“To help. Sure, I get it.” I was chilled but my head felt incredibly clear, as if adrenalin was coursing through my body but not raising my pulse. “I don’t want to talk to you right now.” He started to interrupt, and I put my hand up. “I can’t. I don’t want to listen to anything else.” I walked out the door and pulled it shut behind me, cursing myself three seconds later for not grabbing my coat. I hated motels. Instead of returning for the coat I knocked on Bruxton’s door. He opened it, naked from the waist up. His body was corded with muscle, which didn’t surprise me, but he was tattooed from his wrists on up his arms, over his shoulders and down his torso.

“Hi,” I said. “Do you have a cigarette?”

He handed me the pack, then lit me up.

“You want to come in?” he asked.

“I think I’ll just stay out here, thanks.”

Bruxton was already pulling on his shirt. “I don’t bite, you know.”

“Wish I’d known that when I met you.”

The corners of his mouth twitched. “Bark’s bad enough.” He joined me on the walkway and handed me his jacket. “If you’re going to stand outside, try not to catch hypothermia.” There were four cars in the dark parking lot, and the snow picked up the brightness of the moon almost as well as a streetlamp. “You don’t see stars like this in the city,” Bruxton said.

“Not in Spain either.” We stared up for a while, smoking wordlessly, before I broke the silence. “What’s your name, anyway? All anyone ever calls you is Bruxton or Brux.”

“Hemingway,” said Bruxton. I gave him a quizzical look and he cracked up. “You’re an easy mark. Want to buy a bridge in Brooklyn?”

“Cut it out. You’ve told me you’re an alcoholic, and that you’re divorced, and that your wife cheated on you. Don’t you think you can tell me your name?”

He took a long drag. “When I was getting sober, I read this book, Lighting Up, by some broad who said you should live the least secretive life you can. I like that. But there’s personal and there’s personal. You want to tell me more tales of your sleepwalking adventures?”

“You really hold a grudge, don’t you?”

“Damn straight.”

“Will you be straight with me for a minute? Do you think we’re going to find my sister?”

Bruxton made a sound that could have been a sigh and threw his butt into the snow. “Why are you asking me that now, Lily?” He fired up a fresh cigarette.