"But we just-" Heather began, but Tillie didn't let her finish.

"I told you everything I got to say. Miz Harris wanted me to talk to you, and I did. If I was you, I'd go on back to wherever you came from. There's things people like you don't know nothin‘ about, and never will. That's just the way it is." She turned away and started down the path.

As Heather watched her go, the faint hope that had been flickering inside her for the last few hours was almost extinguished. But when she turned to face Keith, his eyes were alive with excitement. "She knows something," he said, his voice low and intense. "She knows something, but she won't tell us."

"Why shouldn't she tell us?" Heather protested. "If she knows-"

"She's like the rest of them," Keith replied. "The men on the tracks and the woman in the tent. Didn't you hear her?

She said ‘people like you.' That's what it's all about-they won't talk to us because we're not like them."

"Then what are we supposed to do?" Heather asked.

"You don't do anything," Keith said. "But I get a change of address."

Pushing her wire shopping cart, Tillie walked slowly along the paths of Riverside Park. She wasn't in a hurry-hadn't ever been in a hurry, really. Except when she was young. She'd been in a hurry then. Too much of a hurry. She was going to be an actress, and she'd come to New York when she was eighteen, right out of high school. She got a job as a waitress and started going to auditions, but nobody gave her more than a walk-on. But she kept trying, always certain that in just another year she'd finally get her break. At first it had been fun-she had friends who wanted to be actors and actresses, too, and some of them had actually gotten jobs. One of them was on a soap opera now-in fact, Tillie still saw him sometimes when he and his friends from the show ate picnic lunches in the park. Of course, she never spoke to him, and he'd never recognized her, and that was all right.

The trouble had started thirty years ago, when she was twenty-five. It hadn't seemed like trouble back then: all she'd done was fall in love with a man-not just dated him, but really fallen in love with him.

But he was married, and even though he kept promising to leave his wife, it seemed that every month he had another excuse why he couldn't. He made it up to her in other ways. He paid her rent, and gave her money every week-enough so she could quit her job as a waitress.

She still went to auditions, but most of the time she stayed at home, in case Tony called her or came over.

She stayed at home, and she drank.

Vodka, mostly, because it didn't taste like anything and Tony couldn't smell it on her breath. After a while she didn't go out much at all, and her other friends stopped calling her. But she had Tony, so it didn't matter.

Then one day Tony didn't call her, and when he didn't call her the next day, either, she called him. She must have called a hundred times, but his secretary wouldn't ever let her talk to Tony, so she started calling him at home.

After a while his wife had their phone number changed. That was when Tillie started hanging out in front of the building where he worked, waiting for him to come out. He kept telling her he didn't want to see her anymore, but she knew that wasn't true-that couldn't be true, because he'd always said they were going to get married someday.

When Tony's wife-her name was Angela-made Tony stop paying Tillie's rent and giving her money, Tillie went to see her. She was only going to talk to her, explain how Tony really loved her, not Angela. She only took the knife along to scare Angela with, but the more she talked to Angela, the madder she got, and when the police came, there was blood all over Tony's apartment, and the furniture was all torn up, and Angela claimed it was Tillie's fault.

Angela wasn't hurt-Tillie was bleeding even more than she was, and crying like it was the end of the world, so they'd sent her to a hospital for a while. When they let her out, she didn't have any place to stay, but it was the middle of summer, so that night she slept in Central Park.

The next day she stayed in the park and started talking to people. Pretty soon she made friends-even more friends than she'd had before Tony-and they taught her how to get along without much money. When winter came, she and her friends moved into Grand Central Station. At first Tillie thought she'd get another job, go back to waitressing or something, but as the months passed, she never quite got around to it, and finally she stopped thinking about it. Somewhere along the line-it didn't really matter when-she moved from Grand Central into the tunnels themselves, and the longer she lived under the city, the more she liked it. Of course, she still liked coming to the surface, but it didn't feel safe anymore; the city had changed so much in thirty years. When she was out on a day like today, she tried not to get too far away from her friends. Besides, today she had business to attend to, and as she shuffled along through the park, she kept an eye out for familiar faces.

When she came to Liz Hodges's tent, she left the shopping cart parked on the path, stooped to pass under the railing, and picked her way down to the level area that Liz always kept perfectly swept. Liz, always nervous, nearly jumped out of her skin when Tillie spoke a greeting. "Nobody but me," Tillie added quickly, and Liz's fluttering hand dropped from her throat to her skirt. She could barely meet Tillie's eye as she offered her a cup of coffee.

"I'm almost out, but Burt said he'd bring me some tomorrow."

"No thanks," Tillie replied, knowing that Burt, Liz's husband, wouldn't be likely to bring her anything, since he'd died three years ago. She dug into the inside pocket of her coat and pulled out some more of the money Eve Harris had given her. "Maybe this'll help you out," she said. Almost as an afterthought, she dug into another pocket and pulled out one of the handbills Jinx had brought home the other night. "Better keep an eye out for these two. If you see ‘em, just tell any of the fellas. I don't expect they'll get this far though."

Liz nervously took the flyer and studied the two faces, then quickly handed the sheet of paper back to Tillie. "I don't know," she fretted. "I'll try, but you know me-when Burt's not here, I get frightened of my own shadow."

Tillie took the paper back, knowing that if she left it, Liz would worry for an hour over how she was going to get rid of it. She wouldn't dare set it down on her table, for fear that it would blow onto the ground, and she wouldn't be able to put it in her tent, either. Liz had a thing about any kind of litter at all, and having the flyer around her tiny campsite would drive her even crazier than she already was. "Well, don't you worry about it, Liz," Tillie said, automatically reaching out to give the other woman a reassuring squeeze on the arm. When Liz shied away from the contact, Tillie made her way back up to the path. As she retrieved her shopping cart, she saw Liz already busily sweeping away the footprints Tillie had left on the dirt around her tent. "Crazy," Tillie muttered, shaking her head sadly as she shuffled away.

Leaving the park, she headed over to Broadway. She recognized half a dozen people hanging around the subway entrance. Eddie was playing his clarinet, its case open at his feet. Tillie added twenty dollars to it and tucked one of the flyers in his pocket. Eddie winked at her but never missed a note, and Tillie moved on.

Blind Jimmy-whose eyesight was no worse than Tillie's- was just coming across the street, tapping along with his cane and clutching the arm of someone Tillie had never seen before. She moved her cart close to the curb, parking it next to a trash barrel, and listened as Jimmy ran his spiel: "I could sure use a cup of coffee, and maybe a Danish. I think there's a Starbucks in the next block. If you could just-"