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beers?”
    â€œYeah, sure, Pete. I could really use a beer.”
    The door to Mr Tae’s study opened unexpectedly. Mr Tae put his head out. “You are leaving?” he said to me. “I have to go out myself. Let me give you a lift please,” he said. It wasn’t a question. It was a command.
    Looking towards his father-in-law, then back at me, Pete Leung raised his eyebrows. “I’ll see you then, Artie. Soon, I hope,” he added and left the house, poor bastard, and I heard the rattle of his old VW Beetle and remembered how he loved that car.
    The lights in the Taes’ windows receded as Mr Tae’s Mercedes pulled away. Mr Tae sat in front next to the driver—I recognized Winston who used to manage the restaurant. I was in back. There was dry classical music on the radio; Bach, I think.
    â€œDo you mind?”
    I said I didn’t mind.
    â€œYou’re a jazz fan, I remember that, Artie. Mr Stan Getz, is that right? Mr Tony Bennett. And Mr Art Tatum.” Mr Tae was formal, as if conducting a conversation with a stranger.
    I didn’t know what to call him—I’d always called him Martin. But he was distant now, a stranger who tried to put me at ease with empty talk which made it worse. What did I expect? I’d fucked up his family.
    Ricky’s dad who told terrible jokes and got box seats for the Yankees had been replaced by a grave gray old man with two sick kids. We chatted. I made noises about this and that, the weather mostly. Thought about Dawn, about Pansy. Outside the car, the snow falling was a peculiar bright white in the headlights. White as the dead girl, white as Dawn’s face.
    Fog rolled in as we headed south onto the West Side Highway. Fog ate up the river. The foghorns you couldn’t see delivered their doleful toot and wind moaned as if for the chaos it would cause. The car was hot. I wanted to sleep. My lids sank onto my eyes.
    The Bach ended. Mr Tae put on the radio. Some of the trains were already out, the tracks icing up as the temperature dropped; all three airports were shut. A white-out was forecast, freaky in early March; Manhattan would be cut off from the mainland.
    Traffic clogged the highway in both directions. Sirens screamed, blue lights flashed through the snow and fog. The exit to the 79th Street Marina was blocked; a motorbike was flipped on its back like a massive bug. Around us, cars skidded and spun their wheels on the slick highway. Mr Tae never asked me where I was going. He never said what he wanted from me. Winston kept driving.
    A flash of flame shot up near the Holland tunnel. Winston turned off the highway onto Canal Street and I saw three men standing over a fire in a garbage can. In the street, shadowy figures wrestled grocery bags home, and on West Broadway, a kid selling pink fur earmuffs shared the corner with a pair of shivering Senegalese who hawked fake gold watches out of a briefcase.
    On Broadway, the car turned south and now I knew where we were going. I guess I’d known for a while: we were going home.
    The cast-iron building where I live is seven stories tall and a hundred years old. When Mr Tae bought it it was a wrecked commercial hulk. He opened the restaurant on the ground floor and converted the rest into apartments. The entryway for us residents is separate from the restaurant’s entrance. Now, instinctively, I looked up at my own windows. I saw something move, but there was snow in my eyes and I figured it was only shadows up there, that or paranoia. It was fourteen, maybe fifteen hours since Hillel got me out of Lily’s bed that morning. I was so tired, I was hallucinating.
    â€œPlease.” Martin Tae put his hand on my arm and walked me into the restaurant. It had been closed for business since Rick got sick, but the door was unlocked and, from the back, a pink light glowed. Someone was waiting for us.
    â€œDo you remember when Rick made us change the name to the Tiananmen