 
Fingerprints on the Edge: We Belong Together

A Novel in Serial

By Mark French

Copyright 2012 Mark French

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Fingerprints on the Edge: We Belong Together

A Novel in Serial

### Table of Contents

Chapter 1 – Reunions

Chapter 2 – Zeke and Timmy

Chapter 3 – Zeke

Chapter 4 – Lamb Shanks

Chapter 5 – The Squat

Chapter 6 – Lex Luthor

Chapter 7 – Details

Chapter 8 – Goodbyes

Chapter 9 – It's not over

Author's Note

# Chapter 1

Reunions

The silence was a little awkward as they walked away from the cafe on Bleeker Street, the last real honest-to-goodness Italian coffee shop with the smell of freshly baked biscotti and dark roast coffee. Zeke and Timothy talked about how little coffee shops like that were disappearing from the Village, but the topic of conversation was pretty much irrelevant; they were filling the silence as they walked west toward the Sixth Avenue line. It hadn't been long since Zeke had gotten back in touch with him and made an effort to come back into his life, and Timothy's heart was rising up in his throat as they got close to the subway. He hadn't told Zeke any of the things he wanted to say – how much he had missed him all those years that he had walked out of their lives, and how proud he was of him now that he back in touch and getting his life together after all that had happened. Zeke walked a little different now, a little stiffer and more mechanical, like they'd broken both his legs in rehab or he'd aged some forty years. His hair was slicked back and he was wearing a flannel shirt, but it was slicked back less like a fashion statement and more like an old man, with the aromatic Three Flowers hair dressing the old Italian men liked, and the shirt tucked in and buttoned up all the way. They stopped by the basketball courts and he lit a cigarette.

"What a beautiful day, you know?"

"Yeah, Zeke. It really is," Timothy said.

Zeke looked past him, like he was really thinking about something else. "Look at this – my first full day back, and even though it's cold as balls, the sun is shining, the birds are chirping. Things are good. What could we possibly have to worry about?" He offered Timothy a cigarette out of the pack, and Timothy reached for it and hesitated. He hadn't smoked in years, and he wasn't sure that he should be smoking, either, but it was a minor point.

"Take the cigarette," Zeke said. "It's a small thing. That one isn't gonna kill you." He took the cigarette and Zeke lit it for him with a stainless steel Zippo with a Narcotics Anonymous logo on the side, the letters "NA" curved to fit inside a circle. It seemed a little odd that Zeke would have bought the lighter, and announced his problems to the world. He had always been a very private man. Timothy hadn't smoked in a really long time, and the first drag stung a little, but the second felt good.

"I owe you an apology," Zeke said.

"For what?"

"For putting you on the spot all those times asking for money. I know I owe you quite a bit, and I plan to pay you back, you know?"

"Nah," Timothy said, "don't sweat it. You're my brother. We watch out for each other."

"Yeah, I know, bro. But I never wanted it to be like that."

"It's not, Zeke. Really." Timothy hugged him hard, and they parted ways. Zeke went down into the subway downtown, and Timothy decided to walk uptown a bit. The night was cold, but walking in it felt good. He walked, thinking about what he'd said. The money hadn't really ever been an issue. Timothy was hardly a big dog, but he was doing more than ok; as a twenty five year old MBA on Wall Street, he was making more now than his father had made in his prime. He made more now than his father had made at any age. He made more than Zeke, too, but he never felt like he really measured up to either of them.

He walked up Sixth Avenue, past the tables of used books, broken knick–knacks and knit hats and gloves for sale. The sun had just gone down in an extraordinarily red sky and it was already starting to cool down even more. A girl walked toward him with her arms crossed tightly, like she was trying to hold herself together. He smiled and she ignored him. He walked up to Fourteenth Street and into the bank on the corner with the huge marble façade for the ATM. He already knew where He was going – up Sixth Avenue between 23rd and 24th Street. There was a friendly neighborhood go-go bar there, a relic from the early 1960's. It was essentially a neighborhood bar with a three foot high catwalk and stage where the girls danced topless with bikini bottoms. It had somewhat of a mid-century burlesque feel to it – the mirrors on the back wall were framed by heavy red drapes like you'd see in an old-time movie theater, and the girls were forbidden to wear thongs or G-strings. There were cheap metal-framed upholstered chairs lining the stage, but the regulars sat at the bar. There was no stripper pole or VIP room, but the girls still made more in tips than they would have at a strip club on Queens Boulevard.

Dennis the door man greeted him with a "bro" handshake and a shoulder bump. He was in his early thirties, tall and lanky with a Marine Corps flat-top and Recon wings tattooed on his forearms, and tough. Sixth Avenue was quiet, and there wasn't a soul on the block but them. "So how's things with your brother?" he asked.

"We're back in touch. Saw him tonight, we had coffee."

"Dude, that's awesome. I'm glad he's back and I hope it takes this time. You got to watch out for your brother. Maybe you can bring him by sometime – I haven't seen him in a year or two . He really helped me out when I needed a hand, and nobody else would. I owe him. Big time."

"Yeah," Timothy said, "I was worried about him for a while." Dennis brought a couple of bourbons out for them, and they drank them discretely at his booth. Timothy told Dennis about how bad he felt about not helping Zeke when he was down hardest, and how he could have at least bought him food or taken him out to eat.

"Who knows, man," Dennis said. "Bottom line is you guys are always there for each other when the chips are really down. I went through something similar when I got back from the first desert war. People had to cut me off. At first I thought I was just paranoid or going crazy – nobody was answering my phone calls or anything. Like all my calls were just disappearing into space or something. I couldn't figure out what I did to piss everybody off, and then I tried to figure out person by person why they wouldn't answer my calls." He took a sip of his drink and lit a cigarette, offering Timothy one. Timothy took his second one of the night. "So anyway," Dennis said, " I owed my brother money. My wife was pissed off at me, and I figured that she and her sister weren't going to talk to me until I apologized for whatever I did. The hardest to figure out was my girlfriend. She was going through a divorce, but she wasn't like that – turns out she was in on the whole thing. My sister-in-law had told her that if I didn't clean up, I was going to end up dead or in jail." His face scrunched up for a second as if he'd forgotten something really important. "It really wasn't about the war," he said deliberately, "it was more about having a boatload of cash in my pocket and trying to figure out what was next, you know?"

"So what finally happened?" Timothy asked.

"Well, at first I was pissed as hell. Then I figured, 'Fuck them', I didn't need them. In a way, it was a gift, you know?" He shrugged. He went on, "I'm Puerto Rican – my family always had my back. I'd never really been alone before, I mean like just me against the world. Very few people get to walk down the street knowing that they're really alone. I think it made me stronger, because I realized that no bullshit, we really are alone in this world. The perspective helped."

"I could see that," Timothy said, but he wondered. Growing up, Zeke had always been the outgoing one, he was the one that could talk to anybody and kept everybody up-to-date on all the family news. He wondered how he'd handled the isolation, whether it made him stronger or helped drive him crazy. Maybe that's why Zeke seemed so much older, and quieter than he had ever seen him.

Tanya's eyelids were sensuously heavy on stage as she sashayed to the familiar steel drums and reggae beat of an alternative rock song about hope, addiction and redemption. He was enough of a regular to know that it was one of her favorite songs, and she was his favorite dancer. They'd spent quite a few nights talking at the bar and he thought they had built a pretty good friendship. At that moment, as she danced, she had the bar's attention. She was pretty in a very exotic way; her face was narrow with high cheekbones, her almond shaped brown eyes were set just a little too far apart. She had full lips and a slight overbite that gave her a very vulnerable look. Her hair was short, almost like a pixie cut, and it looked like she'd cut the bangs herself, but the effect was smoldering. Her breasts were shapely and although larger than one might expect on so petite a frame, they surprisingly weren't what garnered her the most attention from her fans. It wasn't her legs, either – the smooth, shapely, toned legs went on forever and gave the illusion that she was much taller than her 4'11" frame. The way she moved with the music was smoky and pregnant with some pretty heady promise, too, but that's not what was absolutely irresistible, either; it was something strong, sexy, confident and yet vulnerable, a vulnerability that was in and of itself smoky and impossible not to desire. He caught her eye and she smiled.

He pretended not to notice when she came over to the bar next to him. "So, Timothy, are you my Sergio?" she asked with a little laugh.

"I don't know, Tanya, are you my Jane?"

"No, Timothy, I could quit you at any time," she said mischievously. They talked easily for a while about the cold outside the door, the holidays and whatever else they could think of to keep the conversation going while he bought her $15 glasses of house wine. He didn't begrudge her the wine, it was the price of admission and they both understood that although they both ostensibly enjoyed the conversation, there was a commercial aspect to it as well. He wasn't an idiot, but liked her company enough to cheerfully pay her drinks plus a nice tip.

Tanya was quiet and thoughtful, while a girl that looked like Veronica Lake took the stage, complete with 1940's haircut and full red lips, but with a huge rose tattooed across one of her ample breasts. "Timothy, I need a vacation, " Tanya said quietly.

"Me, too," he said, and he meant it. He was tired.

"I've been thinking about taking my son to Disney World in Florida. He's six, and I think he's old enough now. Plus I heard that winter is the best time to go – cheaper and not as crowded."

"Sounds like a good plan. My dad took us to Disneyland before I went to high school. It was the only family vacation that we ever took, and it was great. Never been to Disney World."

"My son has had a difficult time since his father left, and we need to have some time to reconnect. I can't really afford it right now," she said, 'I make good money, but you know I spent a lot on trying to find his dad, and the lawyers.." She watched his face and was quiet, waiting to judge his reaction. He smiled and tried to take it all in, wondering if he understood what she was asking. He was quiet a beat or two too long. "Timothy is this something that you might be able to help us with?"

" _Of course_ ," he thought to himself, " _who wouldn't want to vacation in Florida with Tanya?_ " There was the complication of her son, but as stupid as it sounded even to him, he trusted her judgment on that. It should have been an easy "yes"; he had the cash and needed some time away, but he was never good at quick, decisive answers in matters that involved women when they mattered most. The pause lasted a bit long.

"Timothy, I know this would cost some money, and there is nobody else I know right now that I would ask. Money is tight for us right now, but I've been working a extra shifts. I'd be glad to write something up and pay you back with interest. I could probably pay you back in two months. My son and I really need this time, and I'm afraid that I'm going to lose him – he's been so sad, and angry..." she said, and gave him a tight little smile.

"It sounds like a good idea," he said, not even convincing himself. "I think it could be fun, and I need a vacation."

"Well," she said delicately, "I don't think he's ready to meet you yet. Let's not rush it." She handed him a card with her name and cell phone number on it. "I know this is asking a lot, and you have no reason to trust me, but I would be forever grateful. I don't work Wednesday, and my friend Raquel can watch Max for if you'll let me take you to dinner. We can talk more then." Timothy tried to keep his composure, and they talked for a little while about anything else, then a bit longer about restaurants they could go to and what foods they liked, and settled on a small sushi restaurant in the East Village that was famous for its rolls. She kissed him full on the lips as she got up when her spot in the rotation came up, not making a scene, but making a promise. He got his jacket on as she mounted the stage, and walked out into a night that had gotten cold enough in four hours to snatch the breath right out of his chest. He hailed a cab that came around the corner, perfectly timed. Part of him wished he'd stayed to see her dance again, but it was late and oddly enough, he didn't feel like it was necessary.

He gave the cab driver his address on the Upper East Side, and sat back, enjoying the lights as they headed into midtown. He never got tired of the lights and the skyscrapers of the city. The cab smelled of cigarettes, and the driver had a pack of smokes on the dashboard.

"You can smoke if you want," he said, "as long as you can spot me a cigarette."

"Just be sure you roll down window," the cabbie said in a heavy Eastern European accent, and handed him a cigarette and a book of matches. He lit his with the cigarette lighter and they continued on uptown. Timothy sat back and watched the city go by. It had been a pretty eventful night; saw Zeke for the first time in three months, and had an interesting conversation with Tanya. He knew full well that it was a mistake, but part of him yearned for her. The idea had plenty of downside. To start with, he hardly knew her.

Timothy was quiet the whole ride uptown, through the canyons of midtown Manhattan and through the wild darkness and winding roads of Central park, then out through the majestic brownstones of Fifth and Park Avenues and on up the upper East Side to his apartment off Park avenue, closer to Lexington. He handed the cab driver roughly twice the fare that showed on the meter. The cab driver left him directly in front of a giant puddle in front of his building. He bounced through the puddle, walked up the stoop and opened the giant mahogany doors that opened into the lobby. There was a built-in desk that came out of the wall next to the mailboxes, the remnants of a time then the building had a doorman and a working elevator. The management company went bankrupt, and all the amenities went away, but the gently curving wide mahogany staircase was still pretty impressive. Timothy walked up four flights to his apartment; one of three on the top floor of the building that had been crafted out of the penthouse. His apartment kept the staircase up to the rooftop deck, and he was the only tenant that could access it. He walked in, fell deeply into the futon and pulled a cigarette out of the pack the pack that the cab driver had let him keep. He sat there for a while, losing himself and all track of time as he listened to the hum of the city, wising that the girl across the hall would decide to do a midnight practice of her scales. She was an opera singer, and she sang like an angel. He didn't know what she looked like, but he was almost in love with her. She sang exercises odd hours and when she was walking back from her evening jog. He finally took one last drag off the cigarette and put out the butt on a saucer on the end table. He forced himself up off the futon, washed his face, brushed his teeth and got ready for bed. Tomorrow was another work day.

Sleep didn't come easy, not at all like those nights when he tried to build intricate spreadsheets and ended up drooling on the keyboard. Moonlight poured through his window, and he could hear the traffic on Lexington Avenue and the hums, rattles and clicks of the night outside his window. A seed of excitement had already sprouted inside him about the vacation with Tanya – he wasn't quite sure why; he started believing that maybe it would be a good idea for him to go as well, even if he stayed in a separate room. Maybe she'd go for that. Inexplicably, he really hadn't really even fully realized that he'd already made up his mind to go. He wanted to tell somebody about it, but he wasn't sure who he should tell; his life was full of people he thought of as friends, but he spent an inordinate amount of time alone and so much of it lonely. He didn't have anybody that he could think of right away to share how excited he was becoming about taking a stripper and her son to Disneyland. He'd of course want to pose it as a question, but even that though seemed ludicrous on the surface, "Hey, there's this cute little stripper I'd like to take to Disneyland with her six-year old son. The son? Nope, never met him. His name? Don't quite remember...Ivan? Sergei? John? Jose?" He really couldn't even talk about it to Zeke – he pretty much knew what Zeke's view would be; for all his troubles, Zeke had his head together and was one of the most intelligent people that Timothy knew. No question that he'd think that taking a stripper to Disneyland was an incredibly bad idea. He thought some more about Zeke.

He sat on the futon and watched a little more TV, still wishing instead there were somebody he could call and talk to about everything that had happened that night. Tanya was still at work, and he'd feel weird calling her now; part of what he wanted to talk about was her. Zeke was also heavy on his mind, but he didn't feel like he could talk to her about Zeke – she'd probably be more at ease with men like his brother, men who were more secure and comfortable in their own skin, and more honest. Timothy could imagine how she would laugh easier with him, and touch him gently on the face in a way she never touched him. Just thinking about the way she hypothetically touched Zeke pissed Timothy off. He could feel the tension going down his body like a wave, starting with the clenching of his jaw and crashing like a wave with the tightness all the way down in his toes. He forced himself to think about something else, and he felt the tightness in his jaw start to dissipate. Zeke. Zeke was ten years older than him, but there was more than the years that came between them.

