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"Hey, look at this!" Sketchy Dave called fro a navy pea coat, one ar up a Styrofoauini in alfredo sauce "You want so the

Pedestrians ending their way ho across their shoulders None of them seemed to see Val or Dave It was as if the two of them had becoh It was the sort of thing that she’d heard about on television and in books It was supposed to make you feel s at her or judging her based on whether her outfit matched or who her friends were They didn’t see her at all

"Isn’t it too late to find anything good?" Val asked, hopping down

"Yeah,is the best ti office stuff We’ll see what’s around, then coht, when restaurants toss off the day-old bread and vegetables And then at dawn you go residential again--we’ll have to get there before the trucks pick up"

"You can’t do this every day, though, right?" She looked at him incredulously

"It’s always trash day soether with string So far, she hadn’t found anything she thought orth taking "What exactly are we looking for?"

Dave ate the last of the linguini and tossed the box back into a Du nice, I guess If you think it’s nice, someone else probably will, too"

"How about that?" She pointed to a rusted iron headboard leaning against an alley wall

"Well," he said, as if trying to be kind, "we could truck it up to one of those fancy little shops--they paint old stuff like this and resell it for big h for the trouble it’d be" He looked at the di up before it gets dark I ht have to do a delivery"

Val picked up the headboard The rust scraped off on her hands, but she ht It was heavy She put it back down again "What kind of delivery?"

"Hey, look at this," Dave squatted down and yanked out a box full of ro"

"To who?"

"We could probably sell ’em," he said

"Yeah?" Val’s ht of the covers: a wo, a beautiful house in the distance All the fonts curled and soold She bet none of these books had to do with fucking your daughter’s boyfriend She wanted to see one of the covers show that--a young kid and an old lady with too much makeup and lines around her ged, carried the box under one arm, and flipped open a book He didn’t read out loud, but his e

They were quiet as they walked for a while and then Val pointed to the book in his hand "What’s it about?"

"I don’t know yet," Sketchy Dave said He sounded annoyed They walked for a while more in silence, his face buried in the book

"Look at that," Val pointed to a wooden chair with the seat gone

Dave regarded it critically "Nah We can’t sell that Unless you want it for yourself"

"What would I do with it?" Val asked

Dave shrugged and turned to walk through a black gate into athe romance novel back into the box Val stopped to read the plaque: Seward Park Tall trees shadowed round equipment sprawled over the space The concrete was carpeted with yellow and brown leaves They passed a dried-up fountain with stone seals that looked as if they h in the summertirass

Sketchy Dave walked past all that without pausing and headed for a separate gated area that bordered one of the New York Public Library branches Dave slid through a gap in the fence Val followed, cliarden filled with shts

"Wait here," he said

He pushed over one of the stone piles and lifted up a sh the fence and unfolding it

"What does it say?" Val asked

With a grin, Dave held the paper out It was blank

"Watch this," he said Cru it into a ball, he threw it into the air It flew out onto the path and doard, when it suddenly changed direction as though blown by a rebel wind As Val watched in amazement, the paper ball rolled until it rested beneath the base of a slide

"How did you do that?" Val asked

Dave reached underneath the slide and ripped a tape-covered object free "Just don’t tell Luis, okay?"

"Do you say that about everything?" Val looked at the object in Dave’s hand It was a beer bottle, corked with ed piece of string Inside, molasses-brown sand sifted with each tilt of the container, showing a purplish sheen "What’s the big deal?"

"Look, if you don’t believe Lolli, I’ue with you She told you too much already But just say that you did believe Lolli for a ht that Luis could see a whole world the rest of us can’t, and say that he does some jobs for theht this was a conspiracy to freak her out or not

Dave squatted down, and with a quick look at the sun’s position in the sky, uncorked the bottle, causing the wax around the neck to cruie like the one she’d seen Lolli pour her drug out of He shoved the baggie into the front pocket of his jeans

"Come on, what is it?" Val asked, but her voice was hushed now

"I can honestly say I have no fucking clue," Sketchy Dave said "Look I have to go uptown and drop this off You can coet there"

"Is that the stuff Lolli shot in her arm?" Val asked

Dave hesitated