The opening of Book One. Fiction by Eric Jourgensen. No signup required.
New York City smelled like coal smoke, river water, wet wool, and ink.
The ink was the best part.
Samuel Bell could forgive a city almost anything if it gave him a pressroom. He could forgive the mud that climbed your trousers by the ankle. He could forgive the boys shouting headlines in voices already worn rough by hunger and weather. He could even forgive the elevated trains that shook dust from the rafters every few minutes and made the gaslights tremble in their glass.
But he could not forgive bad type.
Bad type was a sin.
"That's an upside-down e," he said.
Across the stone table, Mr. Greeley pinched a piece of lead between finger and thumb and squinted like the letter had personally insulted him. He was older than Samuel by thirty years and had never admitted to a mistake in any of them.
"That's a perfectly fine e."
"It is a perfectly fine e if we have stopped caring what an e is."
Mr. Greeley stared.
Samuel waited.
The older man looked down again, turned the letter one half twist, and cleared his throat. "Hmph."
Samuel smiled without showing teeth. In a pressroom, victory had to stay small. Anything larger invited revenge.
The basement of The World building did not sleep, even after midnight. Men moved in shirtsleeves through the steam and noise. Compositors built sentences one tiny piece at a time. Proofreaders muttered curses over galleys. Somewhere above, editors argued about the shape of tomorrow morning as if they could bully the sun into rising on schedule.
Samuel loved all of it.
He loved the machinery most when it was almost too much. The clatter. The heat. The sense that every hand in the room was touching the same invisible wire. The city happened in pieces. Down here, they made it into columns.
"Bell."
The foreman stood at the foot of the stairs with a flat parcel under one arm. He had the expression he wore when a rich man wanted something stupid in a hurry.
"Sir?"
"Special plate. Came down from upstairs. They want it proofed before morning."
Mr. Greeley snorted. "Upstairs wants coffee delivered by angel wings too."
"Upstairs signs the wages," the foreman said.
That ended the theology.
He set the parcel on Samuel's table. It was wrapped in brown paper, tied with string, and cold enough that water gathered on the outside of it in small bright beads. Samuel frowned. The pressroom was hot as a kitchen stove. Nothing stayed cold down here unless it had been packed in ice.
"Where did it come from?"
"Didn't ask."
"Who brought it?"
"Boy from the city desk."
"Which boy?"
The foreman's look sharpened. "Are you writing his biography or proofing the plate?"
Samuel took the hint and untied the string.
End of excerpt. © 2026 Eric Jourgensen. All rights reserved.
