They stopped at the trash barrel and stoked the fire with the breakage of a shipping pallet.

“What are we doing?”

“We’re helping the guy out. I’ll tell you later.”

“Who?”

“A guy.”

“The creeper who lingers here. I saw him.”

“He’s not a creep.”

“What about him?”

“I said later.”

Soon, the fire was roaring. “Get warm. And watch. You gotta make sure you’re never followed. Understand?”

Spike nodded.

“Okay, look behind me. What do you see?”

“Nothing. The street is empty.”

“Any cars sitting? They could have someone inside.”

“Nope.”

“Any dogs walking around that could be hunters?”

“Nope.”

“Good. Nothing your way either. The old man at the restaurant is smoking a cigarette. That’s all. We’re good.”

They went to the main road and waited as cars and trucks screamed by. A black SUV with ground effects thumped rap music and blared its horn as it passed. A jacked-up 4x4 blasting country music did the same going in the other direction. When he saw what he wanted, he raised his hand.

The tuk-tuk pulled over a half block in front of them. He pointed out the black dragon painted on the side flap of the canvas covering as he climbed in.

“All these drivers are loyal to the Silk Dragon. You know what that is?”

“I heard about it on the news,” said Spike. “It’s illegal.”

“Where?” said the driver. He was a chubby man in AR glasses who sucked on a stubby cigar.

“I’m late for a date,” said Hawk. “Wallace Complex. Take the long way.”

“A hundred bucks. Pay first.”

He pulled a hundred out of his pocket and slipped it through the wire mesh.

“A hundred? Are you nuts?” said Spike.

“He’s going to make sure we’re not being followed. That’s what ‘take the long way’ means. Secret code.”

The boy looked at him with wide, wondering eyes, as if for the first time he was realizing the strange requirements of Hawk’s life. Such intrigues were candy to Spike, who, when not skating, spent his every waking moment reading his comic books.

“Secret code,” he repeated in a reverent whisper.

The tuk-tuk accelerated down the straightaway for a mile and then took a right into the dense, winding passages of the BAT. They crawled down a large district of nightclubs pumping music where, even in the cold, girls danced on the streets in silk stockings with college boys bundled in heavy jackets.

The tuk-tuk slowed and stopped in front of a large garage door. The driver shouted to someone in the dialect. The door began to rise, and when it was high enough, the tuk-tuk entered and rolled at a snail’s pace down a long ramp into an underground area. Men on an open floor above them wore welding hoods and were using cutting torches to hack apart the frame of a car, sending sparks showering down around them.

“Wow! Badass,” said Spike. “This is better than the shortcut. I had no fucking idea.”

Their driver followed a subterranean road, slowing once to let another tuk-tuk pass. Through the rainy distortion of the plastic, Hawk spotted the dragon and, in the rear, a girl in a red dress dripping with beauty.

Spike pressed against him. “I’m chilly,” said the boy.

“I’m Argentina,” Hawk replied.

Spike gave him a jab with his elbow.

He put his arm around him, closed his eyes, and thought of the heat. The eternal heat. All his life, there was the heat.

The road followed in an upward direction. They waited for another door to lift, and then they were above ground again, speeding through a part of the city he tried to avoid, and a place where Spike had never been. The BAT was more than just glittering lights.

The red lights stretched for blocks. The women didn’t bother to cover themselves. Spike couldn’t look away. A perfume of flowers and flesh permeated the air, emitted from an olfactory machine. It made Hawk queasy. A pack of businessmen in long coats walked and looked and laughed.

The tuk-tuk took a turn, zoomed down another narrow passage, and the red rooms slowly transformed to blue. A shade of street Hawk knew well.

“Oh my God! Do you work here?” Spike asked.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“I try not to,” Hawk said.

In the windows, the escorts danced under a shower of laser lights and electronic beats. Some wore only the barest of briefs, while others wore nothing at all. There were fewer pedestrians here than in the red lights, yet the boys still pressed themselves lewdly against the glass for the entertainment of their audience of potential clients.

“How?” asked Spike.

“That’s the display case. They have a room in the back.”

“And you do that?”

Hawk shrugged. “Only in emergencies, when I need some fast cash.”

“I see a black dragon on that window over there,” said the boy.

“Madam Lan has a lot of…” He tried to think of how to explain it. “Her organization is large…” He’d done well hiding this aspect of his life from Spike, Nine, and anyone else he knew.

“How do you do it?” the boy persisted.

“I don’t do windows anymore. I have a profile on a site. And if I have a client, they book me through that. I meet them wherever they like… if I think it’s safe. And I have a bedroom in one of her buildings.”

“Like a bedroom-bedroom?”

“Like a bedroom.”

“Can I see it?”

“No,” he replied, his voice shy.

The boy turned to him, studying his face. “Are they all men?”

It was an honest question. It was the logical question. The moment of sexual revelation beyond which Spike would only think of him as a queer.

He found the courage to meet the boy’s eyes. They were open and accepting, and there was a yearning to know.

“Yeah. All men…”

“Do you…” The pause was full of patience. “Do you like it?”

Though his eyes stung with the threat of tears, they did not fall.

He shrugged. “It’s complicated.”

Spike settled closer to him. “You’re hot,” he said. He rested his hand on his chest.

“Thanks.”

