Day Three

April 2

ONCE AGAIN, AFTER MOPPING THE HALLS AND COVERING A COUPLE OF broken stairwell windows with cardboard and duct tape, I spent the rest of the day trying to get through to my dad at Pucegreen Manor. I thought about trying to brave a train ride up there, but with the National Guard surrounding the area, I realized I’d never get through. And taking Metro North would be like hitching a ride on the epidemic express. My only consolation was that my dad most likely didn’t know what was going on. He’d been forgetting who I was most of the time, so he wasn’t going to miss me, anyway. I just hoped the virus hadn’t made its way inside the nursing home. All I wanted was to see him, to know he was okay. It kills me that Instagram and Twitter are full of posts of sweet-cheeked little grandkids drawing pictures outside of nursing homes, dogs, and teary-eyed adults pressing up against spotted hands on the other side of the glass barrier. Maybe that’s how it is if you can afford some expensive private nursing home, but certainly not up at Shitgreen Manor.

I looked up the numbers so I could record today’s daily statistics. I don’t know why I find this calming when the numbers themselves are anything but—I guess they delimit the catastrophe in my mind. Today, April 2, New York State hit 92,381 cases. That’s more than the number of infections that all of China reported in total. One thousand five hundred sixty-two dead in the city as of Thursday evening. CBS news announced that there were more 911 calls received today than on September 11, 2001.

Think about that for a moment. All those ambulances. A city full of 9/11s.

The rooftop had started to become a refuge for people in the building, I could tell. But when I arrived this evening, I saw there was going to be trouble. The tenant in 4C, whom Vinegar had trashed the night before, was up there, dressed to the nines and looking sleek and ready to do battle. She was skinny and gym-rat fit, with ripped arms; long, heavy, swinging blond hair; a discreet mole on her chin—in short, a goddess. Not my type but my interest was piqued, much as I’d never mingle with the tenants. Perched on vertiginous pigeon’s-blood patent-leather Louboutin pumps. Where the hell did she get money for that, living in this dump?

Vinegar had called her Miss Thing, but it didn’t take me long to find her in the super’s bible. Pumps, of course. Apparently she was an Instagram Influencer, specializing in pictures of her pedicures. Two hundred thousand followers.

Pumps remained standing, facing the door, all flexed up like a prizefighter waiting for the bell, as we straggled onto the roof in our usual disorganized way, settling in our socially distant seats with our drinks and snacks. As soon as Vinegar appeared, Pumps rounded on her.

“You been shit-talking me,” Pumps said, her suburban Jersey Sopranos accent slicing the air, utterly at odds with her gloriously curated appearance.

Vinegar calmly continued her walk to her seat, unruffled, while Pumps followed her. Vinegar was carrying a wine sleeve in one hand with a small, folding side table under her arm. While Pumps stood over her, glaring, Vinegar set up a little round table, pulled a glass and a corkscrew from her backpack, cut off the foil, uncorked it, gave the cork a sniff, poured herself a taste, swirled it around, tasted it again, while everyone else surreptitiously watched the unfolding drama. Eventually, Vinegar nodded with satisfaction and poured herself the wine.

Only then did she look up at her antagonist, looming over her, arms akimbo. Leaning back in her chair, putting more social distance between them, Vinegar said, calmly, “You’ve been talking smack about me for as long as I can remember. I just returned the favor.” From her backpack she retrieved an alcohol-soaked chamois cloth—the chemical smell only heightened the tension in the air—and a second wineglass, then proceeded to clean the glass with the precision of a painter wiping down canvas. She then filled the second glass with wine and proffered it to Pumps, who took an alarmed step backward.

“Now take yourself and your coronavirus breath somewhere else,” Vinegar said, “and let me enjoy the evening in conversation with friends.” She turned to Eurovision. “Isn’t that right?”

“Um,” he said nervously. He had on a fresh paisley bow tie with a plaid jacket and striped shirt and skinny green pants with yellow ducks on them. Clearly our rooftop was going to stand in for Eurovision 2020. “Now, miss, ah, I’m sorry I don’t know your name, but you’re welcome to join us in conversation.”

