Further on, a smaller group, mostly girls, compared the design and prices of their new shoes in the gilded glow from a shop window. Silvery phone cuffs encircled their wrists, useless here except as a fashion basic. Their short, filmy dresses and bangled ankles glittered as they danced about, gripping each other’s shoulders for balance, flirting with the few boys among them by ignoring them entirely. Real uptowner kids, surely too young and soft to be Spunk’s ferals. Kids whose parents never left, never had to leave. The Power Elite.

I made sure not to stare as I passed, but I did swallow a sigh. How did that feel, being so at home amid all this glamor? What was life really like uptown? What did they do all day, other than shop and flirt? Could I have been one of them, before Abel?

No, that didn’t feel right. I moved on.

At the north end of the Causeway, a stair led down to the 44th Street Marina. Several brightly colored motorboats were tied up nose-in along the main dock, awaiting the return of the revelers.

Farther along the dock, a gangway led up to the pass-thru that would take me west and uptown. Close by, a large covered launch was pulled in broadside, surprising as the water was shallow here and tidal. This boat could take you a long way and at high speed. Upriver past the Palisades, or all the way Down East to the rumored safe ports, if they’d let you in. Now, its polished foredeck was decorated with lounging young men. A light glowed through the canvas canopy. Girlish chatter drifted on the humid air. Topside, two of the boys passed a bottle, bored and languorous. The third slept or was passed out entirely.

Right off, I wished for the crowd again. Other than the boys, the dock was deserted. I’d have to walk by them to get to the gangway. Turn back? My night would be a total loss. Besides, the boys seemed deeply focused on their drinking. Probably all too drunk to move. And it was a public dock. I had as much right to it as . . .

“Hey, girl,” one of them called. “So late and out all alone?”

Shit. Here we go.

Light from the shops up above glinted in his eyes. He had dark, mussed-up hair and the wild, beautiful face of a predator. A twinge at the back of my brain. Something about him. Did I know this boy? No way I could.

He set the bottle down and sat up. His eyes said: At last! Entertainment.

Too late for retreat. A dozen steps to the gangway, and damn them all, anyway.

The second one, slack-jawed and pudgy, rose up on one elbow. “Well, hello! Lookin’ for c’mpany?”