We passed under the eyes of the same hideous billboard advertising some defunct optometrist’s office, a pair of eyes that gazed at us with avuncular malice as we left the ashes behind. I always felt an obscure kind of relief when Nick and I passed under its gaze, as if we had escaped some kind of calamity or other in Queens, and I was happy to leave the gas station and the madwoman in the attic behind us.
