I unlocked the door to the basement stairs, and led Skinner to the service elevator. He looked around dubiously. I wasn’t inclined to offer him reassurance, so I turned my back on him, dug a pair of wires out of the seeming ruins of the control panel, and crossed the bare ends. I kept what I was doing out of Skinner’s sight. If he missed killing me on this trip, I didn’t want to have shown him how to get upstairs and try again. The cage shuddered and began to climb at an irregular pace, mostly very slow. But silent; I’d used a lot of lubricants to ensure my privacy. Inside the elevator was the inspection certificate, light brown with age and dated 1995. Skinner looked at it and made a clicking noise with his tongue.

“Is this the only way up,” he asked, “or are you doing this for my benefit?”

“You could still find room on the sidewalk for tonight.”

He shook his head, smiling faintly. I didn’t seem to be scaring him.

We ground to a halt on the seventh, and left the box of the elevator. High above the rest of the tenants’ cooking and living, my hallway smelled like decaying building: dusty, dry, abandoned. I fumbled with locks, and opened the door onto the darkness of what had been a reception area. It was an empty room; a last defense against anyone who broke in. Sound bounced off bare walls, the light switch didn’t work — anyone would have concluded that they’d picked the locks for nothing.

I thumbed a box in my pocket that had once opened garage doors, and the bulb lit in the corridor behind the front room. Skinner jumped. “This is it,” I said sourly. “Enter freely and of your own will, and leave something of the happiness you bring.” He laughed. A lot of people wouldn’t have gotten that one, either.

I walked the streak of light from the open doorway and was home. The left-hand room must have held supplies, once; it was just big enough for my wadded-cotton mattress and a chest of drawers. The middle one, which was larger, I’d turned into the living room-and-kitchen. The dormer windows were covered with black felt (a light in the top floor might have attracted attention). I’d hung a sink on one wall, stealing water and drainage from the john beyond it, and had a propane stove on a metal cabinet and an old RV propane/electric fridge next to that. There was a wooden desk that served as countertop and table, and things to sit on, including a leather-and-chrome armchair that looked like a compound slingshot, and a shabby upholstered wing chair. There was also a shelf unit of books, enough to be convincing. I went in and lit the gas lamp over the sink.

Skinner stopped in the doorway, and I watched his gaze go straight to the books. He walked forward and began to read the spines. He touched one now and then, never actually taking a book down. I found myself almost wanting to show him the third room.