His head sagged a bit between his shoulders, then lifted again, defiant. “Used to hang with them.”

“You never!” More Dark Boy bravado, surely.

He glanced away, pocketing his phone. “Did.”

“But why . . . ?” My jaw must’ve dropped open as all the bad and scary thoughts I’d first had about him came howling back. “How could you . . . !”

“You really want to know?”

Not sure I did, but he was intent, both hands fisted on the wheel, hovering between pride and shame, like he needed to get it off his chest. “Okay . . .”

“Me and my guys. Whoever was left. After Felix. When everything looked, y’know, finished. It was the cool thing to do. Drugs, booze, nookie, anarchy. Those high-end, off-grid penthouses down in the Battery. Leftover luxury. The Adders had it all. Like they were the fullest expression of the time.”

“Maybe for you.”

“Yeah? And what were you doing then, Ms. Perfect? Dan says you remembered some stuff finally.”

“I wasn’t shacking up with Adders!”

“My parents fucking abandoned me! Emptied most of the bank accounts, took off for parts unknown. And not with each other! Hannah was still in Africa. Dan was upstate. The world was ending. Why not break loose? Take what you need. Live in the moment. Have some real fun.” He looked at me straight, daring me to contradict. “Like, where was I supposed to go? Some cold-water den, working my butt off day and night for a bowl of slop?”

“We don’t eat slop!”

“I ate steak and drank the best left-behind wines! At least till they ran out.” He laughed, his Dark Boy bitter cackle. “Adders! Like watching a super-gross horror vid, all around you, 24/7. One thrill after the next.”

He was trying for shock, and he had me. “How old were you?”

He sucked in air. “It was Dara’s year, so I was . . . yeah, I was eleven.”

Out in mid-street, a wad of charred debris bobbed to the surface, a remnant of the flying balls of fire. I thought I made out the blackened curve of an arm, but it was so stiff, it might have been a mannequin. Plenty of them around, stripped and abandoned. You’d see them floating out with the tide.

“That’s all you did, watch?”

Julian shrugged. “Mostly. They were bad then, but not this bad. It passed the time.”