Free Warp by Lev Grossman

the middle of the street a car horn honked, right behind him, and he leaped onto the sidewalk and spun around. The car was moving so fast the Doppler effect distorted the sound of the horn as it swept past him.
    He watched it go. The brake lights flared as it rounded a corner, and arms waved at him out the windows on both sides. It was Basil’s car.
    I will kill him.
    Yet stay. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
    Hollis decided to stop and deposit his check in the extra minutes before his bus came. The ATM was housed in a tiny enclosed storefront with a picture window, too small to be a store. The window lit up the sidewalk with a swath of white fluorescent light.
    Standing outside, Hollis went through his wallet for his bank card, making a face at the brightness. Before he finished the lock clicked open, by itself.
    The door swung open, just an inch. He looked up.
    A woman sat perched on the plastic counter beside the ATM, next to the stacks of deposit envelopes. From where she sat she was holding the door open for Hollis with her foot. She wore black leather boots that hugged her calves, with lots of complicated lacings running up them.
    Hollis opened the door and stepped inside. She withdrew her leg and folded it back under her. Her stockings were black. Inside the tiny space it was bright: fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. Crumpled-up receipts with faint purple printing on them lay all over the nubbly rubber floor.
    â€œThanks,” said Hollis.
    The woman glanced up at him for a second.
    Hollis guessed she might be in her early twenties. Her longish hair was dyed a mixture of dark red and black, and it was a little lank. A long string of fake-looking pearls hung around her neck. She had pale skin and a large, wide mouth. Her lipstick was a dark shade of reddish brown.
    She was talking, but she wasn’t speaking English. Hollis didn’t recognize the language—it sounded Slavic.
    It took him a second to realize that she wasn’t talking on a pay phone; she was talking on the ATM’s emergency help phone. A sign under it read: IN CASE OF DIFFICULTY, LIFT HANDSET . Hollis tried to eavesdrop, but all he understood was a couple of names.
    When he was done with the cash machine, he put off getting his card back. He toyed absently with the bumps of the Braille instructions on their embossed metal plaque. After another minute the woman said what sounded like good-bye, and since he was standing at the machine, she handed him the phone. He hung it up.
    â€œI can’t believe you can still do that,” she said matter-of-factly.
    She had a big black leather handbag, and she rummaged around in it and got out some lipstick. She started putting it on in a businesslike way, using her reflection in the window.
    â€œDo what?” said Hollis.
    â€œUse that phone.”
    â€œUse it for what?”
    â€œLong-distance calls.” She pursed her lips in the window. “You don’t have to pay.”
    The ATM returned Hollis’s card, and he took it and stepped backwards until he could lean back against the outside window.
    â€œYou don’t have to pay?” he said.
    â€œNope.”
    She made an odd clicking noise with her tongue.
    â€œWho gets the bill? The bank?”
    â€œAs far as I know.”
    â€œHow does it work?”
    Before she answered, the woman gave Hollis a long, very neutral look. It was startlingly pretty.
    â€œIt’s a long story,” she said, finally.
    â€œThat’s my favorite kind.”
    The alcohol was making Hollis calmer than he normally would have been. Still watching him, she felt around blindly in her bag with one hand.
    â€œWhy do you want to know?” she said.
    â€œI don’t know,” said Hollis. “It just sounds like a sweet hack, I guess. A loophole. Hey—everybody wants to épater les bourgeois .”
    Them crazy French.
    She came up with a lighter and a pack of Merits. In one impressively quick motion she drew