Zeke was good to have as a big brother when they were growing up; he was big, not just physically, but he was a big personality. He had been an All-City linebacker in high school, and everybody was sure he was destined for the pros until he blew out a knee running across rooftops and misjudging the drop from one roof to another. The cop, a young rookie who had been a promising defensive back, made the jump easily and collared Zeke for the burglary of a neighborhood liquor store. The whole take had been two fifths of rye whiskey and a bottle of Chianti for the girls. The neighborhood forgave him, but their parents never did, and he wasn't allowed to return home. Their parents were intellectual Mexicans that had fled the drug wars in their home state of Oaxaca; she a philosophy professor and psychotherapist, he a pharmacist. There was no room for burglary in their world, and they couldn't understand why he would never crack a book, how a child of theirs with no obvious mental defect could so eschew reading, writing and arithmetic. Timothy was their baby, an "accident", but an accident that put their lives right again; he was also a big personality, gregarious and well-liked, but with a love of books and learning and without the "macho" need to prove himself.

Zeke breezed in and out of their lives; back for a while to stay with Timothy, and then gone again without a trace, without a word until the next time he came back, his ice blue eyes full of laughter and mischief, but each time a little less. Then it turned into the kind of thing where Timothy would hear from him when he needed a little money to get out of some kind of jam. Eventually it became hearing about Zeke through some of his broken-down friends.

Timothy shook one of the cigarettes he'd bought from the cab driver out of the pack and watched as the match head flared into a tiny little supernova and then burned steadily. He lit the cigarette and sucked in the warm smoke and watched the smoke coil away lazily as he exhaled. His parents would be horrified if they knew he smoked; he was the good son. The idea made him laugh a little to himself.

He closed his eyes and leaned back into the futon, remembering one of the last times one of the broken people let him know how bad things had gotten for Zeke. He was walking from work at an investment back on Seventh Avenue and Forty Seventh down to a chophouse on Thirty Fifth off Madison Avenue. He made the turn off Seventh onto Thirty Fifth when he heard a familiar voice call his name, a female voice. It was both surprising and jarring; being recognized on the street in Manhattan is unusual, to say the least. The anonymity was one of the things that Timothy appreciated about the city.

"Timmy!" she cried, "is that really you?" Even more jarring was the fact that nobody called him Timmy. The girl crossed the street, strutting along in the way that junkies do, arms out, hands raised palms up at her sides. She was a pretty red head, green eyes and high cheekbones, and a strong jawline that was reminiscent of three or four actresses. She was skeletal, and thick clumsily applied make-up covered up what was obviously bad skin. Her hair was all over the place and looked brittle. She was wearing a dirty pink clingy track suit and her more than ample chest was obviously braless, though the effect was more disturbing than anything. "Don't you remember me?" she said, "stop messing around. It's me, Alize."

He was stunned. Alize had been one of Zeke's knock-out girlfriends that Timothy had partied with when the brothers had lived together for a few months. She had come over one day to hang out with Zeke, and ended up staying with Timothy.

That Alize was gone now, and there was only this caricature left here in front of him. She reached up and straightened his lapel. As she reached up to smooth his suit at the shoulders, he caught a whiff of her and did well not to recoil.

"You look really nice in your suit," she said coyly. "Like a real businessman. Your brother would be so proud of you."

"Yeah," he said reflexively, "I doubt it. I don't think that's true – haven't heard from him in better than a year. I don't think Zeke thinks much about anybody but himself."

"He talks about you all the time, Timmy."

Timothy was still taken aback by the "Timmy" thing. Nobody called him by the diminutive; everybody called him Timothy. He'd never been called Tim, or Tim-o and certainly not "Timmy". There had actually been times in his life when not having a nickname opened a big empty space in his chest; sometimes it made him feel like nobody liked him enough to make the effort, sometimes it just underscored the "apartness". Everybody liked him, just not like they liked Zeke. From the junkie Alize, "Timmy" rang hollow, like an overenthusiastic handshake from an insurance salesman. "Well," he said, looking pointedly at his watch, "I've got some people to meet. It was really nice seeing you, Alize."

"I'm headed over toward Sixth, too," she said, "how about if I walk with you?"

"Sure," he said, thinking but not saying that she had just taken "can't take a hint" to a whole new level. He nearly bolted away, staring straight ahead.

"Hey, Timmy," she said, "wait up. Let me walk with you."

"You're free to do whatever you like," he said, instantly regretting how petty and bitchy it came out. He slowed down some and smiled weakly at her. He didn't figure it would hurt to walk a few blocks with her. He'd give her a couple of bucks and she'd probably walk away.

"Well," she said, "it's amazing that we ran into each other, right?"

"Yeah, I guess it was."

"Aren't you even curious about Zeke?" she asked bluntly, "you guys have always been tight, right?" She laughed at the inadvertent rhyme.

"He's the one that keeps disappearing."

"It's not his fault, Timothy, really," she said quietly. "You know that, right?"

"Whose fault is it, then?"

"I don't know," she said, reflectively, "it's just that sometimes things work out that way. You keep thinking that you'll call tomorrow when you're not as sick."

"You talking from experience?" Timothy asked curtly.

"Yes, in a way," she answered, "and you don't have to be a dick. I know how this must all look to you."

"No," he said, "I don't think you do."

"I'm still a sentient being," she said quietly, regaining a little of her former self, "as much as I hate it, I'm still self-aware."

"Big words for a junkie," Timothy said almost to himself, then got quiet. She had been a sentient being, bright and funny with crisp green eyes. A pang of nostalgia cut through him. He'd really liked Alize and had halfway hoped that things would go on after their indiscretion. They couldn't, though, and they both knew it; she was Zeke's girl and she'd be faithful even if she had known that there had been a steady parade of girls through the apartment. Timothy had even asked Zeke at one point why he strung her along and didn't cut her loose> He instantly regretted how whiny, bitchy and judgmental the question came out. His older brother's answer was simple and direct, "If I don't bang her, somebody else will." Timothy knew there was more to their relationship than that, but the point was taken.

Alize and Timmy walked quietly for a bit, both keenly aware that they were nearly at the chop house. He hated what he knew was coming soon, and he was trying to think of a way to lose her before they got to the restaurant. He could only imagine how the scene would play if his friends were out front.

"Well, Alize," he said slowing to a stop and facing her, "I'm almost there. It was good seeing you. Tell Zeke I said hello."

"Timothy," she said, stopping and grabbing at his sleeve, "I've been trying to tell you, he's not doing so hot."

Timothy stopped walking, and kept his temper. He looked right at her, and spoke slowly and clearly, as if to help her understand. "What do you want me to do?" he asked, and his meaning was clear.

She stepped back an inch and her shoulder, her whole being dropped. "Yeah, guess there's not much you _can_ do about Zeke." She looked around, as if she had suddenly realized that she was someplace else. Tears were welling up in her eyes. "Hey, I hate to ask, Timmy, but it looks like I'm a little short for a token and I need to get downtown..."

Timothy reached into his wallet and fished out a bill that would buy her in the neighborhood of ten tokens. He pressed it into her hand, and she closed her hand tightly, and smiled without looking down at the bill. They exchanged their goodbyes and she told him where they were staying on the Lower East Side. Timothy heard nothing. He looked again towards the chop house, and when he looked back to his right where she has been standing, she was gone.

# Chapter 2

Zeke and Timmy

Timothy was tired on the car ride home from the Chop House. The night had been fun, and he loved to eat there with his friends. The restaurant dated back to the thirties, and like a handful of bars and restaurants, embraced their roots to good effect. The décor recalled the richness of the Art Deco period in New York history – the rich polished wood, and the brass and ornate burnished metal motifs that tied it to the massive granite halls of the Empire State Building, and the steel gargoyles and waterfall frosting spire of the Chrysler Building. He chuckled as he remembered his friends laughing and all talking at once around the big round table, dressed in their dark suits, loosened ties and their shirts unbuttoned at the collar. He could easily imagine the same scene played out fifty years earlier, maybe captured somewhere in a dusty album, impressed in the faded sepias and grays of a black and white picture.

He looked back out the window of the cab, at the lighted display windows passing and flashing like individual frames of a film, and the shadows of the people walking past them; so many people going somewhere even at that hour, and more than a few resting their backs against the walls in the darkness between the bright windows, going nowhere. He wondered if Alize had gotten there yet, either to the somewhere she was sliding towards, or to the nowhere that those people seemed to be working so hard to find. _Those people_. He wondered if Zeke was one of "those people" now, and shuddered at the thought that he'd already abandoned them, already consigned them to the dustbin of ubiquitous anonymity – everywhere but nowhere, present but unknown. "Ubiquitously anonymous," he said softly to himself.

Maybe that's where Alize belonged – maybe she belonged to Ubiquitously Anonymous. " _Hi, my name is Alize, and I'm ubiquitous_ ," he imagined she'd say, and the crowd would murmur back, " _Hi, Alize_." He could imagine that the first thing the membership committee would do would be to smudge her face, and then stand her neatly on a conveyor belt that split off into two different belts on the assembly line. The belt on the left would carry her to a station where they'd work tirelessly on her behalf as they finished the job of erasing whatever part of her face was left, and stack her neatly with all the others into bins that would feed the machine that would grind her up with the others and make them into a nice spicy seasoning for fundraising, packaged in handy shakers to sprinkle into passionate speeches, slick advertising brochures, and billboards on prime high-dollar real estate. The other conveyor belt on the right would load them into buses with fully automatic cannons that would fire them with great precision into situations where they were needed – to be actively and personally berated or ignored by people like him.

The cab spit him out in front of his building, and he made his way up the stairs to his apartment. He sat at his desk and did a little work, caught up on some e-mails and half-heartedly poked around for something to read outside of the usual political grist and movie reviews. He soon gave up and sat to read a book of Raymond Chandler short stories. His mind drifted back to the first time he spent any time with Alize.

It was several years back – Timothy had just graduated from Columbia where his father taught, and was accepted to business school at NYU. There was a complication regarding the dorms, and so Timothy moved in with Zeke for a couple of months. Zeke was doing very well, and had a one bedroom on the Upper East Side south of Eighty Sixth Street between Park and Lex. It was a big apartment, and Zeke's crew had renovated the building in preparation for it going co-op or condo. Alize was one of his girlfriends, and Timothy had been around her a lot. She was a beautiful girl, red head, hourglass figure and a husky voice that although not the full Mae West, was not hard at all hard on the ears. He was getting ready to leave for class one morning when she buzzed to get in. He let her up.

"Zeke's not here?" she asked, almost pouting. "He told me he'd be here."

"Nah, he left pretty early this morning," Timothy said, getting his bag together.

"Damn," she said, all dressed up and nowhere to go. She was wearing some tight jeans and a black tank top. He didn't know anything about women's clothes, but it was clear that they were nice clothes. And she looked nice in them. She leaned forward as she slid into the couch, opening the scoop of the tank top to Timothy, and showing him some very well formed, milky white breasts. If there was any doubt that she wasn't wearing a bra, it was gone when she leaned back, her nipples clear against the silky black material.

"Is Zeke back anytime soon?" she asked.

"I don't think so – he was out all day yesterday, too," Timothy, said, "Want anything to drink?" he asked, leaving the books to their own devices.

"How about a wine?" she asked.

"Sure. White or red?"

"He has this really good sweet Portuguese red wine. Is there any left?" she asked. There were three unopened bottles. Timothy poured out two large glasses.

"What are doing today, Timothy?"

"Looks like I'm having some wine with a pretty girl," he said, handing her the glass and sitting down on the couch next to her..

"If I were Zeke, she said, I sure wouldn't want to have a roommate hotter than I am," she said, and they were off to the races.

They laid there afterwards, on the bed in the middle of the morning, and it was sweet. Timothy was amazed at how well they fit together, and he wanted her at that moment completely. She was smiling at up at him, not saying a whole lot, and he knew she felt that same. He had to many things he wanted to say, and his first impulse was to start talking and planning, but he didn't want to ruin it.

She cleared her throat, and was the first to talk. "Weird that we never did this before – I'm amazed that I kept my hands off you for so long." Timothy's eyebrows raised up of their own accord. She laughed. "You didn't know that?" she asked, and ran her hand over his chest. He was different than Zeke, smoother, but nice.

"It really didn't occur to him – she was one of Zeke's girls, and he'd always thought that she was out of his league. He started to tell her that, but stopped himself.

"I was just wondering if you felt it, too," he said, and smiled.

She was absorbed in stroking his chest. It felt good to him. "You're so different from him. How come he has an accent and you don't?"

"He's older. He was eight when our parents came from Mexico."

"Oh. But he's what? Fifteen years older than you?"

"Ten."

"But he doesn't have a Mexican accent – he sounds pure Bronx." She pinched one of his nipples, and he squealed.

"Wow," she said, "that wasn't I can imagine how hard it was for your parents. They've done very well for themselves. It must have been hard for them."

"Well," he said – not that hard. Our family was very, very rich. Both my parents already had their doctorates before they came. They had it pretty cooked, and we flew to New York first class. Zeke says he remembered that they stayed at the Plaza until they found an apartment. They bought all new stuff."

"Why did they leave? It's pretty good to be rich in Mexico, isn't it?"

"I imagine," he said, "from their stories, it sounds like Christmas didn't suck too bad around the Jacques plantation. They had to leave because of the drug wars. The drug lords wanted their plantation and all their stuff. When they should up with an Army officer and told my dad that it would be a shame to see anything happen to Zeke and my mom, he sold them the land for cash and moved all his accounts to NYC."

"Wow," she said. "So you guys are rich, rich?"

"Rich, rich, rich," he answered with a smile.

"But you guys seem to nice, and so normal," she said.

"Thanks," Timothy laughed. "That's mighty white of you."

She punched him in the belly. "Ha!" she yelled, and they wrestled until she pinned him. He didn't let her pin him, but he played it off like he did. "You're such a girl!" she squealed as he started tickling her to get her off of him.

"Does this feel like a girl?" he growled as he slipped back into her.

"Not at all," she said with a gasp, and kissed him desperately.

They were both sweaty when they finished. She licked his chest, and they both laughed and fell back into Zeke's bed.

"So," she said. "I want to know more about you. How come you don't have an accent and he does?"

They lived in the Bronx when they first bought a place. Well, not so much the Bronx – they moved to Riverdale." He told her all about Riverdale.

Riverdale was quaint community along the Hudson that felt more like Westchester than the Bronx; it was how you would imagine a Christmas New York suburb would be portrayed in a made-for-TV movie, with the cobblestone streets, rock walls, big maples and oak trees; lots of brick and stone and the fragrant spicy smell of firewood burning in fireplaces. Riverdale High was the home of Archie, Veronica, Betty, Reggie and Jughead. Riverdale had more than its share of well-educated immigrants; Italian, French, Spanish and British professors and doctors, so the family fit in well, except for Zeke."

"My mom grew up in City Island," she said. "It's a lot like that, too. It's always been a fishing village, and it feels more like Maine than it does the Bronx. Every time we visit there, I always wonder why City Island is even part of New York City," she said.

Well," he said, "there's still plenty of the Bronx in Riverdale, and he always seemed to find it – my parents have told me stories that would curl your toes.

Zeke always found the Bronx in Riverdale, and ran with Puerto Rican, Dominican and Italian toughs. He worked hard to lose his Mexican accent and earn a deep Bronx accent. He was the only one that had scrapes with the law, and the only athlete. Alize wasn't the only one that saw more differences than similarities in them – she didn't say it out loud, but Timothy knew. It was more like Zeke was an entirely different species. A species far more dangerous and unpredictable.

"Also, said Timothy, "our family moved to the Upper West Side right before I was born, and I always went to private schools." In the schools that Timothy attended and the circles that he ran in, there were no accents and a young man's status was determined more by his dress, the pedigree of his family, and to a lesser degree, his SAT score than by the size of his biceps or the power of his punch. By contrast, Zeke's world was a relatively straightforward meritocracy; working men that were judged by the strength of their word as well as the strength of their backs, where men came right out and said what they meant, consequences be damned.

Timothy's world was more complex, an interplay of constantly shifting social constructs and fads and fashions, a world where a poorly turned phrase or a bad pun would bring ridicule raining down on you like blows. Timothy's world was an incubator for young people who would have to develop a finely-tuned sense of the lights and shadows of social intercourse to fulfill their destinies as lawyers, doctors and Indian chiefs. In his world, a brother like Zeke was a liability, no matter how strong a character and as powerful a man as he was.

