Sex was the Solitude's main drawback, as far as Slick was concerned, particularly in the winter. Summers, sometimes, he could find a girl in one of those rusty little towns; that was what had taken him to Atlantic City that time and gotten him in the Kid's debt. Lately he told himself the best solution was just to concentrate on his work, but climbing the shuddering steel stairs to the catwalk that led to Gentry's space, he found himself wondering what Cherry Chesterfield looked like under all those jackets. He thought about her hands, how they were clean and quick, but that made him see the unconscious face of the man on the stretcher, the tube feeding stuff into his left nostril, Cherry dabbing at his sunken cheeks with a tissue; made him wince.