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important? A man in the government. The Queen of Mars. The Knights Templar.
    Pepper laughed to himself and relaxed and the sheets seemed to slip right off him.
    “Patients are allowed to make phone calls?” Pepper asked.
    “But it’s not free, Joe. You have to pay for the call.”
    “That’s why you want a quarter.”
    “Yes.”
    “In the middle of the night.”
    The man shook his head. “I want a quarter all the time.”
    Okay then. Bonkers or not, the man had helped Pepper a little bit. Patients could make phone calls. Pepper had money—bills in his wallet and coins in his pocket. He wouldn’t call Mari this early, but it was good knowing that he could. He reached down into his pocket and felt the handful of coins waiting there, jingling a little.
    “That’s it,” the man whispered. “Yes, yes, I hear the good news.”
    Pepper found the coin he wanted to give, held out his hand, his fingers closed around the quarter. The man grinned.
    As soon as Pepper released his fingers, his roommate snatched the quarter out of the air and ran from the room without shutting the door.
    Pepper yelled, “And stop calling me Joe!”
    But the guy was already gone. The lights in the hall filled the room like the headlights of a double-decker bus.
    Pepper had to get up. He shivered in the slight chill of the air-conditioned room, cursed as he walked to the door and shut it, and bumped his shin on the metal frame of his bed when he reached it again. He flopped into his bed and, looking across the room at his roommate’s, wondered if the guy ever even slept there. Maybe he collected his alms around Northwest all night. Dorry had warned him that life in Northwest would be unstructured, but he would’ve thought the staff at least discouraged panhandling.
    As the sun began rising on Friday morning, Pepper tried to fall back to sleep.
    No luck. The door to his room blew open. Louder than an explosive charge. His roommate turned on the overhead lights, soaking their room with queasy yellow light.
    “It’s a
Canadian
quarter!” he shouted.
    Pepper lay still, faking the steady breathing of deep sleep. But underneath the covers he nearly laughed as he listened to his roommate pacing. Would the man escalate things? Would Pepper have to fight? That sure wouldn’t help to get him out of this place any sooner. Just that quickly, Pepper worried about what his roommate might do.
    But the poking never resumed. The roommate finally turned out the light and went to bed.
    From beneath his blanket, the guy whispered, “That’s cold,
Joe
. Real cold.”
    Pepper slept until seven a.m.

4
    PEPPER WOKE UP with the sun. He hadn’t forgotten where he was, but even in here, with an ache in his neck from the thin pillow, having slept in his street clothes, and even through sheets of shatterproof plastic, the sunlight sure felt pleasant. He practically purred in his bed, a great cat rousing.
    But who the hell had drawn the curtains? Pepper thought of his roommate. He pictured himself sleeping deep and that guy standing over him long enough to tug the curtains. It just made him feel so vulnerable.
    “Wake up! Wake up!” a woman’s voice sang. It wasn’t his roommate looming at his bedside, and not Dorry, either. A different older woman moved to the head of his bed and snatched his top sheet off. Didn’t even pause to check if Pepper had his pants on or off. (Thankfully, for all involved, they were still on.)
    “I don’t plan to run a bath for you,” she explained tersely. She had a Caribbean accent. “It’s seven in the morning. Wake up! And get out of your bed.”
    The woman’s actions screamed “Staff Member” but her wardrobe cooed “Casual Grandma.” A beige blanket sweater and shapeless jeans, comfortable black sneakers, and hair cut short. She had a batchof keys hanging from a plastic cord around her wrist. They jangled as she tugged the top sheet one more time, all the way off him.
    “You’ll make your bed when I leave,