I put my arm around Eva Vaughan. The young girl was staring at me with perfect fear.

"It's all right," I said.

"No. No, it ain't."

I told her, "We'll get downtown and call Father Capo. He's probably called the police by now."

"Maybe they shot him first."

I hadn't thought of that. "It's gonna be all right," I said.

We got off the train at the State Street station. I didn't have a plan. They had followed me to the church; I knew that much. Whoever was in that car had been following me all day. To Pablo's hospital. To court. And then to Eva. Milk's face floated to the shallow end of my mind. I began to form a fragile idea.

"Where're we going?" Eva's voice was dispassionate and tired. I got the sense that she no longer cared where I was taking her.

"Let's get on the 14," I said. "I'll take you to my apartment and we can figure everything out from there."

When she didn't respond I said, "It's safe. It's the only place I can trust right now." That wasn't true. If they had followed me since the morning then they knew where I lived. But it was all I had.

Eva Vaughan and I waited for the 14 on State Street. The day was turning into evening. The windows of Marshall Field's showed a fall scene. Mannequin children played at the feet of a mannequin woman while real leaves fell around them. On a billboard above another building were John Forrest's eyes. It was an advertisement for watches. There were two timepieces in place of his irises, graphically inserted so that they nearly passed as his real eyes. Underneath the picture were the words "Watch Out."

The number 14 came. I found space for us in the rear. We watched downtown recede from the back window like the end of a movie. Once we were on Lake Shore Drive, and the Lake was just a memory of blue, Eva slid close to me and began to cry.

© 2008 ISAAC PERRY

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