“I guess you left your Boy Scout Manual at home.”

Simon chuckles painfully his head is spinning. “Yeah, something like that.”

“Name’s Irene.”

“Simon.”

“How’d you lose your shoe?”

“Long story.”

“I bet.”

She reaches across the dash for a pack of cigarettes and looks down at Simon’s feet. “I’d say you did break it.”

“Probably.”

“Hurt much?”

Simon feels like crying. “Everything hurts, honey.”

“Honey, huh?”

“Sorry,” mumbles Simon.

Irene checks the rearview mirror and then the sideview as she changes lanes and turns off Third Avenue. She is expert, an engineer working the controls.

“Where you goin?” Simon asks her.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Where?”

“Look here, limpy. Ain’t no way you can take care of yourself. You gonna look like Lurch forever if you don’t mind that foot.”

“Where we goin? Don’t take me to the hospital. Not to Northwestern. My mom used to work there.”

“You callin me honey and now you worried where I’m takin you? That’s a good one.”

She turns again but Simon doesn’t have the energy to lift his head to see where they are going. Simon used to pride himself on knowing how to navigate the city without looking at the streets, the corners, or the signs. Just show me the top three floors and I’ll tell you what block, what street. I’ll tell you when it was built. Now his vision is too blurred, his body too racked to care.

“It can’t be no worse than where I’ve been,” he says to himself.

Irene reaches out and pats his shoulder.

“Things always worse, baby.”

They stop, the wide American tires crunch glass and sand in the unswept gutter. Irene gets out and walks around to Simon’s door. She opens it and bends down and grabs Simon expertly behind the knees.

“I’m gonna swing these out. You lift so we don’t knock your foot. You with me?”

“Yeah, yeah. I am.”

Simon looks at her. Her loose shirt hangs down away from her body and he stares at her breasts that hang free, the crescent of a nipple.

“Come on. Pay attention, cowboy.”

“I’m an Indian.”

“Whatever. Just lift those legs.”

He does and she holds him by the waist as he stands.

“Lean on me. We got some stairs, but not too many.”

They walk to the steps of an old apartment building.

“Put your weight on me,” she says.

She puts his arm over her shoulders and holds his hand as he hobbles alongside her.

She keys the door open and shuffles through next to Simon.

“Just a few steps to the second floor and we gonna be home free.”

Simon sees the stairs and groans.

“Just use me. Put your weight on me.”

He hops up each step on his good leg, his bad one held out and back like a misplaced and useless tail.