They climbed the last two flights in silence. At Danny’s room, his father took a series of breaths as Danny inserted his key in the lock.

Nora opened the door before he could turn the key. She smiled. Then she saw who stood beside him, and her pale eyes turned to ash.

“And what’s this?” she said.

“I’m looking for Joe,” his father said.

She kept her eyes on Danny, as if she hadn’t heard him. “You bring him here?”

“He showed up,” Danny said.

His father said, “I have no more desire to be here than you—”

“Whore,” Nora said to Danny. “I believe that was the last word I heard from this man’s mouth. I believe he spit on his own floor to emphasize the point.”

“Joe’s missing,” Danny said.

That didn’t move her at first. She stared at Danny with a cold rage that, while it encompassed his father, was just as much directed at him for bringing the man to their door. She flicked her gaze off his face and onto his father’s.

“What’d you call him to make him run?” she said.

“I just want to know if the boy came by.”

“And I want to know why he ran.”

“We had a moment of discord,” his father said.

“Ah.” She tilted her head back at that. “I know all about how you resolve moments of discord with young Joe. Was the switch involved?”

His father turned to Danny. “There’s a limit to how long I’ll stand for a situation I deem undignified.”

“Jesus,” Danny said. “The two of you. Joe’s missing. Nora?”

Her jaw tightened and her eyes remained ash, but she stepped back from the door enough so Danny and his father could enter the room.

Danny took off his coat straightaway and stripped the suspenders from his shoulders. His father took in the room, the fresh curtains, the new bedspread, the flowers in the vase on the table by the window.

Nora stood by the foot of the bed in her factory uniform—Ladlassie stripe overalls with a beige blouse underneath. She gripped her left wrist with her right hand. Danny poured three whiskeys and gave a glass to each of them, and his father’s eyebrows rose slightly at the sight of Nora drinking hard liquor.

“I smoke, too,” she said, and Danny saw a tightening of his father’s lips that he recognized as a suppressed smile.

The two of them raced each other on the drink, Danny’s father draining his glass one drop ahead of Nora, and then they each held out their glasses again and Danny refilled them. His father took his to the table by the window and placed his hat on the table and sat and Nora said, “Mrs. DiMassi said a boy was by this afternoon.”

“What?” his father said.

“He didn’t leave a name. She said he was ringing our bell and looking up at our window and when she came out on the stoop, he ran away.”