We both looked out of the window again. There were no bright pinpoints of headlights rolling toward us, no dim red glow of taillights moving away. There were no cars on the Gowanus Expressway. Not one. It was the reason the street below the expressway was so gridlocked. It was also probably the reason those bastards had rented Schwa the billboard for half price.

“But . . . but people will see!” the Schwa insisted. “They’ll see. All the buildings around here. People will look out of the buildings!”

I nodded. I didn’t say what I was thinking. That this whole area was abandoned. Looking out of the window, I saw no lights in any of the other windows around us, and certainly no one looking from Greenwood Cemetery. The Schwa could see that for himself.

“Schwa, I’m sorry.”

He took a deep breath, then another, then another. Then he said, “It’s okay, Antsy. It’s okay. Not a problem.”

We went down the stairs in silence, no sounds but the shards of glass crunching beneath our feet and the impatient honks of horns coming from the traffic-packed street below the expressway. It was still bumper-to-bumper when we got out into the street.

“Bus?” I asked him.

“Later,” he answered.

I followed him five blocks to a ramp that led up to the elevated roadway. It was blocked by a barricade and lined with yellow caution flashers. He squeezed through, and I went up with him.

It’s weird being on a major roadway built for six lanes of traffic but carrying none. It made me feel like I was in one of those end-of-the-world movies where there’s no one left but you and a bunch of evil motorcycle maniacs. I would have welcomed some motorcycle maniacs right now, to take my mind off of this billboard mess.

The Schwa doubled back in the direction we had come, walking right down the middle of the expressway. We passed in and out of little pools of light made by the billboards up above, advertising their wares to no one. Finally we reached the Schwa’s billboard. This close, it loomed so much larger than life that the perspective was all off. His smile was big and fat.

He sat cross-legged in the middle of the road, looking up at himself. “It’s a good picture,” he said. “I smiled right. People don’t always smile right when you take their picture. Usually it’s fake.”

“I suck at smiling,” I told him. “At least when it matters.” He looked at me, and I forced a lame smile, proving it.

“It cost more than just my college fund,” he admitted.

“Maybe you can get your money back . . . I mean, renting you a billboard over a closed road—that’s fraud.”