My stomach felt as if it were trying to crawl up under my lungs to hide. Tick-Tick’s fault for teasing; it was only that I was afraid someone else would think what the Ticker had thought, I told myself. And I couldn’t very well deny it if the question didn’t come up, because I couldn’t bring it up. My God, what if—someone else—hadn’t noticed anything, and I were to say, “You don’t have to worry about me, because I don’t have a thing for you.” I could imagine the look I’d get. I’d have to kill myself out of aggravated embarrassment.

Rico turned her face up to the window, and the moonlight fell full on it. “Orient,” she called up softly. “Sorry I’m late.”

I hung my head as far out the window as I could, to keep my voice from waking the Ticker. “I’ll be right down,” I told Rico.

I remembered, for a wonder, to take a set of keys with me when I went; it would look so good to lock myself out of the building.

She was leaning on the car when I came out, lighting a cigarette, and I smelled the smoke of coltsfoot, clover, and bearberry leaf on the cool air. I was about to sit down on the stoop when I realized there was a lit one in her hand already, and she was holding out the freshly-fired one to me. Lordy, I hadn’t stopped for a smoke in—days? It seemed like days. I walked over slowly and took the cig, brought it to my mouth and realized with a sudden uncomfortable force that it had just been in hers. She was watching me, so I took the drag and pretended my hands were steady.

“You look like shit,” she said.

A list of responses occurred to me, starting with “So do you,” which wasn’t true, followed by “You don’t,” which I didn’t want to say. I shrugged.

“How’s Tick-Tick?”

That was one I could answer. “Lousy. She can’t eat, she can’t sleep… I don’t know. Ms. Wu said she’d be back around, but she hasn’t come yet. I think I’d better go fetch her. How’s Linn?”

Rico’s cigarette flared scarlet in the dark. The reflection of it shone in one eye, until a blink seemed to wipe it off. “Lousy. He’s up at The Lilacs, which is where you’ll find Ms. Wu right now. She’s more or less living there.”

“Tick-Tick says it’s a pretty lah-di-dah place.”

“It has been. Right now it’s more like a field hospital.”

I frowned at her, but she couldn’t see it in the dark. “What do you mean?”