A noise woke him suddenly and he jerked himself upright with both hands still braced against the wheel. The two boys he'd seen before were squatting on the hood with the toes of their bare feet curled against the dash. Crumbs of windshield squeaked under their heels. They were lightskinned and somber and they seemed to know him well. The smaller boy pointed at something on the seat behind him.

"Happy birthday," said the boy.

"Girlfriend's first name," the other boy said. His voice was highpitched and polite.

Lowboy looked cautiously over his shoulder and saw the bag that they'd been kicking up the street. Dark with tar or grease along the bottom. A bag for a Jamaican beef patty or a chicken cutlet sandwich or a beer. He reached behind him and brought the bag over the seat and held it toward the boys but neither of them took it. He opened the bag himself and looked inside and saw the carca.s.s of a stillborn dog.

"Get up," said the small boy. "No sleeping." He worked the words out thickly through his teeth. The other boy yawned. The sun behind them made them look like cutouts. They frowned at him but he felt safe and careless. He felt sleepy and untouchable and still.

When he kept quiet the taller boy sucked in a breath and let it out and eased his body down onto the pavement. He squinted at his feet and shuffled slowly clockwise and let his knuckles drag along the hood. He stopped at the pa.s.senger-side door and opened it. The smaller boy's eyes never blinked. He ran his tongue along his teeth and nodded sadly. Lowboy stared back at the boy and listened to the gla.s.s chittering and wondered how he'd gotten to that place.

He was starting to remember when the taller boy's hand closed over his mouth. The hand smelled like rust and old treebark and crumbling bricks. It touched his face lazily, heavily, the way that it had moved across the hood. Aged fingers testing and exploring. When he sat up the hand covered his eyes.

A wheezing. A rustling. The crackling of paper.

The hand withdrew soon after but his eyes refused to open. He felt the seat sag and buckle as someone got in. Cursewords were uttered. It was not the small boy's voice or the other boy's either and it was like no voice that he had ever heard. He had never heard it but he recognized it. He had heard it since the day that he was born. Careful now, said the voice, and immediately everything went shrill.

"Okay, Alex," Lowboy said, covering his ears. "Okay, Dad." He had no idea what business his father had in that G.o.dforsaken place but he knew that it was no business of his. A hand slipped into his shirt pocket and he let out a frightened breath and slumped forward until the seatbelt caught and held him. He couldn't remember having put it on. He was about to cry out when the boys cleared their throats and the voices came to life and started shouting.

When he opened his eyes he was alone in the car. The sun was the same but the sky had changed colors and the seat was dark and cool against his back. The brown bag was empty. The gla.s.s had been arranged into small bright piles along the dash but he couldn't make sense of the pattern. He sat up and looked at the street. A group of women stood cl.u.s.tered at the far end of the block but other than that he saw no one. If he listened closely he could still make out the voices, at times even understand them, but the wind through the car was a thousand times louder and so were the sounds of his body.

He sat for a time watching the women on the corner, feeling the sun on his face and his forehead, adjusting to the faintness of the voices. Their laughable faintness. He wondered how on earth it could have happened. The piles of gla.s.s possibly, or the little dog's body, or some other trick he had no knowledge of. He decided that the two boys were behind it. They're the opposite of Skull & Bones, he thought. Two personal angels. So straightfaced and quiet. He pictured them to himself, the smaller boy talking and the taller one moving, as if picturing them would get them to come back. He decided that their names were Quick & Painless.

Now that it was quiet again he could think about Violet. He'd have liked to have her with him in the car. She'd have fussed about the bloodstains but that would have been all right. Now that it was over, now that he'd done everything he could, there was no reason for them not to be together. He turned his head and imagined her sitting in the pa.s.senger seat, smoothing down the creases in her jeans, picking bits of broken gla.s.s out of her hair. It's no good Violet, he'd have told her. I tried my best to do it. I tried twice. There's nothing to do now Violet and I'm sorry. She'd have taken his hand in hers and he'd have let her. He might even have laid down in her lap. He imagined her jeans against his cheek, the beautiful mannish jeans she always wore, warm and rough against his forehead like the canvas of a sail. He'd asked her once to take him sailing, he remembered. Come on Violet, he'd said. One of your boyfriends has to have a yacht. She'd laughed at that and called him Little Jacques Cousteau.

