Silence on the other end. She bargained hard, but not as fast from straight out of bed. I could hear her trying to figure out how much my desperation was worth. “Uh-huh. And I can help.”

“Maybe,” I answered as the dickering impulse reasserted itself at last.

“Chica, this is gonna cost you.”

“I’m good for it, Sher.”

“What do you mean,” she said ominously, “you’re good for it?”

“One of the things that happened while I was down is that my money went away.”

“Get some more.”

“It’s, ah, in my other pants. Which are locked up in the Night Fair.”

“Where are you calling from?”

“Del Corazón.”

“What’d you give Beano?”

“Threats and promises,” I answered.

Sherrea said some things in a language I didn’t recognize. Then she said, “It’s a long walk, and you deserve it. Or are you planning to scam a lift out of some poor bastard?”

Twelve blocks and four flights. Well, after that nice restful ride… “I’m walking.”

“You’re gonna owe me, Sparrow. Got that?”

“Yes, I’ll owe you.” I felt suddenly, grovelingly, indecently grateful. Another debit for the ledger — but to Sherrea. I’d never known Sherrea to deal in flesh and blood.

“Get here in less than twenty minutes and I’ll cook your flat ass for breakfast.”

It took me thirty. I followed the route around the east flank of the Night Fair, where spindly locust trees cast a little shade. Sometimes I had to cling to the fence, when the curve of the world became too much to climb. Sometimes I just sat on the curb and panted and clutched my head. Two little black kids with the copper earrings of the Leopard Society threw fragments of paving at me. I scooped a handful of dust out of the boulevard plantings, spit into it, and closed my fingers over it, chanting at random, bastard Spanish, Creole, Lao. Then I stared at the kids. They made a great show of nonchalance, but they left. Which was nice; what was I going to do when I blew my handful of dust at them, and they didn’t turn into lumps of clay, or get leprosy, or whatever they expected?

Away from the Fair, the traffic was heavier. I dodged bicycles and the occasional motorbike, as well as pedestrians more determined than I was, which was all of them. A silver sedan with smoked windows and the insignia of a northside greenkraal nearly put an end to my problems out in the middle of LaSalle. I jumped for the center island as the tires squealed. All’s well that isn’t over.

And all the while I watched for a filthy tri-wheeler, listening for its clotted growling. I had no idea what I’d do if I saw it.

Sherrea’s building was smooth dirty yellow tile and rows of too-small windows, with a door that used to be glass and was now rather more practical armor-gray steel. It was built in the last century, when prosperity must have excused ugliness. The halls had once been blank and identical, the stairwells featureless tubes of concrete block and iron stair rail. Now living ivy worked its way toward the sky at the top of the stairs, where someone had turned a trapdoor into an open skylight; wisteria cascaded down to meet it from the roof. Things peered from the leaves: grotesque carved wooden faces, old photographs of people who all seemed to be smiling, faded postcards. A painted snake twined up the stair rail: red, black, and yellow on the first floor; blue, gray, and green on the second; purple, green, and orange on the third; blue, red, and yellow on the fourth. Fat candles stood in former floor lamps on every landing.