Wren had been there for close to three hours. It had been easy to find Rufus’s building, since he had practically given him coordinates when they first talked. Now Rufus’s front stoop on Catalpa Avenue was littered with cigarette butts and a smashed can of Red Bull. Many of what Wren supposed were Rufus’s neighbors had eyed him suspiciously as they stepped around him to enter the redbrick six-flat apartment building. One, an older gentleman with a bald pate and a ring of silver hair above his ears, even stopped to ask if he could help him, what business he had here. Wren waved him off, telling him he was waiting for his friend Rufus. After the old man had gone inside, Wren wondered if even the term friend was too grandiose for what he and Rufus shared.
They hardly knew each other, and yet
