Horrified, Ron said, “But you can’t live there all the time. Not in there! Not like that!”
“We all do,” she said simply.
Without even thinking about it, Ron said, “Well, you’re not going to anymore.” He started walking again. Faster than ever.
“Whaddaya mean?” Sylvia hurried alongside him.
“I’m getting you out of here. Tonight. You can’t live here. I won’t let you.”
“But I can’t get out, Ron. I can’t!”
“Why not?”
She looked scared. “Ya need an ID card. I never had one. I was born here. They’ll never let me through th’ gates. They’ll put me in th’ Tombs!”
“No they won’t,” Ron said firmly. “I’ll get my ID from Dino. I’ll tell the police that you’re with me and your ID was stolen. I’ll get you through.”
“No. I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Davey,” she said.
“The little kid?”
Nodding, Sylvia said, “I’m the only one he’s got t’ take care of him. I can’t leave him all by himself.”
Ron glanced at his wrist, forgetting that Dino had taken his watch. “Come on, time’s getting short. We’ll take Davey with us.”
“You’ll what?”
“We’ll take Davey too. Come on.”
She kept pace beside him. “You really wanna do this?”
“Yes.”
“And Davey too?”
“I’m not going to let you rot here.”
“But we was born here. We make out all right.”
Ron just shook his head. Sylvia looked at him in a funny way. But she stayed beside him.
The building she lived in was even filthier and more crumbled-down than Ron had remembered it. It had apparently been a factory building once, part of a long row of such buildings jammed side-by-side the length of the long city block. Most of the other buildings were ten stories high; hers was twelve stories. Across the narrow street, an empty garage yawned at them, the sidewalk in front of it stained and slick with ancient grease spills.
At the street level, the building had once had big store windows. Now they were boarded up with old, warped boards that were covered with the remains of a thousand posters and ragged, hand-scrawled graffiti that Ron couldn’t understand. A handful of dark-looking boys were sitting on the low step in front of the building’s main doorway as they came up. One of the boys said something to Sylvia in a foreign language. Ron had taken Spanish in school, and this sounded vaguely like it, but he couldn’t make it out. Sylvia clacked out a few fast words in the same dialect and the boys laughed.
“What did he say?” Ron asked as they stepped through the doorway.
“Nothin’.”
They walked quickly up four flights of creaking wooden stairs to Sylvia’s room. The building was like an oven, hot and breathless. Ron was bathed in sweat by the time they got to the fourth floor. Her room was bare. The only things in it were a battered old chest, like a wooden box, sitting in one corner, and a mattress next to it, half covered by a dirty bedspread. The walls were grimy and cracked, with gaps in the plaster. A few posters and pictures torn from old magazines tried to cover up the worst spots on the walls. It was like putting a few band-aids on a man who had fallen off a cliff.
Ron stayed by the hallway door as Sylvia walked through the bare little room and into the room beyond.
“Davey’s not here,” she said. “Wait a minute ’til I find him. You want somethin’ t’ drink?”
Ron nodded. His mouth was desert-dry. He wanted to ask if there was anything to eat, but decided not to.
Sylvia led him into the “kitchen,” an even tinier room, blazing hot, without any windows at all. There was a shelf built into one wall and a shaky-looking chair next to it. On one side of the shelf sat a stubby little refrigerator.
Sylvia opened the refrigerator and pulled out a plastic bottle of juice. “Here, have some of this while I find Davey.”
She handed Ron the bottle. It was warm. The refrigerator wasn’t working. He looked around for a glass. There were none. The only thing on the shelf next to him was a dead insect, reddish and ugly-looking, curled on its back with its thin legs poking stiffly upward.
“I’ll be right back. He’s prob’ly downstairs, playin’ with some of the other kids.”
She left. Ron sat on the chair. It groaned as his weight settled on it. The juice bottle felt sticky. He got up and opened the refrigerator. There was nothing else in it.
The heat was awful. Ron felt sweat trickling down his face, his neck, his ribs, arms, and legs. He looked around again for a glass, a plastic cup, anything. No chance. Finally he rubbed the lip of the juice bottle with the torn edge of his not-very-clean sleeve. Then he took a long swallow of the juice.
It tasted funny. Different. But wet and good.
He took another drink, then walked out into the bigger room, still holding the bottle in his hand. Maybe there was a window he could open. His head was buzzing and his eyes were starting to feel very heavy.
The heat, he thought.
