The Unseen Read Free Page B

the late dinner rush.
    When they punched the clock and left the café, twilight was spreading its fingers over the city; purple light burnished the bright windows of the strip mall down the street.
    Outside the back door, Sarea took out her pack of cigarettes and pointed them at him. He didn’t smoke, but he always took one when Sarea offered. It was a familiar ritual, and it kept her around for a few minutes, talking to him.
    Sarea put a flame to both their cigarettes, then leaned her head back against the stucco wall of the café, blew a cloud of smoke from the side of her mouth while she eyed him.
    Lucas looked down, uncomfortable with the attention.
    â€œYou ain’t much of a talker, Lucas.”
    He shrugged, and she laughed at that. He wasn’t sure why.
    She took another drag on her smoke. “Where you from, anyway?”
    He knew a shrug wasn’t going to help him here. He also knew he couldn’t answer the question, because he had no idea where he was from, unless you counted an orphanage. “Long story,” he tried.
    â€œYeah,” she said. “And you don’t do long stories.”
    She put one of her sneakered feet up against the wall behind her, picked a fleck of tobacco off her tongue. “So where do you live, at least?”
    â€œStaying in a place over by Howard University.”
    Another laugh.
    â€œWhat?” he asked.
    â€œHoward U-ni-ver-si-ty. How’s a white boy like you end up in the District, working for cash under the counter at the Blue Bell, and staying at a place filled with black folks?”
    He puffed on his own cigarette, looking down at the ground. “You mean I’m not black?” he asked.
    That made her laugh again. It felt good to make her laugh.
    She dropped her cigarette, crushed it with her foot. “Guess that’s as much as I’m gonna get from you, huh?”
    He shrugged again.
    â€œIt’s okay,” she said. “Mysterious is always more interesting.”
    She turned and walked up the alley, and Lucas watched her figure disappear into the haze of twilight.
    TWENTY MINUTES LATER, HE WAS HOME. HE’D TOLD SAREA HE WAS STAYING in a place near Howard University. That was true enough, in a way, but it wasn’t really near the university as such.
    It was inside it.
    Specifically, he was currently staying inside one of the underground tunnels attached to the steam plant. He’d been here a couple weeks now, and he was comfortable hanging around for at least another two weeks before moving on. He’d been scouting an abandoned floor in an old office building several blocks away, and it seemed like a logical next step.
    For now, though, he had his own space down here, below the pipes that occasionally clinked, occasionally roared as heated air moved through them. The sounds were comforting to him, more comforting than the utter silence he’d experienced in some other spaces.
    He moved his electric candle—a miniflashlight with a removable top that became a base—and sifted through his backpack. He found the photo of Noel, the dark-haired office worker. She had her tragic history, which meant Lucas had his magic hopes she would turn out to be a truly interesting dweller.
    He fingered the frame of the photo, looking at the bright, familiar smiles of Noel and her children.
    Genuine smiles.
    At least he had this.
    He crawled to a space near the head of his sleeping bag and placed the photo among all the others; he had arranged more than two dozen of them in a deliberate, almost geometric pattern. Noel’s picture fit the overall mosaic well.
    Of course, his minishrine didn’t hold just photos. There were other mementos that had spoken to him as well. Jewelry, notes, children’s artwork, a purple scarf. They were all here, these totems of Happy Places. And they were here to comfort him. To let him know Happy Places did, in fact, exist.
    He turned off the electric candle and crawled