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“Young people?”
“Well, Rudy’s old enough to be my dad, at least. And I saw some Chinamen, but most of them looked that old or… even older. And then there’s… you. Is everyone down here…”
“Old?” she finished for him. “Keeping in mind that your idea of old and my idea of old are two different things, you’ve noticed rightly. And sure enough, there’s a reason for it. It’s an easy reason, and you could think of it yourself if you tried hard. ”
He pushed a toppled beam up out of his way so he could walk past it instead of climb under it. “I’m a little busy for thinking,” he told her.
“Well ain’t that something. Too busy for thinking. Busy is when you ought to think the fastest. Otherwise, how you expect to last down here any longer than a flea lasts on a dog?” She paused on a landing and waited for him to catch up to her. Lifting the lantern and looking up and down, she said, “I hear them up there, the men on the ship. They aren’t real sweet, not any given one of them, but I think you’ll be all right. You’re willing to think on the fly, aren’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am. ”
“All right, then tell me now, while we walk, why there aren’t hardly no kids like you down here. ”
“Because…” He recalled Rudy’s mention of the Chinese men and why they had no women. “There aren’t any women here. And women usually take care of kids. ”
She pretended to be offended, and said, “No women? I’m a woman if ever you saw one. We’ve got women down here. ”
“But I meant young women,” he babbled, and then heard how wrong it was. “I meant, younger women than… I meant, women who might have babies. I know there aren’t no Chinese women. Rudy said so. ”
“Well, what do you know? Rudy told you the truth about something. He was right there, yes. There ain’t no Chinawomen here in the city, or if there are, I ain’t seen them. But I tell you what, I know of at least one other woman who lives down here. She’s a one-armed bar-keep named Lucy O’Gunning, and one arm or many, she’ll break down doors or men or rotters. She’s a tough old bird,” Angeline said with no small trace of admiration. “But saying that, I should also say, she’s old enough to be my daughter. And she’s old enough to be your mother—or maybe even your grandmother. So keep thinking, boy. Why aren’t there any young folks here?”
“Give me a hint,” he begged, chasing after her, up the next clogged and dusty flight of stairs. He didn’t know how many they’d scaled, but he was tired and he didn’t want to climb any farther. It didn’t matter. She wasn’t slowing down, and she was the one with the light, so he tagged along behind.
“You want a hint, all right. How long ago did the walls go up?”
“Fifteen years,” he said. “Give or take a couple of months. Momma said they were finished on the day I was born. ”
“Is that so?”
“That’s how I heard it,” he swore.
And he began to think of how many years fifteen was, if you weren’t a baby to start with. He thought about how old his mother had been—barely twenty, fifteen years ago. He tried, speaking slowly as he worked to breathe against his mask and his exhaustion, “Most of the folks in here, have they been here all this time?”
“Most of them, yep. ”
“So if they were grown men—and women,” he added fast, “in their twenties and thirties… now they’re all in their thirties and forties, at least. ”
She stopped and swung the light around, nearly clapping him in the forehead. “There you go! Good boy. Good thinking, even while you’re panting like a puppy. ” After a thoughtful pause she added, “I hear there’s a couple of boys down in Chinatown, brought inside by their dads or uncles. Orphans, some of them might be. I don’t know. And Minnericht, since that’s what he calls himself—he’s been known to bring down a younger crew once in a while. But you got to understand, most people who didn’t start out down here… they can’t get used to it. They don’t stay long. I can’t say as I blame them. ”
“Me either,” he said, and he wished hard for three wishes—the very first of which would send him home, should the universe be so kind. He was worn out, and nauseous from the filtered, stinking air, and his skin was smudged raw around all its edges. The face of the murdered Chinese man kept flitting through his mind when he shut his eyes, and he didn’t want to be anywhere near the body—not even within the same city walls.
“Soon,” Angeline promised him.
“Soon?”
“Soon, you’ll be out and on your way home. ”
His eyes narrowed behind his visor and he said, “Can you read people’s thoughts or something?”
She said, “No. But I read people pretty good. ”
Zeke could hear a background hum then, above him and off to the left—the banging din of tools against steel and the hoarse swearing of unhappy men in protective masks. Every now and again the building would quiver as if it’d been struck again, and each of these shocks made Zeke grab for the wall to steady himself. Rudy was right about two things. There wer
e no women in Chinatown, and there were no rails in the unfinished tower.
“Miss Angeline?” he broached, and around the next corner the world grew a few shades lighter, or he thought it did.
“What is it?” she asked. “We’re almost there. See? The windows are more broken, and what’s left of the moonlight’s coming inside. We’re right up close to where they crashed against the side of this old place. ”
