He turns onto Washington and from there to Third Avenue but has to stop and throw up behind a Dumpster. He sees the police station looming like a fortress up to his left. He knows he hasn’t done anything. They have nothing on him this time, but it doesn’t take much to look suspicious. Ill-fitting clothes, the sneer of pain on his face. The color of his skin. His injuries. Anything can be used against him. He inspects his shirt for specks of vomit. Finding none, he continues to limp forward, the parking meters stationary crutches lining his way home.

His eyes don’t leave the pavement. He catches himself counting the slabs of sidewalk, counting how many sections there are between parking meters. The skyline holds no attraction for him. He emerges from underneath the skyways and linked buildings. Keeping his eyes to the ground he turns to the front door of the Curtis. Instead of the wide double doors, his fingers find only chain-link fencing. His leg hurts and his stomach has not calmed down. He looks up.

The hotel is gone. Where the Curtis used to be there is nothing but a pile of rubble on an empty lot. He sees sections of brick like puzzle pieces, bent pipe, chunks of cement with rebar sticking out like deadly thistle thorns. The debris forms a huge pyramid, atop which someone has set an old sign for the Curtis. The “C” has been half ripped away.

Simon turns around and checks the street signs, but he has never been lost in the Cities. He is sure he is in the right place. He looks back at the lot. There is nothing of value left. It is as if a bomb fell on this one building and blew out all the marble countertops, the ornamental iron, sinks, toilets, bathtubs, doorknobs and railings, leaving only great masses of brick, tamped down into rough roads that must have been used by the bulldozers. He can’t quit staring at what is left of the hotel. He can’t believe it.

He knows city planners and developers can push through permits as quickly or as slowly as they want. A building that took years to put up can be pulled down in days. He knows this. He has done it. But he can’t bend his mind around the fact that he has no bed, his mattress buried under such a load of brick. When he closes his eyes he sees his coffee cups, his two spoons, the rusty hot plate and the few shirts he left in the box under the bed. But when he opens his eyes he is greeted by this carnage of brick.