I turned to him: high, bony cheeks, a thick brush of shorter hair wild as a scrawl of charcoal against his too-pale forehead. Not a handsome face, but certainly distinctive. “Okay. I like it because it seems, y’know . . . familiar. Not a lot does, as you know, but here . . . well, it’s like I know it, like maybe I lived around here, before.”

“In the East Village? Mostly flooded before you were born.”

I nodded at the marina. “I mean, up there.”

“Further fantasies of a privileged past? Even if, after Abel, you’d hardly recognize it.”

Abel had hit Manhattan broadside from the east. Rubio could list every building that went down or under, but it was a previous superstorm, Misha, that had brought him to Unca Joe. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he lost his parents in one of the epidemics, but found a new family at a forward-looking design and construction firm that had moved into Manhattan after sea-level rise became undeniable. They were determined to reconfigure the bottom of the island along the lines of Venice—a place Rubio could describe in infinite detail though he’d never been there. They would bring life and culture back to downtown. Misha’s Wave took out the company headquarters along with the chief architect and most of the staff. Rubio’s optimism died with them.

“It’s not recognizing, it’s . . . sensing.” Now and then, I’d be gripped by some urge, maybe an action I’d be halfway into before I’d thought it out, and I’d be left stranded, wondering what I’d meant to do. “Like my body knows where it belongs, even if I don’t. Maybe why Unca Joe is right for me. Like, some westside den wouldn’t feel so much like home.”

How much of who you are is memory and experience? How much is hard-wired?

“Home?” Rubio straightened, circled his long arms to take in the derelict buildings, the black water, the floating debris. “This feels like home? This wreck, this rat’s nest, this . . . garbage dump? This feels like home?”

So many different shades of loss in this broken city, so many sorts of cripple.

“You could support me in this, y’know! Sometimes it’s like you don’t want me to remember.”

“Really? Who spends half his days bringing you up to date?”

“With your life, not mine!”

But Rubio had no room for sympathy that day. “Thing is, Glim, you might have to be satisfied learning about before, and never knowing your personal part in it.”