He covered his eyes with his shirtsleeves now and pictured her. Violet, he said in a whisper. Listen to me. Are you there. There were two little boys here Violet did you send them. Two little angels. If you sent them Violet could you please send them back.

He was still waiting for an answer when someone broke off from the group on the streetcorner. A blackhaired woman of no particular age, hesitating as if she expected to be called back, fussing with the catches of her latticed limegreen pumps. No one called her back. She took off her gla.s.ses, thick owlish lenses in tortoisesh.e.l.l frames, and polished them with the hem of her miniskirt. The others ignored her. When she'd finished with the gla.s.ses she put them back on and started resolutely up the street. The pumps were high but she moved smoothly and easily once she started walking. The skin on her knees turned blue and gray and green as she came closer. She's cold, Lowboy thought. How is that possible.

She was even with the hood before she saw him. She c.o.c.ked her head and arched her back and shivered. She was close to the window, close enough to touch, and though her body was set for walking she stayed still. She let her eyes roll past him up the street.

"That ain't going to ride you," she lisped. "Do you know why?"

He sat back in the seat and shook his head.

"Out of gas."

He looked at the gas gauge and saw she was right. "Is this your car?"

"Not from the South Side, are you, son." She squinted at him. "You look just like that actor. Bradley Pitt."

"Downtown," said Lowboy. "Not actually from the Bronx."

She curled her middle finger around the lock. "What you come to the Point for, Bradley? For a date?"

"I'm looking for some boys," he said. "Two small boys. Quick and Painless."

She laughed and coughed and laughed a second time. She kept her lower lip over her teeth. "You on the wrong street for that, Bradley. Try up on Edgewater."

"Not the wrong street," he said. "There were two little boys. They threw a paper bag into the car. A dead dog's body. They came around the car and touched my face." He hummed to himself and sighed and tapped the wheel.

She considered him awhile. "Best not stay out here, Bradley. You want to go someplace and call your mother."

"No mother," he said. He shook his head. "No calling."

"Your papi, then. Whatever." She pursed her lips. "Stay out in this ride you getting f.u.c.ked."

"I want to get f.u.c.ked," said Lowboy.

"You what?"

He frowned and slid away from her and pressed his hands together in his lap. "I've got money," he said. "I've got $600."

She slid her gla.s.ses down her nose like a professor. "$600?" she said. "On you right now?"

He bobbed his head and blew a kiss at her.

The door rattled open and the car's engine started and they were driving or else she was pushing him by the elbow down the street. The tenements the firepits the oilcolored birds. The song of Quick & Painless playing backward. He saw the two of them watching from under a stoop and he waved at them and they pulled back into nothing. They couldn't follow him where he was going.

She took him to a place where the street humped and narrowed and turned back on itself like Ouroboros. They stood side by side and stared up at a building. The steps were limegreen. A poodle looked down from the fire escape with its head stuck in a plastic coneshaped bonnet. Does that make it bark louder, thought Lowboy. Does that keep its head out of the rain. He thought of the dog on his father's old records: his master's voice. What master, he wondered. What voice. They pa.s.sed into a foyer with gray scalloped walls and then up a cracked waterstained staircase. Then down a low hallway. Then into a fivecornered room.

"What's your name?" said the woman. She was making the bed.

"Lowboy."

"That's not a name. What kind of name is that?"

"Like a dog," Lowboy said. He watched her bend over. "Like furniture."

"A dog, huh?" She laughed at him. "A p.u.s.s.y retriever? You look more like a little squirrel to me." She pulled off her sweatshirt. "n.o.body tell me they church name, doggy. That's all right."

Lowboy said nothing.

"I got a name like that," she said. "Everybody call me Secretary, account of my gla.s.ses." She let the sweatshirt drop onto the floor. "I hate that s.h.i.t."

"Who calls you that?"

She sat down on the bed and shrugged. "All of them dried-out b.i.t.c.hes."

"Secretary," he said cautiously. Getting the sound of it. He reached over and took hold of her hair.

"Don't come up on me yet, doggy." She coughed again and pushed his hand away. "Sit down here next to me." She pulled her right foot up and unbuckled the pump. Her leg was as glossy and softlooking as a baby's. A line of stubble above the ankle with the shiny skin behind. She let her right foot go and lifted up the other. Why is she taking her shoes off, thought Lowboy. How do the shoes come into it. It occurred to him then that he might have the wrong idea about how it was done. But as he looked at her sitting squatly in her underthings, ma.s.saging her heels, he knew one thing beyond the slightest doubt. It would happen now no matter what else happened.

