He started to follow her down a street. But it looked dark down in the direction she was heading. Glancing back over his shoulder, Ron saw that the bright lights of the main avenue seemed to be behind them.

“Wait . . . shouldn’t we be going the other way?”

Sylvia reached for his free hand. “Naw—that’s where all th’ tourists stay. Dose big dumps charge ya two hunnerd a night for a room th’ size of a rat’s nest. And they’re all full-up by now. Right? C’mon down this way.”

She seemed to be in a hurry.

“What’s the rush?” Ron asked.

For a moment Sylvia’s face looked strange. Like she wanted to tell him something but was afraid to. The light from the street lamps made everything look weird, shadowy, off-color.

“C’mon,” she repeated, with a smile that was starting to look forced. “This is a great hotel. You’ll like it.”

Shrugging, Ron let her lead him down the street, into the deepening darkness. They crossed one avenue and started down the next block.

“Hey Sylvie.”

She stopped as if she had hit a steel barrier.

Ron turned to see a guy about his own age and height step out of the shadows of a doorway. He was grinning, but there was no fun in it.

“Been waitin’ fer ya,” he said.

“I’m busy, Dino,” Sylvia said. Her voice was suddenly flat and hard, nothing like the way she had talked to Ron.

“Yer supposed t’be workin’,” Dino said. “I been waitin’ here for a half-hour, maybe longer.”

“Some other time,” Sylvia said. But she didn’t move.

Dino looked Ron up and down. Without taking his eyes off Ron, he asked Sylvia, “Who’s th’ dude? You goin’ out on yer own again? You know what Al’s gonna say when he finds out.”

“You don’t hafta tell him.”

“Get ridda th’ dude,” Dino said, still looking at Ron.

“Flash off, Dino,” Sylvia said. “I’ll see ya later.”

Dino pushed Ron on the chest with one hand. “Get humpin’, dude. She’s seen enough of you.”

Ron took a half-step backward, but he could feel his anger rising. “Now wait a minute—”

“I said get humpin’!” Dino swung an open-handed slap at Ron’s face.

Without thinking about it, Ron dropped the box of clothes, blocked Dino’s slap, and countered with a right to his midsection. Dino’s eyes popped wide and he went “Oof!” and folded almost in half.

But when he straightened up again there was a knife in his hand. Long and slim and glittering in the light from the street lamp.

“Dino, don’t!” Sylvia screamed.

“Shuddup!” he snapped. “You get yours next.”

Ron felt hot with anger. This guy was going to hurt Sylvia; he meant it. But first he’ll have to stop me.

Strangely, Ron felt no fear. Almost like karate class back home. Calm. Even his anger was helping him to see things clearly. Dino was about his own height, yes. But he was skinny, almost frail-looking. His eyes looked weird. And he moved slowly. That slap he had aimed at Ron had been so slow that the kids in karate class would have laughed at it.

The knife made a difference. But Ron remembered his instructor’s words: Never wait for a man with a weapon to make the first move.

So Ron faked a punch at Dino’s face. Dino reacted just the way Ron expected: he jerked back a little and raised his knife hand higher. Ron kicked at his midsection with enough strength to crack a cinderblock. Dino went completely off his feet, doubled over, and landed with a thud on the sidewalk next to the building wall. He lay there in a heap of dirty, ragged clothing, not moving.

Sylvia stood by the curb, her mouth open, her eyes looking very scared.

“Quick,” she said, staring at Dino’s slumped form, “we better get away from here.”

Ron kicked the knife into the gutter. Then he bent down and picked up his package of clothes.

“He was going to hurt you,” Ron said.

She was really shaking. “He . . . he talks too much. Al wouldn’t let him hurt me, an’ he knows it.”

“Who’s Al?”

“He’s—a friend of mine.”

Now that the fight was over, Ron felt good. He was excited now. High. He had fought to protect her and he had won. Like Saint George against the dragon.

“Here’s th’ hotel,” Sylvia said.

They stopped at the hotel’s main doorway. It looked small and shabby. There was a little canopy over the doorway, with a row of lights around its edge. Most of the lights were missing.

Then he found that Sylvia was clinging to his arm. “Hey,” Ron said, “you’re not scared that that guy will try to follow you home and bother you again?”

“She shook her head. “I dunno. He’s kinda crazy sometimes. He gets stoned and goes wild.”

Without even thinking about it, Ron said, “Well look, why don’t you come up to my room with me? Then you can go home later on, when it’s safer.”

Looking up at him, seeming very small and frightened, Sylvia said, “Okay, Ron.”

They went into the lobby. There was no clerk, just an automatic sign-in machine. Sylvia held his package while Ron wrote his name on the plastic strip that stuck out of a slot in the machine. A recorded voice said: “Fifty dollars please.”

Ron put a bill into the slot next to the plastic. They both got sucked inside as quickly as an eyeblink. He heard the faintest click of a camera shutter, then the same slot spit out a key that clattered into a bin in front of the machine. He reached into the bin and took the key.

He and Sylvia rode the automatic elevator up to the forty-second floor and together they walked down the long, shabby hallway, searching for the room whose number was on the key. The hallway carpet was threadbare, the walls covered with decorations that were so old you couldn’t tell what they had been before they faded. The lights were dim.

He noticed that Sylvia was staying very close to him, holding his free hand and trembling.

“It’s all right,” he whispered to her. “He won’t hurt you.”

She didn’t answer.