For a while we talked about nothing that mattered, and I tried to keep him laughing as long as I could. We talked about food, about the first fistful of candy he stole when he was a child, about the abominable pancakes I used to force my father to eat every Sunday.

“Six or seven years back,” he said, “when the fence was new, me and the lads snuck over and scaled the walls of Aylesmere’s. Got into the air vents, shimmied down to where the restaurant is, and cracked the seals on the iceboxes. One was full of strawberries, the other whipped cream. I ate myself silly, Gilda, and as my eyes started to cross, there crossed my mind the purest thought I ever had.”

“Do share.”

“When I’m grown, I thought, every day of my life I’ll eat all the whipped cream I want.” I flicked a spoonful of trifle at him. It missed badly, landing in the cage of a grateful hound. “I suppose I’m grown now. I’ve lost enough friends to qualify.”

After that, I couldn’t make him laugh very hard anymore.

When the food was cold, and our plates bore nothing but unidentifiable smears of sauce and starch, I told him the little I’d learned, and what would happen when Thorne’s next boat came in.

“Van Alen’s people are marshmallow soft,” said Cherub. “Scared of the dark. Thorne will crush them.”

I disagreed. “I’ve seen them. What they have up there, they’ll fight for it.”

“And die by the thousand.”

There was a long silence, and Cherub’s hand crept across the mattress to rest on mine, and I found myself whistling to banish the thought of kissing him.

“That awful song!” said Cherub.

“‘The Bloody Fist Dirge.’”

“Lovely title.”

“I learned the lyrics too. They’re some of the worst . . . say, Cherub. Did you ever hear of a blacked-out pier?”

“Is this some kind of riddle?”

“A blacked-out pier in the river where old sailors go to die.”

“Let it go, Gilda. We’ve lost enough.”

“One that had been painted black, maybe? Or taken off the maps?”

“I’m no Daybreak Boy, Gilda. The river was never my turf.”

“Then where do old sailors die?”

“In my experience? Any dive that sells nickel gin.”