“I’d rather spend the evening in Satan’s ass cuddled up with scorpions than listen to you douche bags in conversation.” Pumps whirled about and left, letting the rooftop door bang loudly behind her.

“Whew,” said Florida, fanning herself, even though it was a cool evening. “My mother always said, ‘Those who bark hang with the dogs, you know what I mean?’ That woman’s trouble.”

Vinegar said, “She pays for those damn shoes by slutting all over Instagram. That’s what I heard.”

“The world sure has changed,” said Florida, “where a moron like that, with a ring light and nice feet, makes a couple thousand dollars a week posting photos of her toes. I remember when a café con leche cost one dollar and the gourmet deli was called a bodega. I’ve seen a lot of things, and have I ever said anything? You better believe I haven’t.

“Not like those blanquitos, who keep calling 311 on us. You like a song on the radio and raise the volume a little bit, and the next thing you hear is the siren out your window and a cop ringing your doorbell, asking you to turn it down. As if a good song ever bothered anybody. It’s noise to them only because they’re not listening. Music gives us an escape, colors the shit of life, and let me tell you, we need this fucking music, because life has not always been so good to us. Especially now! You know what I mean?”

Florida sounded like she had a story to tell. I was starting to really enjoy this. I poured myself the drink of the night—a Rusty Nail—and eased myself back on the couch, phone charged and recording.

* * *

“I’ve always played it straight, and worked hard and paid my bills, thinking that when I got old, I could retire back home or just retire and collect my checks, but how do they say, you plan and God laughs, and oh my God, we all lost our jobs and the only ones who got spared were the rich, and I was fifty-five years old when the factory moved away. The bosses said they couldn’t afford us anymore.

“Do you know how much I made after working nineteen years in that doll factory? Eleven dollars an hour. If I didn’t do all that overtime, every Saturday and holiday, I couldn’t have made the rent, and the lights, and the gas and the cable and the phone and the food. But bosses said they paid us too much. And I got paid more than the new people, so imagine that. All of us, out of work, with no one to turn to. Even my kid, who went to the fancy college and worked with one of the big banks, lost his job, and he was worse off than me because he never saved a dime. He bought everything with his credit card, thinking he would be making the big money forever. Ha! There is no forever or security for the poor. There is only hard work, and you always need luck. I told him this, but did he listen?

“Anyways, it broke my heart seeing him jobless and desperate, because I’m used to living with very little, but my son likes the designer shoes and has two kids in private school and a wife who likes to get her nails and hair done every week. So of course he comes to me asking me for help, thinking I had some savings. I had thirteen hundred dollars at the time, more than he had in the bank, which is crazy because he was working for a bank. But that wasn’t even half his rent. I gave it to him, but not all of it, because even if the unemployment checks would cover most of my bills, I kept two hundred dollars for an emergency.

“At the time, even if the world was falling apart, I was optimistic. Remember when Obama got elected, with his sí se puede song? Oh, God, I was drunk on hope and the dream he was selling. And c’mon, he’s just so fine. So fine! Like those first few weeks when he became president I would wake up feeling all nice inside after he would visit me in my sleep. In the dream we would be in a room in some beautiful house and our eyes would catch and he would give me that look, like—‘I see you, Florida Camacho.’ And if he wasn’t married to Michelle, I know he would’ve asked me out to dance. Because oh, I love to dance. And the way Obama moves, it’s clear he can dance. Yes we can, papi! Yes we can, in my kitchen, in my living room, in my bedroom.

“Oh, don’t you all miss it? The dancing, the getting up close to someone, the music so loud you can’t hear your mind, and the vibrations of the speakers inside your heart, and your feet digging into the floor, getting to the root of things. And with the right person, someone who can hold you just the right way when you’re dancing, their hand pressing on the small of your back, and for that moment in time, one feels like everything is gonna be all right.

