Yeah, you’ve really changed. She sat up and kissed me on the cheek. For a second, I thought we were going to have a good talk about the sleaziness of Braun and the way I’d chosen China and she’d chosen me and now she was off learning to draw maps on the Dirk Wallace Scholarship Fund. We’d talk about the secret world of roofs and alleys and the greatest mystery of all, which was this: the whereabouts of Justine.

But she just whispered into my ear. Can you spare some change? Thanks man. I’m fucking dying I’m so hungry.

Because I had nowhere to sleep, I decided to head to the third floor, where I would open every door until I found an empty bedroom. I was getting tired of watching people shoot up, and most of the people left inside were drifting off into their dreamy inner opium den. No one was amused by my conversations about ventricular atrophy. Besides, the guy with the gun was shadowing me. I told him to meet me out on the porch, and then I ran up the stairs with a sudden burst of energy.

I opened the third and last door, just as I had opened the two others before.

At first, I thought she was a child, a naked little girl. Her back was bare and slim; her arms were folded across her breasts. She sat straddling a man who might have been dead or asleep; I never looked at his face because I was startled by the sight of the pale, delicate body that didn’t seem to belong in that room or in the house.

There was something about her posture that suggested she’d been amused but was now bored, and she leaned back, still keeping her arms crossed over her breasts. I should have recognized her shoulder bones.

I stood in the doorway, transfixed and faint and afraid.

Suddenly she turned her head sharply and stared straight at me.

The room was dark, but there was moonlight through the window and I saw that it wasn’t a child, but Justine. Her hair was now striped with streaks of red and gold, but her face was the same, fragile and doll-like, with her eyes pale blue and her lips red and sly.

I know I must have looked silly with gratitude because I was so stupidly happy. There she was, so I hadn’t dreamt her up, so she wasn’t dead, so I’d found her after all. And I could see why I’d followed her the first time. You could just tell that she knew the Secret, that she’d done all kinds of things and never been defeated or ruined.