Thirty minutes later I stood in front of the Arie Crown Theater, buffeted by streams of exiting fans. No Sophie. At length I was forced to admit that she had slipped past me.
Thanks to Baz, I knew where she would go next.
Outside Yoni’s hotel, I paid off my cab and chose a park bench. Grant Park was hot and humid. Near midnight, tourists strolled along Michigan Avenue. Hobos lay on the grass in the park, sharing cigarettes. I was tempted to lie there like them, with my body on the good ground instead of on this dirty bench, but I sat where I was.
Those days were behind me. No more sleeping in the open with Jake snoring beside me, no more blanket of stars. I had a home, a bed, clean clothes. Suddenly I was homesick for the road, though I had hated it all the years Jake dragged me behind him. I wanted to smell his foul cigars again. I wanted to hear him call me bad names in Kreyol.
I mourned Jake the only way I knew how. Under my breath I sang a song he loved. “Hear the whistle blow five hundred miles…”
I sensed a quickening in the night around me.
I stopped singing.
Someone had heard.
Someone was listening.
It wouldn’t do to attract a mugger. I sent my gaze around without moving, examining each person in sight, those tourists, those smoking hobos . . . and that man seated on a park bench half a block up the street.
He was surely too far away to have heard me crooning under my breath.
Nevertheless I got up and ambled away from him, eastward into the park, until I was well out of his sight line. Then I doubled back and stalked him from behind.
He was looking everywhere, watching the night with none of my subtle woodcraft. Every taxi that stopped in front of Yoni’s hotel drew his close attention. He seemed tense, keyed up like a crack user, sitting still with difficulty.
Somehow I knew he was here on my business. I could feel it.
I drew closer with caution. If he had heard me singing from half a block away, he would feel me behind him.
Sure enough, he stood suddenly and stared into the shadows of the promenade. He examined each bench and tree in turn.
I ducked behind a tree. I waited. After a cautious interval I looked again.
He had turned back to watch the hotel.
I knew him now. Sophie’s papa. My heir.
I backed away, then returned south a full block away from my heir, and took up a position behind another tree, keeping the trunk between us.
I had one comfort. If her father thought Sophie would come here, then I was on the right track.
In a few minutes I knew I was right. I could feel Sophie nearby. I sensed her hovering, light as a moth, cautious but drawn—attracted—obsessed with that singer.
Some movement down the block made me look at her father. He was standing, his hands plunged into his pockets in a way that disarranged the hang of his fine coat. He stared at the hotel—up high. His body was taut. His face, even far away, looked strained.
I followed his gaze.
On the edge of the hotel roof, a human figure swung, monkeylike, at the end of a rope.
While I watched, the figure stopped descending the building and stood on a window ledge. It bent, slid the window up, and slithered inside.
I took off running across the street.
Then I realized I might attract her father’s attention, if he could tear his eyes away from that twelfth-story window. I dropped to a walk and sauntered across Michigan Avenue against sparse midnight traffic. It wouldn’t do to climb the wall right in front of him. While I stood indecisive, something brushed my cheek. I looked up. Many somethings were fluttering down from above in a soft cascade, like dark snow. Another patted my face. I slapped at it.
It was a red rose petal.