I checked the rearview mirror, and sure enough, there it was, where he’d come from: the other gate swinging out. It had been open the whole time.

“They’re strung out,” he said. “They’re bums. They don’t know what they’re doing.”

“They were trying to fuck with my head. It’s what they can do, make people afraid. It’s all they’ve got. It’s fucking absurd—”

“Hey,” he said. “It’s alright to be scared.”

I stepped onto the concrete. I could hear the music louder now, the machine of its buzz, traveling through the tar like an underground river and humming against my shoes. It was feedback off an underground microphone. There were pulses of crackling. I saw the dancer man lying in a pool of light. He had his arms and legs spread like a snow angel’s. The man sitting on the car was watching us leave. “Hey!” he said. “Lady, hey!”

Abe put his arm around my shoulders. “Good night, man!” he called out. His voice didn’t have any kind of question in it.

“Lady don’t like my look? Is that the trouble?”

“There’s no trouble,” said Abe. “We’re just heading home.”

“Your lady thought there was trouble.” The man turned to me. “Didn’t you?” He raised his fingers and snapped them right in my face. “You’re scared of it,” snap, “scared of it,” snap, “scared of it . . .” He grinned. “Until you want it. Just like that.”

He was close now. He smelled like cigarettes and burnt garlic.

“Want what? What do I want?”

Abe tightened his grip. “We’re just heading home. No trouble at all.”

“No trouble, right,” the man said. “You got your lady and all that.”

“What do I want?” I said again. “Why don’t you tell me?”

“Don’t you know?”

“I don’t know.”

Abe whispered in my ear, “We should go.”

“I really don’t know,” I said. “You should tell me.”

“You want me,” he said. “Looking at you.”

The next morning I found three messages from Tom. Guess you forgot. And then: Fuck you for forgetting. And then: Call me back or else I’m flying out.

I called him back.

“You had me worried,” he said. “You get that?”

Abe’s loft was in the middle of an area south of Market that yuppies were beginning to claim—lot by lot, loft by loft—from the prowling bums and drug addicts, the mechanics who crouched in shadowed auto shops. It had a name like Manhattan, SoMa, only here the sun set close over the water, behind the stadium.

Good-looking men and women strolled the dirty streets in polo shirts and ethnic skirts. They smiled at the homeless folks they passed but didn’t give them money or else gave money without smiling. The sidewalk was lined with entrance areas in cages, where people kept their welcome mats. Each one, it seemed, was home to a small pair of running shoes.