While he waited for her he looked around the room. Silhouettes bobbed and flitted past the curtains. Doubts visited him but he dismissed them. The room took up the whole of his attention. A door in the far wall hid behind a dresser. A tearshaped lightbulb jittering like a candle. A snapshot of a man in uniform. Her father, he decided. The wall above the mattress was festooned with curlicues of yellow paper. They twitched and rasped in concert with his breathing, working free of their staples, a sound like roaches trapped inside a box. In time he saw the slips for what they were.

"Receipts," he said. He pointed at them. Secretary was hanging up her clothes.

"That's my diary, doggy. That's evidence."

"Evidence?"

"d.a.m.n right."

He didn't know what to say to that. She was folding her sweatshirt. She did it very quickly and precisely.

"What's your church name?" he said.

She stopped and looked him over. The room seemed smaller than before. He turned his head and tried to count the staples.

"Maria Villallegas," she said. She said it as though he'd asked her something secret. "You can read it on those slips if you can read."

"Maria Villallegas," he repeated. The name felt brittle in his mouth. "Villallegas," he said carefully. "Is that right?"

She smoothed the sheet down under him and sat him up and pulled his zipper open. "How about you just call me Secretary."

"Secretary," he said loudly. "Secretary." She was between his legs now. Her lips came graciously apart. She was keeping him quiet by putting her head in his lap.

"You ready, doggy?" she said. "You look it."

How can she ask me that, thought Lowboy. He bit down on his tongue. How is it that she can say a word.

"Don't stop, Secretary," he said. She didn't stop. "I want to-"

Something tapped against the window and she stopped. A bottle or a watchface or a cane. Something ungiving. She stopped and cursed quietly and pushed herself up off the floor. She got up because a man was at the window.

"The f.u.c.k away, Ty. Somebody dating me." She cleared her throat. "A man. A little boy."

A little boy, Lowboy said to himself. He put a hand over his face and hid behind his fingers. A man.

The man at the window spoke measuredly and without any cursing. Secretary held the curtain closed. To hide the man from me, Lowboy decided. Or possibly to hide me from the man. Secretary cursed and spat and rolled her eyes but she never spoke until the man was finished. Their voices never touched. Lowboy wondered what would happen if they did.

Then the talking was over and Secretary came back to bed. The look on her face was hard to make sense of. Lowboy opened his mouth but she held up two fingers. "That's just Ty," she said. "Ty like to grieve me." She let herself sink back onto the bed. "He said we ought to done this on the street."

"I heard him," said Lowboy.

She looked at him now. "You heard all of that?"

"You never talk until he's finished talking."

She made a sharp sound with her tongue against her teeth. Then she made what sounded like a laugh.

"Why is that, Secretary?"

"Get them clothes off you, Bradley. Why you pull your pants up?"

"I was cold."

She pulled them down and shook her head at him. "d.a.m.n if you ain't good to go," she said. "I guess Ty didn't spook you much."

"Who's Ty?"

She was back on her knees with a towel under her and the front of his pants in her fist like a ball of old paper. What she was doing to him was terrible but he wasn't afraid of it yet. "That's my little Bradley. Look at that doggy d.i.c.k." Her voice was high and toneless and impatient. A child actress, he thought, but that wasn't right. A fullgrown actress playing the part of a child. Talking straight at his stomach and keeping her child's eyes wide open. The top of her head was kinked and wiglike and his stomach itched where her hair brushed against it.

"You ready," she said suddenly. "You good." She pulled a coffeecan down from a shelf above the bed and brought out something wrapped in silver foil. He knew what it was for and smiled and nodded. She bit open the wrapper and stared at him until he closed his eyes. She held him down with one hand and put it on with the other and brought her knees up level with his hips. He was afraid of her now. He heard her squat and stop and shift and take a breath. She was smaller than seemed possible and her body had no smell or weight at all. "All right now," she singsonged. "All right." Her hand held him pinned like a b.u.t.terfly in a gla.s.s case. He thought of museum of natural history and the skeletons set like jewels into the tiles. When he opened his eyes she was smiling and looking him over.

"You a sweet boy," she said.

He opened his mouth and closed it.

"You couldn't find a little girl to date?"