“But we’re stuck now. God ain’t playing no games. We can’t even shake someone’s hand. Six feet apart. So sad. And if you cough because something is stuck in your throat, everyone’s ready to throw a rock at you. Even my own son, who I’ve been there for, no matter what trouble he gets into, won’t visit me. Not even to wave outside my window. He knows I don’t see anyone else. Not a soul, because I have the asthma, and the last time I had pneumonia I almost died. He knows I’m careful and that he’s safe visiting me. But no, he says he’s trying to save me from getting sick, acting like he ever cared about me. But he’s lying. And you know what all this solitude has made me realize, that I’ve been lying to myself. When the shit hits the fan, we’re alone. And people will kill each other for that last roll of toilet paper.

“Remember that year we had snowstorm after snowstorm and the sidewalks were like a skating rink? And most supers laid out the salt the night before so we could get around and not kill ourselves trying to get to the bus stop. But the lazy super out by the corner on Clinton Street let the ice get real thick. A real hazard. And I one day, rushing—didn’t think a tragedy would ever happen to me—stepped right on the ice, slid on that sidewalk, crashed into the building, and my foot got stuck on that iron fence, broke my knee and cracked my hip.

“You better believe I called that lawyer who advertises on the buses. No case too big or too small, they said. And just like the lawyer says on his commercial, the money did come in. And back then you better believe my son came to visit me in the hospital a bunch of times, always wanting to talk to the lawyer directly, supposedly in my best interest, but I told the lawyer that he could not be trusted. Because it’s true. This is the thing about being old—you stop lying to yourself. Or maybe I just stopped lying to myself. When my son lost his job, he drank and played the numbers because he always thought he was lucky. But he ain’t lucky. I kept telling him that everything he has ever had was from working hard, at school and at work. But he was always looking for the shortcut to being rich. So when the money came, of course he came around a lot. And I gave him a good part of it. But then I told him it was finished, to see if he would stop by just to say hello. Hoping that because he loves his mother and he knows how happy it would make me, that maybe he would bring my granddaughters to visit. But he never did.

“My son thinks I have nothing to give him anymore. He thinks I have no more money to lend and frankly, even my meals, I know they’re not as good anymore because I can’t smell. Before you start looking at me like I have something, yes, I saw that Times article last week, too, but trust me, I don’t. I haven’t been able to smell for ages, before this novel coronavirus showed up. And because of that, I can’t taste the food I make.

“And so I think, this curse, this plague that has fallen on everyone in the world—yes, people are dying, and we have to be careful, but don’t you think it’s rather convenient, too, the way the plague now is being used by the young people. They go around like they don’t care. Maybe they just want us old folks to die so they can inherit whatever we have left. Maybe they’re relieved of not having to visit us? Like, do you think that there can be love when there is need and greed? Like, was I just someone my son needed? It all makes me very sad. Like, will I end up like the old man on the fourth floor?

“Were any of you around back then? I can’t remember. The red-headed man who lived above me, who smelled like skunk and never shaved. He was always pounding on something, so hard my light fixtures shook. He drove me crazy with all his racket. And sometimes it was as if he was sawing the heating pole in half. What a torture. And I would pound my broomstick against the ceiling for him to stop. And I complained to the super, the old super. I even wrote him a note and begged him to quiet it down. And then it did stop. And how lovely it was. I had forgotten how beautiful the silence was. I loved the quiet so much I didn’t even want to turn the radio on. Or the TV. Or open a window. For a short period it was as if my ears were full of water and all I heard was the quiet hum of my thoughts. Even my chatty mind quieted down. I was so happy to be in the quiet. And when the sirens in the distance blared or someone yelled at someone outside, I was jolted from what felt like a dream.

“But then we could all smell it. That smell of decay, and oh, the poor old man who made a racket, who barely said ‘thank you’ when you held open the lobby door for him, had died. He had been dead for days and days. And I felt horrible at first because I had been so happy those days with the quiet, and all along, he was dead. And you know what? With him went my sense of smell. Gone. Forever. Just like that.

