I nodded, and a path opened to the far end of the bar. Abner walked down it, carrying the dog bowl like he was escorting me to my coronation, and I followed at his heels. The crowd clapped, slow and mean, hating me for stealing their prize. At the end of our march, he handed me the bowl, unlocked a metal door, and bowed until I stepped inside. By the light of a greasy lantern I saw a glorified crawl space filled with a pile of stained mattresses, occupied by a single dozing drunk.

The door slammed shut. The lock rammed home. Cradling the bowl in one arm, I twisted the knob. It did not give.

“Abner, goddamn it, let me out!”

The drunk in the corner stirred and shushed. I continued shouting and he pushed himself onto his elbow. He was small, and his eyes were wet with gin, and when he grumbled, “Shut your mouth and for god’s sake let us get a touch of sleep,” I realized how bad I’d missed him. For here was a ghost, a myth from the past, the once-and-future chieftain of the One-Eyed Cats, a survivor of Eighth Avenue, a hero of the docks, a Westside legend, my former lover, and a welcome sight for bloodshot eyes.

“Cherub Stevens,” I breathed.

“Lord. Is that a brace of Gildas Carr I see swimming before me?”

“Tell me there’s a way out.”

“Not till Abner lets us out at dawn. Now are you sharing, or what?”

He patted his mattress, which was no more filthy than any of the others, and I took a seat. I lifted the bowl of increasingly icy gin, and we drank deep.

I looked him over, this beautiful black man, and saw the light had gone out of him. His coat was shredded; his hat was flat, and his hip, I was shocked to see, was bare.

“Where’s your saber?” I said.

“Hocked it. I’m done fighting. After last year, I couldn’t look at it without smelling blood.”

“And you’re not working?”

“Where would I go? Van Alen won’t take Barbie’s old soldiers, my papers don’t allow me over the fence, and it’s hard to find respectable work when all your references are dead.”

I couldn’t argue. We passed the bowl. We did not talk about last autumn, when war brought us together and fear of being happy drove us apart. We talked of our childhood—those days when death had only just taken hold of the Westside but had not yet begun to squeeze. We worked to remember the names of people lost, of places gone. We emptied our bowl and banged the door and did not complain when no one answered. But no matter how I tried to lead it elsewhere, my mind wandered back to the Byrds.