"You're a great guy, Timothy," she said sweetly. "I wish we could just stay here like this forever." She smiled. "I wish we could just sleep here until tomorrow morning."

"Me, too," he said, and said nothing as she got dressed. They kissed one last time, and she watched him expectantly. He wanted so badly to say something, to claim her for his own and he knew, he could feel, she was waiting for him to say something. He let her walk away, down the stairs. They exchanged polite the requisite, "let's do this again," but Timothy let her walk away.

"Oh, God," Timothy called out softly as he returned to where he was, alone on the bed. As lay there trying to fall asleep, he prayed a little prayer for forgiveness. For Zeke, and especially for Alize. He hoped she was okay. He said a little prayer of forgiveness for himself.

He didn't want to think about how he'd done Alize, and he wished he could turn off his brain, and turn it all off. He had to face the unembellished truth that there were times, more times than not, when he didn't try to hide his disdain from Zeke. His face was hot with shame, knowing that there was no doubt that Zeke knew it, and Alize had endured it.

# Chapter 3

Zeke

Zeke couldn't believe how bad things had gotten. He had just a little money, and not many prospects – he had no deals of any kind to be made. The economy was folding in on itself, and nobody was hiring or spending any money. The media were trumpeting the recovery, but they had jobs, and they were still basking the glow of their historic victory. They had elected a Harvard Law man as president.

New York was reeling over the beating the financial sector had taken, and the shit truly rolled downhill. The press painted the Wall Street big wigs as robber barons, but a whole economy had grown in New York and New Jersey catering to them. Zeke's renovation and custom furniture business were gone. New eco-friendly windows weren't priorities anymore, and the co-op and condo conversion market had been knocked on its ass. Seemed to be a common thread in his life, desperately broke with his back to the wall and limited options. To be fair, there were good times as well, when the deals came together – he'd brokered every kind of deal you could imagine; windows for city projects, furniture from North Carolina, tires for 18 wheelers, illicit goods of all types and all kinds of equipment. He knew people and he knew how to put deals together, but every time he'd seem to get things rolling he'd have a spell of bad luck that would blow everything to hell.

Most of the people who'd known Zeke at his best knew him as a simple and straight-forward man, a straight-shooter. Introspection and navel gazing had never been his thing. But then, as he started to drift off to sleep on a big fluffy sofa with a women's magazine there on the floor where it had slipped off the table, he could almost but not quite discern a new dimension to his character; a thought, a seed, a whispering doubt in that back of his mind that he just couldn't quite yet bring himself to consider.

He left the apartment the next morning before she woke up, just to take a walk and get some air. Walking aimlessly was familiar, therapeutic. He walked to St. Mark's and west, across Third Avenue where St. Mark's became Eighth Street and headed cross-town, through the river of morning commuters, joggers and retail clerks in a rush to get to their somewhere. He stopped into a coffee shop on Fifth Avenue, a coffee shop with big pinkish love seats and comfy chairs that were clearly from the 1970's and had been cheaply reupholstered more than once. The ceiling soared high above, with the vents and pipes that had been painted black and had been wired with tiny white Christmas lights to complete the illusion that only an open night sky full of stars existed above. He read the newspaper and assorted magazines as seven became eight, then nine and ten. It was closing on lunch before he resumed his trek west, deciding that he wanted to lunch at the sandwich shop at Greenwich and Eighth Avenue that baked their own bread and still sold sandwiches for less than an hour's worth of minimum wage labor.

As he turned the corner on Eighth Avenue, Zeke was surprised by a crowd scene. At center stage was a man about his age backed into a doorway, shielding an athletically built teenager from a comically thin thirty-something wearing tight Daisy Duke style jean shorts and an equally tight half-shirt, one hand on his hip and the other pointing a finger as he screeched at the two in the doorway. The screecher was a bad stereotype, the two in the doorway were obviously father and son, both sharing the same square jaw and Oklahoma-barber crew cuts. A crowd was gathering, all obviously supportive of the man in the tight Daisy Dukes; and as more people gathered, the yeller became more self–righteous, angry and self–assured as he played for the crowd. The son, although square-jawed had delicate features and an almost pretty face. Zeke could imagine what happened; an inappropriate remark from Daisy Duke, a response from either father or son and a phrenic response and escalation. The father was fully aware that time and the crowd wasn't on their side and was trying to figure a way out. He turned his head slowly and said something to his son. The son nodded, and his demeanor changed. He started to step out some from behind his dad, and Zeke could see on his face acceptance and resignation to an action. Zeke slipped through the crowd and next to the protagonist. He cleared his throat, and caught the Daisy's attention.

He leaned in and spoke to him just above a whisper, "The old man's gonna come hard at you, and probably punch you hard in the nose. Don't let all the blood scare you – a broken nose isn't really as bad as it feels when he hits you. Hit him in the ribs as hard as you can before he can pull back to hit you a second time." Having said that, Zeke slipped back in the crowd and made his way back to the sandwich shop without looking back. He could hear the "I hope you learned your lesson", and "this is our neighborhood, so get out," as Daisy Duke started making his way out as well. The crowd, seeing that nothing was going to happen, started to dissipate.

# Chapter 4

Lamb Shanks

Zeke and Timothy talked a couple of times over the next two months, but neither of them was a big phone talker, and they still weren't at a place where they could chat casually and freely. There was still ground to cover, and a lot to figure out. The agreed to meet for dinner or drinks several times, but it was a little over two months before they finally nailed down a date.

The restaurant was a Polish diner on the corner of Second Avenue and Thirteenth Street, a clean, bright diner with pretty Polish waitresses and big plates of rich and filling Polish comfort food. A few blocks south of there, Second Avenue was being renovated, with fancy new bars that the locals couldn't afford and big-name clothing stores and fake hipster-friendly coffee shops with made-up Italian-sounding drink sizes and prices to match. A few blocks north, starting on Sixteenth Street, the big brownstones were being renovated and the neighborhood was being marketed as Gramercy East. Only between Tenth Street and Sixteenth was Second Avenue still dark and untainted by renovation or the bright promise of tomorrow.

Zeke sat in the booth waiting for him; Timothy was late again. The waitress, a pretty blond Polish girl with a beautiful narrow face and lanky figure brought the laminated typewritten menu over to the table. She was a little older than the other girls, maybe early thirties, but she was hiss favorite. She leaned in a little lower as she set the menu in front of Zeke, and he smiled as he considered her ample bosom.

"What's the special?" he asked.

"Lamb shank," she said and smiled. "Big shanks today, and good."

"Good," he said, "set me up when my brother gets here. I'll take a hot tea for now."

The waitress smiled and held the menu to her chest. "You have such pretty accent, Zeke. Where are you from?"

He looked up and smiled. "I'm Bronx Mexican, baby."

"Like the Spanish from Puerto Rico?" she asked teasingly.

"I'll tell you where I'd like to be _going_ ," he said, "what time do you get off?" She rolled her eyes, and shook her head. It only encouraged him to be bolder. "Say something to me softly in Polish – like this," he whispered breathily, "something sexy,"

"You're terrible," she said, laughing, and started to walk away, then looked back over her shoulder, "maybe later," she said, and winked.

Timothy was late. He took a while to pick his dinner, then ordered cordially from the waitress and handed her the menu without looking at her.

"You seem a little out of sorts," said Zeke.

"Yeah, just had a tough day at work, and I got a lot going on." He stared absently out the window for a while, and it was obvious to anybody that there was more to the story, but figured Timothy was looking for a little space. Timothy sat quietly, losing himself somewhere in his head.

"Hey," Zeke said, snapping his fingers loudly, "wake up!"

The waitress was standing in front of Timothy, with a menu suspended in mid-air as she waited for Timothy to take it from her. Timothy blushed and took the menu from her and she and Zeke laughed easily. It wasn't mean or denigrating laughter, just a shared moment between friends. Timothy laughed. "Sorry," he said and took the menu.

"What's good?" he asked Zeke.

"Can't beat their soups or the lamb shanks. The lamb's really good."

Timothy ordered the beef and cabbage soup with a side of pirogues. "Sorry about that, Zeke."

"No problem," he said. "Look, kid, don't worry about things so much. I'm set up, I got a place to stay and I'll be back on my feet in no time. All I want to do with you know is get to know you and let you get to know me."

"Zeke, it's not that," he said, not even looking like he believe it.

"Look, Timothy," he explained, "you never really knew me. I think that's part of the problem. Everything you know of me is pretty much from mom and dad, and stories you've heard here and there," he paused and took a sip of the enormous water that Petra had set in front of him.

"That's the only way I _could_ know you."

"Nah, you've been a grown-up a while now. I've been sick a while now, but not the last ten years. You went to college at NYU and then went uptown from your MBA. You weren't ever curious about me? You really think I was that hard to find?"

Timothy couldn't argue that he didn't know where to find him, because they both knew that was weak. It never would have been hard to find Zeke; he was right about one thing – he cut a wide swath. He was a big personality, not loud and boisterous, but well know.

"It was easier for all of you to think that you knew me," Zeke said in almost a whisper. "The folks weren't exactly dying for you to get to know me. I would've been a bad influence if you really got to know me. Maybe you wouldn't have kept up with school."

"I don't know, maybe," Timothy said absently.

"Seriously?" Zeke laughed. "Your mind is that weak?"

Timothy laughed. "No, I guess not," he said, suddenly a little sullen. "What was it like?"

"What part?"

"All of it."

"It's not all rolled together, exactly. There was a life there, too. I made a lot of money at different times and had what was almost a normal life, but the bottom kept dropping out of things." He motioned to the waitress, and ordered them both a beer.

"Should you be doing that?" Timothy asked cautiously.

"Yeah. I can afford it, I have a little money," he said, and absentmindedly felt for the roll of bills in his front pocket. Most of them were small bills, but it still felt good to know that they were there.

"No," Timothy said quietly, "I meant with the program and all."

Zeke looked at him coldly for a second, then his expression softened, as if he'd recognized something. "This," he said lifting the beer, "wasn't my problem. I know they have their way of doing things, but beer isn't by any means my problem. "

"I didn't mean anything by it, I just don't know a lot about these things."

"Nobody does, junior, I don't know much about it and they don't either," he said and looked out the window at something that must have been far away. "I notice you do say that a lot, _'I didn't mean anything by it'_. You shouldn't say something if you don't mean anything by it. Only say things that you mean, and that way you do a lot less explaining."

Timothy fidgeted uncomfortably. "Sorry."

"No, don't be sorry, just stop doing it. Think of it as economy of words and clearing up your thinking," Zeke said, and took a sip of the beer. It was so cold that there were bits of ice in it and it made his fillings hurt. "That girl likes me – I always get big plates of food and the coldest beer in their fridge."

Timothy smiled, and he shifted a little in his seat. The conversation got a little easier as he saw and heard that Zeke was in a much better place. They talked a little bit about their parents, the idiosyncrasies and the weirdness of growing up with a pharmacist and a psychotherapist. They talked about girls and women, and Zeke talked about growing up in Riverdale and Timothy talked about growing up on the Upper West Side.

They talked about money made and money lost, and established a re-established their brotherly bond. Timothy only kept one topic to himself, and that was Tanya and the Disney trip. The conversation ran up to that point, then stopped.

"So you're wondering what it was like?" Zeke asked.

"Yeah," Timothy said, "I've been thinking about it a lot lately."

"Believe it or not, the worst part of it wasn't being broke. I think I could have kept myself together if that had been it."

"Yeah, but for how long?"

"As long as possible – broke was hard, but it was feeling like the asshole that was harder. At first people are eager to help, but if your luck keeps turning against you, you can't keep going back to them, even though sometimes you have to when you got no other choice." _The hardest part was when you started to believe it yourself_. There was no way Zeke could think of to say that without sounding pathetic, or worse, so he didn't even try. "You remember Alize?" he asked Timothy.

"Yeah," Timothy said, "I remember Alize. She was the one that told me you were in trouble. I never told you about that, did I?"

"No." Zeke started, "but man, bro..."

"What?" Timothy started tentatively, still worrying about what might offend his brother. "What happened to her?" he finally asked. Zeke was pretty sure that he already knew the _what_ – that was obvious. The _why_ was also pretty fucking obvious on the surface.

" I just can't help but wonder why... people like her were so so hell-bent on killing themselves on the installment plan? Did she go crazy? Was she always crazy?"

Zeke heard the hesitation, and knew that the question was about him, too. "No, she wasn't always crazy." Zeke finally answered. "You know that. You and her got a little tight at one point. She wasn't always like that." Zeke got a drink of water and continued, "I was gonna say, she understood better than anybody. She knew what I was, and what I wasn't. She left me. I wish I could have said, ' _I was sick_ '." Zeke stopped a while, and had a drink of water and drew figures with the little pool of water that had condensed off his glass. He was quiet and looked out the window, like he was surveying the road ahead, and deciding whether it was someplace that he wanted to take Timothy. "But there's nothing there – sick of what? Of this bullshit life? Nothing you can take for that, nothing _you'd_ want to take."

Timothy nodded, but didn't know how to sugar-coat what he had to say. "That's fine, Zeke, but you know what I don't understand?" Zeke kept listening, but made no gesture to encourage him, so Timothy continued. "What I don't understand is you, and Alize, and half the people you are around – you're all incredibly talented people. You're one of the best men I know. Why were you so dead-set on killing yourselves like that?"

Zeke look at him blankly, like he was speaking an entirely different language. "That's what you think? That we wanted to die?"

"Well, I don't know... how else would you explain it? How many of your friends ended up dead?"

"How else would I explain it..." Zeke repeated stoically. He respected the kid for having the balls to ask the question, but wondered to himself incredulously, how do you begin to answer such a stupid, ignorance and judgmental question without choking the jackass asking it? When he finally decided to answer, it was more like thinking out loud than anything else. "It's not about wanting to die, Timothy," he said quietly. "One thing I've learned is that there are very few people out there that really want to die – nature rigged that against us; even the poor fucks that have nothing to live for, even the most wretched desperately cling on to life. It's more about making life bearable for an hour or five while you try to work things out."

Timothy seemed like he didn't know what to say, so Zeke continued, "it's more about finding a place where life's bearable for a few happy moments with friends, but it's the Devil's bargain. It's a rigged game," he said heavily. "I got to the point where I'd made peace with the idea of dying, but not in a good way – more like praying to God to show a little mercy and just let me just die in my sleep. But I didn't _want_ to die – can you understand the difference?"

Timothy didn't allow the silence to linger too long, and changed the subject. "So what were you going to say about Alize?"

"Alize was proud. I think she was afraid that I was ready to die. You have no idea how torn up she was for you to see her like that – it's hard for me to know that letting you see her like that was one of the truest ways she ever expressed how much she loved me."

"See her like what?"

"Don't be stupid. After she saw you, she knew how bad she looked; sometimes it takes having somebody else see you before you can cut though for a second and get a hard look at yourself. You know?"

"I can see that," Timothy said, remembering the time before she fell apart, when she came looking for Zeke with a gram of coke and instead, she and Timothy shared it. He remembered that her lips were dry and salty, and it surprised him; it was such a contrast to how soft her pale skin and read hair was, and how soft and smooth her thigh was when he stroked it as they were laughing, and as she scooted up closer to him before the kiss.

"She cried off and on for a day or two after she saw you," Zeke said, "it was even worse that you gave her money like she was some common street beggar. Then a few days later this big older guy came busting into our apartment and grabbed her by the arm and took her away. Mouse says she was crying and apologizing as she left with him."

"I gave her money because she asked," he said tersely, then realized what Zeke was talking about. "Anyway," he said, changing the subject, "who took her away? Cops?"

"No, it was her dad. She'd called him because she couldn't go on living like that – seeing you was too much for her. Mouse took care of me until I was over the sickness. Mouse cried a lot, too." Zeke's voice broke a little and he took another sip of water. "Mostly because it hurt us that Alize stayed there in that hellhole so long when, she had someplace to go. All she had to do was call her dad and she could have gotten out. Mouse and I didn't have that."

