The gawky, anxious girl’s strung so tight that the kindest thing he can do is let her go. When you get like that, you don’t want people to see you. Not the way you are. Dan knows. At the corner she turns around to check. He waves and goes back into the kind of heat that stops hearts. It’s exponential; even the cockroaches have died. Stalled in the sweltering shotgun hallway, Dan considers. He’s looking for so many things in his life that he can’t be sure what brought him here. It’s those fucking news photos, he thinks. The ones Lucy tried so hard to hide. As if your mother can protect you from certain things. The gabled frame house where the old lady died may have been nice back in the day but it morphed under the hands of multiple tenants, who made it hideous. Heading upstairs, he picks his way through a jumble of makeshift partitions, amateur wiring and crap fixtures, searching with no clear idea of what he is looking for: diaries, perhaps. Notebooks. Some trace. A hook to hang his story on.
