Last night’s storm hadn’t lowered the temperature much, but it had given the humidity a serious leg up. All the potholes were full of water, unstirred by so much as the threat of a breeze. Above the ragged, ambling roof-lines of Soho I could see the sky over the Border. It looked as if someone there had seen a few animated fairy tales and meant to duplicate the style: improbable pastel clouds came streaming out, toward the World, against a watercolor turquoise backdrop. It’s stuff like this that makes it impossible to predict the weather in the Borderlands.

I wasn’t the only thing awake, but I was close to it. On Desire Street I saw an auburn-haired girl hanging out laundry from her fire escape, singing something about a smiling Trojan horse to a lilting, scampering sort of melody. A calico cat teetered on the top pipe of a chain-link fence and regarded me gravely. “I’ll live,” I assured it. It lashed its tail and leaped down to investigate a storm drain.

Trudging uphill to Tick-Tick’s sweated some of the hangover toxins out of me. Still, when I yelled under her window and she leaned out to look at me, she shook her head. “Back to the pit that spawned you,” she said.

“That bad, huh?”

“You should have a mirror in that little hideaway of yours. Then you could at least try to turn degradation into a fashion statement.”

“This isn’t a fashion statement?”

“The young Lou Reed on a three-day bender? No, my dear. Or at least, I hope not.”

“Who’s Lou Reed?”

Tick-Tick covered her eyes with one slim white hand. “Blessed isle. So much for the notion that only cool people come to Bordertown. Would you like some breakfast?”

“Nah. I figured I’d hang out here some more and we could wake up all your neighbors.”

Tick-Tick yanked on an iron ring mounted next to her window frame. The latch on the green-painted double doors to the building said clack, and I shouldered my way in. The Ticker was the only tenant in the building who didn’t have to come to the front door to let her guests in. It wasn’t selfishness; she’d promised to set up remote mechanical latches like hers for at least three of her neighbors, just as soon as she got around to it. But having solved the problem and implemented the solution once already, she’d found the thrill wasn’t in it anymore.