There were storms all weekend. I lay back and let the mustard bed give way underneath my body. I took the gin straight once the juice had run out and tried to change the patter, the tick tick tick of rain, just by tapping my fingers. The rain kept falling just the same. Tick tick tick: nails against the motel window, my mother’s well-trimmed hands. I took long sips that burned my throat, felt like they were peeling my skin right off, until I’d taken so many they didn’t feel like anything. I let them fill every part of my body. I let my fingers go limp. I let the rain fall.

I went back to the bank on Monday, but I didn’t go inside. I waited on the bench. The air got chilly. I watched workers leave the building. There was a rush at five, another at six—Abe’s low, when everyone goes—and only a trickle afterward. I thought I saw Abe, walking quickly with his head down, but then I realized it was someone else, another big man moving like a spy. Sylvia came through the revolving doors with a pair of pumps in her hand, wearing running shoes, and ducked into the BART station.

It was dark before Toledo got there. She sat down without saying anything. Every day she watched the blue sky going black. This was her life. Where would she sleep? Would it be cold there?

I said, “Haven’t seen you for a while.”

“I didn’t treat you with respect,” she said. So she remembered. “You’ve always treated me with respect, and I didn’t treat you with respect.”

“How are you now?”

She held up one hand. I could see a stub of charcoal between her fingers. “I like sketching when it’s dark out. You can’t see what you’re making.” She glanced up at the sky. “I don’t have enough paper.”

It looked like she’d been drawing on her single sheet for hours. It was a mess of marks. She moved closer on the bench. Her elbow patches were still firm and bright. I liked feeling her close, sitting there, saying nothing.

“Was that your daughter that day in the park?” she said. “The other lady?”

“Kind of.”

“She looked scared.”

“She was,” I said. “A little.”

I picked up the paper. Across the top she’d written: Big Tears. I wondered if she meant rips or crying. I got up to buy us two hamburgers. She ate hers in pieces: buns separately, then the meat, the wilted lettuce last, damp with ketchup. She asked for another.

“Do you have a place to spend the night?” I asked.

“There’s a place I go.”

“The shelter?”

“No.” She shook her head. “Not anymore.”

“But you’ve got somewhere?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I do.”

“I’d like to go with you,” I said. I paused. “I know it sounds crazy.”

She shrugged. “I’ve heard crazier.”