Ray woke up. It was cold. He pulled the newspapers into his jacket and pressed them against his chest. The ceiling above him had a water stain the size of a dinner plate. Last month it rained, and water came through the stain. It is still dripping. A small slow drop into a rusted can he placed on the floor for that purpose.

He sat up. The abandoned Ford assembly plant was quiet. Dave was sleeping in the corner, a thin blanket over his body, his mouth open, snoring quietly. Ray counted the drops. One drop every four seconds. Sixteen drops per minute. Nine hundred sixty drops per hour. Forty thousand three hundred twenty drops per day.

He did not think about what the drops meant. He just counted them.

The soup kitchen was on Grand River Avenue, in a building that used to be a church and then stopped being a church and then became a soup kitchen because someone needed to do something and doing something was better than doing nothing. Father Paul was there, a man of fifty with a red face and a bad temper and a good heart that he did not admit to having.

"Morning," Ray said.

"Morning," Father Paul said. He was stirring a large pot of something that was not soup and not quite stew. It was warm and it was salty and it was free. "We are short one volunteer today. Some lady who comes on Tuesdays called in sick."

Ray nodded. He took a paper plate and Father Paul poured the warm salty thing onto it. Ray sat at a metal table and ate.

There were other people at the table. A young man with hollow eyes and shaking hands. An older woman who smelled like mothballs and soup. A man who had been in prison and had come out and had nowhere to go and no one to go to. Ray ate his soup and looked at their faces and saw the same thing he saw in the mirror every morning when he found a crack in the bathroom mirror at the bus station: the slow flattening of a life.

Not dramatic. Not a single event. Just the slow wearing away, like water on stone, like rust on metal, like the middle class leaving Detroit, factory by factory, block by block, year by year, until there was nothing left but the hollow buildings and the people who could not afford to leave and the people who had nowhere else to go.

Mindy stood under a streetlamp on Jefferson Avenue. She was twenty-four, maybe younger, wearing a dress that was not a dress and shoes that were too small. Ray walked past her and she called after him.

"You want to pay for one night?"

"No."

"Okay."

Ray kept walking. He did not look back. He did not need to. He knew what she did and she knew what he knew and neither of them thought the other was better for it. They were the same thing, just different positions on the same slope.

He passed the old Kmart on East 8 Mile. The glass was broken. Weeds grew through the broken glass. The parking lot was cracked and uneven, weeds growing through the cracks. Ten years ago people came here to shop. Now only wind came here. Ray looked at it for a second and kept walking.

He sat at a gas station on Eight Mile and Livernois. Dave came out of the bathroom and sat next to him. Dave was fifty, same age as Ray, worked at Ford for twenty-three years, same as Ray, and one morning in January 2009 they told him not to come back. His position was replaced by a machine. He was not fired. He was just told that his position no longer existed.

"I miss home," Dave said.

Ray nodded.

"My house is gone. They took it. Foreclosure. I don't have a home to miss."

Ray nodded again. He thought about his son. His son was thirty-two, lived in Ohio, and had not called Ray in three years. Ray remembered his son in the garage, maybe eight years old, working on an old bicycle, asking questions.

"Dad, how does a car run?"

"Gasoline."

"And then you get home?"

"Yeah."

Ray had not thought about that conversation in fifteen years. It came to him now, clear and exact, like a photograph. He did not feel sad. He felt nothing. The nothing was enough.

He sold cardboard for five dollars. He went to a recycling center on Conant Street and sold three boxes of cardboard to the man behind the counter. The man weighed them, read the scale, and handed Ray five dollars. Ray counted the bills. Five one-dollar bills.

A sandwich cost three dollars and ninety-nine cents at the convenience store. He needed two dollars and one cent to survive. He had five dollars. He bought a sandwich. He had one dollar and one cent left.

He ate the sandwich standing up, outside the convenience store, on the corner of Conant and Outer Drive. The sandwich was cold and the bread was soft and the meat was thin. It was food. Food was what he needed.

He walked back through the empty streets. Windows were boarded up on most buildings. Some buildings had no windows at all. The sidewalks were cracked and uneven. Grass grew through the cracks. A dog wandered past, ribs showing through its fur. It looked at Ray, and Ray looked at it, and neither of them moved. Then the dog kept walking. Ray kept walking.

He passed a playground. The swings were rusted. The slide was bent. A tire swing hung from a broken chain, swinging slowly in the wind, back and forth, back and forth. He watched it for a moment. Then he kept walking.

He found a dry spot under a bridge on the river. He sat down and took off his shoes. His socks had holes in the toes. He stuffed newspapers into the holes. He always kept newspapers for that purpose. The newspapers were also worth fifty cents if he saved enough boxes.

A woman walked by, pulling a shopping cart filled with plastic bags. She looked at him. He looked at her. She looked away. They were both used to this.

He took off his shoes and inspected his feet. Blisters on both heels. He wrapped them in paper from the sandwich. The paper was clean on one side. He used the clean side.

He closed his eyes. The river moved below the bridge. He could hear it, even from here. Water moving. Constant. Unchanged. He had been coming to this bridge for two years. He did not know why. Maybe because it was a place that had not changed yet. Maybe because water meant life, even here.

He opened his eyes again. The sky was grey. The bridge was concrete. The river was dark. He was alive. It was enough.

Winter came. The temperature dropped to ten below zero and stayed there for three days. Ray slept in a gas station on 7 Mile Road, in a corner behind the dumpster, behind three trash cans that provided a wall of metal between him and the wind. He wore all his clothes. He had four outfits total, and he wore them all at once when it got cold.

The snow stopped at dawn on the fourth day. Ray opened his eyes. The snow was white and bright in the morning light, and the gas station was white and the street was white and the sky was white. Everything was white and quiet and cold.

He pulled his jacket tighter. He did not need to go home. He did not have a home. He just needed to survive until tomorrow. Tomorrow he would find more cardboard. Tomorrow he would eat a sandwich. Tomorrow he would find a place to sleep.

It was not a plan. It was a habit. Habits were all he had left.

Father Paul saw him the next Sunday at the soup kitchen. Ray was sitting in the back, eating粥 slowly, his eyes on the plate. Father Paul came over and stood next to him.

"How are you, Ray?"

"Okay," Ray said.

"You need anything?"

"No."

"Okay." Father Paul stood there for a moment. "I am here if you need anything."

Ray nodded. He finished his粥. He put his plate in the stack. He walked out into the cold Detroit morning, white snow under grey sky, and he walked toward the recycling center.

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