pointed to a narrow walkway between her house and the one next door. “Go through there to the alley. At the back, there’s a fire escape.”
“No. I really can’t.”
“You will. Come on.” She ran into the street in the wake of a passing limousine with tinted windows as black as its paint job.
Before other traffic might appear, I sprinted after her. She raced up the front stairs of the house as I followed the passageway that led to the alley.
The fire escape switchbacked up the building, looking as though it ought to ring loudly beneath my feet like the bars of a xylophone struck exuberantly, but my ascent was quieter than pianissimo. A window framed soft light at the second-floor apartment, and the draperies were only half closed. As far as I could see, the room beyond was deserted. I turned onto the next flight of iron treads.
At the fourth floor, Gwyneth had opened the window for me; but she was not waiting. At the farther end of the dark room, beyond an open door, a cut-crystal ceiling fixture brightened a hallway wall with prismatic patterns.
Switching on my flashlight, I noticed words printed in black letters on the white windowsill, but before I could consider them, Gwyneth appeared beyond the open door and said, “Addison. Come to the kitchen.”
By the time I climbed through the window and slid it shut behind me, the girl was gone. I stood in a generously proportioned room as sparsely furnished as a nun’s cell: narrow bed, single nightstand, lamp, digital clock. The place smelled fresh, and I could relate to the minimalism.
Across the hallway lay an equally large room, containing only a desk, an office chair, a computer, a scanner, and two printers.
A lamp turned low illuminated a living room that must have been twice as large as my three underground rooms combined, but the place felt like home because of the books. There was, however, only one armchair, as if her father, while alive, had never lived here.
Beyond an archway lay a dining area with a table and chairs, open to a large kitchen in which she worked by candlelight. Even those discreet flames in ruby-glass holders were bright enough to risk my revelation.
Although we seemed to have much in common, I suddenly grew wary and felt that I should leave quietly.
Although her back was to me, she said, “There you are. Scrambled eggs and toasted brioche with raisin butter will be quick. Okay?”
“I should go.”
“You won’t. You’re never rude. Pull out a chair. Sit down.”
In spite of the one narrow bed, in spite of the single armchair in the living room, I said, “You aren’t alone here, are you?”
Breaking an egg into a bowl, attended by her shadow and the shadows of candle flames that quivered on the walls, she said, “There is one who comes and goes infrequently, but I won’t speak of that. It’s nothing that will put you at risk.”
I stood beside the table, unsure what to do.
Her back remained toward me, yet she seemed to know that I had not pulled out a chair. She held another egg, hesitating to break it.
“Everything now depends on mutual trust, Addison Goodheart. Sit down or go. There can be no third choice.”
EIGHTEEN YEARS EARLIER, DURING MY SECOND week in the city, on the night I saw a Clear in hospital blues walking the high ledge …
Later, at home in our deep redoubt, after the groceries were put away, Father brewed a pot of orange-flavored herbal tea, and I sliced a pound cake with coconut icing, and we sat at our small table, It and Son of It, speaking of this and that, until he finished his cake and put down his fork, whereupon he brought up the subject that he felt was more important than our small talk: Fogs and Clears.
He never called them that. He had no names for them, and if he had a theory about what they might be, he wasn’t inclined to discuss it. But he had an opinion about what we should do when we encountered them.
His instinct, like mine, told him that the Fogs were nothing but bad news, though of exactly what kind he wasn’t prepared to say. Even the word evil, he said, was not sufficient to describe them. Best to avoid the Fogs. Certainly never approach one, but on the other hand, maybe it was also wise never to run from them, just as running from an angry dog might invite attack. Feigning indifference to the Fogs had worked for Father and for his father, and he strongly advised me to respond to them always and without fail as he did.
Leaning over the table, lowering his voice, as though even this far beneath the city, all but entombed by a mountain of concrete, he might be overheard, he said, “As to the others, the ones you call the Clears. They aren’t evil like the Fogs, but in their own way, they’re more terrible. Pretend indifference to them, as well. Try never to meet their eyes, and if you do find yourself in close quarters with one of them and eye-to-eye, turn away at once.”
Perplexed by his warning, I said, “But they don’t seem terrible to me.”
“Because you’re so young.”
“They seem wonderful to me.”
“Do you believe I would deceive you?”
“No, Father. I know you never would.”
“When you’re older, you’ll understand.”
He would say no more. He cut another slice of cake.
BY THE LIGHT OF A SINGLE CANDLE SET NEAR Gwyneth’s plate and far from mine, we ate a simple but delicious pre-dawn breakfast of scrambled eggs and brioche with raisin butter. I had never tasted coffee as good as hers.
After six years of solitude, sharing a meal and conversation with someone was a pleasure. More than a pleasure, her hospitality and companionship were also affecting to a surprising extent, so that at times I was overcome by emotion so intense, I couldn’t have spoken without revealing how profoundly I was moved.
With my encouragement, she did most of the talking. In but half an hour, the quality of her voice—clear, steady, gentle in spite of her profession of toughness—charmed me no less than the grace with which she moved and the determination that she seemed to bring to every task she undertook.
She was, she said, a recluse from a young age, but she did not suffer from agoraphobia, a fear of open spaces, of the world beyond her rooms. She loved the world and exploring it, though she did so largely under limited circumstances. When the hour grew late and few people were afoot, she ventured out. When the weather turned so bad that no one spent a minute longer outdoors than absolutely necessary, she prowled the streets with enthusiasm. The previous year, a storm of historic power shook the city with such elemental ferocity that its broadest avenues were all but deserted for two days, and in the tempest, she spent hours abroad, as if she were the goddess of lightning, thunder,