"You could have called me," Timothy tried.

"Yeah," he laughed softly. "Okay. I would have had to die before you and I could have pulled it together." Zeke said. It was clear he didn't have to say much more about it. "The hardest thing about being that far down is that you start believing things about yourself," he explained. He'd never felt the need to explain, but maybe that was part of the problem, too.

"Believing things like what?" Timothy asked, trying to keep the conversation going.

"Another time. Don't you have anywhere to go?" he asked gruffly, "Something else to do?" He stood up stiffly and pulled the chain on his wallet to draw it out of his back pocket. He felt like he was about seventy – hip hurting, legs sore. They said their good byes and walked off again into the darkness, Timothy uptown toward the bright lights of Midtown, and Zeke east down the dark streets toward Alphabet City. The shops had their corrugated storm doors down, and looked gray, blue and moondust white in the night. The night felt oddly cold, and the crisp, inky, moonless darkness felt like waiting for something to happen.

# Chapter 5

The Squat

As he walked, Zeke lit another cigarette, and watched a black cat cross the street ahead of him, emerging out of the shadows between a couple of beater cars, stopping for a second in the middle of the street to throw him a quick glance, then disappearing again into the shadows on the other side. "That's the way life is," he thought to himself, "the black cat just comes out of nowhere, then it's gone again in a flash, except for that moment it stops to regard you." That part of life was a bitch, though, and what was a quick glance from that particular cat seemed to linger a lifetime. He laughed as he remembered an answer that he got in the service when he asked the Black Hat how long he had to pull his reserve chute if the main failed. The instructor didn't miss a beat. "The rest of your life, son." The black cat was the same way – it stopped for an instant, but for a lot of people he'd known, that instant had been the rest of their life. He turned up his collar against the cold and kept walking.

He was past Avenue A now, and coming up on Avenue B, but slowly, deliberately weaving from one side of the sidewalk to the other, as if he were somehow retracing some steps he'd taken decades before. He thought a bit about what he'd told Timothy, the part about being at peace with the idea of dying. There was no way that Timothy could have understood what he was talking about – there was being at peace with dying in a good way, too.

The wail of electric blues came pouring out of the bar at the corner of Avenue B, and part of him wanted to walk in and see if Ross and Delta Garage was playing, but his feet kept walking; past the big red arched doors of PS 61, past the playground, foreboding at night, and over to Avenue C. He took a right at the monolithic brick building on the corner of Avenue C and walked the last couple of blocks slowly, past the bodegas and small shops. Manhattan down here felt more like Brooklyn, like Sunset Heights. It was more alive in some ways, even at night. Yes, there were people in Manhattan, but here they knew each other, and the conversations were more lively .

One more block, and just a few short years back in time, and he was home. The building looked different, clean, more orderly now. It was a narrow red brick five floor walk-up, with a shop now on the ground floor, with the storm doors rolled down. He walked across the street to get a better look, leaned against the wrought iron fence of the community garden, and lit another cigarette. The fire escape had been fixed and was painted black, and the building now looked unremarkable, like any other building. The only reminder that it had ever been different was a small wooden protest sign, faded white with black stenciled lettering that said "THIS LAND IS OURS", and a barely legible "NOT FOR SALE." The contrast between the old weathered sign, and the up-and-coming neighborhood was jarring to him – a reminder that he, like the sign, belonged to a different time, like the old, faded black POW-MIA flags. The POW flag guys and the "NOT FOR SALE" guy were hanging on, but the neighborhood had moved on past them – there was a Starbucks on the corner one block down. Zeke felt a little uneasy – he belonged to neither. He hadn't given it much thought, but as he smoked the cigarette, he realized in some ways that he was trapped between the worlds – he hadn't fully moved on, but he would have felt silly flying the flags of that time.

He walked across the street and took a closer look at the building, not really sure what he was looking for; the building was rough finished in standard "clean it up enough to go co-op" modern. The Anarchist "A" symbols and the other tags had been sandblasted off the brick, leaving a somewhat mottled finish that looked like a bad photo retouch. The fire escapes had been painted with an industrial flat black, and the trim and the street-level façade had been painted commercial brick red. He looked up to the third floor, and found the middle of three windows facing the street, in front of the fire escape landing. The windows had all been replaced, and a purple NYU banner hung proudly in the window. That had been their apartment back then, before everything had changed. Zeke took the last drag off the cigarette had hadn't even noticed that he'd lit. He "field stripped" it, pointing the open end down and rolling out all the remaining tobacco and dropped the butt into the trash can on the corner in front of the bodega.

Part of him was disappointed that the building had changed as much as it did – that part had been looking forward to pulling back the plywood that covered the windows and acted as a make-shift door to take a look around. He laughed out loud at the idea that he would have been able to pry the door open at this hour without getting thrashed. There was a system that they had in place back then to let everybody know that they were coming into the building – not knowing the system was bad news, if you planned to visit. There is little room for trust when you lived in an open building.

As he made his way back, he tried to remember how they first came to live there, but he couldn't bring it back – it was like they had always lived there; it was as if that time was a self-contained box with no beginning or end. Sometimes he worried that it was still going on in there, and if he opened the lid, he could just step right in and be there again. Worse, he halfway believed that if he spent too much time staring into the box, he might get sucked back into it, like some hopeless mope in one of those black and white late-night horror serials.

He found himself wandering back in time as he walked. Mouse had found the place, no doubt about it – she was the one that made things like that happen, she took care of the group. They had been living in a two room railroad in Windsor Park, Brooklyn, but ever since the real estate agents started calling it Park Slope, the rents had been going steadily up and their landlord, an Armenian lady, Anna, who had scraped and scratched for long enough, just couldn't wait. Mouse had lived in a squat in London for two years, which had always amazed Zeke – she wasn't what you would have expected. Mouse was petite, thin and pale with black curly hair. Her family was Sephardic, and she had the classic Jewish beauty that was so prized in the 1950s; dark curly hair, light olive skin, a thin face and a figure that got her a lot of attention. And very girlie. Her nickname came from the fact that there was something in her face that was beautiful, but recalled the features that the cartoonists put on the "hot" mice in the fifties – oddly, her face, with the slight overbite and coloring, reminded Zeke of a female Freddy Mercury.

They'd been living on the railroad on 15th Street, and the gig there was up. The Armenian had raised the rent retroactively by a lot, and they knew that they weren't going to be able to pay the last month's rent and all the difference.

Alize was pissed. "She can't just raise the rent, and back date it. That's bullshit," she said angrily.

"Not much we can do, though," Zeke countered.

"Bullshit. Can't we talk to a lawyer or something?"

"We don't have money for a lawyer, and we don't have a lease with Anna."

"Well then what do you want to do, then, Zeke, just take it?" she said, her tone making it clear that it's not what she thought a man would do.

"We move out – I'm sick of this neighborhood anyway. I'm sick of the "F" train, I'm sick of the smart-ass black kids on the train, and I'm tired of walking fifteen minutes to the grocery store."

Mouse pulled a little white cloth bag out of her bag, the kind that the golden nugget bubble gum came in, and fished around for some rolling papers. Zeke watched her as she rolled a nearly perfect joint. She pulled in her bottom lip and bit it to keep steady as she worked. Zeke couldn't help but smile watching her work so intently. He thought she was beautiful. Mouse lit the joint and passed it to Alize, then spoke up as she watched Alize let the smoke out a little to cool, then lustily suck it back in. She was always entranced by the way that Alize smoked – like just about everything Alize did, it was heady.

"So my friend Masha was telling me about this building on the Lower East Side, " Mouse started, " It's a squat, but the people who are in the building are really taking care of it. Her brother lives there with his girlfriend, but they're thinking about moving to Queens. She's pretty sure we could take the apartment over."

Alize reacted dramatically, as always. She'd taken off her sweater, and was wearing only a tight white t-shirt. The effect was electric. She was a full figured redhead, and they all agreed that she oozed sex. Her voice was deep and husky, and with her green eyes it wasn't hard to picture her as a 1940's torch singer. Her skin was porcelain white, and her face was sharp and angular, but pure femininity. She was third generation German-American. The name Alize was a German for of Alice. It was supposed to be pronounced _Ah-leeza_ , but everybody pronounced it _Ah-leez_ , except her grandparents, and her parents when they were angry at her. When Alize spoke German, it sounded like sex, and she spoke it often, just to screw with Zeke.

"A squat?", Alize laughed, "Really? Why don't we just tie our stuff into a bundle at the end of a stick and ride the hobo train?"

Mouse burst into laughter, and almost fell over. "I could just see you as a hobo. I bet we'd miss the train while you did your make-up."

They all three laughed until they cried, and then agreed that it was at least worth taking a look at the place. The rent was right.

"Zeke, are you awake?" Alize asked.

"I wasn't," he answered, "but I am now."

"Are you really thinking about us moving to the squat?" she asked tentatively.

Zeke had been awake, thinking about what their next move should be. He was tired of living in Park Slope – the gentrification was in full swing, and the neighborhood was changing. It had only been tolerable because of the "ma and pa" shops, and it was pretty clear that the incoming crowd had no use for a hardware store or an Italian barber shop.

"I don't know," he said tentatively, "we've got to get out of here, but I'm not excited about the idea of moving into a squat."

"I hate the idea, Zeke. Things are just starting to get better, and I don't want to start going backwards instead of forward..." she let the sentence trail off, but he knew what she meant. She'd been working hard at her bank job to try to get ahead, and she'd already been promoted twice. Zeke was starting to do well installing windows and selling "custom" furniture.

"I know," he said, "It would save a lot of time living in the city, but man..." She snuggled up against him, fitting her head into the hollow of his neck. He loved it when she did that, and he knew that it was his reward for agreeing with her. "I guess we should check it just because Mouse put so much work into trying to find us something. Maybe after we see it we can all go to that falafel place you like on First Avenue, then walk over to the Belgian beer place on West Fourth."

"You know she's in love with you, right?" Alize said nonchalantly.

"Where did that come from?" he asked defensively, raising up a little bit.

"Put your head back down," she said, "it's not comfortable when you raise up like that."

"Why would you say something like that?" he asked flatly. He knew that this couldn't be going anyplace good. He couldn't understand why she did that – whenever they got to a place that felt good, she'd do or say something to piss him off. It was like she constantly needed him to prove his love.

"Wow, you sure got quiet," she finally said.

"Let's not do this Alize," he said curtly, "let's not do this now. You know I love you. Just you."

"Yeah," she said, slowly and deliberately, like she was talking to an obstinate child, "but that's not what we're talking about. Mouse is in love with you."

"Mouse and I have been friends for a long time, Alize. Don't make more of it than that."

"It's not your fault," Alize said pensively, "at least I don't think it is... unless you all have something going on that I don't know about," she said with a chuckle, and nuzzled his neck softly.

He could feel the icy blackness rising in his chest, from somewhere down in the bottom of his chest, and up until it reached behind his closed eyes. It wasn't anger, exactly, though he was angry. It wasn't despair or desperation, though he felt both as well. It felt more like a betrayal of sorts, like she was digging around to try to expose something deep inside him. "No, nothing is going on between us," he said, almost under his breath. "I don't know why you do this," he finally said as he pulled his arm out from under her and rolled to leave his back to her.

"It's hard to believe you when you act so weird," she said, as she softly stroked the back of his head. "But that's okay."

It was about a week before they finally went out to look at the squat. They got there in the early evening, before darkness fell, but late enough that lights were visible in the windows – candles, lanterns and other light sources that had varying degrees of brightness and color. Some of the lights in the windows flickered, others were steady, but threw odd shadows as they sat on the floor. Masha's brother Steve was waiting for them in front of the building, leaning against the front of the building and smoking a cigarette. Even though it was almost dark, he still wore his sunglasses. He was clearly glad to see Mouse, and was very warm as he introduced himself around, and pulled back the make-shift plywood door and let them into the building.

Living in the squat was better and worse than they had expected. The building was in disrepair, but the residents had a can-do spirit that helped them overcome. There were electricians, plumbers, carpenters that liked there, and jacks-of-all-trades like Zeke. There were illegal, but low-capacity electric and sewer hook-ups and there was no heat. The tenants were by and large out of the mainstream; artists, free-thinkers and political activists and junkies, and there was a co-operative market of sorts that worked in the building. Food, drink, music and necessities were traded, bartered, borrowed and sold. Freegans traded veggies and staples they scrounged, trash cuts of meat were brought in by the guys that worked in the butcher shops, and the bakers and doughnut makers were popular.

The building was as safe as an open building could be, but edgy, and there was no relaxing while they were there. The only incident was one day around Christmas time when Mouse was coming back and was molested by a post office letter carrier. They never got the full story, but it had been broken up by a Korean deli owner. But that wasn't the worst that happened to them.

The end came well before they moved out. Zeke was full-time junk sick, Alize was on her way home, and Mouse was doing everything she could to keep everything together.

"Good morning, prince," Mouse said softly as she wiped his brow with a cold washcloth. He was lying on the floor of the 'master bedroom', on a mattress of old sleeping bags and blankets.

"What day is it?" he asked.

"Thursday," she said. "I think you're through the worst of it."

"Geez," he said weakly, "I sure hope so."

"Yep," she said, offering him a large white foam cup full of ramen noodle soup, "me too..."

He raised up on his elbows and looked around. The room smelled decidedly organic; of stale sweat and vomit. He felt his flannel shirt, and it was wet. The stale sweat smell seemed to be emanating from him. His eyes felt red, like he'd been swimming in sand with his eyes open. He felt his shirt again, and he was surprised at how clearly he could feel his ribs.

"Where's Alize?" he asked.

"She's gone, Zeke."

He felt ice water draining through his veins and into his stomach. "Gone, gone?" he asked weakly.

Mouse laughed a tired, sad laugh. "No," she said, pushing the hair off his forehead and out of his eyes, "not gone- gone. Her dad came and picked her up and took her away. Don't you remember?"

"Yeah," he said, but he really didn't. It was more like a few unconnected grainy images, shot through an amber filter. He remembered the shiny, angry face, shouting what he could only imagine were invectives in German, and a few choice ones in English. He remembered the old man punching him in the chest, and the surreal feeling of what seemed like his chest collapsing around the fist. He didn't particularly remember it hurting, but he did halfway remember a disconnected thought as he went down, " _man, that was a chicken-shit thing to do..._ "

"Well..." he said, "how you doing?"

" _How you doin'_ ," she said back in a Brooklyn accent, making it sound like a famous pick-up line.

He laughed, and he could feel his whole body hurt. "Don't make me laugh," he said laughingly, "it hurts too much." Mouse pulled back the blanket covering him and slipped in next to him, pulling his arm under her head. "No," he said, sheepishly, and more than a little ashamed. "Don't do that, Mouse," he pleaded, "I must smell like fermented demon piss. I can smell myself, so it's got to be bad."

She ignored him and started kissing his forehead, sweetly. "Believe me," she said, "you smelled much worse before. This is nothing." She kissed him all over his face, and cuddled in close to him. He tried not to move.

The lawyer came a couple of weeks later. Zeke had got some strength back, and he and Mouse were making an honest effort at trying to hold things together. The lawyer came in with a fake leather briefcase that he carried under his arm. He was a friendly young guy, late twenties or early thirties with his hair fashionably slicked back and wearing a flannel shirt and carpenter jeans. Zeke noticed that the kid had a pair of prescription sunglasses that had to have set him back a couple of bills. He smiled and started his presentation.

'Let's take a walk," said Zeke, "the storefront downstairs has a conference table of sorts we can use, and the light's better. The lawyer agreed, and they went downstairs and sat at the conference table at the corner nearest the shopfront window. The light was a lot better, and the chairs and table were more than serviceable.

"So what have you heard so far, Mr..."

"Zeke. Just Zeke." Zeke went over everything that they'd heard, that there was a movement in place to turn the building over to the tenants for a mostly symbolic $1 purchase price. The kid filled him in on all the details, and presented him some papers to sign.

"Can I read through them a day or two?" Zeke asked.

