“Are you—Do you think they might hurt you?”

“I think they want to scare me,” I said. “I think they might want that.”

I didn’t say the words “homeless” or “black,” though I could see they were both. This wasn’t about that. This was about women and men together in the dark, what might happen.

“I need to go,” I said.

“Call me back, alright? To let me know you’re okay?”

I hung up. I called Abe. He picked up on the fourth ring.

“I’m sorry,” I said. My voice was shaking. “I know it’s late. It’s Stella.”

“You sound strange.”

“I’m at the parking lot on Bryant. There are some guys. I need you to come.”

“I’m—Jesus Christ. Yeah. I’m coming. Are you—I mean—are you hurt? Did someone hurt you?”

“Just come,” I said. “Please?”

I hung up the phone but kept it close to my ear. I called my own answering machine so it would look like I was talking to someone. I kept checking the rearview mirror. The guys had wandered a little farther from the fence, but it was still closed. They hadn’t wandered far. One of them climbed onto a small blue sedan and started jumping on the hood.

This is Alice calling your Connecticut cave…This is your mother and I think you’re on the road…This is Tilly, I think the beep already happened, I think you’re coming home at three…

I hung up. I checked the mirror again. Now the man was cross-legged on the roof. He hurled his bottle at the window of a nearby car. There was the high, fragile crackle of glass breaking, then the frantic thrumming of the music once more. I checked the sidewalk both ways. I closed my eyes. I’d count to twenty and then I’d open them. There had to be a way to make the moments pass faster. To get through them, any way I could, that was all.

I heard tapping. I put my fist into my mouth to stop the sound in my throat. I was an animal, my stomach rising raw and fast. I wasn’t making choices, just listening to the fear.

It was Abe. I could see his big white pupils, one hand pushing his glasses up his nose. I opened the passenger door and he slid in. I leaned across and grabbed whatever parts of him I could—his cold hand, his solid thigh—I pulled his shoulders close and gripped hard. Now I was really crying, throat heaving into something like hiccups. “Thank you.”

“Hey,” he said. “Sorry I scared you.”

“You didn’t scare me.”

“Looks a little sketchy down here,” he said. “Kind of a bonfire situation.”

I laughed and rubbed my hand across my face. The skin was slick and wet from tears, all over my flushed cheeks and my mouth.

“I didn’t see you coming,” I said. “I was watching.”

“I came in off Bryant. Looks like the other fence is closed.”

“I know,” I said. “They closed it.”