Papa showed them all the stories hidden in amber and bone and marble as they moved through the galleries. Every civilization dealt with insanity and every story was an echo, an inherited memory. The oldest were about the father and the mother gone, a child starving, a beast waiting in the back of the cave. Or a false mother, or a trickster, or being lost—all these things happened over and over. This was why everyone wanted to hear fables and see horror movies: People like being reminded of their old fears, the idea that life had once been worse. The best stories—the birth of the sun and the moon, trickery and transformation, theories for the night and day and winter and summer—both explained and reassured: It won’t always stay dark, it won’t always stay cold, it’s all happened before. Some cultures preferred these comforting stories.

“Not the Aztecs or the old gods,” said Dee.

“No one loves the old gods,” said Papa. “They ate their children. Mean fucks, every one.”

They walked through a warren of offices in the basement and left the Scythian albums with a man who kissed Dee on both cheeks and touched her ponytail.

After they got off the subway at Astor Place, Edmund and Polly split a plain corned beef sandwich and Dee ordered a Reuben, saying that she’d never be able to finish it. Papa, who chose latkes and soup and a pastrami sandwich, ridiculed her when she did. Back at the apartment, Papa said he and Dee needed a nap in their dusty bedroom, just as they did at home. He gave Edmund and Polly the key to the front door and told them to walk around.

Downstairs, four Italian men were playing chess in front of the store next door. Papa called the place a social club. “Are you with the old lovers, then?” asked one man.

For whatever reason, they nodded.

“They’re magic, you know. You the same types?”

They nodded again, like idiots, and the old men laughed.