Hudson City

      The interior of her building gave lie to the redevelopment exterior, which had been polished up with white bricks in a fashion of many new buildings. But the inside had all the old bones of traditional tenements, complete with a vestibule and a wall full of brass mail boxes and an inner door that opened with a key or a buzzer. She opened the inner door ahead of me and I pashed into the dark first floor with the apartment for the super on the right and a stairwell leading up to the rest of the building along the left wall. “How far up?” I asked. “It’s apartment seven on the fourth floor,” she said, her eyes twinkling a little under the dim overhead light. “Think of it as seventh heaven.” Someone had tried to maintain the interior, but age oozed out from under the new wall paper and out the cracks of the wooden wainscot that lined the walls even along the sides of the rising stairs. The first step creaked when I put my foot on it and continued to creak as I proceeded Je

  She looked different when we got outside, under street lights, gaunter, like a wraith, no more substantial than a ghost, her eyes deeper and darker, and full of mystery, her long fingers pale. Her mouth alone had the same crooked and taunting look as she’d shown in the bar, taunting, as if she was on the verge of saying something mocking, perhaps even hurtful. “Which way?” I asked. She pointed to the left, the light catching a gold ring she wore on the thumb of her right hand. The tall historic water tower loomed out of the darkness like a wraith, caught in the occasional flash of headlights as traffic used the street as a short cut to the tunnel and the highways headed towards western New Jersey. Clusters of stores cluttered the sidewalk on both sides, some better illuminated than others, most on the far side with the temporary feel of hopeful entrepreneurs, while on our side, the more established, older stores – the Chinese takeout, the liquor store, and a cheap bodega – drew in