Vera was beginning to see that her search faced a wall she’d not anticipated. Many had worked to build it. They rightly saw that the world must have its expertise. They believed it was too complicated for the common man, and for those beings with uncommon attributes—ghetto ballerina and passing mulatto—occupying lowly denominators—night cops and night editor—it was as narrow as pencils in fat, angry oceans. Stanley told Vera the obvious, how there were beats—night cops, Pentagon, White House, courthouse, legal affairs, Redskins—because there had always been beats. They predated the summer of ′71; they were contemporaries of hansom cabs. Like a trotting horse pulling a woman in a petticoat, Stanley believed, beats kept the Room hidebound. And so Vera labored, trying to reach Jupiter on a pogo stick.

Vera tried to play it back. She’d been walking to the bike rack on the second level of the parking garage. Whispering the Marian litany of Loreto: “Mystical rose, pray for us. Tower of David, pray for us. Tower of ivory, pray for us. House of gold, pray for us. Ark of the covenant, pray for us. Gate of heaven, pray for us. Morning star, pray for us. Health of the sick, pray for us. Refuge of sinners, pray for us.” It was dark; one of the garage lights was out. She couldn’t remember if she’d heard the footsteps behind her—there were so often people getting their cars around then, just after the first edition closed. He was on her so fast. She did remember the scent of him clearly, because at first she’d thought it was Stanley, but this wasn’t the smell of cigarettes. It was the smell of chalk.

She knew that smell, because her father liked a pool hall near home. She didn’t remember much else about him, really, except that whiff of the gentian block he ground his cue into and got on his hands when she was, oh, maybe only four, the last age she would have been when he was still around.

But this chalk wasn’t Daddy; it was Gordon Bray, the new managing editor. She’d seen him here, getting his sea-green Vespa. He grinned at her with the glissading confidence she imagined she’d have had if she’d been him.

Her memory eddied right there. Did he say, “Baby says ‘hi,’” in that Euro accent of his, or was that said later, after he told her he had gotten to know Baby. Gotten to know Baby—her mind took more than a few turns to bring that twirler down to earth.