“But then the noise came back. Because the landlord wanted to gut renovate the apartment to triple the rent, and what a nightmare. And this girl, with the shoes and the Instagram, she has money because all alone she pays that triple rent. But don’t say you heard that from me. Like I said, I like to mind my own business. All I know is that something is going on with her and the exterminator.

“So you know how the exterminator used to come by on the third Saturday every month? Anyone with eyes knows he’s handsome. But he’s so respectful, always with ‘sí señora, permiso, señora.’ And I always offer him water, coffee, because who knows how long his workdays are. And he always says no and quickly sprays the bathroom, then the kitchen. And he does all the apartments, always in order, on each floor. I hear him on my floor going to 3A, then 3B, then me, 3C, and so on down the hall. Then he goes upstairs. And when he is upstairs, I can hear his footsteps so clearly because he has those heavy worker boots, with the hard rubber. And they are big feet, a nice thing for a man to have. And he steps hard. And the floors, as you know, thin like paper. So I know when he’s spraying the bathroom, then the kitchen, which requires him to walk down our long hallway. But then the footsteps stop. At first I didn’t notice, but then I paid attention. And every third Saturday of the month when he visited, it was the same. I timed the minutes he was in my place and counted the apartments in the building and added up how much time it will take him to finish all the apartments, give or take a few, being that some people aren’t home. And you know what? There is always a mysterious amount of time unaccounted for. And you know where he spends it? With the lady who lives above me.

“So of course the next time he comes to my apartment, I try to get to know more about him. Is he married? Does he have children? And he hurries along, his big muscles bulging from under his T-shirt. His wild long hair in a ponytail, thick and dark and shiny like those men on the cover of romance novels. He pretends as if I’m not asking him anything at all, rushing to get upstairs. And always, when he gets to the fourth floor, I hear the door close behind him. I hear the footsteps on my ceiling, stomping down the long hallway, and then not a peep.

“You see, my heating pole runs up through my ceiling into her apartment. And all of you should know that if you talk near it, I can hear what you’re saying as if you’re in my own kitchen. So be careful what you say. So of course it’s not like it’s my business, but the not knowing was keeping me up at night, so I pressed my ear to the heating pole to see if I could hear them. Sometimes the volume of the music goes up and then down, sometimes I hear her laugh. And then about thirty minutes later he leaves, his heavy steps down the hallway shaking my ceiling.

“Honestly, who could blame her. Who doesn’t miss affection? I mean, the last hug I received was from my son. Maybe he only visited when he wanted things, but when he visited, his mouth was full of honey—and his hugs, he really knows how to hold a person. And I’d dress up for him just so he’d tell me how good I looked. God, I do miss him.

“All I have to do is tell him I have money in the bank and before you know it he would forget everything he had said about keeping me safe during this plague, and he would come over to my apartment, sit in my kitchen, eat my cooking, and give me all the hugs I want. I know this to be true.”

* * *

The thought of Florida missing her son like that really choked me up. Oh, man. When was the last time I got to hug my dad? Really not since I had that asthma attack last month. Why the hell wouldn’t anyone answer the phone at old Pukegreen Manor? What if I just showed up and demanded entry? They’d have to let me through. Or I could just sneak through someone’s backyard maybe. As soon as I can get out of this place.

I was yanked back into the rooftop chatter by Ramboz’s cracked voice. “The last super found that old tenant’s decomposing corpse,” he informed us all, with relish. “Or so I heard. Been there for days. Horrible purple color, with all the fluid running out.”

It was true, I’d seen the notes in Wilbur’s book. I wondered what else the tenants might reveal about my predecessor. I leaned a bit closer to the action, all the time trying to look as if I didn’t care at all.

Hello Kitty unfurled herself from the cave chair, her fingers clenching her glittery vape. “He had a name, you know.” She threw a look at Florida.

Florida returned the look, uncowed.

The Lady with the Rings jumped in, her voice soothing: “I’m sure he was a lovely man if you didn’t have to live below him.”

