The light in the corridor flickered. Frank Donovan watched it do this for a long time. On, off, on, off. A slow rhythmic pulse like a heartbeat that couldn't decide whether it wanted to live or die.

He sat on the floor of the corridor in his apartment building on West Cullerton Street, his back against the wall, his hands on his knees. The bottle was empty. He had finished it three hours ago or maybe three days ago. Time had become something fluid, like the river behind the steel mills, always moving but never going anywhere.

Lily's bicycle was in the storage room. He hadn't moved it in eleven months. It was a small yellow thing with training wheels that he'd taken off because Lily was eight now and eight-year-olds didn't need training wheels. He'd taken them off on a Saturday morning, and Lily had ridden around the block by Sunday afternoon, laughing, her hair flying behind her like a flag. She had come home with a scraped knee and a face full of sunshine and said, "Dad, I'm not a baby anymore."

She wasn't a baby. She was eight. She was gone.

The driver was sixteen. His name was Jamie Cole, and he was thin in the way that malnourished teenagers are thin—not the lean thin of someone who exercises, but the hollow thin of someone whose body is eating itself. Frank had seen him in court, sitting next to his grandmother, a woman whose face was a map of every bad decision she'd ever made. Jamie's hands were shaking. Not from guilt. From withdrawal. He was already addicted to something. At sixteen.

The sentence was eighteen months. The grandmother got the insurance money and disappeared within a week. Frank had watched her leave the courthouse with a new man's arm around her shoulders, and he had felt nothing. Not anger. Not sadness. Nothing.

He found Jamie in a methadone clinic on 43rd Street. Not to hurt him. Not to forgive him. He found him because he needed someone to sit with him in the nothing.

Jamie was sitting on a bench outside the clinic, smoking a cigarette with the desperate intensity of someone who knows it's killing him and doesn't care. Frank sat down next to him.

"You're Lily's dad," Jamie said. It wasn't a question.

"Yes."

Jamie exhaled smoke. "I'm sorry."

Frank looked at him. "You've said that."

"I know. I'll say it again."

They sat in silence. The wind came off the river cold and wet, carrying the smell of steel and diesel and something else—something that might have been hope if Frank had believed in things like hope.

"I don't hate you," Frank said finally.

Jamie looked at him, surprised. "Shouldn't you?"

"I don't know how. You're worse off than me. You destroyed yourself before you even knew what you were doing."

Jamie laughed. It was a dry, broken sound. "I should be dead. I know that."

"Maybe. Or maybe you should just keep living. Living and seeing what you broke."

That became their routine. Every Tuesday and Thursday, Frank would walk from his apartment to the clinic, and Jamie would be sitting on the bench, smoking his cigarette, waiting. Sometimes they talked. Sometimes they didn't. Frank told Jamie about Lily—what she liked, what she hated, what colour her eyes were (brown, but not just brown, like the river, like coffee with too much milk), what song she used to sing on the way home from school (something about butterflies, Frank couldn't remember the words).

Jamie listened. He drank. He nodded.

One Thursday in February, Jamie said, "I should have been the one."

Frank looked at him for a long time. The corridor light flickered on, off, on.

"No," Frank said. "You should keep living. Living and seeing what you broke. That's your punishment. That's your job."

Jamie nodded. He didn't cry. He hadn't cried in years.

The methadone clinic closed in the spring. Funding cuts, they said. The building on 43rd Street was boarded up by May, and Frank walked past it once and saw that the benches outside had been removed. Jamie was gone. Not dead, just gone. Someone said he'd moved to Indianapolis. Someone else said he'd overdosed in a shelter on the West Side. Frank didn't know. He didn't ask.

He returned to the corridor. The one in his apartment building. The one with the flickering light. He sat on the floor, his back against the wall, his hands on his knees, and he watched the light flicker.

On. Off. On. Off.

Lily's bicycle was still in the storage room. He hadn't thrown it away. He hadn't pushed it out into the hallway either. It was just there, in the dark, covered in dust, its yellow paint faded by the absence of sunlight.

The light flickered. On. Off. On. Off.

Frank Donovan sat in the corridor and watched the light flicker, and the corridor flickered, and the building flickered, and the city flickered, and nothing changed. Nothing ever changed. The light went on. The light went off. The light went on. The light went off.

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