“Get on the horn and get an ambulance up here,” he told Asbury, “then get upstairs. Your boss’ll need you. We’re taking the car.”

Asbury hopped to attention. He was halfway down the block when I realized I never thanked him for the dressing. I called after him, but if he heard, he didn’t respond.

“No reason to thank the man,” said Virgil. “It’s his job.”

We climbed into the car. Getting it started flustered Virgil, who cursed under his breath at the machine. He seemed to take its defiance personally.

“Hate these things,” he said. “Never could get used to them. Never had any urge to. You can’t drive one, can you?”

“No. Can you?”

“Well enough.” We lurched into traffic. “Just as good that I do the driving. From here out, I’ll handle this whole situation. It was a stupid mistake bringing you up there.”

“As I recall, it was I who brought you.”

“Girl your age shouldn’t be in a room with a man like Van Alen. Shouldn’t never have to do . . . what you did.”

“No need to thank me. I was doing my job.”

Watching his face as he struggled to maneuver the uncooperative machine onto Broadway, I could tell there was a lot he wanted to say to me. There was certainly a lot I wanted to hear. Instead, we said nothing. I sank into the seat and felt the throbbing in my cheek sync up with the humming of the engine.

“You’ve ruined that dress,” he said somewhere past Central Park. “Your mother . . .”

“She isn’t my mother.”

“All the same, she’d wring my neck.”

“That’s why I can’t stay. You understand that, don’t you?”

“We’ll discuss it when this is through.”

“You seem to think it’s your decision.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Even if you were my father, I wouldn’t let you talk to me like that.”

“And that’s just the problem, isn’t it, with this other city of yours. It’s warped you. It’s made you hard.”

“That wasn’t entirely the city’s doing.”

“I suppose not.” He gripped the wheel, bit his lip, and performed a less-than-graceful turn toward the East River. “It was . . . my counterpart, his fault as well. I’d like you to stay, girl. Give me a year or two, see if we can’t sand down some of those rough edges, make up for the damage the other Virgil done.”

“I like my rough edges. I am my rough edges.”