Hello Kitty ignored her. “His name was Bernstein. Not ‘steen’ but ‘stine.’ He used to tell me, ‘Steen is mean, but stine is fine.’ You all didn’t really know him at all, none of you.” She dropped her hand from her necklace, flicking her fingers open as if we were gnats. “You’re all so clueless. Mr. Bernstein would be pissed at you, talking about him as a noisy, smelly old man. You know why he was so loud? Because he was almost deaf. And if he was here now, he’d tell you the story of the absolute worst way to die, even worse than what happened to him in the end. You want to hear it?” It felt like she was daring us to tell her no.

When no one did, Hello Kitty settled back into her seat. “There have been other pandemics, diseases worse than Covid. Mr. Bernstein should know—one almost killed him.”

“You know that it’s a lie that the coronavirus is just like the flu, right?” Eurovision looked uneasy about ceding control of the conversation to this unpredictable young woman. “Haven’t you heard all those stories from the hospitals where they’re running out of ventilators? People choking? It’s a pretty terrible way to die.”

“Sure,” said Hello Kitty, “but there’s something much worse.” She edged her chair back so that there was more room between her and everyone else, clearly enjoying the attention. She raised her vape and took a quick hit. “A fate worse than death.”

* * *

“Abe was only eight. It was the summer of 1952, and he and his twin brother, Jacob, were staying with their aunt in Canton, Ohio. They had a blast, visiting the Hall of Fame, fishing and swimming in the lake their aunt’s house was on, going out on the boat with their uncle. Everything was great. Right up until the morning when Jacob got out of his bed up in the attic, where they both slept, and fell down the steps.

“He didn’t break anything, but he couldn’t move his legs, so they rushed him to the children’s hospital in Akron and called Abe and Jacob’s parents to drive back early from their week in Atlantic City. All Abe remembered was the whispering. Constant whispers hushing whenever the grown-ups noticed he was near. The way they hugged each other but never him. And he knew; he just knew. They were afraid of him. Afraid he had the plague, same as Jacob. The polio.

“Then Jacob died. Abe wasn’t allowed to attend the funeral services, not allowed to come downstairs as relatives poured in from Pittsburgh and Cincinnati and Erie and Buffalo and places he’d never heard of, like Altoona.

“All that time, he lay upstairs in the attic, wondering: Would he be the next to die? All alone, locked away with his twin’s empty bed and nothing to do but read and worry and try to add his voice to the mourners’ below as they recited the kaddish, the prayer for the dead, hoping that God heard.

“But God didn’t hear. Two days after Jacob died, Abe couldn’t get out of bed. They wouldn’t let his mother come with him in the ambulance, the steel doors slamming shut against her screams and tears. Then they jabbed him with a needle, and he fell asleep wondering if he’d ever wake up again.

“Wake up he did. Only to find himself trapped. Locked inside a nightmare.

“He couldn’t move. His body had been swallowed whole by a huge machine that clanked and whooshed and stole his breath when he was trying to breathe in and forced his lungs to fill up with air exactly when he wanted to breathe out. He panicked, tried to scream, only to find that he had no voice.”

“Oh, very Harlan Ellison,” Eurovision interrupted. I’d had my eyes locked on Hello Kitty’s face, so even I was startled a bit by this.

“Excuse me?” Vinegar snapped.

“You know,” said Eurovision, warming to his subject. “‘I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream.’ Classic story—the human race is destroyed by this computer AI, except the computer keeps a few humans alive just to torture and play with them like lab rats—”

“Sounds perfectly horrid,” Vinegar said. “Let the girl continue.”

Hello Kitty met my gaze, watching me watch them—she was no fool.

“So poor Abe. Just a little kid, alone and scared, and he can’t tell anyone how he feels. Even swallowing makes him choke, so they shove a tube down his nose. The iron lung keeps tugging and pulling at his body, and it’s worse than any medieval torture device. But the worst thing is how all alone he is. And he can’t help but wonder if this is also how Jacob died: alone, unable to scream, unable to do anything except stare at the metal monster that is holding him prisoner, making weird noises like it’s eating him alive. Maybe the ambulance guys kidnapped him, maybe this wasn’t the hospital at all, but some evil mad scientist’s laboratory like in the comics?

