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were on the job, I’d give a damn, but I’m not, so I don’t. Let the kids have their little campfire fairy tales. I’m here for information.
    “David, I’m not going to kill you, but if you don’t stop rambling and tell me what I want to know, I will hurt you.” This snaps him back into the present tense nicely. “Now: did you ever see Trevor with anyone else? A girl, perhaps?” I didn’t want to take it there, but when I say it, he immediately squints his face up and nods.
    “There was a girl. Well, I noticed her. She didn’t say anything, but every time I met with Trevor at the Red Edge, she was there, always at the same table in the corner, always drinking a glass of red wine. And it struck me, you know, because I never saw her there before, and she was, you know . . .”
    “Hot?”
    “Yeah, definitely. And also . . .” He waves around looking for the word.
    “Black?”
    “African-American, yeah.”
    “Did you just correct me, David?”
    “No! I mean—”
    “Anything else about her?”
    He has to think about how to answer this for a second.“I always had the feeling she was like somehow with Trevor or something. Cuz I go to that spot pretty frequently . . . well, I did, and I’d never seen her before.”
    “Anyone else?”
    “Uh-uh, not that I saw. I mean, I could be wrong. You know . . . I don’t really know. I just . . . yeah.”
    I’m about to send him back downstairs when he gets this real concerned look over his face. “The other thing is . . .”
    “Yes?”
    “I’ve been, um . . . off, ever since.”
    “How so?”
    “Well, I feel like shit, and . . . I’m bleeding.”
    “Bleeding?”
    He shows me the wad of tissue. It’s bright red.
    “From where?”
    “Everywhere. My eyes, nose. Ears sometimes.”
    “That’s not good. You seen a doctor?”
    David shakes his head. “Nah, I’m gonna wait it out, see what happens.”
    “Probably not the best move, considering you’re bleeding from your eyeballs.”
    He shrugs. “Yeah, well, thanks for your concern. Can I go back downstairs now?”
    *   *   *
    I picked up a habit at Mama Esther’s once I’d slipped far enough from death’s icy claws to see clearly again. Every night I’d lope up the stairwell to that massive attic library of hers, retrieve some random, ancient hardcover, and then go back to my room and read it till I passed out. At first I was all the way lost, all the time. Gradually, pieces began fitting together, shards of history, warfare, science, magic all clicked into place. Reading any book from that librarybecame like following a single endless story with infinite tentacles. Through all the tumultuousness of healing, reopening wounds, sliding back and forth between the edge of death and helplessness, I found peace in that unending story. It was a place I knew I could always return to. Solace.
    So I carried on the tradition when I got my own place. I have a modest couple of shelves—nothing that could shake a stick at Mama Esther’s collection, but it does the job. Tonight I’m on Herodotus’s
Histories
, a copy that Esther perma-lent me when I left, but it’s not holding my attention at all. Instead, disparate scraps of the day catapult back and forth across my mind. The ngk, the fucking ngk. I can still taste that filthy dread in my mouth. The fact that it’s in Brooklyn, so close to Mama Esther’s library—the only truly sacred place I know—makes things all the worse.
    And then there’s Sasha. I retrieve her crumpled photo, feeling somewhat stalkerish, and check to see if that certain oomph is still there.
    Yes.
    With a vengeance. Something lurches in my gut. It’s like fear but . . . yummier. How can a single moment, captured on a tattered scrap of paper, cause such havoc on my insides? I’m stoic, steady-handed. I’ve died, dammit.
    This is unacceptable.
    I’m wide-awake and irritated. I toss the picture off to the side, grumble for ten seconds, and then