New Kid in Town
Copyright© 2003 by Carlos Malenkov The contents of the suitcase overflowed onto the rumpled bed. Sport jackets and underwear mingled with battered paperback novels, bars of hand soap, and creased snapshots of a middle-aged couple embracing a gangling adolescent. Ben could barely contain his excitement. He had arrived in Manhattan all of three hours ago, and already he felt he belonged. Even the luggage tag proclaimed him an official inhabitant of the city: "Benjamin Davis Carper, New York,...