At the next turn, light leaked past a solid door, open just a crack. Whatever business went on in there—drugs, sex, the black market—it wasn’t mine. Maybe only squatters, living best they could. But a squatter could become a mugger fast enough. Eight blocks more till my assigned sector. The concrete relayed the slightest foot-scrape into an echoing whisper. My foot, or someone’s behind me? I held my breath and scooted by the open door.

Corridor after corridor, dark and not so dark. Wavering across footbridges spanning the East 40s, dry down below now but not during a surge. My luck held and the halls stayed empty. Easy beans, so far. I passed the time planning my pick.

In high-rise picking, you hoped that between the third-floor pass-thrus and the high-and-dry sixth, you had two stories of deserted apartments, block after block after block. Above that, the lock you chose to pick might have someone behind it. Still some private houses left as well, along the cross streets, but those were harder to access. Maybe you could drop onto the roof from the window of a neighboring high-rise, but it was risky. If the former owner had been lazy or rushed, some nice stuff might be left behind. Thinking they’d be back, when things calmed down, when the weather got fixed.

At Unca Joe, we had a numbers guy working on a system to predict how long it would be before we’d picked the whole island clean, and our living dried up. Taking things as I did pretty much day by day, I was glad someone had an eye out for our future.

Along Madison between 50th and 51st, the street-facing windows had been knocked out to form a sort of covered balcony overlooking the back end of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Someone with an eye for a view, even if it was of moldy, unkempt gardens and grim stone buttresses. The double spires rising into darkness did lift the heart somehow. I guess that’s why they built it that way.

I stopped at the uptown end to gawk at the fabled structure and wave Rubio’s regards. No way the tallest building I’d ever seen, but certainly the most elaborate. Pointy arches and crosses and window tracery wherever you looked. Below, the ground was dry, but for the usual puddles in the low spots. A woman trotted by beneath me, a kayak balanced on one shoulder, a full pack weighing down the other. Couldn’t make out her den sign. Lucky girl, to have her own transportation.

A boat means freedom. So right. Might be my new mantra.