When the weather cooperated, they sat outside the cafés, sipping tea droned in from the mountains of small countries otherwise swallowed up by oceans. They took pictures with their cell phones—unreliable for anything else even this far uptown—selfies and each other carefree in front of the view down the cross-streets to the ever-widening East River Estuary. Back in their high-ground, gated burbs, they’d boast of seeing the real Manhattan-Under-Water.

Or so it was said. As a night-shifter, tourists felt as distant to me as Adders or Storm Worshippers. Recent den word was that the tourist trade was slacking off. Good riddance, then. They weren’t adding to the den economy.

And at night, the Causeway was a different story.

After the tour boats pulled away and the cops retreated to the lighted protection of the shops, a tougher, livelier crowd showed up—in town with a bodyguard, taking a break from the clubs and casinos, doing biz over late night suppers droned in from afar. Often the artists and musicians brought in to entertain the tourists by day stayed to drink up their pay by night. Some brave souls came by from neighborhood buildings where squatters and stay-behinds piggy-backed on the relative security of living next door to Murray Hill. A more local crowd, but a crowd none the less. Strangers, of a sort I wasn’t used to.

Which had me on super-alert, climbing the wide stair at the downtown end of the Causeway. No picking planned here. Just passing through, quick and quiet. They’d never notice.

Up top, electronic music beat a quick tempo. The spruced-up but mostly empty storefronts flashed neon and fake candlelight. The sad, stunted trees were strung with twinkle lights and had a few real leaves on them. If not for the heat and the odors of harbor and garbage wafting up from below, you could almost believe all was well with the world—the very myth its merchants were desperate to promote. No barter system in these cafés, and I had none of their sort of credit. Still, I slowed for a bit of eyes-wide window-shopping. This brief stretch of artificial civilization felt like a dose of hope. A vision of my future life on the Mainland. And there was always a chance, in a new neighborhood, that something might stir up a memory, some familiarity, like sensing what was around the next corner.

But nothing about the Causeway felt like home, so I veered back to the midline and strode along purposefully, like it was what I did every day and night.

Halfway along, the tables outside a lit-up café overflowed with loud young people carousing. A uniformed guard watched from the door. Inside, bartenders waited stiffly at their posts. A metal chair scraped, a glass smashed the pavement, laughter erupted. The guard stayed where he was.

I picked up my pace.