I walked toward Zeg’s pawnshop. I hadn’t been there for a while and for once had nothing to sell, but I was lonely enough that I was willing to listen to his scolding for the afternoon, just to talk to another person, to hear my own voice out loud. I once had a vision of Zeg helping a man who must have been his father at a shoe store: his father would hold out a shoe to a customer, and Zeg would hurry into the back room to look for the proper size among the stacks of white shoeboxes. In the vision I could see out the front window to what must have been Atlantic Avenue, the marquee of the old movie house. The theater was closed now and the store across the way, where Zeg’s father’s shop would have been, was now a fried chicken restaurant. So that explained Zeg, I guessed. He was just like the rest of us. He couldn’t let go of what he had lost and would spend the rest of his days hoarding the wrong things trying to make up for it. Maybe his father had gone out of business when the casinos were built. Maybe his pawnshop was his small way of getting back: collecting gamblers’ wedding rings and lucky coins when they came to him pleading, liquor wafting out of their pores, eyes bloodshot, hands shaking, giving them a tenth of what their most prized possessions were worth. Maybe he felt like he was getting his revenge by being exacting, cheap.

A strip of bells attached to a leather strap jingled when I pushed through the door. Zeg was bent over a copy of the Press of Atlantic City, and I could see the thinning hair at the top of his head. His store was a mess, but he knew where everything was, as though at the end of the day he brought home a map of his inventory and studied it before he slept.

Below him, a glass case gleamed with rhinestone necklaces, tarnished silver spoons, gold bracelets and earrings, old watches, all stopped at different times, and a few newer ones that told the times in other cities, too: London, Tokyo. I loved looking at the things in his case, but he was as indifferent to all of it as though they were tabs from soda cans, bits of penny candy, tokens from the arcade. They were like the visions in a way. Scraps of a life, clues. And then I had an idea.

“Good morning,” I called. Flirting didn’t work for Zeg, and stealing from him was out of the question—he was way too vigilant for that, one of the few people I knew who actually paid attention to how other people moved through space. I always wondered, what did he want, other than to read his paper and exact his revenge, piece by piece, pawn by pawn? I couldn’t tell.