“She’s up in a high-rise,” I said. “I need to get out there and bring her back. I can pay you. Not much, but I can give you something for helping me.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Just get in. We’ll see if we can bring her back here.”

I got in the boat after the people who were already in it got out. The man’s name was Peter, he said. I looked at his clothes, then down at mine. His looked a thousand times cleaner. I wondered when I would be able to change mine. Then I thought of my basement apartment with everything packed up in boxes. That was the first moment it hit me. It was all gone. Everything was gone. I sat down in the boat.

“Where in Gravesend are we going?” asked Peter.

“Far Gravesend,” I said. “The Ocean Way Apartments.”

We went along the water with his boat churning up water behind us. We went down long corridors of what were once streets, but now felt like canals. We could have been in a picture I once saw of Venice in a book, if everything didn’t look so broken down and destroyed. Buildings loomed up on either side of us, their windows looking dark and haunted. Many were broken, and I thought back to the winds and rain just a few nights before. Now, with the sun shining through the cold air, it was hard to believe that night had ever happened. But all around us was evidence that it had.

Peter kept up a steady stream of words about the things he had seen, but I didn’t talk. I sat back in the boat and tried not to see what was around me. I tried to be in the sun, in the reflection of it on the water, away from the hard metal on the bottom of the boat. I leaned back and closed my eyes. The rumbling of my stomach kept me from disappearing inside my head.

Then, through my closed eyes, I could tell that the light had gone away. I opened my eyes, and we were going down an alley between two high buildings. The alley was dark and floating all around us was garbage and shit.

“What’s going on?” I asked. “Why are we here?”

Peter cut the engine on the boat. He walked toward me, the smile still on his face. It was a wide smile, one I had not noticed before was not just kind and helpful. It was a bit wild. I suddenly felt like such a numptie, thinking this guy was upswing.

“Remember you said you wanted to pay me?” he asked. “To give me something?”

I saw where it was going right away. But all around me was filthy water. He had positioned the boat so that we weren’t even near any fire escapes.

“Stay away from me,” I said. For the tenth time I cursed myself for not having a weapon. I’d even left the stupid tapewrapped ruler in the school room.