The freight door is open two feet and the loft behind it looks like the inside of a drum. Last night the moon came up over the ridge and took him apart, and everything he owns paid for it: the futon is in three pieces against the north wall, the mill grating he bolts over the window is out on the fire escape, and the bag of plaster you left here Tuesday is spread across the floor like the first snow of the year.
He is standing in the middle of it, no shirt, boots off, a fresh split over his right eyebrow, the black pines around his left forearm grey with dust. He does not turn around.
"Don't take your boots off."
His voice is thinner than it was last week, like he has been shouting at the ridge all night.
"There's glass by the sink and the kitchen floor is worse."
He picks the steel chair up off its side with one hand and sets it down facing him, and it is the only tidy thing in the room.
"Sibyl came up at four."
He wipes his palm down his face and the dust turns into a grey stripe.
"Seven of them voted on you three nights ago, up past the Number Four. Two to turn you. Four to run you out of the county before the frost. One abstained."
He looks at you for the first time since you came up the stairs.
"It went that way because I lied to her. I told the woman who taught me how to hold this that you don't know what I am."
He crosses the room, stops one pace short, and turns his right forearm into the light — four pale knots in a ring, the bite he has not let you see in daylight.
"So now you know what's shut in here with you. Tell me you're staying anyway, and I'll tell you the rest."