“No. I mean, your body is hot.”

“Thanks!”

“Dumasibal seki! I mean, your body temperature is hot. You’re like an oven.”

“Oh, sorry.”

“It’s okay. I like it. It’s cold tonight.”

The tuk-tuk took another turn. Blue Street, with its youth and music and hungry men, disappeared into a block of darkness and boarded-up buildings. By and by, they passed open convenience stores, cubbyholes of light where a clerk worked a counter, but in the absence of customers, they stared at a phone or off into the void of VR glasses. Then, those too evaporated, and they drove into a sinister and shadowy part of the city.

At an intersection, the tuk-tuk swerved and honked its horn at two shoeless women on the cold cement street. They ran in circles with their hands and faces lifted to a dark and obscure sky.

The tuk-tuk turned down an alley lined with trash barrel fires where spinners, who hadn’t yet entered the world of blissful frenzy, warmed their hands and picked their scabs.

“Stop,” said Hawk.

They got out, and the taxi sped off without a word or bleat of the horn. He didn’t blame the driver. The Wallace Complex was not a place for anyone to linger.

“Hey, can you spare a dime?”

Both boys jumped at the voice of a scraggly old man with a long beard and a cowboy hat. He walked with a cane and pulled a wagon of luggage and recyclables.

“Sorry,” said Hawk.

“A dollar, man, a dollar—or maybe enough for some cigarettes.”

He took a step toward them.

Hawk put out his arm to guard Spike.

The man laughed, showing broken, rotten teeth. “Oh, do I pose a danger? Look at this!” He hiked up the sleeve of his patched-up coat to reveal a forearm devoid of fat or muscle. “Or maybe you’ll catch what I got—old age and death.”

“Here.” Hawk reached into his pocket and pulled out another hundred. He stepped forward and held it out. The old man inspected it, then looked at him.

“You fucking with me, kid?”

“No.”

“You doin’ an internet show?” He squinted one eye and looked around, trying to spot a camera.

“Just take the money,” Hawk said.

The old man grabbed the note and shoved it in his pocket. “Thank you. I can make that last. You ain’t gonna find no spin out here.”

“No. We just—”

“It ain’t important. Don’t tell me. Be careful. They look off in their own fantasies, but sometimes they can be dangerous. In the course of a night, they can imagine the rise and fall of civilizations. A few weeks ago, some dude killed six people cause he thought he was Genghis Khan.”

“Come on,” Hawk said to Spike, pulling him by the sleeve down the street and away from the man.

“Oh, what wicked creatures lurk in the city…” shouted the man after them, but they turned a corner and started running, and whatever he was going to say next was drowned out.

“Fuck,” said Spike. “That guy was—”

“Shh. Don’t worry about him. We’re almost there.”

They emerged into a square lit with more fires. Men and women, some bundled tight, others nearly naked, stumbled around shouting expletives into the air. A man restrained by ropes was on the ground screaming. Two Gretas worked to put a scarf around his neck and another on his head. Another shrouded woman worked feverishly at her sewing.

Beyond the square, rising in the darkness was the unfinished cement and steel skeleton of a skyscraper surrounded by a fence topped with razor wire, but the gate was broken open. On the first floor, another fire burned, throwing shadows of a group of spinners holding hands in solemn dance.

“We’re going up,” he said.

“Up there?” Spike halted.

“Don’t worry about them. They can’t get very high. When I say run, okay?”

“Alright.”

“You can do this. Spike, the great warrior!”

Spike hit his arm, but not hard. The boy was scared.

“Run!” Hawk bolted, Spike on his heels.

They ran up to the first floor, and the spinners performing their ceremony barely noticed them. On the second floor, it was dark, and they could see people wrapped up in sleeping bags in the ambient light. On the third floor, there was no one, only darkness. The stairwell leading up to the fourth floor was closed off by a gate secured with a chain and a padlock. He found the key in his pocket, opened the lock, and pulled out the chain. When they were through, he re-threaded the chain and put the lock between two links but did not secure it.

“We’re not leaving this way. But just in case…”

“Now what?” said Spike.

“We climb. Twenty-one. All the way.”

“Wait.” Spike walked to the edge.

“Be careful,” said Hawk.

“You’re scared of heights,” teased the boy.

“No. I just have a healthy respect of falling to my death.”

Below them, was the square of Escape addicts. More than they had realized. They came out of the buildings and out of the alleys like rats looking for food. Two men started fighting, and it ended with one lying on the ground motionless.

“This is what’s gonna happen to my mom,” Spike said gravely.

“No, it will not. We’re going to take care of her.”

“It’s too expensive.”

“I can get the money.”

“No! I don’t want you to do that! Promise me you’ll stop.”

He gently pulled Spike away from the edge and the horror below. “We’re not thinking about that tonight. Let’s go.”

Spike turned and with a skip was running toward the stairs.

“Stop.”

“Fuck. What? Let’s go!” urged the boy.

Hawk dug in his bag and found two small flashlights. He handed one to him. “Watch your step.”

As they ascended, they paused on each floor and swept it with their lights. And each floor had the same skeletal structure of an unfinished building.

They climbed and climbed. The muscles in his legs started to tire, and his breath came heavy. At last, they reached the uppermost floor, which, unlike the other floors, was closed off by a heavy door.