Read The City When It Rains for Free Online

break.”
    Pike laughed. “Like what? Lotto?” He shook his head. “All the free-lance shooters end up the same, Corman, looking for something steady. In the end, they all want to come in from the rain.”
    Corman said nothing.
    â€œThey all figure it out, believe me,” Pike added. “That they can’t keep it up, that life has a downward pull.”
    Downward pull, Corman thought as he returned the envelope to his bag, incremental fall, toward the abyss. The whole world was beginning to sound like Julian Carr.
    There was an old Automat not far from the newspaper. Corman found himself going through its revolving glass doors a few minutes after his meeting with Pike. It was his favorite place on the east side of the city. He liked the furious speed with which the attendant scooped up exactly twenty nickels when he gave her a dollar bill. No matter how empty the place was, she jerked up the coins with the same flashing speed, her whole attention narrowed to the green bill, then the tray of faded gray coins. It was a focus Corman could understand. Since going free-lance, he’d come to realize that watching money was a way of seeing. Suddenly the price of a magazine loomed larger than the cover story. Lately he’d even begun to compare the prices of various brands of laundry detergent and tuna. Edgar didn’t have such worries. He was kept by a big law firm, and because of that there were times when Corman envied him, not because he was rich, but because his security gave him an aura of dignity, competence, even mastery. Hustling for a dollar made you look like a kid, froze you in an adolescent pose. If you didn’t own property, had no broker, figured your taxes on the short form, your voice never changed and your shoes squeaked when you walked.
    Corman dropped the coins in the slot, pressed the lever and watched as the coffee cascaded into the plain white mug. When it was full, he walked to a table by the window and sat down.
    Outside, the rain had started again. The street looked dark and slick. Traffic moved slowly back and forth, while people darted through it, their umbrellas flapping in the wind off the river.
    He turned from the window, took a quick sip of coffee, then riffled through his camera bag again and took out a stack of pictures, searching for one he could sell. Slowly, meticulously, he went through them one by one, staring closely, combing his mind for some way to place each one. He was still doing it when Eddie LaPlace came through the door a few minutes later.
    â€œYo, Corman,” Eddie called from across the room.
    Corman waved to him.
    Eddie bounced energetically up to the table, pulled out a chair and sat down. “Been up to the City Room?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œSell anything?”
    â€œNo.”
    Eddie shook his head. “Hey, it’s a tough life, am I right?”
    â€œFor the last few weeks, anyway,” Corman admitted.
    Eddie looked at the pictures Corman had spread haphazardly over the table.
    â€œSome of this stuff looks pretty good,” he said.
    â€œOnly to you, Eddie.”
    Eddie looked surprised. “Oh, yeah? Really?” He picked up a long shot of the old man on the balcony. “Holy shit,” he said with a chuckle. “Where’d this go down?”
    â€œBrooklyn,” Corman said. “He’d just shot his wife.”
    â€œNo shit,” Eddie said. The photograph slipped from his fingers, fell back down on the table. “You don’t sell pictures with dicks in them, my man. Pussy hair, that may get by, and tits and ass, they’re just fine for everything but the dailies. But dicks? Forget it.” He smiled. “You know why?”
    Corman shook his head.
    â€œBecause editors are usually men,” Eddie said, “and they feel embarrassed for the guy. For a fox, no problem. They’ll spread woolly pink cover to cover. But for a guy, they’re embarrassed.”
    â€œYou