Florian’s got a really sad collection of music. If you’d asked Rat what kind of music Florian was into, she’d have said heavy metal, maybe electro-groove. No, turns out he’s into music-hall variety, octogenarian crooners his granny must love. The only decent CD he has is Manu Chao.

“Clandestino” is old now, but Rat still loves it.

All the songs interconnect, there’s this same weird Spanish-language radio broadcast running through it, the same late-night Arabic lullabies for some baby that never seems to go to sleep. And this loneliness that’s not just personal but elemental, worldwide. It’s the loneliness of migrants to the big city, people who work night shifts and sleep in illegal dormitories, twelve to a room, who on Sundays crowd into long-distance-phone shops hoping to hear for just one moment the voices of their loved ones back in Macedonia or Senegal. The loneliness of people who, unlike Rat thus far, have actually managed to smuggle themselves across a border into the land of the lucky and can’t stop longing for what they left behind.

“Mano Negra clandestina / peruano clandestino / africano clandestino / marijuana ilegal!” she and Morgan chant. Florian starts howling like a wolf. He’s really crazy, that boy. Last time they stopped for gas and a pee, he asked Rat if she wanted to drive.

“I’d love to, but I can’t.”

“You know how to, right? A fifteen-year-old who doesn’t know how to drive is unnatural.”

“I know how, but”—she pointed out the obvious—“I don’t want to get us arrested.”

“What about Morgan, can he drive?”

Morgan split his sides, giggling.

“What’s the matter, Morgan, you can’t drive? Don’t feel bad about it, there’s lots of nine-year-olds can’t drive. I can teach you in a jiffy.”

“Yeah, it don’t look so hard,” Morgan sassed. “Judging from you, all you have to do is put your foot down hard on the pedal and curse at all the other drivers.”

“Have a toke, Morgan: it might make you less saucy.”

Morgan clicks his tongue in a “no.” “I’m an athlete,” he says. “I don’t put anything in my lungs but oxygen.”

Morgan has been full of surprises. Last night, staying with Florian’s granny, Rat had taken advantage of their first plumbing in weeks to do laundry. Emptying out the pockets of Morgan’s shorts—bubblegum wrappers, football cards, the one-euro dummy—suddenly she’d come upon two little medals, one brass, one stainless steel. Magpie Morgan’s voodoo charms, she’d figured. Except engraved on one medal was “Indexel Electronic Identification” and on the other Thierry’s name and cell phone number.

She was curious. “What’re these?”

Morgan shrugged.

She was genuinely baffled, then it clicked. “Aren’t these Vesuvio’s?”

No answer.

“Did you find these somewhere?”

No answer.

“Why’d you take his ID medals?”