The safehouse occupied the third floor of a building that had once manufactured buttons—pearl buttons, specifically, harvested from the river mussels that used to thrive in the waters east of the city. Eli learned this from the old man who lived in the basement, who talked about his mother's hands working the presses, how the pearl dust had settled into her fingerprints until she left her identity on everything she touched.
"Gone now," the old man said, not looking up from the television that played soap operas two decades old. "The mussels, the factory, all of it. Just buildings left. Buildings and people who don't know what they used to be."
Eli gave him money for the observation. It seemed important, somehow, to acknowledge that history continued beneath the surface of every operation, every temporary shelter.
