They continue up Washington, the municipal buildings petering out until the older warehouses and streetcar storefronts emerge sheepishly in their wake. The cars shoot past, sinking and rising in the sagging, potholed road. No one is on foot. Even the check-cashing stores and rental shops are hooded in the rain, neon paling from behind the besmeared windows. They cross over the freeway on Broadway. The old neighborhood is looking older, rotting away since the streetcars disappeared in the fifties. They cross Dupont and then Emerson. Neither knows what to say, so they walk on in silence until they reach an abandoned storefront on Freemont and Broadway.

“We’re here.”

“Upstairs?”

“Yeah. Up on top. No way in hell I’m lettin you up, though.”

“I wasn’t gonna ask.”

“Like hell. Anyway, I suppose I’ll be seein you on Washington.

But if you wanna walk, ask.”

“Yeah, okay.”

She keys the aging Yale lock and opens the glass door. She closes it behind her, shakes the water from her jacket, and stamps her feet on the dusty industrial carpet that runs up the stairs, puffy slick stuff made for lawyers’ offices and motels.

Simon turns and hunches down in his jacket and begins walking back to the Curtis. It begins to rain harder.

14

Simon boosted Lester so he could slip quietly into Vera’s room before she sat up in bed, startled awake by his presence. Lester laid his finger over his pursed lips. She stared at him, still trying to shake out the last shreds of sleep and distill from the wet night real shapes from shadows. Lester danced silently around the room, tossing clothes—jeans, T-shirt, windbreaker—on the bed.

“Get dressed,” he whispered, before he scampered to the sill and, like a reverse beshadowed Santa Claus, poured his long dark body back out into the night.