“Maybe he’d never see his mom and dad again. Maybe he was going to die here, just like Jacob.

“But he didn’t die. Instead, he fought. He learned how to relax and work with the machine. How to ignore the itching he was desperate to ask someone to scratch, the pain of the feeding tube rubbing against the back of his throat, the burn of his eyes so dry because the only things he could move were his eyelids, and that took so much effort that they’d often slide open whenever he fell asleep.

“He couldn’t speak, couldn’t communicate except to blink furiously, hoping someone, a nurse, his parents during the short times they were allowed to visit, the man who worked on the machine—anyone who came close—would notice. He tried to let them know that he wasn’t gone, that he was still alive, held hostage inside his own body.

“Then he heard the doctors urging his parents to let go, that his case was too far gone, that they were keeping his body alive, but Abraham, the child they knew, his mind was probably already damaged beyond hope. Inside he was screaming, but the only thing his parents noticed was a tear after the doctor shone the light in his eyes. His mother wiped it away without even looking at him. He was afraid they were going to give up on him, that he’d die there, maybe even be buried alive—his worst nightmare.

“But after already losing one child, how could they not fight for their last child? And so, Abe’s parents insisted that the doctors keep doing everything possible. Their love was what finally saved him—that and a mirror.

“More precisely, a crooked mirror.

“Imagine a little boy, fighting for his life, trapped inside the prison of his own body, unable to even tell anyone he was still alive. Imagine the hours, the minutes . . . the seconds. Every itch tormented him, every stray breeze burned his skin raw. He counted every breath the machine squeezed out of him, counted the rivets and screws and bolts on the machine, counted his own heartbeat echoing through his brain. He played imaginary games with his dead brother, tried to remember the scoring plays of every baseball game he’d ever seen or heard on the radio. He even prayed, this terrified, lonely, bored little boy, who was slowly going insane.

“But then one day—he’d lost count of how many days he’d been held prisoner by the machine and his body—one day, after the janitor left, in a hurry because he had tickets to the Indians hosting the Pirates, a voice called to Abe from the wilderness. A little girl’s voice: ‘Well, hello. I couldn’t see you very well until now. But Mr. Alvarez knocked my mirror when he was cleaning it and now instead of what’s behind me, I can see you, isn’t that nice? You’re Abe, right? I heard your mother call you that. I wish my parents came to see me, but they have to work and take care of my brothers and sisters.’

“Abe had heard the nurses and the girl talking, of course. And he sensed that she wasn’t very far away—after all, they were sharing an iron lung, how far away could she be? But his own mirror reflected only the blank wall behind him, and since he couldn’t turn his head, he couldn’t see her. Until now, her presence had been one more irritation, less annoying than the itch on his nose that he couldn’t tell anyone to scratch for him, more annoying than the fly buzzing up near the overhead light. At his age, girls were, well, girls. He didn’t understand them; they seemed to talk all the time but not about anything important or interesting; and they couldn’t play ball—or wouldn’t play ball—so what good were they, anyway? At least that was the consensus he and Jacob and all their friends had reached by the ripe old age of eight.

“But now, a girl, this girl, saw him. She prattled on and on—something about her brothers and sisters and missing her friends at school, and woven in there was a story about a squirrel that she had left food for on her windowsill one morning and how suddenly she was responsible for an entire family of squirrels and she hoped someone back home was remembering to feed them all—and Abe felt as if a lifeline had been thrown to him.

“And then she said, ‘I know you can hear me. Blink once for yes and two for no. That way, we can sort of talk. I’m so bored. And it’s kinda scary being here, all alone. Could you do that? Talk to me?’ Abe was elated. He’d tried blinking to his mom and his dad and the nurses, even Mr. Alvarez, but it took a lot of work, and no one noticed—especially not after the doctors told them it was only some kind of reflex. But the girl, she’d noticed. She could be his voice. Maybe. If she wasn’t dumb like most of the other girls he knew. So, slowly, determined, he focused all his power on his eyelids and carefully closed them. Long enough for the machine to breathe out and then in. Then he opened them.