"I've got $600," he told her. "I've got-"

She moved her hand up to his mouth. "Quiet now."

Why was I born, thought Lowboy. Is this why.

She let out a thick breath and put him inside her. He tried to keep quiet. He was underwater now and so was she. She was moving above him like someone on camera, making small sounds so as not to wake the neighbors. He forgot her and remembered her again. She was moving the way he'd imagined her moving and the sight of it flooded his body and brain with relief. It was happening now there was no way to stop it. He was laughing apparently. The room had gone silent and the light had gone dim and he opened his mouth and the whole world went silent. Somewhere voices were screaming in amazement and victory but the screaming was too far off for him to hear. There was no need to hear. She was moving above him. He could see out of the holes in her eyes and taste with her mouth and feel every single thing that she was feeling. He felt the skin around him breaking and the silence breaking with it. He seeped out of his body like the yolk out of an egg. The world was outside his body now, which meant he was alone. His body was on the outside of the world.

"That's right, doggy," she said. Her eyelids fluttered like the receipts on the wall and her mouth hung wide open and he saw black s.p.a.ces where her teeth had been. "That's right, doggy," she said. "Give it up."

Afterward she leaned forward and they came softly apart and that was all. But the world was so different. He was seeing out of his own eyes again. For the first time he noticed a poster behind the dresser of a deserted sunny beach and one above it of the singer Ricky Martin with two holes punched into his neck. The mark of the vampire, Lowboy thought sleepily. He felt easy and harmless. He raised a corner of the bedsheet and ran it slowly back and forth across his stomach. Now it's happened, he thought. Now the world can stop ending. He let his head fall back and looked at Secretary. She was turning out the pockets of his jeans.

"Where's the money?" she said. She dropped the jeans to the floor. "Where the f.u.c.k is my $600?"

She almost seemed to be saying it to herself.

They arrived at the precinct and found the right room just in time to hear Emily's statement. It was well after midnight but the building seemed crowded. Such a different place from the Department of Missing Persons, Violet thought. Everything so close together. No one asked them who they were or what they wanted. They found Emily sitting up straight in a room full of desks, a proud and solitary figure, watching the desk sergeant curse at his computer. If she noticed them she gave no sign of it. She seemed too old somehow, not the same girl at all, a stand-in for Emily Wallace. An understudy, Violet thought. Only when the sergeant had asked if there was anything else and she'd shaken her head no did she turn and look at them over her shoulder. Her forehead and her neck were smeared with soot and her jacket was ripped along the collar but her face was a careless mask of self-sufficiency. If anything she seemed very slightly bored.

She learned that from Will, Violet found herself thinking. That's Will's look on her face. Her own expression was not much better and when she realized that she forced herself to smile. The sergeant nodded to Lateef and withdrew discreetly behind the photocopier. Not a word pa.s.sed between them. He stepped around Violet blankly, squinting down at his files, as though she'd been put in his way by accident.

No one spoke for a moment. Emily seemed to be looking at Violet but in fact she was looking at nothing. I'm going to make a mess of this, Violet thought. Emily's dislike of her expanded to fill the empty s.p.a.ce between them. Violet opened her mouth, took in enough breath to speak, then bit down on the knuckle of her thumb. She felt her body tipping backward. Finally Lateef cleared his throat and sat down heavily behind the desk. He looked uncomfortable there. The sergeant's ergonomic chair gave a slow disdainful hiss under his weight.

"Hi there, Miss Wallace. I'm Ali Lateef, the detective in charge of Will's case. I think you know Miss-"

"I know her," said Emily. Her voice was clear and composed, the same voice she'd been using with the sergeant. "h.e.l.lo, Yda."

"h.e.l.lo, Emily. I'm so happy to see that you're okay." The fact of Emily sitting composedly before her, a little disheveled but otherwise in perfect health, was too much for her suddenly, too extravagant a gift. How could such a thing have happened, she thought. How could it have happened twice. But this second miracle was not like the first: Emily's empty face was proof of that. There was no love for Will to be found there.

"Something's happened, Yda. To Will, I mean." She smiled crookedly. "I know that sounds stupid."

"It doesn't sound stupid, Emily." Violet gritted her teeth and took a small step toward her. "Will's gone off his meds. He stopped almost two weeks-"

"It's not the meds. It's something else." Emily turned to Lateef. "He's a different kind of sick now than he was."

"Different how?" said Lateef.