was anonymous now, faceless in a growing crowd on the summer streets, one of eight million. That didn’t buy her answers, but it did buy her some breathing room. Besides, she had a prior appointment to keep.
The Q-line train smelled like dirty socks, a mildew odor that percolated in the trapped heat. A bead of sweat trickled down Seelie’s spine, leaving a damp streak along the soft cotton of her T-shirt as she clung to a steel bar and rode with the curves of the track. It dropped her off in Alphabet City.
Back before her time, this stretch of town had been a war zone. Progress and gentrification gently pushed the war back, replacing crack dens with jazz clubs and coffee shops and organic grocery stores. The street still looked a little sketchy down by Avenue D, and she kept her head on a well-trained swivel as she walked in the shadows of the projects. Nobody hassled her today. She turned left past the Royals Chicken, air thick with the aroma of frying fat and grease, and climbed a short flight of steps. Soon she was standing at the end of a sweltering hallway, walls caked in peeling eggshell white, knocking on Ducky’s apartment door.
Amber opened up. She was Ducky’s girlfriend, or common-law wife, or ex, depending on who asked and what day it was. She’d gotten her everything pierced; rings lined her bottom lip, more along her septum, and she swung enough heavy metal in her ears to weigh down an elephant. She looked at Seelie with bloodshot eyes, then glanced past her shoulder.
“Hey.”
“Hey,” Seelie said.
“Just you?”
“It’s always just me.”
She checked again, just to be sure, then waved Seelie inside.
Ducky’s kitchenette had been built sometime in the forties. His furniture was from a seventies garage sale. Their quasi-roommate Dee sprawled on a deflated orange and brown flower-print couch, arms spread like she was ready for a cross, eyes rolled to heaven. Seelie wasn’t actually sure if she went by “Dee” or just the initial D. Dee was always too faded to talk to, and Seelie didn’t care enough to find out. The television was on, some preacher claiming he could heal the sick and work miracles, and the screen offered up a big golden 1-800 number to buy your very own divinely blessed prayer water.
“Didn’t that guy get busted by a reporter or something?” Seelie said.
Amber was flipping bolts and pulling a security chain tight. She looked back over her shoulder and squinted at the grainy, bulky TV set.
“Huh. Yeah. Guess God forgave him.” She put a hand to her mouth. “Ducky! You got company!”
Ducky emerged from the bedroom in frayed jeans and a studded belt, looking like a rocker past his prime. Tribal tattoos curved along his bare chest, rising in black waves over the bumps of his rib cage. He rubbed his eyes, one foot still in dreamland, and gave a half-hearted wave.
“Seelie, hey.” He looked to Amber. “Do I smell breakfast?”
“Nope,” Amber said.
“Could I smell breakfast? C’mon, babe, I’m dying here.”
“I didn’t tell you to stay up until four in the morning, playing video games and getting blazed.” Amber sighed and relented. “I’ll see what we’ve got. Think we’ve got some eggs that aren’t growing fuzz yet. Seelie? You want?”
“I’m good, thanks.”
“You here for the usual?” Ducky asked her.
“The tried and true.”
He puttered back into the bedroom. She saw his shadow crouched on a span of dirty carpet, fiddling with the dial of a combination lock. She kept her distance, equal parts respect and caution; never a good idea to play with a drug dealer’s sense of security, and she knew Ducky stashed a loaded shotgun under his bed.
“You know anything about phones?” she asked, calling across the threshold.
“Like what?”
“Like how to get them unlocked when they don’t belong to you.”
“Nah,” Ducky said. “Might have a guy for that, though. Hold up a sec.”
She stopped breaking his concentration and idly watched the preacher on TV. He was trying to convince an old woman to climb out of her wheelchair and walk. Seelie gave her fifty-fifty odds.
“Hey,” Dee said. Seelie glanced at her. Dee was still sprawled on the sofa, pupils dilated, riding a wave of chemical bliss.
“Yeah?”
“They cut it off yet?”
Seelie’s eyebrows lifted. “Excuse me?”
Dee’s dangling hand pointed a limp index finger. She flopped it around like a dying fish.
“You know,” she said. “It.”
Seelie folded her arms tight across her chest.
“Do you normally ask casual acquaintances about the state of their genitals,” she said, “or am