in town.”
“Craftspeople, you sexist clod,” Kiara said, giving Albert’s arm a backhanded smack.
Albert gave her a toothy gin. “It’s pronounced sex-iest.”
The byplay between them largely passed Aaron by; he was a little caught up at how easily they’d heard his concerns and offered their advice. He realized that he’d been bracing to get a lot more flak for talking about what he wanted in anything less than absolute, even aggressive terms. Albert’s friendly teasing didn’t bother him, not when he’d been unconsciously expecting to be told why his feelings and desires were stupid.
I guess the inherited dragon soul stuff isn’t the only bullshit I’m finding out about myself this week, he thought ruefully.
Now that they had a better idea of what Aaron might be looking for, they revisited several departments in the store, on the hunt for anything that would be a good fit. They ended up picking out two couches and two chairs as well as a number of rugs. Griffin had them swing back to household goods to pick up a number of decanters and other glassware and Albert helped with selecting some light fixtures that would better match the intended decor.
Before they’d even finished shopping for clothes, they had more than they could effectively fit in the trunk of their car, let alone carry the fifteen blocks back to where they were parked. When you added in the gadgets, furniture, and various other sundries, transporting it all by hand would have been a truly impossible task. Thankfully, the store had a delivery service, although Aaron noted that the address Kiara had him provide wasn’t the same as the apartment building. He chalked that up to a security measure in much the same way his computer had gone to the Drakon’s people first.
I hope they don’t go looking through my browsing history, Aaron thought with a gulp.
There wasn’t anything awful to find, but there was plenty of stuff that would make him look like a giant weirdo goob. Tia might understand why he had an entire folder of bookmarks that had images and gifs he could use to reply to comment threads and tweets, but actual grown up adults? It probably wasn’t ideal if he was supposed to be proving himself fit for a role at the pinnacle of the Society’s leadership.
With the deliveries squared away, they left the flagship store and stopped to grab lunch at a nearby delicatessen, where another new worry crossed Aaron’s mind. It took him about half his sandwich to work up the nerve to say it out loud.
“Hey guys,” he said, interrupting a discussion about the artistic value of remakes and reboots. “Am I pompous?”
“Because of your taste in furniture?” Griffin asked. “How’s that pompous?”
Kiara shrugged. “It’s not like you were looking for gilded baroque gaudiness or ultra-sleek contemporary stuff so you can build a personality at home around mentioning how minimalist or postmodernist you are.”
“I’m not even two full steps removed from being a crusty gutter punk and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having a sense of style,” Albert said. “Consumerism is shit and the poison of the masses, but it doesn’t change the fact that most people are at least a little happier if they have some stuff that makes them feel good about themselves.”
Their reassurances put Aaron’s mind somewhat at ease over whether he was turning into an ostentatious prick, but it was something he meant to watch out for nonetheless. If he truly was going to be the leader of a secret society with the kind of wealth and power the Drakon had, it would be less than ideal if he let a little cash turn him into a douche canoe.
“It’s when you fixate on accumulating more stuff, or let your stuff define you, that’s when you turn into a dickhole,” Albert finished.
When they finished lunch — Aaron got a pastrami on rye because, y’know, New York and all that — the quartet took a leisurely stroll a few blocks to the north and east, to the tailor Albert knew. The tailor’s shop was an unusual place, at least in Aaron’s limited experience in Manhattan, and would be easy to miss if you didn’t know what you were looking for. The front of the building was covered in scaffolding, which wasn’t all that unusual in the city, but it was odd because the tailor’s shop wasn’t accessed from the street and its entrance was largely unmarked.
A relatively narrow frontage of plate glass sat between a pizzeria and a framing store, marked only by an address above a similar plate glass door. A man was seated at a small desk reading a newspaper in the tiny foyer on the other side of the door and he buzzed them through the door when they knocked. A hallway ran deeper into the building behind the miniscule lobby and that was where the businesses in this building could be found.
Albert led them down the plain hall to a plain door with a small, plain sign that read Darren’s Custom Tailoring. Behind the door was a surprisingly elegant sartorial shop. The tailor was staffed by two people — an older man and a middle-aged woman — and they wasted no time getting to business.
They took Aaron’s measurements swiftly and professionally, then sat with him to go over what kind of suits he preferred. His first inclination was to veer towards older styles — double breasted suits, pleated pants, and the like — but he let himself be talked into considering a couple suits in more modern styles, as well.
Who knows? he mused. With the changes from the emerging thingy, I might actually like the way I look in other things.
Aaron tried on a number of fitting garments to see which fabrics he liked and discover what adjustments could be made to improve the fit. When all was said and done, he had an order for more than a dozen suits in different styles and weights. He hadn’t even known suits came in different weights and they were apparently meant to accommodate for differences in weather between the seasons.
The tailor, Darren, bowed them out of his shop with the promise the suits would be ready in no more than a week and Aaron could either take them as they were or return to the shop for a final fitting. A week or less seemed like a remarkably quick turnaround to Aaron, but Albert had sung Darren’s praises as a top notch couturier. Operating out of a surprisingly well-hidden shop also suggested the shop didn’t have — and didn’t need — business from foot traffic and passerby.
When they were back on the street, Kiara said, “The Market’s in Chinatown. What’s our best route?”
Griffin thought about it for a second before answering. “The B or F trains from B of A Tower will get us there almost as quickly as it would take just to walk back to the car.”
“The subway it is, then,” Kiara said.
“Ah, the subway,” Albert said, nudging Aaron with an elbow. “Another classic city experience.”
They walked down 40th Avenue, bearing west, for several blocks, until they came to a park that doubled as a kind of open air shopping plaza.
“I’ve never seen a park with this many little businesses in it,” Aaron said as they walked through the busy grounds.
Kiara stopped on the lawn they were crossing and turned the group around. A broad building made of pale stone ran along the full width of the park. Aaron couldn’t figure out exactly how tall it was, but he guessed it was at least five or six storeys. Columns of thin windows ran two-thirds of the way up the building, alternating with the stone to give the building an almost pin-striped appearance, and above that was a row of massive windows with rounded arches. The entire structure was crowned by an ornate cornice that struck a familiar chord in Aaron’s memory, although he couldn’t place it.
“I think I know that building,” he said.
“That’s the Main Branch,” Kiara said. When Aaron threw a confused look at her, she elaborated. “Of the New York Public Library. You’d definitely recognize it from the front.”
“You’re not just standing behind it, you’re standing on top of it,” Griffin said. “This is Bryant Park and the library extends underground beneath it. Our station is on the other side of the park.”
During the walk down 40th, Aaron hadn’t been doing as much sightseeing as he had on previous trips. This was the result of three factors: there hadn’t been many landmarks he could see; most of his view had been either scaffolding or awnings on the narrow street; and, he had enjoyed chatting with his three guardians. So to suddenly find himself looking at the ass end of a major landmark took him a little off guard.
How many movies and TV shows had he seen with scenes in the impressive halls and galleries of that famous library? It was weird to find himself standing just a hundred or so feet away from it. At the same time, as cool as it was, it was still just a building next to a park. He had shit to do. He turned his back to the landmark and they crossed through the park, emerging at a corner they had crossed earlier that day on their way to Herald Square.
Across from him was a tower made of glass and steel and, next to it, their destination — the entrance to the 42nd Street-Bryant Park subway station.