The kid didn't bother to hide the fact that he was rolling his eyes. "Look, Zeke," he said condescendingly, "your one of only a handful of units we need the docs from. Why don't we just get it done so that done so we can move forward on behalf of all the other residents?"

"I'd like to read it before I sign," Zeke said, trying to stay cool. "Is that a lot to ask?"

"We're doing the work for you gratis. That means..." he started.

"Yes," Zeke said, "it means free. I get that. But free to me, right?" he looked the kid in the eyes, "so who is paying?"

"We're a non-profit corporation. Most of us donate our time."  
"Non-profit doesn't mean nobody pays."

The kid smiled, "True enough, Zeke, but we have a quite a few patrons that are funding us." The kid licked his lips to moisten them, and Zeke read this as a tell. "Bottom line," the lawyer started up again, "is that you're the one benefitting. There are covenants in place to make sure that nobody sells to outsiders at market once the co-op closes. You all will only have to pay a maintenance fee to keep the corporation running and maintain the building. Quite a bit less than rent."

"But the new owners can sell at below market," Zeke asked.

"Sure, but the board has to approve the sale."

Zeke could feel that something wasn't right. "Can the guy the original owners sell to turn around and sell at market?"

"Sure. After the first sale, the new owner can sell at market," he said, "but I'm not sure what that matters," he said as he went for the close again. "So can we depend on you?"

"Who's on the board in the beginning," Zeke asked, "I'm sure you know that most of the residents aren't experienced or versed in this stuff."

The lawyer nodded sagely. "That's why in the beginning, our organization will run the board and help get some residents elected and up to speed.".

Zeke started to ask if there was a limit or caps on how much the board could raise maintenance fees, but didn't want to play his hand. "So the City is on board with this?"

"Oh, yes. The City has actually taken possession of the building from the previous owner. This will help greatly in expediting the whole process..."

Zeke came back into the apartment after what seemed like hours to him, so he could only imagine how it felt to Mouse. He felt unsettled, and he was sure that Mouse could see it. He could feel her stress level rising. She'd never seen him anything but in control.

"Let's go," he said to her, "let's go right now."

"What?"

"No time to explain," he said, "we have to get out right now. Grab your pictures and music box, leave everything else."

She grabbed he photo albums and her music box full of her jewelry and other small mementos that were of immense sentimental value to her. They went all the way down the stairs past the main floor and down an unlit rickety staircase that lead down into the basement. The basement was mostly mechanical, with all the pipes that services the building, and a narrow hallway that was once used to haul out the trash. The door had once been sealed with drywall and cement board, but it had been broken open when the building first became a squat. This was the way the original pioneers had entered the building. He gently and careful peeled back a plywood panel and looked around. "Okay," he whispered to Mouse, "follow me."

"Okay," she said, and took pains to be extra careful and quite.

The plywood exit led them out into what was now the toolshed of one of the community gardens. Zeke again looked out carefully, and then led her out by the hand. They walked casually through the garden, just another couple, and then waited near the entrance until they saw a vacant cab. They dashed out and jumped in the cab and rode it to Union Station, then went downstairs, rode the IRT one stop uptown and then a few stops back to Chinatown. They walked a few blocks to make sure that nobody was following them, and then went down some stairs into a Chinese restaurant for an early dinner.

Mouse was laughing. "What the hell was _that_ all about?"

Zeke slumped back in the red booth, "I sold our apartment for five thousand cash," he said, holding up a manila envelope, "just wasn't sure we were going to walk away from there with the money."

"Really?" she asked, wide-eyed.

"Honestly, I don't know," he said, "I don't know who's running the deal, but it was worth five grand cash to them to get rid of a loudmouth jackass." He took a sip of his water, and sat quietly for a while, then noticed that she was waiting for the rest of the story. He explained how he saw them getting screwed down the line, and although it could just be some "goodie-two-shoes" groups doing something valiant, it didn't make sense that the City was going along with the squatters over the property owners. He would have more easily believed that they would have sold the building to another real estate group at a rock-bottom price. They talked for hours about the apartment, Alize, and everything they'd been through. The only thing that didn't talk about was what the five thousand dollars in cash meant; how it might change their lives, how it might change them.

# Chapter 6

Lex Luthor

"Hey, Luthor, hurry up with the iced latte, would you? It's not rocket science, it's a coffee drink."

Luthor pushed the glasses back up on his nose, and glared as hard as he could at the kid who'd just snapped at him. The thickness of the lenses in his glasses were cleverly hidden by the plastic Euro tortoiseshell frames, but there was no disguising the fact that they were still heavy enough to keep sliding down his nose. "My name's not Luthor. It's Kevin."

"Dude, nothing wrong with being an evil genius."

"I don't know why you all call me that," he said, but he knew. It was a cinematic release of the Superman series that had just achieved cult film status. Kevin was spot-on as a doppelganger of the actor playing the film's version of Lex Luthor, Superman's nemesis. That he shared the first name of the actor who played Lex in the film was of course, even more delicious to the confident young turks who frequented the coffee shop.

For those that didn't know him, Kevin wasn't a bad looking guy, and more than a fair number of young women flirted with him; some brought him small expensive gifts like a nice pen they saw or fancy coffee beans that they found in some pretty out of the way places. Inevitably, their enthusiasm waned as he simply seemed to take their affections for granted and gave them the cold shoulder. Some worked frantically to be obvious that they were making advances, some grew angry at the rejection and vented their anger at him in ways that left him hurt and bewildered.

A blonde with a long blond curls walked into the shop and strode up to the counter. Kevin smiled at her and started up to the counter.

"Did you enjoy the coffee, Luthor?" she asked curtly.

"Yes, I'd always wanted to try the civet coffee – the taste was interesting," he started, "richer than I expected." He laughed a small laugh, "it was just hard getting past the idea... you know..."

"Well, Luthor, I'm glad you enjoyed it. I guess calling me to let me know you liked it would have, you know, put you out?"

"I just figured I'd see you here. I always look forward to seeing you," he said nervously, pushing the glasses up his nose. "I really wish you wouldn't call me Luthor. Especially not you, Cathy."

"That's such bullshit. You don't have to humor me. What did you make of the fact that I put my number in there on a note that said 'call me', did you think I pass my number out like you pass out coffee?"

"I really thought it would be nicer to say 'thanks' in person, I guess."

"You guess?" She said, then again, mockingly, "You guess? I don't need to take this shit from a guy that serves my coffee." She turned and walked away, and left Kevin there, watching her leave, frozen in place with his mouth slightly agape.

Heather showed up a few hours later, before his shift was over, just like she always did, and waited for him in the big old leather easy chair that was always open for her. She didn't order a coffee– she didn't feel like she could afford five dollar coffee, but she sat way back in the chair and read a tattered old paperback that she carried around with her everywhere lately. It was a collection of Langston Hughes poems. When he was done, Kevin came over and set next to her in the giant leather chair. She was delighted, her face was beaming as she snuggled up next to him.

"How you doin', Heather?"

"How you doin', Kevin?" She leaned over and impulsively kissed him on the cheek, then smiled at him as she moved her short black hair back over her ear.

"Oh, not bad," he said. "Cathy came by today, and was totally pissed at me."

"What did you do?" she asked.

"Not exactly sure – she was really pissed." He took a long sip of the coffee in the giant cup he was carrying, then set it on the table in front of them.

"Something you did, no doubt," she said, and bumped him with her shoulders.

"I wish," he said dejectedly.

"We'll," she said, "let's figure it out. Think. If it wasn't something you did, was it something you said?"

"No. She came in, asked about the coffee she gave me and then treated me like dirt."

"Okay, now we're getting somewhere. She gave you some coffee?"

"Yeah, some Kopi Luwak coffee – really expensive stuff. It's the civet cat coffee."

"Ok..." Heather said, "Just the thought makes me a little nauseous."

"No, it's really interesting. Kind of a rich plum, dark chocolate taste," he said, suddenly more animated. "Not at all what you'd expect – no hint of sewer smell or taste, if that's what you're thinking."

"So it's chocolaty," she said giggling. He bumped her with his shoulders. He liked how easy it was to be with Heather.

"Yeah," he said, and sat back for a moment, quiet. He couldn't completely play it off like he didn't care – he'd noticed Cathy for a while, and although he hadn't gotten around to asking her out, he'd wanted to and hoped that the conversation about the coffee would have been his opening, but instead it blew up in his face, and he didn't completely understand why.

Heather watched him slump back. "So was it something you said to her?"

"I don't know," he said dejectedly. They talked a little about it, and he remembered the line Cathy gave him about her giving her phone number out. "She asked if I thought that she gave her number out like I hand out coffees."

"Ok. She gave you her number. Did you call her?"

"No, I thought it would be nicer to thank her in person."

Heather tried to explain to him that the gift was merely a pretense, that Cathy really wanted a clever way to give him her number, and how she was hurt that he didn't. As she explained, Heather saw the agony in his face, and wondered why Cathy and women like her didn't get him – he was a cute guy, really, and fun to be around. It hurt her to help him with other girls and she had to admit to herself that she often wondered, just as those other girls must have wondered, why he didn't just lean in and kiss her.

After they said their goodbyes, Kevin walked alone for a bit headed downtown. Stopped into an Irish pub and had more than a few pints. After the fourth pint, he realized he hadn't seen Gwen around the building in a while, and he was starting to wonder if she was avoiding him. They'd been running into each other on a pretty regular basis in the building – they both lived on the fourth floor and saw each other in the mail room, in the laundry room and in the hall. She'd knocked on his door once in the middle of the day when he got home from the early shift – he could tell she was stoned and was wearing an over-sized t-shirt, and not much else from the look of it. They talked a while, then sat on the couch and listened to some of his CDs until she suddenly remembered she had some place else she needed to be. He hadn't seen her as often after that. He remembered that she's told him she was a dancer at Arnold's, and it suddenly occurred to him that it might not be a bad idea to visit her at work. He chuckled to himself as he considered whether going to Arnold's was just a bad idea, or if it was a _good_ bad idea.

He walked quickly over to Eighth Avenue, didn't find Arnold's and then walked over to Seventh Avenue. He'd been to Arnold's twice before, before he knew that Gwen danced there, but his memory was a little fuzzy. He stopped at a pay phone, called information and found out the bar was on Sixth. As he walked across the long block between Seventh and Sixth, he began to feel a little stupid about showing up to see her without letting her know he was coming, but thought to himself, "what the hell, I'm showing up unannounced, I get what I get and I don't get upset". The bar was far more crowded then he'd remembered it ever being. He ordered a beer and leaned up against the wall to watch a bit of the ball game on the television above the bar. The beer was good, ice cold, and the bar was warm, it seemed that things were alright except for the nervous anticipation of seeing Gwen. He tried watching the game but couldn't really focus on who was playing. Looked like maybe the Padres, but since the uniforms had changed so much in baseball and pro football and teams kept moving from city to city, it was hard to tell. Kevin looked through the crowd, first trying to find Gwen, then looking to see which girls were there. He saw a girl he'd never noticed before, then stopped dead when he realized. He froze in place, unable to move. It was Heather at the bar, sitting with her back to the bartender and her long legs in front of her. She was dressed like one of the strippers, and was deep in conversation with a guy that looked like he had just stepped off the pages of Retirement Monthly. Worse, she was giving him the same looks that she'd given Kevin when they first met. His legs started carrying him forward, toward the bathroom, in a line that would take him right in front of Heather. .

She squinted hard when she first noticed him, then a look of shock, panic and dismay flashed across her face too quickly for her to try to hide it. She literally leapt off her stool and dashed across the floor toward him, a look of full blown panic on her face. "You gotta leave, now," she said sternly and forcefully as she grabbed his arm. "You can't stay. I'll explain everything tomorrow." He felt like every eye at the bar was on him. He could feel a cold slice of anger form in his stomach and flow through his bloodstream like ice water, and he wanted to be gone before the full force of anger and public humiliation set down on him and he did something he'd forever regret. He eased away without a word, compliantly letting her guide him to the door, slowing only to set the beer down on the bar as he walked out. She gave him a little push as he went through the door, and she closed the door firmly as she went back inside. Kevin's legs kept walking, out into the incandescent night, down the dark stretch of Sixth Avenue between 23rd Street and Fourteenth, then through the spots of light and laughter coming out of each new bar along the avenue as he headed back downtown.

Fifteen blocks and two avenues away in another pub, Kevin was deeply involved in a mathematical problem. He'd had four pints at the first pub, a twelve ounces can at Arnold's before that, and four pints here at the pub. How many twelve ounce beers was that? It was exceedingly hard to focus on the numbers. He'd also just ordered another beer for the rather large blonde at the end of the bar, who introduced herself as Galyn. Galyn and her very cute red headed buxom friend were vying for the attentions of a generic Gen-X tall Irish kid with a regulation mullet-with–ponytail haircut named Tommy. He knew that the kid was named Tommy because of the girls were using the hell out of his name, almost every other sentence. He wondered if it was something they'd read in a Cosmo article. It wasn't hard to figure out which one was going home with Tommy, so Kevin was hedging his bets with beers for the heavier girl, but he wasn't really interested in Galyn beyond the sheer sport involved.

A thought surfaced quickly and startled him; more than anything he wanted to call Heather, but he felt like there were some unwritten rules between them, and he was simultaneously afraid that calling her right then would ruin and complicate everything. He sent another beer to the chunky blonde. Galyn squealed "You're so sweet!" when she got the beer, smiled coyly and went back to her conversation with Tommy mere seconds later. Kevin chuckled to himself, "she's hedging her bets, too," and ordered another stout from the bartender Sean, a tall sympathetic Irishman with short blond hair and wire framed glasses. Sean looked like he could just as easily be an investment banker or cop as a bartender.

"Are you sure, mate?" Sean asked. "You're starting to look a little green around the gills."

"Green is good, Sean," Kevin retorted, "it's a lucky color."

"Aye, that it is, mate, that it is," Sean said as he pulled another stout. "This one's on me. Cheers."

"Thanks," Kevin said, extending his arm for a handshake, "I appreciate it"

"You may not be so thankful tomorrow," the bartender laughed. "I'm Sean."

Kevin laughed. "You're probably right. Nice to meet you, Sean. I'm Luthor." Kevin was starting to feel a little warm about the ears, and his stomach was a little unsettled from the dirty water dog he'd had from the street vendor around the corner on Second Avenue, but he figured it wasn't anything major and went back to the stout. A stout and a snakebite later, the math didn't matter anymore at all, he no longer cared much about his blond friend, and it was getting hard to focus. It was time to leave. Sean was on the phone – sounded like he was talking to a bookie and trying desperately to explain something, and Kevin could swear Sean's accent had gone from a lilted Irish brogue to a hard Queens accent. "Hard to tell, bar's loud and I'm drunk," he thought, and shrugged to nobody in particular. He left a ten on the bar for Sean and walked out as elegantly as he could manage and then through Washington Square park, across five long, lonely avenues and up six short streets. He stopped on the corner of Second Avenue and West 4th, leaned against the light pole on the northeast corner and looked longingly at the red brick building above the East Village Deli across the street. He thought that might be the building that Heather lived in, but he wasn't sure, and he couldn't remember why he thought that. It wasn't the drunkenness that made him want to walk over and ring Heather's buzzer and go up and see her if she was even home; the drunkenness only allowed the impulse to surface. He was tired, Tired of being alone, tired of searching for what he felt with her. The empty feeling inside him pulled him toward her apartment, but stronger still were the years of dashed expectations, and those certain certainties; he knew how things turned out for him, and to some degree, he knew that in the end he lived up to his father's nickname for him, _Useless_. He knew instinctively that it was better left alone. He staggered one avenue and the three blocks over to his building, worked the front doors open and collapsed in his bed.

It was about five in the morning when consciousness snuck up on him as he was hugging the cool white porcelain of the commode and heaving. Between the violent heaves he sipped from a pitcher of cold water he'd mercifully provided for himself from the fridge. Sometimes he was thankful for how well he took care of himself. "I love you, man," he said weakly and smiled as another wave of nausea swept over him. As he laid back in his bed, the last feeling he felt before he passed out again was gratitude that he hadn't gone to see Heather. He was sure that he would have been embarrassed.

