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imagined
being run from inside a derelict building like this, complete with town
meetings and trials and punishments meted out. Basically anything could be
going on behind those blank and faceless windows.
    But I never thought I'd actually be finding out for
myself.
    ************************************
    The air was difficult to
breathe, baked hard by the summer sun. As Jen descended, she left dust coiling
behind her in the few shafts of light. Her runners left footprints on the
stairs, which made me feel better. Maybe no one ever came here. Maybe some
buildings were just ... empty.
    Every floor down it got
darker.
    Jen stopped after three flights, waiting for our eyes
to adjust, listening carefully to the silence. My ears were still ringing with
the alarm screech, but as far as I could tell, no one had followed us from the
building next door.
    Who would do anything that crazy?
    "Do you have any matches?" Jen said softly.
    "No, but this works." I switched my phone to
camera mode, careful to turn the bright screen away so I didn't blind myself.
It shone like a little flashlight in the pitch blackness. It was a useful trick
for fiddling with keys on late nights.
    "Gee, is there anything that phone doesn't
do?"
    "It's no use against crackheads," I said.
"Or officials of the Chinatown secret government."
    "The what?"
    "I'll tell you later."
    We descended the last three flights, the phone
scattering a weird blue light that gave our dancing shadows a ghostly pallor.
    I darkened my phone when we reached the ground floor.
Now that our eyes had adjusted, the sun streaming through gaps in the plywood
shone like a row of spotlights. The ceiling was high, the whole floor
stretching out unobstructed except for a few thick, square columns. What had
once been store windows were now gaping rectangular holes in the wall, only
plywood separating us from the street. Not even broken glass remained.
    "Someone's using this floor," Jen said.
    "What do you mean?"
    She scuffed one shoe across the concrete next to a
patch of light.
    "No dust."
    She was right. The sunlight revealed no coiling cloud
around her shoe. The floor had recently been swept clean.
    I ran my thumb to the familiar shape of the send
button. A moment later the little multi-platinum tune played from a distant
corner.
    As we crossed, taking careful steps, I saw that the
wall nearest to the flashing phone was lined with stacks of small boxes.
Someone was in fact using the building for storage.
    Jen knelt and picked up the phone, checking the floor
around it.
    "Nothing else here of Mandy's. Does she carry a
purse?"
    "Just a clipboard. If she got mugged, would they
keep that?"
    "Maybe they just tossed the phone in so she
couldn't call for help."
    "Maybe ..." My voice trailed off.
    Of its own accord, my hand went to the stacked boxes,
pulled by magnets of familiarity and desire. I ran my fingers down the lids
spaced every four inches. The boxes were a common size and shape, so familiar
that I almost hadn't realized what they were at first.
    Shoe boxes.
    I reached up and pulled one from the top of the stack.
Opened it and breathed the new-car smell of unused plastic, heard the crinkle
of paper, felt plastic and rubber and string. I lifted out the pair and set
them on the ground in a shaft of sunlight.
    Jen gasped, and I stepped back, blinking at the sudden
radiance of panels, laces, tongue, and tread. Neither of us said a word, but we
both knew instantly.
    They were the coolest shoes we'd ever seen.

 
    Chapter 6
    ANTOINE HAD
TOLD ME THE HISTORY OF SHOES MANY TIMES:
    In the beginning, the late 1980s, the client was king.
A certain basketball player (whose name basically became a brand) made them
king. An industry was transformed, and shoes grew air pumps and Velcro straps,
gel chambers and light-emitting diodes. New models came out seasonally, then
monthly, and Antoine started buying two pairs, one for wearing and one for
saving, like comic-book collectors with their plastic bags.
    And of