Margaret began to give details about Phil and her, but Fire stopped her politely and gave her yet another fact. He had to go, and the clerks in billing needed to speak with someone. Would she deal with them? He had no idea how these things worked in America.

“It’s not that I don’t want to,” she said, “it’s just that I don’t … y’know …”

“Know him?”

“Yes. I don’t even know his full name or his address.”

“Well, I have to go,” he said. “I’ve been here for thirteen hours now and I need to get away.”

He gave her his details and Phil’s information, then left.

He didn’t realize he was drenched in sweat until he went outside and the wind transformed his body hair to splinters. Standing outside on Seventh Avenue, he sensed what it was like to be a tree in a metropolis—to be a living, breathing thing that was ignored. As he looked around for something to call out to him, to pull him in a direction, he felt his feet being sucked into the earth below the concrete, felt his toes turning into roots.

He’d never known New York to be indifferent. There was always something calling out to the lonely. Good things and bad things, novelties and fixtures, bright lights and dark places, saviors and con men. But tonight, though, the city just went about its business.

Raising his head slowly, he looked up at the sky and couldn’t see the stars through the mustard gas of smog. Jesus Christ. This place would deny him now the basic right to wish.

“Whassup?”

He looked over his shoulder and saw a guard—a one-eyed youth with two gold caps.

“Why you looking like that, B? One o’ your boys up in here?”

He nodded.

“Whassup? He got shot?”

“He might have tried to kill himself. We’re not sure yet.”

“He white, right?”

“How’d you know?”

“Cause when niggers get upset they kill another nigger.”

Fire shrugged his shoulders.

“But yo, I gotta go finish my shift. I just came out for some air. I don’t know how they expect a mofucker to get well with that death smell they got up in there.”

Fire shrugged again.

“But yo, don’t worry about your boy, man. What’s gotta be gotta be. Go home and chill with your lady, man, and don’t give a damn about a thing.”

He slunk away. Fire found a phone and called her, tapping his feet as he dialed, trying to ignore his stiff chest and trembling jaw. She wasn’t picking up. He called again. Same thing.