The crack of noon came quickly, leaking in weakly under the heavy red velvet curtains of Kevin's studio apartment. Kevin didn't have the stomach to lay around any longer. He rose slowly out of the bed, afraid to rouse any demons, made his way to the bathroom and splashed water on his face, brushed his teeth and decided to take a walk in Tompkins Square Park. He walked outside as the sun came out from behind a cloud, and his eyes stung with the sudden blast of light. He stumbled backward into his building, shielding his eyes as two young girls jogged by and started giggling. "Was that a vampire?" he heard one ask, and they both burst out laughing so hard it hurt his ears. He staggered back into his apartment and fished a pair of mirrored sunglasses out from the middle of a grocery bag he kept his mail in. "Okay," he said as softly as he could manage, "let's try this again."

Kevin's second attempt was easier because he was mentally prepared for the sojourn. He walked two blocks east to the park, past the workers and messengers doing their thing, and the young artists and hipsters looking for their thing. There were too many skaters and bikers and runners and other healthy glowing people, so he walked a little further down to the other side of the park. The constant jolt of walking was hurting his head, so immediately upon entering the park he sat at one of the green wrought iron wooden slat benches. He could feel the heat coming off his head and the beer vapors pouring out from his pores and from behind his eyes. He was thankful for the sunglasses and the ice cold water he'd bought from the hot dog vendor on the way in. The park didn't feel right; since the neighborhood changed, it started to feel like Central Park south. He remembered years before spending time with his friend Heather and her friends, squatters from a building over on Avenue B. The park had been grittier back then, but hadn't yet become the full on hobo jungle that the Giuliani administration cracked down on to forcefully evict hundreds of really scary people. He was pretty sure that he'd always loved Heather, but he now understood that they'd been doomed from the beginning. He missed her.

"Hey, Mac," he heard come from slightly behind him and to his right. He automatically reached into his jeans and fished for a dollar bill. A dollar was extraordinarily big for a beggar, but he couldn't be bothered to answer to anybody.

"Put your money away, slick," the voice said, "I just want to talk a bit."

Kevin turned around slowly, but saw nobody there except for a gray squirrel. "What?" he asked agitatedly.

"What's with the attitude, Kevin?" the squirrel asked. Kevin noticed that the squirrel was wearing a very serious, solemn expression.

Kevin shook his head slowly and deliberately. "How fucking great is this, I'm talking to a squirrel."

"Hey, don't worry about it, Kevin," the squirrel explained in a thick Bronx accent. It kind of sounded like, " _Hey, don' worry bouddit, Kevn_." The squirrel continued, "This is a very important moment in your life. Show a little reverence."

Kevin didn't exactly feel reverence as he sat there slack-jawed staring at the talking squirrel, but he did feel relief. It was a load off his shoulders to know, really know beyond a reasonable doubt there _was_ something wrong with him, and there had been all along. He was insane. Tears streamed down as his cheeks as he smiled a crooked little smile and tried to pull himself together. "Sorry, squirrel," he said, "no disrespect intended."

# Chapter 7

Details

With a small part of the five grand, Zeke and Mouse had rented a studio on Clinton south of Houston street, only about ten blocks from the squat. It was the top floor of a five floor walkup, orange-tan brick, open courtyard-type stoop. It was very typical of the apartment buildings built in the 1950's and 1960's – neat, clean, functional. As a bonus, Zeke did small repairs and some painting on the weekend and kept the hallways and common areas clean in exchange for paying $250 rent. Westy had set it up for him with one of his friends, with the stipulation that they had to move out when the building went co-op. It was a way for the manager to keep the number of apartments sold at the "insider" price down. There was a plumber, and electrician and a floor and tile guy that were getting the same deal. Thanks to the floor guy, their apartment had real wood floors.

Zeke sat at the table, sipping his coffee and smoking a cigarette. He was reading an OTB racing form, and trying to decide whether he should lay some bets for the week, or just let their money ride. They were in good shape, and had hardly spent anything. His window business was gone, but the "custom furniture" business wasn't completely gone. He'd gotten a call from one of his clients, and they were looking for him to build them a new entertainment center. There was at least six or seven bills he'd make there. He heard Mouse stirring, and start to get up. He looked up at the clock – it was 10:45am. "You want some coffee?" he yelled.

"Sure," she answered flatly.

"Cool," he answered, and got up to get her a cup and freshen his. She liked her coffee light and sweet – lots of milk and sugar. He drank his black, sometimes regular with some milk and two sugars. Today he drank it black. He was remembering an old black drill sergeant that he had at basic training, and his take on coffee and women. Zeke ran the line out loud, doing his best Georgia bass, "I like my coffee like I like my women... old, strong, black and bitter." He laughed out loud.

"Who you talking to?" she yelled from the bedroom.

"Nobody," he answered, "just remembering something and talking out loud."

"Oh," she said.

" _Like that_ ," the thought to himself. " _Just... oh._ " Something had changed since they moved out of the squat, and he wasn't sure what or why. This should have been a good time – the pressure was off. They got a new place, cheap, and it was clean and secure. They even had a home phone, even though it had yet to ring even once. They'd bought their furniture on clearance and from the Swedish furniture store in New Jersey, also on clearance. It was all new, nothing used or second hand, and it was nice. But still, in the last week or two, she was increasingly unhappy, and things had started going downhill, not only with them, but with her. He didn't like what he was seeing.

She touched him lightly on the shoulder, and he jumped. "Didn't mean to wake you," she said with a little smile, "I'll take that coffee ." She sipped it and made a little happy noise. "What we you thinking about?" she asked. "You looked like you were a million miles away."

He smiled back at her, and he felt a little more at ease. "Just things. Happy to be here."

"Me too," she said, and then a few seconds later, something in her face closed. The little smile vanished, and she ran her hands through her short hair.

"I might have a cabinet job, he said. An entertainment center for one of my old clients."

"Oh," she said, glancing at the racing form, "Where are you going to build it?"

"North Carolina," he said, smiling.

"Ok..." she said, "I'll bite. How?"

"A master cabinetmaker never gives away his secrets," he said, and smiled. "Actually, I don't really build them. My friend Johnny set me up with this hillbilly that his brother knew. They guy looks like a rock star – long red beard, long hair, a great guy."

"Have I met Johnny?" she asked.

"No," he said, thinking. "I don't think you have. We worked together on the windows business. He helped me with the permits, inspections and the union."

"Oh," she said. "One of those guys, huh?" Her voice was dripping with disdain.

"He's a great guy, Mouse. You'd like him. Honestly, one of the smartest guys I know, and one of the hardest workers, too," he said defensively.

"Ok, so how does the 'hillbilly' help you with the cabinets?" she asked, then like an afterthought, she said, "and you know that is so disrespectful."

"What?"

" _Hillbilly,"_ she said, letting it ooze out of her mouth.

"Yeah," he said, "you're right... so anyway, " he started, "so I get the idea and measurements and the _hillwilliam_ builds the piece in his factory and ships it to a friend of mine in Red Hook, Brooklyn and we deliver it from there."

She laughed. " _Hillwilliam_ .... you're an idiot." She smiled and walked back in the bedroom to get dressed. "What's your plan for today?" she asked.

"Meeting Timothy for lunch in the West Village, and then maybe a few beers. You?"

"Got some stuff to do, and then work again. I'm closing tonight"

He could tell by her tone of voice that the conversation was over. "Cool." He straightened out a bit, then tried to sit and read the paper, but he could hear people on the roof deck with the distinctive click and thud as they walked across the semi-floating deck.

Access to the roof deck was one of the perks of their top-floor apartment. It wasn't really what you would imagine when you think of a roof deck – more of a raised wood platform that drained well and had been painted a dark green color that was reminiscent of a dressing room floor in an old gym. The deck wasn't covered, but the taller buildings to either side gave it nice shade in the early mornings and late evenings. There were a few molded plastic pool chairs and a couple of plastic tables. It wasn't much, but it was nice to sit outside on nice evenings

.

Zeke caught the Houston Street bus crosstown to the end. He walked up West Street to the piers around 10th Street. The promenade that ran along West Street was always busy with joggers, skaters and bicyclists. The piers jutted out into the Hudson, and were about as wide as two streets. There were benches along the side, and musicians played, and college girls danced. The piers had a Washington Square Park feel to them, before the Square became a hipster haven and a freak show. He smiled to himself a melancholy little smile. He already knew from Johnny that this was all going to change – they had already built a driving range at Chelsea, and they were already talking about building a giant dog walk and rebuilding the promenade into something beautiful. He looked downtown, at the sun shining of the World Trade Center and the pink granite of the Two World Financial Center buildings, and Stuyvesant High School up the street. The parking lots across the street from the World Financial Center would become a luxury hotel, and a movie multiplex and maybe a plaza with some restaurants and bars. " _It's coming_ ," he thought to himself. The whole waterfront would one day be "beautiful". He was almost to the big pier, and he could already hear the murmur of happy people – the loud laughter, the music and the talking. The idea that this would be developed made him a little sad, because this, to him, _was_ beautiful.

He stopped at the head of the pier, and saw Timothy in the about the middle of the pier talking to a girl with long, curly red hair wearing a full length peasant dress. They were both smiling, and she was touching his elbow as they spoke. Behind them was the Hudson River, looking gray and a little turbulent with whitecaps on the angry little waves that were breaking. Across the Hudson was Jersey City with its new skyscrapers, looking like a little mini-Financial District. Beyond that, an expanse of gray sky with storm clouds building in the distance.

Zeke was hesitant to interrupt them, but Timothy looked over and saw him, and gave him a little wave. The girl looked over, and gave a little wave, too. Zeke waved back. They ended their conversation, and said their goodbyes, the girl the whole time keeping in contact with Timothy's arms, elbow or shoulders. Timothy started walking toward Zeke, and looked back and waved again.

They talked as they walked towards the diner on Greenwich Street north of 11th Street. The girl was somebody Timothy had seen a few times around their building when he was out to lunch. He finally had a chance to introduce himself, and things seemed to be going well. The diner on Greenwich wasn't like the Polish diner on Second Avenue, but it had a good feel to it – white with lots of green trim and plants. It felt like somebody's very happy, well-adjusted mother had decorated the place from ideas she got in house and garden magazines.

They had lunch with small talk and a beer. They finished there and walked over to the White Horse Tavern for a few pints. The White Horse had been around for a while, and bragged of having Dylan Thomas as one of their regular clients in the day. It was a good bar, if not a little pretentious, and a pretentious crowd was less likely to strike up a conversation with Zeke – he had an intense aura, or so he'd been told by more than one intensely curious girls. The inevitable break in casual conversation finally came, and Timothy seemed to sense that Zeke had something on his mind.

"So how's everything going?" he asked.

"Well, not bad," Zeke said. "We're into a good studio apartment on the Lower East Side, and we're getting settled in." He lit a cigarette, and took a long drag. He felt like he was wasting time. "But... Mouse is using, and it's starting to get ugly."

"Sorry to hear that – I know you guys have been through a lot together. I'd still like to meet her sometime." He didn't know much about Zeke's world. He wasn't even sure what he should and shouldn't ask. "Bad?"

"Yeah, pretty bad. Moving pretty fast."

"How long has she been getting bad?" Timothy asked.

"Well, it's hard to say," Zeke answered, "maybe three, four weeks. Started about a month after we moved to the new place."

"You think that has anything to do with it?"

"Nah," Zeke said, "the old place was a dump, and there was nothing there for either of us. I don't know," he said, looking around at the rich wood and the old hardware. "Sometimes it's nothing that happened right then. Who the fuck knows."

"What's she on?" Timothy asked, obviously trying to keep the conversation going.

"That's the bad part. Downers – mostly reds," he said, and noted by his expression that it didn't register with Timothy. "Barbiturates. Mostly phenobarbital. It's pretty fucking horrible. One minute we can be talking and having a great conversation, and the next minute she turns into a fucking caveman – no higher brain functions at all. Blank eyes, and her tongue gets real thick. Like everything gets turned off ." Zeke looked a little shaken up. He took another drink of the dark ale, and sat quietly for a few seconds, thinking and smoking a cigarette. He seemed to hesitate for a minute, then went on, "that's not the worst part, either. That stuff's really messing with her – she's getting suicidal, too. She talks about it all the time, and she'll be gone sometimes for a couple of day, and who know what the hell is going on."

"At least she's talking about it," Timothy offered. "I heard that as long as somebody's talking about it, they won't do it."

"Sounds about right. I've heard that, too," he said, then started again, "last time she was out, she came back with a Harley-Davidson tattoo on her forearm. Can you believe it?"

"Like a shield? Orange and black?" Timothy asked incredulously.

"Yeah, I wish. More like a half-assed black outline. No art to it at all. A fucking prisoner would be ashamed to have that shit on their arm. I knew kids in grade school that did better work."

Timothy shrugged. "Man, I don't even know what to say. What did she say about it?"

"That it was a joke. She passed out with a bunch of her friends and one of them did it as a joke. I'm telling you, things are bad."

"A joke?"

"Yeah, some joke..." Zeke said. It was obvious that there was much, much more to the story, but he couldn't even begin to guess. Timothy seemed to be studying Zeke's face, like there was something there that he'd never seen before, or as if it was the first time that he'd seen them. Zeke was a bit uncomfortable with that look, but resigned himself to not saying anything. There was nothing that he could think of saying.

Timothy looked down and twirled the cardboard coaster with the beer logo on it, and spoke without looking up. "Sounds really bad, Zeke. Does she have any family? That you could..."

"Honestly, I don't know. She's mentioned a brother, but that's it. I don't even know her last name or where she works," Zeke said.

"How could you not know where she works?"

Now Zeke shrugged. "Never came up. I know she's a cocktail waitress, but I don't know where. She's pretty secretive about a lot of stuff, but she opens up from time to time." He knew it probably sounded stupid, but he really didn't care. That was classic Mouse, or at least the non-caveman Mouse. She was private, and he trusted her – he wasn't big on talking, either. There were some things that didn't help to talk about, that you couldn't change, or that you were muscling through. Talking about them didn't make them less real, or soften the edges, it just gave you more ways to be misunderstood, more things to be judged on, and ultimately, more things to fight about. Not everybody understood that, especially not now, when everybody was touchy-feely and 'sensitive'. The Italian barbers understood that, and so did the men of his father and grandfather's generations, and, he thought, so did Mouse. He tried hard to remember an old war quote.

"What was that?" asked Timothy, "I didn't hear you."

"What?" Zeke responded, and then realized that he must have said it out loud. He recited it again, " _Three of us left for Viet Nam, full of braggadocio, and more innocent than they knew. Only one came back. That's all there is, except for the details_..." He took another drag off the cigarette. "I'm pretty sure that it's a riff off an older quote – a report by a young colonel after his brigade was wiped out in the Civil War, or something like that. I can't remember."

"Wow," said Timothy. They were both quiet for a while, Zeke thinking about the quote. "So what are you going to do?" Timothy finally asked.

"I don't know, Timothy. It's beyond me now, and I don't want to wait until she overdoses and I have to leave her at some emergency room like an animal, you know?"

"Yeah."

"I know a priest at the Franciscan Church over on West 31st Street. They deal with tragic shit like this all the time – they minister to drunks, drug addicts, AIDs victims and the desperate and despondent. Mouse and I fit into at least a few of those categories. I might go ask him what we can do. They're tied into a rehab somehow."

"Sounds like the only thing to do – you don't want to have to drop her off at Bellevue, you know?" Timothy sat for a minute, thinking. "Zeke?"

"Yeah?"

Timothy hesitated, like he was debating something, then said finally blurted out, "I hope it works out. Sounds like you love her." Zeke looked up and smiled at him, and Timothy smiled back awkwardly and shrugged.

"Yeah, I don't know. Sometimes I think I do, but we're not there yet." Zeke asked the bartender for a glass of water. "We're together, but there's still a lot she needs to work through, before we play house for real. This shit is a perfect example."

