“Well, it’s a good deal, Daniel.” Saying his name, even dubiously, felt like a pact of some sort, and it got my nerve up again. The night was wearing on and he was the best—no, the only—prospect so far. “But . . . say I have a book to sell . . . ?”

“To sell.” He sat back, his intensity fading, then looked me over more carefully. “That’s okay, too. What sort of book?”

“Old. In good shape. With a leather cover.”

“Leather?”

“Yeah. The real kind.”

He glanced away, then back again. “Is it yours?”

Here we go, and so quickly. “I didn’t steal it.”

“I didn’t say you did.”

I stared back at him.

He folded his chin to his chest. “Okay, implication granted. Sorry. Something you . . . found?”

“No. It was . . . given to me. That’s the truth.”

“I’m glad.”

“It really is old, over two hundred years.” His chin edged up, so I’d played the right card. “Date’s on the first page. It’s about this hombre’s trip on the ocean, in a sailing ship. It’s handwritten.”

“Really? So, it’s a personal diary? Like, a shipboard journal?”

“I guess.” I mean, it was a sea story, yes, and some guy had written it. But Daniel’s description gave it a sudden, salt-sprayed reality: a young man in 1849, clinging to a rolling deck, struggling with ink, then when he ran out, pencil, to lay down the very words I could read in the book hidden away in my gut pack. A true-life story. It had really happened.

“And someone gave it to you? A relative?”

“A . . . friend.”

His brow creased gently, but he decided to let it go. “Is it any good?”

I blinked at him.

“I mean, is it interesting? Could he write? Did he write about interesting things?”

“Does that matter?”

“Well, to me, it does. Doesn’t it to you?”

“I . . . haven’t read it all.”

He laughed, amazed. “Why not?”

I fumbled for excuses. “It’s . . . um . . . long. And the writing is hard to read. I don’t have enough light in . . . um . . .”

“In your den,” he finished quietly.

I gathered myself to duck out of there, quick as I could.

“Hey, wait! Don’t leave! Don’t run.” He raised both palms. “Please. It’s okay. Been there myself.” I eyed him, rabbit-tense, but he nodded, his whole torso swaying for emphasis. “Truth. Just after Misha, before I got a place of my own. I joined up with some friends who were scraping a den together in Alphabetland.”

“Avenue C?”