TO GATES:

Still holding the line.

Thanks to the usual suspects: Mel Stirling, Christa Hickey, Maddy and Nicky, Miriam Kriss and Jessica Rothenberg. This is getting to be a habit . . .

I am lying in a narrow single bed in a room no bigger than a closet, in a tiny apartment. The pad of paper I’ve been drawing on this trip is a collection of hard edges against my chest; I hug it harder. Outside the window, Brooklyn rumbles like a big sleeping beast. It’s the traffic in the distance, speaking in its own tongueless grumble. They’ve come back from cleaning out a rat spirit infestation, and they’re bushed. Outside the cracked-open door I hear the clink of glasses, liquid being poured, and my father speaks again.

“You have to, August. I can’t leave her anywhere else, and I’ve gotta—”

Augustine interrupts. “Jesus Christ, Dwight, you know how dangerous this is. And she’s just a kid. Why leave her with me?”

I snuggle into the pillow. It’s Augie’s pillow. He had made the bed up fresh for me, in the only bedroom in this crackerbox place. He and Dad thought I was asleep. I took a deep breath. It smelled like a place only a man cleans, frowsty and tainted with a breath of cigarette smoke.

The slam of a shot glass on the kitchen table. Dad was drinking Jim Beam, and if he was doing it in shots instead of sipping, it was going to be a long night. Augie stuck to vodka. “She’s safer here than anywhere else. I’ve got to do this. For . . . for reasons.”

“Elizabeth wouldn’t—”

My ears perked up a little, drowsily. Dad never talked about Mom much. And apparently he wasn’t going to tonight either.