They had a few more, and both of them made a conscious effort to lighten the mood. They had a few laughs, talked about growing up, and the Yankees -Giants - Rangers - Knicks alliance versus the Mets - Jets - Islanders - Nets axis. Zeke was absolutely dumbfounded that Timothy wasn't a fan of the blue, and he wondered out loud whether his little brother was soft or just stupid. They left before midnight, feeling good to be alive, feeling good to be brothers. Zeke waved once more, and headed for the subway.

Timothy debated whether he should catch a cab home, or stop by Arnold's for a quick drink, and decided on taking a walk. He felt bad for Zeke – there was a lot for him to deal with, and he hoped that he'd be okay. There was a lot that he needed to think about, too. Tanya was on his mind.

He was a little more excited than he thought he'd be when he got close enough to see the painted metal double doors of Arnold's. Dennis gave him the usual warm greeting, but it was a full house, and he didn't have time to talk much to Timothy. That actually suited him fine – he didn't really feel like talking, and was looking forward to talking to Tanya. It had been quite a while since they'd spoken. He glanced around the place, but didn't see her. He walked up to the bar and bought a bourbon with a splash of water. The bartender leaned over and kissed him sweetly. Bourbon and water was his cold weather drink – he liked the sweet malty burn of the whiskey.

He watched the last set of a tall skinny blonde that he'd never seen before, then smiled as he saw Tanya approach the stage. The guys crowded up a little closer – she was obviously popular. The DJ was playing a classic blues CD, and drinking scotch and milk at the end of the bar. He was a big, very big black man about Zeke's age, and knew jazz and blues cold. He played lead in a blues band, but Timothy had never been out to see him play. A signature B.B. King song came on, first with the leading electric piano, and then Lucille opened up. It was a song about the chains that bind and keep a man earthbound. Tanya was feeling the music – she was swaying sensually, throwing her head back and running her hands slowly down her body, and then into the "V" of her crotch and moving her pelvis hungrily against her hands. She was wearing a long sleeve see-though cover, and her firm breasts and erect nipples were clear against the wispy material. All the men around the stage were transfixed, quiet, swaying with the beat and in synch with Tanya. The air was thick with the promise of sex, electric. The hair on the back of Timothy's neck was standing on end. He'd never seen her dance like this before, and though he wasn't complaining, it was _different_ and not in a completely good way. He watched her for a moment as she slid the cover down to just above her nipples, holding it tight against her body to show her breasts to maximum effect. In the moment that every eye was watching her breasts and waited electrically for the unwrapping, he looked up at her face. Her face was distant, her eyes were far away, they were half closed, but not in a sensual way. That's when it hit him – she was _selling_ it. He'd never seen that before in her. As she peeled the cover over and exposed her breasts, little by little, the crowd was mesmerized. She dropped the cover to the floor of the stage and arched her back, looking up at the ceiling, her arms spread and palms open.

Timothy set his drink down on the table, and resting his elbows on the table, buried his head in his hands. "Fuck, fuck, fuck...' was all he could say. His chest felt tight, and he felt like he'd swallowed a frozen golf ball; tight in his throat and hanging in his chest, moving down only little by little. All he could think was that they were fucked. They were all fucked. Everything was fucked, fucked, fucked. He couldn't look up at her, he could barely breathe. Her set ended, and he could hear the hoots and hollers of the guys around the bar. He knew she'd do her victory lap around the bar now, collecting tips. He thought about trying to get up and casually leave, but he didn't want her to see him. Eventually, as he knew she would, she came to his table.

"Timothy?" she asked, "Timothy, what are you doing here? What's the matter?"

He looked her dead in the eyes, and she couldn't hold his gaze. " _What's the matter_?" he asked. "What the hell is this?" He reached over quickly, grabbed her wrist and turned it over to expose a crude, line art Harley Davidson shield. "What the fuck is this, Mouse?"

What color there was in her face drained away, and she froze. Everything in her face, everything in her being fell. She was more naked than he'd ever seen her on stage, and she did what she could to regain her composure. "How... why did you call me that?"

"How did I know about the tattoo and your name?"

"Yeah," she said quietly, looking at him beseechingly. "How did you know?"

"Zeke's my brother,"

"Oh, no," she said. She sat down at the table with him. She looked at his face, looking to make sure she wasn't in danger. She didn't see rage there, nor hatred – she didn't see a whole lot in his face, except maybe disappointment and a foreshadowing of what they both knew what they'd have to face with Zeke. "So now what happens?"

"What happens next? I don't even know what's happening now. Hell, I don't even know your name – well, that's not exactly true. I know at least two of them."

"Heather," she said. "Heather Shapiro."

"Pleased to meet you,' he said, and not entirely facetiously. "Timothy Jacques"

She smiled a small smile.

"Really?" he asked.

"Yeah," she said. "It drives Zeke crazy that you and your parents pronounce it like it was French. He prefers to pronounce it the Spanish way."

"Well, he's wrong there," he answered curtly. We're not Spanish. Even though our family is from Mexico, we're ethnically Catalan. It's pronounced the French way."

Mouse laughed. "Zeke said you all thought that, but he says that's bullshit. You're Mexicans." Timothy wasn't smiling. "Look. I'm sorry," she said, but didn't see much give in his face. "For everything."

"If you were a guy, I'd knock you out. You have no idea how pissed I am."

"Actually," she said, "it's not that hard to hear it in your voice. You need to try to keep it down a little, or we're going to have trouble. The guys that come here tend to be meatheads."

"Keep it down?" he asked.

Dennis came over to the table and put himself between Timothy and Heather. A powerful hand went onto Timothy's chest and froze him. "Everything okay?" he asked Heather.

"Yeah," she said, motioning to Timothy. "We're just talking. Turns out I live with his brother, Zeke."

Dennis looked at Timothy, and saw him for the first time. "Oh. Hey, Timothy," he said, smiling and shaking his hand firmly. "How about that? Zeke's a great guy. Small world, huh?" Dennis nodded and smiled at both of them, and then stepped away without another word as something else caught his eye.

"So how much were you going to rip me off for?" Timothy asked her.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"Disneyland with your son"

She closed her eyes. "Oh, man..." she looked away. "But I never called you back. Zeke came up with the money we needed to get out of the squat." A few guys came up and tried to strike up a conversation, but she smiled and expertly dismissed them.

"Wait... squat? You guys were living in a squat?"

"Yeah."

"Like an abandoned building?" he asked. "Seriously?"

"Well, it's more complicated than that, Timothy. It's not exactly Park Avenue, but it's not Mad Max, either. As far as squats go, it wasn't that bad – there were a lot of blue collar guys living in the building, and they were constantly fixing it up with Zeke."

He shook his head, sadly. "I can't believe Zeke would keep you all in a squat. A burned out building."

Heather started to get pissed. "It's better than a lot of the places people rent. The tenants cared about the building, and took care of each other."

"Yeah, I guess. So how much were you going to take from me?"

"Let's not do this, Timothy. I was going to pay you back, I just needed some time. We had to get out of there. Zeke wasn't doing well, he was sick."

"Sick?"

"Junk sick," she said, and then explained. "Withdrawals – he kicked, and you always get sick. Real sick."

"I hadn't thought of that," he said, "I knew he was in trouble, but I just didn't think of him as a junkie."

"Yeah, well," she said, "you don't know much about your brother." She looked around. "You need to buy us a drink. It's busy, and Dennis is giving me stink eye."

"Dennis runs the girls?" Timothy asked, surprised.

"Dennis _owns_ _the bar_ ," she said. "He's pretty low-key about it. Doesn't need a whole lot of friends." She walked off and opened a tab for Timothy, and came back with two more drinks.

"I feel like a real asshole," Timothy said, "I thought I was falling in love with you."

"I know," she said. "You're a great guy, and I'd never have taken advantage of that. I never asked you for anything, and like I told you, the other thing was going to be a loan."

"But you still lied," he said.

"Seriously, Timothy?" she smiled at an older Wall Street type at the bar. "I don't have time for this," she said and started to walk away. He grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her back.

She pulled her arm away, "Don't touch me again." She sat down, impatient. "You really thought you were falling in love with me? That's a laugh. What kind of man would let the girl he loves dance in a strip club?"

He looked at her blankly.

"Yeah. With all these guys itching to rub up against me. You and your brother both – I don't see him here dragging me out of here, either."

"He doesn't know you dance. He's thinks you're a cocktail waitress."

She laughed. "Seriously? He thinks I was supporting him and Alize on a waitress' salary? Unbelievable." She pulled a cigarette out of the pack Timothy had on the table. He lit it for her. "I loved him like you wouldn't believe. You wouldn't believe how much shit I put up with – he doesn't even have the balls to tell me he loves me, but I know he does." She let the cigarette hang out of her mouth. Timothy winced – it looked vulgar. Not sexually vulgar, but it made her look cheap " So you'd let me dance here if I was your girlfriend?" she asked him, smugly.

"No, but neither would Zeke. He loves you. You know he does."

"He told you that?"

"Not exactly, but he's worried about you," Timothy said.

She laughed again as she blew a smoke ring. "yeah, I know. Zeke and all his macho bullshit. And look at you," she said, almost sneering, "You're such a girl, Timothy. I always worried that Zeke would find out that I danced here," she said, and smiled at Timothy seductively, winking, and laughed again. "I already lost one friend that I really liked when he found me here. But you know what, tiger?"

He halfway shrugged and nodded his head up in a way that said "what"?

She stood up and did a little dance and rubbed up against him. "It's not hard to dance in front of his brother. Dancing in front of him would be just as easy." She looked over her shoulder and smiled at the guy behind her as she started to sway her hips. He was over in a flash and they started doing the hump. She looked at Timothy, licked her lips and blew him a kiss. Timothy got up, pulled on his jacket and started for the door.

"Hold on," she said, and held Timothy's hand as she walked him outside. The talked for a little while, and they went around in circles. Timothy tried to explain to her that Zeke lover her, and she argued that nobody loved her. Nobody. It went back and forth until it degenerated into a shouting match. A patrol car pulled up and flashed its overheads, and Heather turned around, walked back inside and slammed the metal door behind her. Timothy waved at the cops, walked to the corner without looking back, and hailed a cab.

# Chapter 8

Goodbyes

Mouse didn't come home for three days.

Zeke was starting to panic. He's talked to everybody he knew, and he put the word out that he was looking for her. On the morning of the third day, he stopped a patrol car that was passing by and asked them what he needed to do to make a missing person report. The cop was genuinely helpful, and a beat cop stopped by as they were talking. They helped him file a missing person report. He'd looked through one of her boxes to get an old driver's license, and had it with him before they he flagged the patrol car down, so he had all the information they needed. He had to tell them he was her husband in order to be able to file the report. That kind of made him smile. As they spoke, Zeke couldn't believe how much the foot cop knew about what was going on in the neighborhood. He stayed after the patrol car took off, and they compared notes. Zeke was able to fill in some missing pieces for him, as well.

Jerry had been a NYC police officer for twenty five years, and was forty six. He was big, about six-four, six-five and had a big head full of wild white hair. His face looked much younger than the white hair implied, so from a distance, he looked much older than he was. To some degree, it worked for him. The neighborhood saw him as a kindly, albeit big old man, and when he meant business, it was clear that he could deliver. They talked for a long time.

"Here's what I don't understand," Jerry said as he ran his hands through his hair. "We're having a real problem with Gypsy cabs. The real problem is that we don't know who's driving. Most of them are just old Puerto Ricans, Haitians or Jamaicans making a buck. We're not worried about them. The Metro sucks down here, and there's nothing anybody can do because of the damn union. We understand that. It's the other guys we're worried about – the young hoods that come into the neighborhood from Brooklyn and pose as Gypsy drivers to find victims. We've had seventeen robberies in the last two weeks. It's going to drive the old guys out of business, and worse, we have no way of knowing who's who. Know what I mean?"

"Yeah. So you're looking for a way to identify legitimate neighborhood drivers?"

"Exactly," said Jerry. "How do people know who's a driver? Is there some kind of sign or code or marking that they use on their cars?"

"What?" asked Zeke.

"Yeah, is there something they put in their window, or some kind of bumper or window sticker or something they put on their car?"

Zeke laughed. "Yeah, I got you," he said, pointing to a gold Dodge parked in the middle of the street under a tree. "See that Dodge down the street?"

"The gold one? Yeah."

"It's a Gypsy. You know how I can tell?"

Jerry was intrigued. "How?"

"Because it's Pete's car, and he's been driving for years."

Jerry laughed. "Good grief. No wonder people think we're idiots."

Zeke spent most of the morning running errands, pick up the cash he got monthly for the work he did, and the favors he helped people get though his connections with Johnny and people he knew in the City. The checks were regular, every month. It wasn't a lot, but never less than eight hundred a week.

He went over to St. Mark's Workshop, then walked down to the Polish diner with some friends to drink some coffee, smoke some cigarettes and mostly just kill time.

It was well after ten when he started to make his way home, and nearly ten thirty when he finally made it up the steps and opened the door. All the light were off, but the light to the bathroom was on, bright. He hadn't left it on. He could see the tub, framed by heavy wooden trim around the door, and he could see her arm hanging out of the tub, pale and unmoving. Her body was hidden from view by the tub, the view of her head blocked by the doorframe. "Mouse?" he called out, watching the arm, looking for a response. Nothing moved. "Mouse!" he call out again and ran to the bathroom. She was laying in the tub, reclined. Her head was out of the water, her hair nearly dry. Her eyes were open, but unmoving and staring off into the distance. "Mouse!" He called again, and reached out to pull her out of the tub.

"What?" she said, and turned sluggishly towards him. "Where were you?" she slurred. "Where the fuck were you?"

"Went to St. Mark's," he said, and sighed deeply. "Thank God you're okay." She tried to mumble something, and he ignored her as he lifter her easily out of the tub, dried her with some hotel towels they'd bought on the street, and carried her to their bed. He laid her on the bed, pulled the sheets and blankets back and lifted her and put her under the covers. She was trying to protest and gesture, but she did little more than thrash and mumble incoherently a times and fall asleep.

Zeke pulled one of the chairs in from the dining room table, and sat near the bed for a while, to watch her and make sure she kept breathing. He sat back, and woke up a time later. He hadn't even remembered falling asleep. He continued to sit there for a while, watching her sleep, her body cut by the razor sharp stripes of dark blue shadows of night and the harsh yellow phosphorus beams of light from the streetlight through the mini-blinds. She looked older somehow as she slept, and he wondered whether maybe he was older than he thought, too.

He went into the living room and sat at the dining room table to smoke a cigarette. There was no reason to turn a light on. He thought about Mouse, and he knew that he had to do something pretty damn soon. He couldn't go on like this, and he wasn't sure how long she could last. " _This is the end of something_ ," he thought, but damned if he even knew what that something was. He'd go talk to the priest in the morning. That was the only thing he knew for certain. He went back in the bedroom and slipped into the bed next to Mouse. She was snoring lightly.

Mouse came out of the bedroom at about 10:00 am. Zeke was surprised she was up that early. They didn't say much to each other – Zeke didn't know whether it was because she didn't remember, she didn't want to talk about it, or because there was really nothing to say. Most likely, he thought, because there was nothing for them to say.

"Hey," he said, "I've got some errands to run, but I should be back around lunch. Do you want to go grab something at the vegan place on Sixth Street when I get back?"

"Sure," she said without looking up, "whatever."

.

Zeke caught the crosstown bus to Sixth Avenue, then took the "D" Train to Herald Square. He walked over to the church, walked up the stairs and asked for Father Richard. Father Richard was saying mass downstairs, so Zeke went down into the chapel that was in the basement, did the Sign of the Cross as he went in, and found a seat near the door. Father Richard was just starting his homily.

