It didn’t seem like she recognized me. She pulled a square of newspaper from her pocket and unfolded it. It was covered with hard blisters of gum—white, green, yellow—and I could see a headline about the war. It could have been from days ago, or years. She kept pulling items from her pocket and laying them on the grass in front of us: a crushed milk carton, a shard of brown glass, a severed doll leg, a syringe tucked inside a plastic bag. She said, “I’m collecting everything I’ve ever stepped on.”

“I’m sorry,” Stella said. “But I don’t have any money.”

“I didn’t ask for your goddamn money,” Toledo said. She kicked the ground with her sneaker.

Stella glanced at me. She was afraid but trying to hide it.

“Toledo,” I said, “do you recognize me?”

“You know her?” Stella whispered.

Toledo’s eyes were roving. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other in a kind of dance.

Stella grabbed my arm. “You know her?”

I knew Toledo had a regular shelter, but they didn’t let you in if you were drunk or high. “This shit is all over the place,” she said, then picked up her objects and dropped them on the grass again: the doll’s leg, the poster board of gum. “Right now you don’t even know what they’re doing to kids in other cities.”

“What’s going on?” I asked her. “What’s all this about?”

She sucked in her breath sharply, and then she spat on the top of my head. I felt it through my hair. I looked up. Her eyes were like slits showing a nest of shiny black ants. I’d never seen a look like that on her face, or anyone’s.

“My name’s Toledo,” she said. Like we’d never met. “It’s where my dad was killed.”

I could feel the spit on my face, but I didn’t wipe it off. I said, “You need some rest.”

“You don’t even know the first thing.”

Stella whispered, “We should really go.”

I let her lead me away. We walked across the park. Stella was breathing hard. “Jesus,” she said. “She spat on you.” She pulled a tissue from her bag, made a cone of one corner, and started wiping my hair.

“Let me.” I took the tissue. “Thanks.”

I put two fingers against Stella’s neck to feel her pulse. Her heart was going like mad. I didn’t want to kill it. I just wanted to touch it. She flinched. She didn’t want the spit on her skin too.

*   *   *

Dora waited a few months until she came. I’d known she would. She knew I turned everything rotten—sooner or later, it was all she’d ever seen me do—and she wanted to see her own daughter. What had I done to her?

Stella asked if I was willing to see her. I wanted to know, was she willing to see me?