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one. Not that I really thought I would. This so-called artist lover of Trish’s sounded faker than a xerox copy to me. She said she loved him—what did she know about love!
    Suddenly I put on my jacket and yellow-striped cap, my blue muffler and mittens, and went out again. I thought about taking my car, but still couldn’t face the dried blood in the back seat. Instead I walked up to Broadway and got on the Number 7 again.
    Four hours had made a difference. The Market and shops were closed; street life had taken over on Pike. I recognized some of the same kids from earlier; many were high now, running back and forth across the street, sharing cigarettes, talking in loud, excited voices.
    I went up to one of the girls, a quiet looking thing of thirteen or fourteen, standing on the edge of a crowd, not sure whether she fit in or not, but determined to look as if she did. She was smoking in small, furtive gestures and was hardly made-up at all. Like Trish she wore a black felt hat; maybe that’s why I approached her first.
    I touched her shoulder. “Excuse me?”
    She jerked around and her eyes widened when she saw me. “Yeah?” she said, trying to be tough. She didn’t want any of the others to think I knew her or anything for godssakes.
    “I’m looking for a… friend of mine,” I said. “I wonder if you know her? Her name’s Trish.”
    The girl stared coolly. “Trish what?”
    I tried to act tough as well. “She goes by a lot of different last names.”
    The girl shrugged and moved in closer to the others. I thought for a minute she was going to ask her friends if they knew, but then I realized she was ignoring me.
    “Please,” I said, in a low and urgent voice. “It’s important that I talk to her. You must know her or where I can find her. She’s tall and has streaked blond hair and she wears a black hat like yours. She had a friend named Rosalie.”
    I discovered the whole group was listening. Another girl, older and harder-looking, with a small rosebud tattoo next to her left eye, said, “We don’t know nobody named Rosalie.” And with that they all dispersed, simply swam away like a school of disturbed fish, to other parts of the street.
    Great, now I’d really blown it. They had probably been asked about Rosalie by the cops; they probably thought I was a cop myself. And the way news spread on the street, nobody was going to give me information. I could see members of the group floating warily about, tipping the others off.
    I leaned against the wall of the abandoned department store and thought about what to do next. I could hit some bars in Belltown, the ones where artists hung out; maybe someone would know Wayne. But the thought didn’t appeal to me much. Whoever and whatever Wayne was, he had a hold on Trish; he probably wouldn’t like the idea of me looking for her one bit. Especially if he was the one who’d gotten her out of my apartment.
    I stood there for a while and watched. Near me was a seasoned older girl instructing a younger one to keep off her turf; a crazy-looking boy in a leather vest and T-shirt was yelling he was going to kill the next guy who stole his hat. Among the kids walked a couple of older prostitutes, arm in arm, tight skirts twitching over round asses; a man in a white suit and cowboy hat followed them drunkenly. On the corner was a tall thin guy in a sweater and corduroy coat talking earnestly to a lethargic girl in a pink sweatshirt and pants; he’d taken her by the arm and was showing her a pamphlet. He must be on the Lord’s business—she looked too dazed to protest.
    I stood there and for some reason began to remember an Introduction to Anthropology class I’d taken as a sophomore at the U. It had been a reassuring thing to hear, at twenty, that your own society was a mere episode in millions of years of human history, no better and no worse than countless societies that have existed or will exist. I recalled the kindly expression of Mr. Lieberman as he