as anything. But not so far along. It was a home for unwed mothers.

It was a nice neighborhood. The Haight had been a lot wilder and woollier when he’d lived in San Francisco.

Lucy got out from behind the wheel. She went to the apartment building two doors down the hill on the same side, rang, waited there at the door. The boy got out a beat after she did and stood beside the car, looking up at the navy-gray sky. He looked like he was thinking that it was going to rain, but it was just the way the nights were in San Francisco in September, something else Jimmy remembered afresh. The boy looked over at his sister waiting there at the door, the way she was acting, but he didn’t dwell on it. It was just one more thing he didn’t get.

A woman answered Lucy’s bell, came out onto the sidewalk, out under the streetlight, and the two of them talked for a second, the slanted sidewalk forcing them to stand oddly, a little uncertainly. In time the other woman, who was enough older than Lucy to have a little mother in her manner, a little sympathy (or at least judgment, which is a kind of concern), reached into the pocket of the long sweater coat she wore and came out with a key, a loose key, and an index card. She put the key and the card in Lucy’s open palm and looked at her with that look again, the neighbor lady’s own version of the tough-love look the waitress had given Lucy back at the café in Saugus.

Lucy nodded and thanked her and said something that looked like, “I will.” The boy got his guitar and pack out of the backseat.

Five halting, unrhythmic tones sounded. Each of the three apartments in the Victorian had its own door at street level, on a marble stoop. Lucy had opened the center door, stepped just inside, the index card in hand, to punch a code into the alarm. There was another, longer tone, the all clear, and Les followed her in, climbed the stairs behind her carrying his gear, as the door closed itself. After a minute, a light came on in the front room on the third floor.

Jimmy started the Porsche. He pulled forward and turned right, drove up the hill on Central, alongside the Catholic home. He went to the top of the hill, to the park, and turned around and came back down and snugged the car in against the curb. From here he could see straight across into the apartment, from Lucy’s top-floor flat on down. There were closed drapes in the living room, but in the bedroom the blinds were raised. The boy Les was in the kitchen, looking up at the light fixture.

It was wide-screen, like a drive-in.

The air had weathered up, gotten heavy with water. Jimmy suddenly felt a little hollow inside but shook it off. So he waited, behind the wheel. He smoked another cigarette, though he was already getting bored with it. Smoking. He spun the dial, found a good station on the radio. They were playing Zeppelin, Houses of the Holy, broadcasting from somewhere down on the waterfront.

Act two, Lucy came in and sat on the edge of a stripped bed in the front bedroom, alone, her hands on her knees. Her worries, her sadness, the heaviness had sure enough come round again. Big surprise, it was lying in wait for her four hundred miles north. Jimmy wondered if she had any idea that half the neighborhood could see in, could see her sitting there, if they looked.

The boy came into the bedroom. He looked at her but just stood there in the doorway.

“Say something to her,” Jimmy said. “She’s your sister.”

But the boy just stared at her. Jimmy had decided a ways back down the road that they hadn’t seen each other much lately, were unused to each other. Lucy lifted her head and said something. The boy nodded and left the room.

After a moment, the downstairs front door opened, and he came out onto the sidewalk. By now the night had that horror film look to it, fog hanging around the streetlights, making each of them look like something alive wrapped in a gauzy cocoon. She had given him the keys, to lock up the car. Les got behind the wheel and put the key in. He looked for a second like he was going to take it