“See anything?” Dewey asked, squinting at the windows.

“Just a couple of lights,” Ron said. “Don’t you see them?”

Shaking his head, the old man answered, “No. I can’t see very much anymore. I’m going blind.”

“Blind?”

“Yup. In another year or so I’ll be blind as a mole. I have to make sure I keep everything in here exactly in place, so I don’t bump into things.”

Ron didn’t know what to say.

“The City,” Dewey said, leaning back on the sofa. “She used to be ablaze with light! Outshone all the stars in the sky!” He was suddenly shouting. “Lights everywhere. The Great White Way. All gone . . . dead and gone.”

There were tears in the old man’s eyes.

“How did it happen?” Ron asked. “Were you here when they closed the City?”

“You never saw her the way she was, boy. You’re too young. I was here. She was a beautiful city. Beautiful—but sick. Corrupt and dirty.”

He took a huge swallow of brandy. “Damn city just got dirtier and sicker and sicker and dirtier. Every day was worse. People died from the poisons in the air. Nobody did their jobs, they just argued and went on strike and fought everybody else. City ran out of money, had to sell its soul to Albany and Washington. They put that stupid Dome up to make things better and it just made everything worse. Everybody was going crazy. You couldn’t walk down the street without getting shot at.”

He finished his glass and reached for the bottle. “Too many people crowded too close together. People started falling over in the streets, dead from pollution or mugging or just plain brain fever. The Mayor was busy running for President. The City Council was busy stuffing its pockets with money and arguing with the unions. The banks threw up their hands and said the city was a bad investment. Eight million bad investments. Then the Federal Health people came in and said the environment inside the Dome had sunk below the level needed to sustain human life. Inside of a year everybody would be dead.”

“Wow!” said Ron.

“You should have seen the rush! It was like a riot and an earthquake and a war, all at once. Went on for months. Families separated. Kids left behind. Banks closing their doors, and mobs breakin’ ’em down, only to find their money’d been taken out long ago. People running every which way. When the dust finally cleared, the City was declared officially abandoned—empty, nobody here. So they sealed it off.”

“Then how did you get in? And the others?”

Dewey laughed. “We never left! I sat here and watched ’em boiling out of the City. I figured I had plenty of time. And anyway, the more of ’em left, the better for me. I’d have the whole City to myself. Pick up a few things the others had left behind.”

“Is that how—”

But the old man wasn’t listening to Ron. “After a couple months, Manhattan got to be right livable, with everybody gone. I knew there was a few others like me; a couple thousand of us, at least. We never got out of the City, and as far as the Government was concerned, they wasn’t going to come in looking for us. They had enough to do, handling the eight million or so who had come screaming out. So the Government wrote us off their records. Officially, I’m dead. You’re talking to a dead man!”