“The girl cheered. ‘Yes, that was a yes!’ She began peppering him with questions: Did the tube they fed him through hurt? Yes. Could he still taste the food, because it was yellow like cake batter, but it smelled funny, did it taste like cake? No. How long had he been here, because he was here when they brought her in two days ago? Abe wasn’t sure, so he stared straight ahead, keeping his eyes open as wide as he could until they watered. ‘Oh, you don’t know?’ she translated, and suddenly they had expanded their vocabulary.

“And so it went. By the time the nurses made their rounds that night, the girl was fluent in Abe-blinks, and, despite being exhausted, he performed for them. The next day, they showed the doctor and more nurses, and then Abe’s parents, who cried with delight before immediately bowing their heads in prayer. Slowly, but surely, Abe improved, regaining control of his muscles until they could remove the feeding tube, and his voice, at first just a whisper, became stronger. He still couldn’t turn his head, but he asked a nurse to turn it for him and finally, days later, he got his first look at the girl.

“She wasn’t much to look at—like him, her body was swallowed whole by the iron lung. She had curly hair that the nurses kept brushed and pulled back in a red ribbon. Her eyes were brown like his, and she had a bunch of freckles, and her two front teeth overlapped the slightest bit. But to Abe, she was the most beautiful thing in the world. He only wished Jacob was here to see that maybe girls weren’t so bad after all. Her name was Clarissa, and he decided then and there that he was going to marry her one day. She told him she was getting better. They were moving her to another hospital where they could work on her muscles.”

Hello Kitty leaned back in her chair as if waiting for applause. We waited for her to continue, but she just gave us all that unreadable smirk that irritated the hell out of me.

The Therapist spoke. “So? Did they see each other again? Did he find her? Did Abe marry Clarissa?”

“They were just kids,” Vinegar scoffed. “How could he have found her?”

Florida said, “I think Abe did have a wife who died young.”

“Was her name Clarissa?” someone asked.

“I forget her name.”

“What I think we all want to know,” said Eurovision, turning to Hello Kitty, “is what happened.”

“What do you think?” Hello Kitty’s hand unconsciously caressed her vape. If we’d been playing poker, I’d say that was her tell—but what did it mean? A full house or a bluff? “Maybe I don’t know what happened.”

“Obviously you do,” said the Lady with the Rings. “If Abe told you the story this far, he would’ve finished it. Either Clarissa died, or he never knew what happened to her, or he later met up with her and maybe married her. One of those has to be the truth.”

Another smirk; Hello Kitty was enjoying the attention. “What is truth,” she said, “and what is fiction?”

“God, you’re such a drama queen,” Eurovision said. “Did he marry Clarissa?”

“Fine. After Clarissa saved Abe’s life—or, at the very least, his sanity—he never forgot her. Once he finally improved enough to go home, he asked his mother to help him write thank-you cards to the nurses who’d taken care of him. And inside them he placed notes he’d written himself, asking for Clarissa’s last name and address so he could write her. For a long, long time he didn’t hear anything, but then one day, a letter came. Addressed to Abe. Of course, the nurses couldn’t give out Clarissa’s private information, most of them hadn’t even thought twice about Abe’s scrawled note, but one had reached out to Clarissa’s parents and passed Abe’s request on.

“It had taken a long time—it wasn’t like today, when people compose marriage proposals in one hundred forty-four characters and in less time than it takes to watch a TikTok. But Clarissa wrote back. Then Abe replied, and slowly, over the years, they somehow kept going. She was two years younger than him, so he had to wait for her—and spent his first two years at college worried that she’d graduate high school, marry the guy who’d taken her to prom, and Abe would never hear from her again.

