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She smiled sweetly. “Favor, please?”
    “I’m broke.”
    “Naw, what it is is I gotta go out tonight. Babysit, will you?”
    “Claire—”
    “I met this guy and he was talking about a job. He might hire me.”
    “Which
club’re
you going to meet him at?” Rune asked wryly.
    “S.O.B.’s,” Claire admitted. “But he really thinks he can get me work. Come on, please….” Nodding at her daughter. “You two get along so good.”
    Rune looked at Courtney. “We
do
get along, don’t we, dude? Gimme five high.” She held up her hand and Courtney crawled forward. They slapped upraised palms.
    “Dude,” the little girl said then crawled back to Persephone. Rune looked at her face and didn’t see much of Claire in it. She wondered who the father was. Claire, she knew, occasionally wondered the same.
    After a moment Rune said, “You know, I’m not, like, too good with saying things like this….” Rune paused, hoping Claire would pick up on the hint. But she was concentrating on putting a fake diamond earring into one of the holes on the side of her nose. Rune continued, “What I’m saying is you really’ve
got
to find a place to live.”
    “I didn’t plan on staying this long. It’s not that easy to find a place to live in Manhattan.”
    “I know,” Rune said. “Look, I don’t want to kick you out.”
    Claire got solemn for a moment. “The truth is I’m thinking about going back to Boston. Just to get my act together for a while. What do you think?”
    Hallelujah!
    Rune said, “I think that’s a very mature thing to do.”
    “Really?”
    “I do. Absolutely.”
    “I’ll stay with my mother. She’s got a nice house. I can have the upstairs to myself. The only thing that bothers me is I don’t know what I could do there exactly.”
    Rune wasn’t sure what Claire could do here in Manhattan either, except hang out and go to clubs, which she could probably do in Boston just as easily and for a lot less money. But she said, “Boston’s supposed to be a wonderful place. History, lots of history.”
    “Yeah, history. But, excuse me, what do you do with history?”
    “You don’t have to
do
anything with it. It’s just neat.” Rune hefted Courtney to the windowsill, propped her on her hip. “Just look out there, honey, and picture it three hundred years ago. You know who lived there? Indians! The Canarsie Indians. And there were bears and deer and everything.”
    “Like the zoo,” the girl said. “Can we go to the zoo?”
    “Sure we can. Maybe tomorrow. And see over there, all those roads? They used to be tobacco fields. They called the place Sapokanikan. It means the tobacco plantation. Then the settlers came up here from New York City—which was all down by the Battery then. They came up here because they had all these terrible plagues or epidemics—and they saw all these fields and farmland and the place got called Green Village—”
    Claire interrupted, “And now it’s Greenwich Village and it’s got bagels and coffeehouses and ATM machines and the Antique Clothes Boutique.”
    Rune shook her head. “Oh, you’re just so sitcom, it’s disgusting.”
    Claire said, “So—Boston … You mind if I spend some time there?”
    Mind? Rune felt as if she’d just gotten a package in a turquoise Tiffany’s box. “I’d say: Do it.”
    “Then I will,” Claire said lethargically. She yawned and pulled a vial out of her purse. “You want some coke?”
    “Coke,” said Courtney.
    Rune took Claire by the arm roughly, whispering viciously: “Are you crazy? Look what you’re teaching her.” She snatched the vial and spoon away from Claire and tossed them back into the purse.
    Claire pulled away angrily. “Coke is real. Dragons and goddesses aren’t.”
    “You keep your reality.” Rune stood up and took Courtney by the hand and led her up onto the outer deck. “Come on, honey, I’ll read you a story.”
    AN HOUR LATER COURTNEY ASKED, “ONE MORE, PLEASE.”
    Rune debated,