I worked for hours, learning far more than I wanted about man’s obsession with covering women’s hands. I found nothing useful. I’m not sure I expected anything different. I could have searched for information on Galen Copeland. I could have tried to understand the meaning of the word in his datebook, “brass.” But those were bigger mysteries than were safe to contemplate, and I was already feeling rattled by Bruce’s story about the disappearance in 3B.

When it was clear the trip had been wasted, I walked home along Fifth Avenue. It was mine, and mine only. North, this canyon of skyscrapers was clean and precise. South of the Borderline, for a few glorious blocks, it was the avenue of my dreams: vines twisting tighter every year, buildings caving into the sidewalk, strange light dancing up a street of broken glass. The air was rank with glorious decay—like the water in the bottom of a vase of rotting sunflowers. I breathed it deep and forgot the wasted afternoon.

The shop windows had been smashed long ago, but you could see the remains of mannequins, whose blank faces had so terrified me as a child. Every Sunday afternoon, my mother and I strolled the avenue, laughing at the latest fashions and pitying the women who flocked here every week to empty their wallets. We imagined their faces when they got home and laid out their purchases on the bed, and found that no amount of silk could ease the creeping terror that spoiled their sleep and curdled their days. My mother was not a silly woman, and she was not a cruel woman, but since she married Virgil Carr she had never had money, and nothing made her laugh like imagining the secret heartaches of the wealthy.

The late-afternoon sun lit up Washington Square like a bonfire. A fallen elm lay in front of the arch, rotting into the matted green carpet. I could have walked around it, but it was more fun to climb over it, and so I did. I spent my childhood playing in this park, but I never had so much fun as I have since the district emptied out and the forest was left to grow. It was a private garden now, shared between me and those peculiar people who still lived around the square. Only I, and a few brave and hardy children, had the nerve to venture into the square’s darkest corners.