"Music?"
"No." She hesitated. Roman, who had no instinct whatsoever for privacy, said, "Mom's gonna be on the radio. She's making a tape so they'll pick her. She does it at night with a towel on her head so I can't hear, but I can hear."
"Roman."
"You said 'freezing my patootie off in Buffalo' and then you said a bad word and started over."
"Roman, go put on your pajamas. Go on. It's eight o'clock. A Charlie Brown Christmas is on at eight-thirty and if you're not in pajamas you can watch it through the keyhole."
He went, under protest, down the long railroad hallway to his room, and they heard drawers banging and a series of small, theatrical groans. Harper picked up the dish towel and dried a plate that was already dry. She could feel Lucian looking at her.
"What station?" he asked quietly.
"WJNY. Fourteen hundred. They need somebody for overnights. Midnight to five."
"The graveyard."
"That's what they call it?"
"That's what we used to call it." He was turning his mug slowly on the oilcloth, a quarter turn and a quarter turn, the way some people turn a ring on their finger. "The graveyard. The night shift. The owl. We had a dozen names for it. Every one of us who did it pretended to hate it, and every one of us would have fought you with our bare hands to keep it."