IT WAS JUST A FEW STEPS BEFORE TONY TOLD US, “We’re lost. Already.”

“We’re not lost,” said Darnell. “We don’t know where we’re going.”

“We know where we’re going,” said Pilar. “We don’t know how to get there.”

There was a big window with large red letters that looked like they were on fire. There were people inside, but they didn’t sit together, and they looked out the window and into a mirror over what they drank. There were glasses stacked on top of each other and faucets that spit suds into glasses.

“They might know,” I said, and we pushed in the door. We heard a few soft voices and sad music. A man with a ponytail behind his head who stood behind a tall counter asked, “Beer?”

Darnell asked, “What?”

“Can I get you a beer?” asked the man.

“A what?” asked Darnell, and the man behind the counter made a face and laughed.

“Okay. I get it. You’re not a beer guy—just top-shelf scotch, am I right?”

“I can reach the top shelf,” Darnell told the man.

“Can you tell us how to get to the police station?” I asked, and a man who sat on a stool a little space away turned around to say, “Darling, the police usually find me.”

A woman in black pants and a black apron and a white shirt and bright red hair came over and stood in front of that man. She looked at us with a smile but told the man behind the counter, “Nicky, I think these folks may be from the home over there.”

She tugged her shoulder toward a wall.

“Oh,” said the man who had the name Nicky. “Oh, right, over there. Sunnydale.”

“Sunnyside Plaza,” I told him.

He asked, “You work with Bob and Dorothy?”

“We know them,” said Tony. “Sure.”

“But I think,” said the lady with red hair, “that they’re—”

She pulled on her shoulder again.

“You live there?” asked Nicky. “Or work there?”

“Oh, both,” Pilar told him. “We work in the kitchen.”

“With those funny people?”

“Nicky!” the woman almost yelled, and Nicky started to flap his lips before he could speak.

“Oh, shoot,” he said. “I see. I don’t mean anything. Have a drink.”

“Nicky!” the woman cried again.

“Well, I bet they could use one,” he said.

“Orange juice, Nicky,” she said. “On me. On you, for what you said.”

Nicky pointed a finger at the can Darnell had under his arm.

“Looks like our friends brought their own.”

Darnell laughed and said, “That’s tomatoes.”

“We each have a different can,” Pilar told Nicky. “Peaches, apples, pears.”

“You afraid of running out?”

Darnell laughed again.

“We have a counter, too,” he told him. “In our kitchen. At Sunnyside. Our kitchen smells nicer.”

Nicky lifted up a carton of orange juice from behind his counter and began to pour the juice into a glass.

“Is it old?” Darnell asked him.

“Old?” asked Nicky. “Old juice?”

“You can see on the label,” I told Nicky. “There are numbers.”

Nicky lifted the carton up above his nose and looked hard.

“It says here the oranges in this juice were picked just two days ago by elves in little green suits.”

Pilar said, “Wow.”

The woman with red hair and black pants yelled out “Nicky!” again.

The man on the stool turned around again, and said “wow,” too.

“I think it’s a joke,” I told Pilar. “Isn’t it?” I asked Nicky.

The woman with red hair leaned over the counter and took her own look at the carton.

“The label says sell by the end of the week,” she told us. “It’s fine.”

“We have to be careful,” I told her. “We take pills.”

“Oh, so do I,” said the lady. “Aspirin, blood pressure. I’m Jackie,” she told me. “Why are you looking for the police station?”

Nicky poured out 1, 2, 3, 4 glasses of orange juice and handed them to Darnell, Pilar, Tony, and me.

“We need their help. We need to show them something.”

“Can I help?” asked Jackie. “We can call the police. You usually call the police when you need them to help.”

“Thank you,” I said, and took a sip of orange juice. “But we have to see some people there—Esther Rivas and London Bridges—who told me to look around for something, and I did.”

Darnell drank his orange juice as he listened and then told Jackie, “People don’t hear us, sometimes. People think we don’t know things, so they don’t hear us. We have to show them if we want them to hear us.”

Jackie seemed to think about that and said, “I hear you. Well, the police station is one block up, two blocks over.”

“Up?” I asked. “In the sky?”

The man on the stool laughed.

“You’re funny. Really funny. What’s your name?”

“What’s that to you, Marvin?” Jackie asked him.

“Sally,” I told them. “Sal Gal.”

“Well, Sally Sal Gal,” said Jackie, “‘up’ in this case means you go out our door and go left. For a block.” She looked at her wrist. “Then you turn right.”

“Right?” I asked, and Jackie lightly tapped one of my shoulders.

“This side,” she told me. “You can tell a block is over when you see a new street. You’ll see that after you go left”—and Jackie tapped my other shoulder—“and get to the corner. There’s a church mission there.”

Jackie must have seen my face and knew that I didn’t know what she meant, really.

“Like a church. But it doesn’t look like a church. It’s a big, lighted room where people sing and pray.” Jackie tapped Marvin on the top of his head. “They pray for Marv.”

Marvin turned around to say, “I don’t need prayers.”

“You don’t need another beer,” Jackie told him. “That’s what you really don’t need.” And then she turned back to me. “The mission has prayer and song meetings. They should have one tonight. They’re not police. But they try to help people. Maybe you could stop there and ask them to point you toward the police station. You sure I can’t call your friends there? Esther and—is that really his name? London Bridges?”

I nodded my head.

“It sure is,” I told her. “But we have to show them the cans so they’ll know.”

Jackie leaned a little closer to me.

“Is it… safe for you to be out… here?” she asked.

“It’s… different,” I told her. “We don’t go out much.”

“Are you okay?”

“Oh yes,” I said.

“Should I… call someone?”

“Oh no. Our police friends are detectives. We have to find them, show them, and they’ll help,” I told Jackie. “I’m sure.”

“Well, we’re here,” she said. “If you find your way back.” Then Jackie, the red-haired lady, took hold of my hands.

“A lot of people come in here looking for something, Sal Gal,” she said. “At the bottom of a glass. And they just try glass after glass, and never find what they want. But I think you’re looking at life the right way, Sal Gal. You’re on your way.”

Nicky was pouring more orange juice into everyone’s glass, but I told them all, “We better go.”

Marvin put his hand over his glass and told Nicky, “Don’t let orange juice break my beer glass.” A couple of other people in the back of the place laughed, and as Darnell opened the door for the rest of us, we saw the red sign on fire again, and Darnell said to us, “That was good, wasn’t it? I like it out here.”