“Drift gotten,” Myron said quickly. “So, uh, where’s Patrick? Can you give me an update?”

“Young Patrick sneaked out of his house two hours ago,” Big Cyndi said. “He walked approximately one mile into town and took bus 487. I looked it up. Bus 487’s final destination is Port Authority in New York City. I drove my car and arrived before the bus. I waited for him to get off and followed him here.”

“Here where?” Myron asked.

“Don’t turn suddenly, because you’ll be obvious.”

“Okay.”

“Patrick is standing behind you, between the Madame Tussauds wax museum and Ripley’s Believe It or Not!”

Myron waited. Then he said, “Can I look now?”

“Turn slowly.”

Myron did. Patrick stood on Forty-Second Street wearing a baseball cap pulled low. His shoulders were hunched as though he was trying to disappear.

“Has he talked to anyone?” Myron asked.

“No,” Big Cyndi replied. “Mr. Bolitar?”

“Yes?”

“Do you mind if I pose for more photographs while we wait? My public demands it.”

“Go for it.”

Myron kept his eye on Patrick, but he also couldn’t help but watch Big Cyndi work the crowd. Thirty seconds after she got back into action, the queue to have a photo taken with her was so long the Naked Cowboy looked at her askance. She glanced at Myron. Myron gave her a big thumbs-up.

Here was the simple, awful truth: It was often hard to see beyond Big Cyndi’s size. We as a society have many prejudices, but there are very few of our fellow citizens we stigmatize and judge less charitably than what we consider to be “large” women. Big Cyndi was all too aware of that. She had once explained her outgoing lifestyle, if you will, thusly: “I’d rather see shock on their faces than pity, Mr. Bolitar. And I’d rather they see brazen or outrageous than shrinking or scared.”

Myron turned back toward Ripley’s just as a teenage girl sidled up to Patrick.

Who the . . . ?

Myron remembered what Mickey and Ema had told him about Patrick’s claim of having a girlfriend. But if he’d been living in quasi-captivity in London, how would he know anyone in New York City?

Good question.

Patrick and the girl exchanged a quick, awkward hug before heading inside Ripley’s. Big Cyndi was by Myron’s side now. When Myron started toward the ticket window, Big Cyndi stopped him.

“He knows you,” she reminded him.

“You’ll go in?”

Big Cyndi pointed to the sign with an index finger the size of a baguette. “It’s called an ‘odditorium.’ Who better?”

Hard to argue.

“You wait by the exit,” she said. “I’ll text you updates.”

Myron stayed on the street for an hour and people-watched. He liked people-watching. Great views of sunsets and water and greens are wonderful, he supposed, but after a while, they become something you barely notice. But if you’re in a spot where you can watch people walk by—every race, gender, size, shape, religion, language, whatever—you are never bored. Everyone is their own universe—a life, a dream, a hope, a sorrow, a joy, a surprise, a revelation, a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end—even when they simply walk by you on the street.