I HAVE VERY LITTLE TIME left now. I don’t have the patience to wait until my appearance is less alarming. I put on some clean clothes at least—most of my clothes are downstairs in Autumn’s bedroom now—and walk stiffly to the library. I draw stares along the way. I draw stares from a mother and her child when I pass them in the foyer. I don’t care. It’s a hundred to one shot that Oscar will be there—I don’t even really know whether it’s morning or afternoon—but there he is. He stands up when he sees me heading toward him.

“What happened to you?” he whispers.

His compassion makes me furious. I have no plan here beyond thinking he might give something away if I approach him threateningly enough. “You don’t know,” I say.

The librarian is already afoot, heading around her desk and in my direction.

“Know what?” Oscar says. He doesn’t look all that concerned for me; his eyes are darting all around him. I have become an incriminating figure, the opposite of invisible. The lank-haired librarian is almost upon us. What a character she is. Authoritarian to her core. What is she protecting, exactly? What is she enforcing? Her life is a child’s life, a little fake kingdom defended by crossed arms from reality of any kind.

“Outside,” Oscar says to me and nudges my shoulder. When we are out in the sunlight, by the glassed-in community message board, he puts his hands to his forehead. “What are you trying to do, get me banned out of there?”

“You’ve been to my room,” I say. “You’ve seen it. You know where it is.”

“So? I didn’t say nothing to her.”

“I need the money. I recognize now that I don’t need all of the money. But I can’t have nothing. You know what will happen to me. Wait, what did you say?”

“Boy, make some sense. I don’t know what kind of trouble you’re in, but I’m the one Black guy you know and now I stole some money from you? Who put that beating on you? It couldn’t have been that little wisp of a thing.”

“What fucking wisp? What are you talking about?”

“Look,” he says. “I don’t know what kind of shit you’re into, and I don’t care, I truly don’t. Somebody was around here asking about you. Some woman.”

“What? When was this?”

“A week ago? I don’t know. I figured out the person she was looking for was probably you. She showed me a picture. But I didn’t tell her shit. Now you raving something about money, it makes a little more sense.”

“What did she look like? Kind of tanned, stocky, halter top, hair piled up on her head?”

“Nope,” Oscar said and narrowed his eyes. “How many women you got out looking for you? No, this was some tiny woman, young. Tattoos all down the arms like white girls do nowadays. Acted all official. Too little to bust you up like this, though. Who did that?”

“A cop,” I say. “Wait. When was this?”

“I don’t know, week or two ago. I didn’t write it in my damn diary. Listen, you should get out of here. I’m starting to be sorry I ever talked to you.” He turns to go back inside.

“Listen to me,” I say. It’s an act, but it’s also not; everything I need to feel in this moment is available to me. “Someone took something that belongs to me, something very valuable. If I find out you had anything to do with it and didn’t take this one chance to make it right with me, I will kill you.”

And he laughs. He doesn’t believe it even for a second. “Please, motherfucker,” he says. “You’re killing me right now.”

Who would be looking for me? Asking about me? Who would even know to try the library? Who would have a picture of me? Was it a recent one or an old one? I should have asked Oscar that, but I didn’t, and now the opportunity is gone. The question of what has been done to me may go deeper than I imagined.

I do spend some time upstairs in my violated room. Some nights, even. The door won’t lock, but it will stay shut if I push the garbage can in front of it. I eat what little food is there, slowly. The food is now what the money used to be: zero sum. Whatever I use, I have no means of replacing it.

Partly for that reason, I gravitate back downstairs to Autumn’s, and she never seems surprised to see me. She brings home a lot of takeout food. She never asks me to contribute, but then I’m not always sure she’s buying for two. I eat what she doesn’t finish. Sometimes we watch television. I couldn’t tell you what’s on; it’s just something we sit in front of. She pours us both a drink and leaves the bottle between the glasses.

When she is asleep, I will sometimes get up to use the bathroom and then make my way as quietly as I can around the dark first floor, trying drawers, trying closets and cupboards. Some of them are locked. Left open, predictably, is the drawer in the kitchen that contains, among decks of playing cards and loose batteries and other junk, the gun. I take it out and hold it, waving it carefully but loosely in the air, getting the feel of it. It is heavy. I feel sure it’s loaded, though I don’t even know how to check. Gently, with the barrel facing away from me, I put it back and shut the drawer and return to bed.