Brad was so thin he looked like a corpse. He was still tall, though, and his hair and beard were grown out into long, bad-smelling straggles of knot and grime. In the half-light of the garage, he had the instantly identifiable silhouette of a street person. He gathered Adam up in a hug that reeked of piss and booze, a hug like a bundle of twigs in his arms. "I love you," he whispered. Andrew backed away and held him at arm's length. His skin had gone to deep creases lined with soot, his eyes filmed with something that looked like pond scum. "Brady. What are you doing here?" He held a finger up to his lips, then opened the door again onto the now-empty alley. Alan peered the way that Davey and Krishna had gone, just in time to see them turn a distant corner. "Give it another minute," Blake said, drawing the door nearly closed again. A moment later, they heard another door open and then Kurt's chain-draped boots jangled past, headed the other way. They listened to them recede, and then Brian swung the door wide again. "It's okay now," he said. They stepped out into the sunlight and Bert started to walk slowly away. Alan caught up with him and Bert took his arm with long bony fingers, leaning on him. He had a slight limp. "Where have you been?" Alan asked when they had gone halfway home through deft, confident turnings led by Blake. "Watching you," he said. "Of course. When I came to the city, I worked out at the racetrack for a week and made enough money to live off of for a couple months, and avoided the tough guys who watched me winning and waited to catch me alone at the streetcar stop. I made enough and then I went to watch you. "I knew where you were, of course. Always knew where you were. I could see you whenever I closed my eyes. I knew when you opened your shops and I went by at night and in the busy parts of the day so that I could get a better sense of them. I kept an eye on you, Alan, watched over you. I had to get close enough to smell you and hear you and see you, though, it wasn't enough to see you in my mind. "Because I had to know the *why*. I could see the *what*, but I had to know the *why* -- why were you opening your stores? Why were you saying the things you said? I had to get close enough because from the outside, it's impossible to tell if you're winking because you've got a secret, or if you've got dust in your eye, or if you're making fun of someone who's winking, or if you're trying out a wink to see how it might feel later. "It's been four years I've been watching you when I could, going back to the track for more when I ran out of money, and you know what? I know what you're doing." Alan nodded. "Yeah," he said. "You're watching. You're doing what I'm doing. You're watching them to figure out what they're doing." Alvin nodded. "Yeah," he said. "You don't know any more about the world than I do." Albert nodded. "Yeah," he said.