“Unknown reason, hell,” Olivia said. “They’ll do it for money, same as anyone else.”

“And think of something to call them besides the oldies,” Manfred called as she let herself out.

Olivia, the bit firmly between her teeth, felt purposeful and much more cheerful. She pulled her hair back into a ponytail as she walked to the hotel. She felt the beginning of a trickle of sweat on her back, knew it would roll with an unpleasant ticklish feeling down the crack between her hips. She found she was looking forward to talking to Tommy again. He was a rascal, through and through.

Olivia liked old people. It surprised her to realize this, and she wondered if it had something to do with her relationship with Lemuel, who was the oldest person she’d ever met . . . though perhaps calling him a person was a bit of a stretch.

But then she remembered her father’s mother. She’d liked Grandmother. There had been a few moments in her childhood that hadn’t actually sucked, and the times she’d gotten to stay with her grandmother had contained all those moments. So she walked into the hotel with pleasant anticipation. Two old women were sitting in the lobby, which contained several comfortable chairs and a table or two. One of the women was knitting, and the other was listening to an iPod. They both looked up with interest as she came to a stop in front of them.

“I’m Olivia Charity,” she said. “I met Tommy the other day. I believe you ladies must be Mamie and Suzie?”

Mamie turned out to be the knitter, and Suzie the listener. Mamie had to use a walker, and Olivia discovered quickly that her conversation tended to wander away from time to time. Mamie’s knit pants hung on her, and her shoes were orthopedic, but she wore makeup, by God, and her hair was white and curly like a lamb’s coat. Suzie was (to Olivia’s surprise) of Asian descent, though her speech was purely American. Her thick gray hair was cut short at her earlobes, and her eyeglasses were decorated with rhinestones. Suzie was wearing a red T-shirt and white crops with red sandals. She looked as if she were about to go on a Golden Age cruise.

“Yeah,” Suzie said, when Olivia introduced herself, “Tommy told us about you. I’ll go get him.” Suzie was able to walk on her own with relative ease.

Left alone with Mamie, Olivia asked her how she liked the hotel.

“It’s safer than the Five Aces,” Mamie said. Her eyes were a faded blue, and her eyelids looked very thin and delicate with their trace of blue eye shadow. “We were going to get murdered in our beds there. Or right out in the street.”

“So you were glad to move?”