late to stop, there were other passengers besides you and your whim. The moment disappeared. You’d be disappointed anyway. The store at the side of the road was not so eccentric now that you got a good look at it, that authentic mom-and-pop fare curdled on the tines, and the oldest roller coaster in the state closed down years before and the rat-poison warnings prevented even a quick look-see of the dilapidated premises. Like all mirages, they evaporated up close.
Anti-looting regs kept the world-renowned shopping of New York City off-limits, but he suspected Ms. Macy had enough pull to arrange an after-hours spree, for a price. Four juice boxes.
She turned to Mark Spitz. “Let me take this opportunity to thank you on behalf of Buffalo for all the great work you men and women are doing,” she said. She tucked a sprig of hair behind her ear. “You have a lot of supporters up there.”
“Thanks.”
The jeep shot left and Ms. Macy clutched her seat, perfect nails pinioning the cushion. He’d call the nail polish light blue but a more fanciful appellation no doubt decorated the bottle. “It’s not often I’m out in the trenches,” she said. “Mostly we sit around our little conference table with our sad little plant and our wipe board and come up with our grand plans. But that’s changing.” Grit infiltrated her eyes and she twisted around to massage them in the cracked mirror of her compact, tilting it to find a workable angle.
Bozeman pulled up in front of a boutique hotel, caressing the curb as he parked. The army had cleared the cars from this side of the street since the last time Mark Spitz was here. The dark metal sheeting of the façade was artificially stressed, striated and pocked with calculated imperfection that in this depleted era implied foresightedness. Surely this was the forward-looking architecture they had all been waiting for. Mark Spitz recognized the humble inn from its regular invocations by the extinct gossip pages. It was home to premiere parties of dud movies and the desperate pell-mell drug binges of celebrities and rich children who had never been hugged properly. Ms. Macy and her escort stepped to the sidewalk, the young woman scampering ahead for the glass awning that kept the rain at bay with bone-white glass and stainless-steel ribbing. “Why don’t you come with,” Ms. Macy said, bowing to see Mark Spitz’s face. “I could use your expertise.”
He didn’t know what she meant, as his only expertise was his cockroach impersonation, the infinite resilience of said critter he had down cold. A continuous grumble of gunfire from the wall uptown murdered the silence. They walked over the sparkling cubes of glass that had once been the front doors, Ms. Macy tentative in her pumps and frowning and making clucking sounds. Bozeman tracked ahead to scout the first-floor lounge, that dim sac nestled into Reception like a tumor. Mark Spitz made a quick survey of the hallway feeding into the restrooms and hidden employee preserves. He sensed the three of them were alone but beat it back to the lobby just in case. The place was clear of skels, but it wouldn’t make anyone happy if he were wrong and one of Buffalo’s own got her face eaten, in such beautiful shoes.
Ms. Macy paced the cold tile, slow and pensive. He liked the sound of her heels on the floor. They echoed with enticing glamour, like the growling of a promising party behind the door at the end of the hall. She said, “Five blocks.” It was five blocks to the wall, he calculated, and twenty-plus floors above before they ran out of rooms. She was looking for housing.
Bozeman emerged from the lounge and shrugged when Mark Spitz looked at him for an explanation.
“I thought you said the doors were fixed,” Ms. Macy said. “We don’t want squirrels and rats and God knows what else moving in here.”
“We’re working on finding a proper glazier, ma’am,” Bozeman said.
“Glazier?”
“Window-makers, dealers in glass. So far the only ones we’ve turned up are in the far camps. They’re really cracking down on nonessential air travel lately, what with the operation gearing up.”
She shook her head. “Don’t get caught up in the deprivation game. That’s the old days.” She appeared vexed, and dumbfounded as to the source of her vexation. Then she looked up at the ceiling, where a crude map of old Dutch New York unscrolled in slapdash yellow strokes. The amateur nature of the rendering