Page 63 of Wrong Mail

The driver takes the bridge, then the freeway, and lets me out where I ask.

The street changes in less than a block. Behind me are glass towers, hotel awnings, tourists, money. Ahead, the buildings go low and tired, the doorways shuttered, the sidewalks uneven. Men and women sit against the brick or beside carts piled with blankets and bags. When the car pulls away, a few of them look up.

Then they look away again.

Skid Row. Rodriguez called it that the day he showed me the faces. Not Los Angeles. Seattle had the name first, back when logs were skidded down toward the waterfront and the rougher streets grew up around the route.

I never thought I'd have a reason to stand here.

I’ve never been this far outside my comfort zone.

I go into it anyway.

The farther I walk, the more obvious it becomes who lives out here. All around me are tents pressed into alleys. Bedrolls against brick. Shopping carts carrying everything someone owns. A man washes at a public sink while a woman nearby sorts through a plastic bag at her feet.

I hold my phone up to the first man who'll look. "I'm trying to find this man. He's not in any trouble from me. I just need to talk to him."

He looks at the phone, then at me, and for a second I think he recognizes the face. Then he laughs, not unkindly, but as if I've asked the wrong question in the wrong language. He turns away.

The next man asks me for money. I give him the loose change in my pocket, and he takes it but tells me nothing. Not because he's hiding anything. Because he has nothing to tell.

I press on.

A woman in a doorway studies the photo long enough for hope to rise in me. Then she looks up and asks if he owes me too.

I keep going, block by block, deeper into the heat. The pavement gives it back in waves, and beneath it is another smell, sweeter and worse, something rotting under sugar.

People jostle me. People ignore me.

Outside a boarded storefront, a man comes up on my deaf side, and I don't hear him until his hand closes around my arm. He yanks me sideways, hard enough to wrench the bad shoulder, and pain whites out the street for one bright second.

I wrench myself free, push him off, and get away from him as fast as I can. I'm beginning to think that coming here wasn't a good idea.

My heart is hammering so hard I can feel it in my teeth, but I don't look back.

It's a boy who helps me in the end. He’s sixteen at most, sitting on a milk crate with a dog between his feet. He studies the face for a long time.

He nods. "Yeah, I know him. A dope head. He's sick," he says. "You a nurse?"

“Yes,” I say, because it's the answer that gets me closer, and I have always known which lie opens which door.

He points me to a brick building down the block. The windows are covered with plywood and cardboard. The front door hangs crooked from its top hinge.

"Third floor. Three-oh-seven."

I thank him and head toward it.

At the entrance, I stop.

Every sensible part of me says not to go in. I could call the police, tell them where he might be, let them handle it. But if he isn't here, I've gained nothing. And if he is, I need to hear the answer from him.

I push the door open.

Inside, the air is stale.

The stairwell stinks like garbage and piss. I climb to the third floor and follow the numbers until I find 307.

The door is partly ajar.