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didn’t even shake hands or wish each other luck. Nor did she look back. Not for anything would she have looked back.

FIVE
    J ULIE KNEW BEFORE THE cab turned into Sixteenth Street that she’d been kidding herself. Scarlet Night no more belonged in that living room than a bag lady. She kept the cab waiting while she ran upstairs and got the traveler’s checks. And the keys to Forty-fourth Street. Back in the cab again, she wondered just how strong in her subconscious the association between the shop and the painting was. It was something she would have explored in therapy: the one sure thing her doctor would have made her fish for was the reason she had bought Scarlet Night. Jeff would ask the same question if she ever got around to telling him about it.
    Because I like it. Okay. That would work with Jeff anyway.
    “Welcome home,” she said and set the painting against the chair in the front room of the shop. The floor was cluttered with junk mail beneath the letter drop. She scattered it with her foot but let it lie and went out again, having just time to make the bank before it closed. There was no sign of the child, Juanita, no mangled dolls in the hallway when she looked in. She hadn’t thought she would miss her, but she did.
    After straightening things out at the bank, she began to feel liberated. Or maybe the word was secure. Which, on Eighth Avenue, was crazy. The street was wretched, the whores and pimps and sex movies, porn shops, massage parlors, the debris on the sidewalk, buildings with their eyes smashed out. Yet in among it all were the hardware shops and delis, Greek restaurants and pizza stands, bars, pawn shops, clothiers, a pet shop…and Bourke’s Electrical Shop, all of them run by decent human beings.
    Mr. Bourke came out from behind the counter and shook her hand. “Oo, la, la,” he said, which Julie figured had something to do with Paris. He looked about as healthy as skim milk.
    “I went away without returning your spotlights,” Julie said. Mr. Bourke had loaned her two spotlights for the front of her shop when Pete Mallory had decorated it for her. “I ought to pay you a rental on them.”
    “We can make some kind of arrangement. Or else I’ll sell them to you at a good price.”
    “I don’t expect to need them anymore, Mr. Bourke. I’m going out of the gypsy business. I mean, no more fortune-telling or advising.”
    Mr. Bourke approved. “It was not a very good business for such a lovely young lady. I hope you’ll come back and see us now and then.” He pushed his glasses back up his nose. They always seemed ready to dive off.
    “I’m not moving out yet. Just closing the shop to the public.”
    “Your friends will like it that you’re staying. Mrs. Ryan missed you something terrible.” He mimicked the Irish voice. “And Fritzie, it seems, won’t eat.”
    “It’s worms,” Julie said. Fritzie was Mrs. Ryan’s long, low dog which wasn’t entirely dachshund. “Fritzie loves Fritzie, and pro tem, whoever takes him for a walk.”
    Mr. Bourke laughed. Then: “It will be a sad day for her when he goes.”
    Their eyes met. He had spoken of the dog but both of them thought of Pete Mallory. Mr. Bourke had been very fond of him. “Look, I’ll bring the lamps back and then we can decide what I owe you.”
    “Take your time.” Mr. Bourke retreated behind the counter.
    Julie started out, not wanting to see the tears she was pretty sure were in his eyes.
    He called after her, “There’s a Mass for Peter at St. Malachy’s at five on Thursday.”
    “I’ll try to make it.” She was sure she wouldn’t.
    She bought some eyelets and picture wire before returning to the shop. The first thing she did when she returned to Forty-fourth Street was gather the junk mail. In among it was a folded piece of lined paper on which was written in a foreign but childlike hand:
Dear Julie
    Anyone looks for me I am back July 7. We go to Puerto Rico. Please.
    Rose Rodriguez
    Julie crumpled the