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Of course, there was another option: I could leave. It made me sick to think about it, but I just might have to be the one to leave.

I started picking through the ashtray, looking for a roach. “Does Wilt know she might move in?” I asked.

He shrugged.

“Where is he, anyway? Him and Mia.”

“I don’t know. Haven’t seen them since lunch yesterday. I figured they told you where they were going.”

“No. You mean they didn’t sleep here last night?”

“Uh-uh.”

Taylor Simon, Wilton’s buddy from Antioch, had come into the room by then. He was on the short side, well-muscled, with an infectious grin. He and I often played Scrabble to the death.

“Who didn’t sleep here last night?” Taylor asked. Between a new girlfriend and the job he had at Rising Tide, an alternative magazine that had started up last year, we hadn’t seen much of him lately.

“Mia and Wilt,” I said. “Where could they be?”

“Maybe Mom and Dad needed a break from us kids. I guess they could’ve gone with Dan on one of his psilocybin vacations in the forest primeval. They’ll all come home tripped out and smelling bad. Anyway, boys and girls, get your filthy clothes together. Me and Cliff have laundromat duty, and then I gotta get to work.”

I closed my door and lit up as soon as they left.

Bay-bay, everything is all right. Uptight! Out of sight.

Beth and Clea’s little record hop was even louder now. I could still hear their merriment. I thought sourly, the only thing I have to celebrate is finding the butt of this abandoned joint.

At the same moment I realized I’d left my book at Nat’s place, the Hawthorne I was supposed to be reading for American Lit, I heard a dull thud above my head. Funny, but I could also have sworn I heard an agonized moan. Double funny—the apartment upstairs was vacant. It was going to be the upper floor of our duplex.

I opened my door and looked out to see Clea and Annabeth rushing out of the apartment. They were headed upstairs. I followed.

A bucket of soapy water was overturned on the landing. Mr. Fish, the building superintendent, lay writhing in the doorway of the empty apartment, his mop clutched in his hand.

Annabeth leaned down to pry the mop handle from his fingers. Must be a heart attack. “Get an ambulance, Sandy!”

I was headed back down to our place when I heard another scream—Clea’s. I knew instantly she wasn’t wailing in grief over Mr. Fish. There was too much terror in that cry. I ran back up and shoved her aside.

Oh, Lord. There was every reason to think that old man’s heart had exploded when he caught sight of this. Mia was facedown on the floor of the deserted apartment, dark blood clotting her hair. She was wearing her sweet white wool jumper with the embroidery around the neck and hem, tiny Dutch children in their wooden shoes.

Across the room, Wilton was anchored with rope to a folding chair, eyes bugged, throat slit, his shirtfront soppy and black. Hard as I tried, I couldn’t turn away.

I was standing in Mia’s blood. Her life all liquid under the soles of my boots. But I couldn’t move, couldn’t turn away from the stiff and swollen torso in that old chair. That thing turning to rancid meat had been my friend Wilton, who always had a joke for me, and whose quick mind and kind heart had been my delight in living. Soul brother. An expression I never used. But that was what he had been. How could I turn away?

Uptight! Out of sight! said Stevie. I couldn’t hear what Beth was shouting, but I heard Little Stevie.

“Shut up,” I cried.

And if I couldn’t turn away now, couldn’t literally go, then I’d just have to escape to some other place in my own head.

So I did that. I went somewhere else. I went back to the park, and I was there with Wilt.

2

That convention was the damnedest thing. From January through July, the pileup of terrible events was staggering, more evil than we ever dreamed we could endure. But then the Democrats came to town, and the violence turned psychedelic.

It was bedlam in the Civic Center. Mayor Daley was really showing his ass, venting his murderous, red-faced rage. Ah, but there was a place