His voice stopped her. It was not what she expected from the shape of him. It was low and unhurried and very clear, a voice with the rough edges sanded off, a voice that seemed to arrive in the ear already warm. It made the shelter feel, for one odd second, like a room with a lamp in it.
"Sir," she said, "the buses stopped. They're not coming. There's a sign."
"So I gathered," he said. "I read it. Several times, in fact, in the hope that it would improve." He smiled slightly. His teeth were chattering, and he was managing them, she saw, with an effort, the way some men manage a stammer. "I was waiting for the twenty-four. I think I may have been waiting for it for some time."
"Where were you going?"
He considered this. "That," he said, "is a more complicated question than it sounds."
"Okay. Where do you live?"
"As of noon today," he said, "nowhere in particular." He said it without self-pity, as a plain fact, the way a man might mention that his watch had stopped. "The house I lived in on Tonawanda Street has been sold to a gentleman who intends to make it into, I believe, a parking area. The tenants were given notice in October. I was given the same notice as the others, and I'm afraid I did what the young people call 'putting it off.' This morning a gentleman came with a hammer and a great deal of plywood, and here I am." He lifted one gloved hand an inch off the blanket in his lap, a small, courtly gesture, as if introducing himself to the storm. "I had a plan. It involved the twenty-four bus and the Salvation Army on Main Street. The plan has not survived contact with the weather."
"The Salvation Army will be full," Harper said. "It's always full on nights like this. And City Mission too."
"Then I suppose I'll sit here a bit longer and think of a better plan."
"You'll die out here."
"It's possible," he said courteously. "I've been trying not to think about that part."