“And he didn’t. Not that entire summer after she graduated, not even a thank-you card or phone call after he’d sent her a graduation gift—a lovely antique compact he’d found at a secondhand store. He thought he’d lost her forever.

“But then, as he’s moving into his apartment to start his junior year, a flash of light hits his eyes, so bright he almost drops the lamp he’s carrying. He blinks and turns and it’s Clarissa, standing across the street where the sun hits her compact mirror just at the right angle for her to send its rays his way. Blinking, like their old code.

“They were together over forty years until she died, and he couldn’t stand living in their house without her, not without the girl who’d saved him from a fate worse than death. So he moved in here.”

* * *

“And that,” she said, with a cool glance at Eurovision, “is what happened.”

I looked around at the group, wondering if they were all thinking the same thing I was. But I was surprised to see Vinegar surreptitiously whisking away a tear. Even Eurovision seemed at a loss.

“No wonder he would have seemed so angry all the time,” said the Therapist. “Poor guy.” She seemed about to say something more, but just then the bells of St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral began tolling. Eight o’clock. For the first time, I noticed how clunky they were, and out of tune. One must have been cracked, because it gave out a dead sound on the final stroke. Those bells seemed to have become an unspoken signal for the end of our evenings, because everyone began to shift themselves out of their chairs and start a round of six-foot-distant goodnights.

I was just going to let it drop. What business was it of mine if the kid wanted to lie? But her smirks had gotten to me. She knew I knew. But I wouldn’t call her out publicly. I wandered over toward Hello Kitty, hovering near her casually as she tucked away her AirPods. She looked up at me, defiance in her eyes.

“You’ve never been inside 4C, have you?” I said in a low voice.

“Says who?”

“I know about the old man who died in there.” I hoped I wouldn’t have to explain how—I was pretty sure these people would not be thrilled to hear about Wilbur’s bible.

Hello Kitty held my gaze, her face carefully revealing nothing. I should have kept quiet, but I continued.

“His wife’s name was Roxanne, not Clarissa. He met her when he was in the navy. Nothing you just said about his life matches what I know about him, except that he was old and deaf.”

Her face broke into a small, cynical smile, not even doing me the honor of looking guilty.

“You made that story up,” I finished.

After a pause, still with that hard glint of a smile in her eyes, Hello Kitty said, “So what?”

I couldn’t think of an immediate response to that. But Eurovision, who’d been putting his speaker into his knapsack, had overheard and stepped over, always ready to be the center of the action.

“My dear girl, it really isn’t kosher to tell a false story about someone who lived in the building. Did you even know him at all?”

“Fine. I never met him, okay?” Hello Kitty let her voice rise above the rest of the chatter on the rooftop. “But did any of you ever bother getting to know him? If it weren’t for Miss Know-It-All here, none of you would have had any idea. Who are you to judge what’s true or not, anyway? No one should die alone, abandoned and forgotten. And now everyone will remember him. Abe Bernstein.”

Hello Kitty climbed out of her chair, turned on her heel, and stalked downstairs, leaving the cave chair and the rest of us in the eerie silence of the city that was never supposed to sleep. Eyes shifted from the door, back to me and Eurovision, frozen in place. I wondered if I had done the right thing. Everyone had wanted to believe her story. Despite the plague, the threat that surrounded us, we all liked to believe the lie that our lives might someday have a happy ending—even if the truth is we all end up like the old man in 4C: purple and draining fluids.

I reluctantly returned to Hades and sat at the old desk, half drunk, and began replaying the evening on my phone, scribbling it down in The Fernsby Bible. As midnight neared, the footsteps came again. Tonight they were very soft, like someone tiptoeing in socks, and, strangely, seemed to be going only in one direction. The gentle footfalls would come, barely audible, one after the other in agonizing slowness, like children up to no good. It would take a good minute or two for them to cross the room, right to left. I strained to hear them go back the other way, but they didn’t. Maybe I was imagining it. But then the footfalls would come again, right to left. I also heard once or twice a gentle splashing noise. Christ, I thought, there’s a leak up there.

Tomorrow, I’ll check it out.