Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets by Guy Adams, Kasey Lansdale, Glen Mehn

maybe sixteen-foot-high ceilings of bare wood. You could dance in here. There was nothing but a couple of hard chairs and a simple table.
    “Yep. There’s an old bed up there, too. Just the one. My husband and I lived up here while we were fighting with Stuy Town, before that Mr. Lorch let us move in to his place.”
    I remembered them. The Post had written a scathing editorial about letting ‘that spade family’ move in and ‘corrupt’ the all- white enclave.
    Sherlock looked at me, rubbing his fingers against his thumb. I reached into my pocket and gave him the ten-dollar bill he had given me a few hours before outside the Chelsea. I was overdue there, and I wasn’t going to pay them another dime. I was going to live here.
    “Mrs. Hendrix, we’re happy to take the floors, effective today. Right now, if that’s all right?”
    She turned from the top of the stairs. “That’s no problem. Y’all do what you need to do. I’ve gotta get keys cut, but y’all stay here if you need and they’ll be ready as soon as we can get them out. Breakfast rush about to start. First of June, now. See you on the first of July, if not before.” The bills disappeared underneath her apron.
    Sherlock looked at me. “This floor alone is worth it, isn’t it? Shall we look upstairs?”
    The next floor was the same, if a little cleaner. There was a bed, made up, with a dust cover on it, and a small rough wooden dresser.
    “We’re allowed to do what we like. Put up walls if we want, or not. And Mrs. Hendrix wanted to keep the furniture up here, said that it was too much trouble to bring it down. And free breakfast. Anything left over from the day before. I think your trim waistline may expand, if you’re fed enough.”
    I yawned.
    “Poor John Watson. I’ve tired you out with my manic walk the length of Manhattan Island. We should lie down.” He pulled back the dust sheet.
    “This is the one thing. The blue beauties will make you yawn, tired and exhausted, but you’ll have trouble sleeping.”
    “I’m sure we’ll find something to do.” He pulled me to him, to those lips and that lovely long face I’d been dreaming of all night.
    A SINGLE RAY of actual sunshine wandered across the floor, motes of dust sprung up from our bodies twinkling in their slow journey to the floor. “Look at the dust, Sherlock. Floating there, swirling. Lighter than air. It’s like magic.”
    “Not at all. They’re very light, but not lighter than air, or they’d float up and we’d have far less sweeping. They’re just light enough that the lift from swirling air molecules, from tiny temperature changes can slow their descent. The sunlight is heating the air as it streams through the window. That’s your magic, John. Motes of dust are simply pawns in the sun’s game.”
    “Take the joy out of everything, don’t you?”
    “Not everything, John.” He smiled at me, then, the first time I saw his secret smile; the one he only shared with me, and only when we were alone. That smile told me that this, that we, were special, but that it wasn’t to leave the confines of the private lair we would build for ourselves, there above Alphabet City.
    “Pawns.” He sat up, moving faster than I could even think of moving. “Tell me something, John. Do you remember Valerie Solanas? Did she strike you as a pawn? Someone who would do something, unasked, for someone else?”
    I thought about her. “Not really. She seemed more... more like someone who was used to playing her own game, changing the rules of the game she found herself in.”
    “Exactly, John. She’s a queen, able to make any moves, playing her own game, but she is without the luxury of her own board. Acting as a pawn. Driving towards the opponent’s back row, to regain her crown.”
    He got up and walked to the window.
    “But she’s not in control, is she?”
    “That’s exactly it, John. She’s not in control of her life, and she’s trying to work out who the king is.”
    “Or the