He’d intended to spend the night at her place. He liked sleeping with her, even when it was only sleeping. He put up with sleeping with the King of Siam, who sometimes decided an exposed ear was something that needed killing. Now he decided going back to his apartment made a better idea. Assuming he was entitled to stay was liable to piss her off.

She didn’t ask what he was up to or tell him to stop when he began getting dressed. That made him figure he was probably doing the right thing. She needed to get used to his being around again, too. “We’re both still getting our act back together,” he said.

“And getting our act together back,” she said, which also wasn’t wrong.

From her place to his wasn’t more than five minutes. He thought hard all the way down 139th Street. Everything would be fine for a while. He’d lifted the photo of Humpty Dumpty and the one of the aliens inside from the middle of sequences of similar pictures. Nobody would notice they were missing right away. You’d need to count the prints or compare them one by one with the negatives before you’d realize a couple had walked with Jesus.

Not with Jesus, Jerry thought as he pulled into his building’s driveway. I’m only a distant, distant cousin. He was smiling when the security gate swung up to let him in, but not by the time he got out of his car.

Jerry dialed the number his old house had used since he was eight years old. They called it a three-two number now, not a DAvis number, but it was still the same number no matter what they called it. The phone rang twice. Then his father picked it up. “Hello?”

“Hi, Dad. It’s me.”

“Oh, hi, Jerry,” Hyman Stieglitz said, as if the call were a surprise. Then he got himself back in gear. “Where do you want to go tonight? The Tijuana Inn okay?”

“Anna and I had Mexican food last night,” Jerry said.

“Did you? All right. How’s Helen Yee’s sound, then?”

“That’d be great,” Jerry said. When he was a kid, Gardena had boasted only two Chinese restaurants. Helen Yee’s was the good one. There were more Chinese places around now, and it seemed kind of old-fashioned, because it hadn’t changed a bit. But the food was still tasty. “What time?”

“Six o’clock work for you?”

“How about a quarter to?” Jerry said. If his father went along with that, he ought to be there by six straight up.

“Fine,” his dad said. “See you then.” He hung up. So did Jerry.