“So we gotta start workin’ t’ gether,” Al said.

Dino shook his head. “How we know we can trust the other gangs?”

“How they know they can trust us?” Al shot back. “I’ll tell ya how—we’re gonna start out small. We’re gonna let Ron start fixin’ stuff for some of the other gangs. And th’ Chelsea gang agreed t’ let us use th’ stuff in their warehouses.

Ron can go there an’ they’ll let him take what he wants. No more raids on ’em. And they won’t raid us.”

“That don’t smell right,” someone else said. “Them Chelsea rats always been hittin’ us. Ever since I was a kid.”

Al said, “Well, we’re gonna try and see if we can get along together. It’s worth a try.”

“It’s a trap,” Dino said. “You got suckered by some sweet talk.”

Al walked straight up to Dino. He was shorter and skinnier than Dino, but it was Dino who backed a step away. “Lissen speedie,” Al said, “you wanna fight so bad, go uptown and fight th’ Muslims.”

Dino’s face went red. “Aww . . . don’t get hopped up. I was only—”

“You was shootin’ off yer mouth,” Al said. “As usual. Only time you keep it closed is when it’s fulla pills.”

Dino said nothing. But his face went dark with hatred.

And that was that. Ron started fixing machinery for other gangs, working longer hours and sleeping even less than he had before. Most times the other gang members would come into Gramercy turf under a white flag of truce, carrying the equipment they wanted fixed. Soon, when they saw how well Ron worked, they began asking him to come to their turfs to fix equipment that was too big for them to carry.

Ron began to move around the area, going into different turfs. Al put only one restriction on him: he was not allowed to fix guns for any other gang. Wherever Ron went, he was always accompanied by at least one other gang member. A warrior. And, usually, by Davey as well. He fixed generators and freezers, heaters and stoves, truck engines and street lamps. Once he even repaired an old movie projector in an empty, crumbling theater for a gang that had films to show.

Each of the gangs was very much like the Gramercy Association. Teen-aged guys and girls, a few smaller kids. Hardly any older people; no one over thirty. The City hadn’t been closed, officially, long enough for the gang kids to get that old. Also, gang life wasn’t conducive to old age. Everyone was poor, dirty, without education, without decent food, without medicines—it was like living in the Middle Ages. The constant raids had also helped to kill off many of the youngest and strongest warriors. But Al was working desperately to maintain the shaky truce that he had helped establish among the gangs.

One day Ron was walking back from an area called the East Village, after fixing a building’s heater. He passed a dozen kids Davey’s age playing on the littered, cracked sidewalk. They were running and laughing, making lots of noise, breathless happy grins on their dirty faces.