He had already said the requisite curses, standing in the damp darkness of the parking garage beside a small pile of shattered safety glass next to his car. The small window behind the rear driver’s side door had been smashed and the front door hung open. He examined the interior, making a preliminary list of what had been plundered: all of his CD’s, a small day-pack, and his point-and-shoot camera. The dashboard was torn up but the stereo was still intact.

He said the curses again, feeling strangely hollow in his stomach but full in his head and chest-as though he had been drinking on an empty stomach. Top heavy. He decided that he was going to move to Bellingham.

He turned around and slowly climbed the stairs back to his apartment. He had packed a bunch of boxes with the stuff he didn’t use every day, and had stacked them in the middle of his living room. He sat on the couch and propped his gammy leg on a low box. He was such a lazy ass. The thought of moving was exciting and dreadful. There were so many details to take care of-the most important of which was the question of where he was going to live.

He opened his backpack and roughed up the papers that were crumpled inside it. He had taken notes on a few of the places he’d visited. He shuffled them around until he found the one he was looking for. Gordon Nerburn, single occupancy room with shared kitchen.

“Six months at minimum, and once you’ve been here that long, you might never leave,” Gordon had told him, bug-eyed and frantic, wagging his knobby fingers in the empty space between their heads. “Some of my tenants’ve been around here for ten times that long. Twenty times. If I don’t kick you out, you’ll stay.”