Key in the lock.

Nothing.

Then the door opens fast, banging against the wall, and Da swings the piece of wood with an effort that begins at her ankles. But it sails through space, hitting nothing, until it cracks against the frame of the door, having passed straight through the place where Kep’s head should have been, and the force of the impact flips the piece of wood out of her hands, and then the flashlight comes on and blinds her.

“Awwwww,” Kep says. “You waited up for me.” He kicks the piece of wood aside. “Don’t pick it up,” he says, “or I’ll take it away and beat your teeth in with it.” He pans the room with the light, fast sweeps to right and left, and then brings it back to her face. “Where’s the little monster?” He leans to his right until his shoulder hits the doorframe, almost missing it. He’s drunker, Da thinks, than he knows.

“Asleep,” she says, backing away. There is a pile of wood behind her.

“Good. No interruptions.” He points the light at the concrete floor for a moment. “Not too comfy, huh? Where’s your blanket?”

“Under Peep.” The heel of her shoe has touched the edge of the woodpile.

“Well, up to you. He can have it or you can. You’re going to be on the bottom. You want to get your back dirty?”

“I’m not getting my back dirty.”

“Yeah? You wash the floor or something?”

“If you touch me,” she says, “I’ll mark you for life.”

“I don’t think so. Look here.” He shines the light down at himself. His left hand flashes silver, and the flash turns into a long, curved knife.

Da reaches behind her, her fingertips brushing pieces of wood, just odd pieces, nothing with any weight to it. She says, “Are you ready to kill me?”

“Oh, don’t be silly. I won’t have to kill you.” He brings the knife up and wiggles it from side to side. “You know that web between your thumb and your first finger? You got any idea how much it hurts when that gets cut? I mean cut deep? You’re going to be very surprised. And then you’ll do anything I say not to get the other one cut.”

There’s nothing behind her that she can use. She brings both hands forward, arched into claws. Then she registers surprise, looks past him, over his shoulder.

Kep laughs. “Oh, yeah,” he says. “Right. And I turn around and look behind me, like I haven’t seen ten million stupid movies. Like I haven’t-”

Da sees a blur of dark motion and hears something that sounds like a coconut hitting the ground from a high tree, and Kep’s knees turn to water and he pitches forward flat on his face, the flashlight spinning on the floor, lighting the room, the boy from the street, the room, the boy from the street.

I have a stomachache,” Miaow says.

It is 6:45 A.M., and she is fully dressed: jeans with an acute crease, which she irons in herself because she’s never satisfied with the way the laundry does it, and a bright red T-shirt featuring the Japanese teenage girl samurai Azumi. Her bunny slippers are on her feet, but her shoes are lined up beside the front door like well-trained pets. Rafferty sits at the kitchen counter, grimly waiting for the coffee to drip, and if someone challenged him to describe his own clothes without looking down, he’d fail completely.

“Sorry to hear it.” His pre-coffee voice is, as always, a croak. “Do you feel well enough to go to school?”

“I don’t think so. I really hurt.” She goes to the counter and takes the can of Coke he’s pulled out for her and pops the tab.

Rafferty says, “Alka-Seltzer? Good idea,” and watches her down about half of it and then lower the can. She burps discreetly. Breakfast.

The door to the bedroom opens, and Rose, who is rarely at her best before noon, feels her way into the living room. She regards the two of them without conspicuous goodwill and squints defensively at the red of Miaow’s T-shirt. She is leaning against the wall, so loose-limbed she looks as though she plans to go back to sleep standing there, but she is dressed to leave the apartment, in a pair of white shorts and one of Rafferty’s freshly laundered shirts. Her hair has been slicked back with damp hands, but it’s still a gloriously anarchic tangle.

“Miaow’s not feeling good,” Rafferty says, getting up. At the sink he runs hot water into a cup that already holds two heaping tablespoons of Nescafé and stirs it quietly, trying not to make a clinking noise with the spoon.

“Me neither,” Rose says furrily. “My stomach hurts.” She watches Rafferty cross the living room with the cup in his hand. When he gives it to her, she does something with the corners of her mouth that she probably thinks is a smile.

“I’m feeling okay,” Rafferty says on his way back to the kitchen. He pours just-dripped coffee into his cup. “Did you two eat anything last night that I didn’t?”

“The spring rolls,” Miaow says.

The bottom half of Rose’s face is hidden by her cup, but she lowers it long enough to say, “Right.”

Rafferty swallows the day’s first coffee. An invisible film between him and the rest of the world begins to dissolve. “That’s probably it. You both look a little punk.” He knocks back half of the cup and picks up the pot with his other hand. Miaow goes to the door, kicking off the bunny slippers, drops to her knees, and pulls on her sneakers. Rafferty continues, “They probably sat too long, maybe under heat lamps. Maybe you guys should both go to bed for a while, see how you feel in a few hours.”

“All right,” Miaow says, opening the front door.

“Don’t make a lot of noise, okay?” Rose says. She sounds sleepy and irritable, and it’s not an act. “I want to sleep.”

“I’ll work on my notes for the book. That’ll be quiet.” He drinks again and heads for the front door, which Miaow is holding wide. “You two go to bed. Get some rest. You won’t even know I’m here. I promise.”

Rose precedes him through the door, cup in hand, and Miaow closes it quietly behind him as he punches the button for the elevator. Two minutes later, down on the fourth floor, Rafferty inserts a new cassette and pushes “record” again.

DA WAKES ON a village farmer’s schedule, maybe six in the morning, and finds herself on her back, looking up at a rough wooden ceiling. After a moment shaped like a vague question, she rolls over to see where she is.

The room is dim, with interruptions of brilliance. Sunlight shoulders its way through the cracks between the planks that make up the walls. When she withdraws her focus from the vertical strips of glare, the gloom resolves itself into backs, seven or eight of them, between her and the nearest wall. Peep is asleep beside her, nestled up against a child Da has never seen before.

She smells children, none too clean, but not filthy either. Just the slightly salty pungency of child’s sweat. She could be back in the village.

Suppressing a grunt of effort, she sits up and looks around. The room is full of sleeping children, literally wall to wall. The floor beneath Da’s hand is packed earth. It takes her a few seconds to assemble the pieces in her memory. The sad song, the light in Kep’s hand, the silvery fire of the knife, the blur of motion behind him, the sound of the stone hitting his head. The stone that turned out to be in the toe of a sock. And the boy standing in the doorway when Kep went down.

She had quickly picked up the flashlight and snapped it off. She was certain that the sound of the motorcycle and Kep’s singing had awakened the others in the building, and the light seemed dangerous. The boy had nodded acknowledgment and then made a cradling motion with his arms: the baby. By the time Da had Peep hugged to her chest and the blanket folded over one shoulder, the boy had pulled the ring of keys from Kep’s pocket. He rolled the man farther into the room so the door could swing shut without hitting him. Then he motioned Da into the hallway, closed the door, and locked it. She had followed him outside into the night. Without even looking back at her, he climbed onto a motorcycle that had to be Kep’s and started it with one of the keys on the ring. He waited until she climbed on. As he pulled the bike away from the building with her hanging on behind, she looked back to see the pale shapes of faces at the windows.