When my father was young, he navigated between cities by radio. Driving dark andusually empty highways, he'd twist the dial back and forth, back and forth,until he'd hit a station. Then he'd withdraw his hand and wait for the stationID. That would give him his rough location--that he was somewhere outside ofAlbany, say. A sudden signal coming in strong and then abruptly dissolving ingroans and eerie whistles was a fluke of the ionosphere, impossibly distant andeasily disregarded. One that faded in and immediately out meant he had grazedthe edge of a station's range. But then a signal would grow and strengthen as hepenetrated its field, crescendo, fade, and collapse into static and silence.That left him north of Troy, let's say, and making good time. He would begin thesearch for the next station.

You could drive across the continent in this way, passed from hand to hand bylocal radio, and tuned in to the geography of the night.

I went over that memory three times, polishing and refining it, before thebranch line abruptly ended. One hand groped forward and closed upon nothing.

I had reached the main conduit. For a panicked moment I had feared that it wouldbe concrete or brick or even one of the cedar pipes the city laid down in thenineteenth century, remnants of which still linger here and there beneath thepavement. But by sheer blind luck, the system had been installed during thatnarrow window of time when the pipes were cast iron. I crawled along itsunderside first one way and then the other, searching for the branch line forthe Widow's. There was a lot of crap under the street. Several times I wasblocked by gas lines or by the high-pressure pipes for the fire hydrants and hadto awkwardly clamber around them. At last, I found the line and began thepainful journey out from the street again.

When I emerged in the Widow's basement, I was a nervous wreck. It came to methen that I could no longer remember my father's name. A thing of rags and