"A few years, ago," he started, "there were some particularly bad drug wars in northern Manhattan, near the tip of the island. There were some drug gangs that had gotten so brazen, that they were engaging in murder and gunfights in broad daylight, and committing acts so heinous that the whole city went mute. Nobody talked about it. Then, one day a beautiful little girl was killed in the crossfire of one of these gunfights. Four years old. Innocent. How could God let this happen?" Father Richard went on to talk about free will, and how each of us has the choice and the ability to control our actions, and because we're frail beings, our actions affect others, and vice versa. Free will. Long story short, the little girl's mother was devastated, and got a lot of sympathy from the community, and the other mothers in the community. She prayed on this, and was struck by how many of those mothers were also the victims of these beasts, and yet had nobody to turn to themselves. She organized the mothers first to comfort and support each other, and eventually they became a political force that forced the city to act and clean up their community.

"I'm reminded of an old Shaker hymn that said you should lay your burdens at the foot of the cross, and God was make them into something beautiful, and it will be waiting for you when you get to the other side. How many times do we find ourselves at the center of the storm, unable to even keep our eyes open as the wind whips around us? Lay your burdens at the foot of the cross, and walk around to the other side, where the winds are still." Zeke liked that. It was Zen.

Zeke waited for Father Richard after the mass, when all the congregants had gone off into the city streets.

"Hey, Father, you got a second?' he asked.

Father Richard looked Zeke in the eyes, maybe measuring him up, and agreed immediately. "Sure, come on up to my office."

They walked up stairs, and Father Richard had him sit in an wooden chair in front of the big wooden desk. It was a nice desk, but was very simple in design. He told Zeke to be comfortable while he got out of his vestments, the ceremonial robes he wore while saying mass. Zeke waited, and looked around the office. It was simple – very utilitarian and neat. He came back in the brown hooded wool robe and simple white rope belt of the of the Franciscan Friars.

"So, young man," he started, "what can I do for you?"

"I enjoyed your homily, Father. A lot to think about."

"Thanks. You can call me Richard."

Zeke got to the point. "Father, I need to find out about your drug rehab programs. I have this friend..." he started, and watched Richard's eyebrow go up and a little smile flash across his face. Zeke laughed. "No, it really is a friend. She's my girlfriend, in a way, and I'm not sure how much longer she's going to make it. She's talking about suicide, but honestly, that's not what I'm worried about."

"What's she on?"

"Downers."

Father Richard looked concerned. "That's a pretty serious habit. Barbiturates are bad news – they're part of the chemical cocktail that the government uses to execute their inmates, and that Kevorkian uses them as well."

"Yeah, I know. And she's not a very big thing, either, I don't think she's even five foot tall."

"Oh," Father Richard sighed. "Well, I'm sorry to hear that..."

"I'm sorry," Zeke said, and stood up and offered Father Richard his hand. "Zeke. Zeke Jacques."

"Richard," he said, and they both sat back down. "So Zeke, what do you propose?"

"Well, Father, I'd like to see if we can get her into rehab before I lose her."

"Okay." He reached back behind him and pulled a three ring binder off the shelf. "Which programs out there have you considered sending her to? There are several programs out there – the medical school downtown runs one, and there are several private ones, and of course, the city runs some, too."

"We can't wait for the city," Zeke said, " the government programs have more than a two month lead time. She's not going to live that long. We don't have insurance or a lot of cash," he said. "I could probably put my hands on three, maybe four grand."

Father Richard finished the sentence, "but that would leave you with nothing."

Zeke nodded, and exhaled slowly, like all their air was escaping out of him. "Yeah, pretty much."

Father Richard pulled another folder out of a drawer, and leaved through several papers until he found the one he was looking for, then spent several minutes poring over one particular document. "Okay," he finally said, "I'll be right back. I need to make a call," and walked out carrying the manila folder. He was only gone a short time, but it felt forever. Zeke hated waiting like this, at the mercy of somebody else. He braced himself for either answer as he heard Father Richard's footsteps echoing down the hall.

Father Richard sat down, and smiled. "I called in some favors. Do you think she could make it until tomorrow?"

"Yeah, we can do that, Father. Whatever it takes."

"Okay, there's a Franciscan community about an hour from here that runs a rehab for our Diocese. They can open a bed for her, and they're going to fax me the paperwork. Meet me here tomorrow at 10:00 am with your friend, and I'll give you what you need. You're going to have to buy the bus ticket to get upstate, but they'll pick you up at the bus station."

"Okay. I can do that," he said, and hesitated for a split second. "What's this going to cost us?"

"Don't worry about that now. You and I can work that out later – we have needs here for all kinds of skills and abilities. Don't worry about that now. Let's get her there."

Something else suddenly flashed in Zeke's head, and it must have shown on his face.

"What else?" asked Father Richard.

"Father, she's not Catholic. Not even Christian. She's Jewish. Is that going to be a problem?"

Father Richard laughed. "No, not a problem. Look, you've been given a gift – this is very rare. Things never work this way, but everything fell in place for you. Don't waste it. I'll worry about this end, you just worry about getting her here." Father Richard stood up, and gestured toward the door. "We'll see you both tomorrow at ten in the morning."

"Father Richard, I don't know how to thank you."

"By calling me Richard, young man. See you tomorrow." Richard gave him a little nudge toward the door and then went back to his desk to work.

Zeke was elated, and felt a sense of relief he hadn't felt in a while. He felt like the sun was shining right on his head. He opened the door, and Mouse as sitting at the dining room table, elbows on the table, smoking a cigarette, look out the window. She didn't even look at him as he walked in.

"Hey, you want to grab lunch in a bit?" he asked.

"Sure why not," she said and looked over at him. She was moving slow, like she had a bad hangover. "What are you smiling about?"

"Let's talk over lunch."

"About what?"

"I have a couple of ideas. I think things are going to start getting better for us, starting tomorrow."

"What happens tomorrow?" she asked.

Zeke hesitated a minute, and even though he knew that they should have talked about it after a good lunch, and some time to talk about their plans, he did something he's forever regret. He blurted it out. "I spoke to this priest I know, and I set it up so that you can go to rehab upstate tomorrow. It's all set – we can leave tomorrow morning."

"Really," she said in a tone he'd never heard before from her. "So when did we decide this?"

He froze. "Well, it's not _decided_ , but it's an option that's open to us. Get dressed and we can talk about it over lunch."

"Fuck you," she said simply.

"What?"

"Fuck you," she repeated. "Who the hell do you think you are? I'm sorry. Am I a burden on you? Am I embarrassing you somehow?"

"Come on," he said. "You can't keep this up. You know it yourself. Mouse, you keep talking about killing yourself..."

"So your answer is to ship me away to some Christian boot camp to fix me?" she shouted. "Do you have any idea how insulting that is? I sat with your sorry ass while you sent through your junk sickness, and stayed with you until you got well. You vomited on my more times than I can count. Asshole."

"Look, Mouse, we can make this work – I don't know how to help you stop. I'm afraid of losing you?"

"Afraid of losing me? Since when? Do you have any idea how much shit you put me through?" She was yelling, and crying now. "Watching you play house with that red head trust fund baby? Was that how much you love me? Letting me dance at a titty bar? Was that love, too?"

"Wait, what? What are you talking about, dancing?"

"Like you didn't know that I danced at Arnolds? Even your brother knew I danced there – he spent plenty of time and money trying to get me in bed with him."

"My brother? How the hell would I know that you were dancing? You never talked about what you did – I thought you were a waitress somewhere."

"You never fucking asked."

"Look, enough with the language. I didn't know you danced, I wouldn't have let you. I love you, Mouse."

"Yeah, sure you love me. You don't even know what that means. It's just words to you. How could you let me dance in a titty bar? How could you let us live in a squat? Is that love?" She was crying full bore now, heavy sobs.

He literally didn't know what to say. He had no idea which way was up.

"Nothing to say?" she said, laughing. "Figures. Your nothing below that macho bullshit." She wiped her eyes with her shirt sleeve. "Let me make it real easy for you. You don't love me any more than my stepdad did. He literally fucked me, and you did it every other way you could. How could you?"

"Mouse," he started, "come here." He started walking towards her with the intent of holding her close.

"No! You don't get to be nice now!" she yelled as she pushed him away. "You never loved me. Nobody ever did. Now you're going to send me away, you bastard?"

The noise level was starting to get out of control. He had an elderly lady next to him, and he didn't need her calling the cops. "Mouse, slow down. Let's talk."

She stopped, and composed herself a bit. "You're right," she said, 'it doesn't matter anyway. I'm going to go on the roof and get some air. You can go fuck yourself, or some other redhead. Whatever." She walked to the freezer and pulled out an ice cream treat, vanilla ice cream on a stick covered with an orange sherbet shell. She dropped the wrapper on the floor, and walked out the apartment and up the stairs to the roof deck. Zeke followed.

It was crisp outside, and she was only wearing one of his extra-large white long-sleeved t-shirts as a nightgown, and some baby blue granny panties. She walked toward the parapet at the front of the building, and leaned against the short brick wall. "I have no place to go if you throw me out," she said, squinting a little bit against the bright mid-day sun, and the chilly wind that had just then picked up.

"I'm not asking you to leave. I want you to stay. I really want you to stay. I love you, Mouse. Always have. I'm sorry I never told you before."

"Why didn't you, Zeke? Were you waiting for somebody better? Am I too fucked up to be with the great Zeke Jacques? Sorry I'm not pretty, Zeke, I wish we could all be beautiful – me, Kevin, Dennis. We all deserve it more than you do." She stood up straight, dropped the ice cream and climbed on to the parapet, her legs on either side like she was riding a horse.

Zeke shook his head, and was almost near tears. This was going south fast. Mouse was shouting now, and he was sure that somebody was going to see her from the street and call the police. He really didn't need this shit – they needed to keep this apartment and this kind of drama wasn't going to keep them there. "Mouse, come on down. Let's go inside. Iit's cold out here. Let's go," he said, holding out his hand and taking a few steps towards her.

She swung her body toward the street, "you stay the fuck away from me! I'll go over, I swear." She swung her body back in and to her original position, straddling the parapet. She leaned back like a cowgirl riding a mechanical bull. The shirt pulled tight against he breasts, and her nipples shown through. She smiled at Zeke, gave him a sexy pose, her eyes half closed, and blew him a kiss. "My name is Heather."

"What?"

"Heather. H-e-a-t-h-e-r. Not Mouse. I'm not a kid, you know. Can't you tell? she asked, and smoothed the shirt against her breasts.

"Sorry. I didn't know it bothered you."

"You don't know anything about me, do you?" She was shouting again.

"Come on, Heather. Let's go inside."

"I have no place to go after you throw me out – don't you understand that? I should just jump now and get it over with."

He looked at her, really looked at her. This wasn't Heather, at all, and standing out here and giving her an audience wasn't helping. They needed to come inside and work it out, but there was no talking to her while she was like this. He started to turn and walk back to the door.

"I'll jump! I swear I'll jump!" she was full out yelling now, and he figured it was to make sure that she was heard and seen, and to make sure she had an audience for her big scene.

He was done with the drama. They looked at each other, and he thought for a split second that he could see a flash of recognition, that she knew this scene was over. He spoke the last words to her that he could ever be sure that she heard. He had no way of knowing that the words would haunt him, and follow and taunt him throughout his years on this planet; if he knew that, he never would have spoken them. But there's no way to know these things, and there's no way to pull them back once they're out. As he walked down the stairs and back into his hallway, he left them there hanging frozen in that moment, with Mouse forever straddling the wall, the bright blue open sky behind her, and him stomping off down the stairs. "Do what you gotta do, Heather."

# Chapter 9

It's not over

He was in the apartment and headed to get a cup of coffee when it happened. All at once, crowded into that split second, he heard her scream, he saw something flash by the window and he heard the impact. It was loud, very, very loud. He froze for a second, trying to process it and figure out what else it might have been, so that what had just happened wouldn't have happened. If it could be, it had to be something else. Not that.

He ran to the door and opened it, and the elderly lady that lived next door opened her door at the same time. "What was that, Zeke?" she asked, obviously spooked.

"I'm afraid it was her, Mrs. McMahon."

"Oh, my God, she said, and did the Sign of the Cross, and looked again at him. "Go!" she said, "run! She might still be alive."

Zeke ran down the stairs, twice losing his footing and falling into the landings. He bolted out the front door, and there she was. She was laying facing up with her legs twisted under her. He ran to her, and there were already people there, a sanitation worker and a couple of random people. He bent down and stroked her forehead, "you didn't have to do this," he said softly, "you didn't." She was gone, and he knew it. There was nothing behind her eyes. He again brushed her bangs back away from her face. He had never appreciated what a pretty color of blue they were – very dark, almost a turquoise. He'd never noticed. He felt a big hand on his shoulder, and he stood up. It was Jerry, the beat patrolman.

"She's gone, friend. I'm very sorry for your loss," he said respectfully.

"Thanks, " Zeke said. He let Jerry maneuver him back and away so that the coroners and the other cops could do their job. A young plainclothes officer walked up and said something to Jerry. "Let's go upstairs so you can walk them through what happened." They walked up stairs.

A cop with a camera started taking pictures. "Looks like there was a struggle," he said. Zeke looked around. There were clothes everywhere. Clean clothes on the futon and the bed and dirty clothes, especially Mouse's, strewn everywhere. The sink was full of dirty dishes. Zeke looked around, like it was the first time he'd ever seen the apartment like this.

Jerry laughed at the camera guy. "A struggle? What the hell's the matter with you? Do you see any broken furniture or damage to the apartment or its contents?" He shook his head and looked at Zeke, then back at the cameraman. "Looks like they struggled with the laundry – is that what you had in mind?"

"Sorry," he said, but Zeke couldn't tell if he was apologizing to anybody in particular. Zeke walk them through what happened, walking to where he remembered standing, then back to where she stood. He walked through the whole thing as best he could, including his conversation with Mrs. McMahon and the falls he took coming down the stairs. He rode in the back of a patrol car to the precinct, where he was questioned by a white haired detective, who again, had hair that was a lot older than he was. He went through the story three or four times, and the detective typed up his statement. By that point, he didn't need much input from Zeke. Zeke looked it over, and it was good. He noted that the detective called the ice cream an "ice pop", and it struck him as odd, a very old word.

"Well, Mr. Jacques," he said, rising up from his desk and extending his hand, "I'm very sorry for your loss. The report still needs to be reviewed, but at this point, we're going to call it an accident. Miss Shapiro was taking some very powerful drugs – we found a prescription bottle in her effects. We believe she lost her balance up there."

Zeke didn't know what to say. He shook the detectives hand. "Thank you, detective. I just don't know why she did it."

"Don't do that, Mr. Jacques – we don't know what happened up there, and she was taking some pretty powerful medicine. That's all her family needs to know. "

"Thanks."

"Do you have anywhere to go?" the detective asked.

"Yes, I'm going back home. I may call my brother."

"That's a very good idea. Priest?"

"Father Richard at the Franciscan Church on West Thirty First."

"St. Francis of Assisi. It's a good church. The Capuchins are right down the street at St. John the Baptist," he said. "Mr. Jacques?"

Zeke look up at him.

"Make sure you see him, the priest, today or tomorrow."

"I will," Zeke said, "we had an appointment with him tomorrow at ten in the morning. He got Heather into a rehab upstate, and we were supposed to leave tomorrow."

"Keep the appointment," the detective said. "She can't make it, but you can. No reason not to." Zeke nodded in agreement.

Zeke couldn't stay in the apartment that night, and he didn't want to bother anybody, so he rode the A train all night, from Port Authority to Rockaway and back, and then rode the Sixth Avenue line from Sheepshead Bay to the Bronx. The bright light of the cars was good, and the rocking of the car and the clicking of the tracks was comforting. He finally got off at the Herald Square station and walked to see Father Richard, then spent the day in Central Park and met Timothy for dinner at a neighborhood Italian seafood restaurant on Second Avenue near Houston. They ate an enormous stack of mixed seafood, _frutti di mare_ , then had a few Italian beers and walked over to an Irish bar on First Avenue.

"So, how you feeling?" Timothy asked.

"Weird. Of course I miss her, and the whole thing sucks, but not like you'd imagine. I don't know how to explain it without either sounding like a robot or like I'm feeling sorry for myself."

"I can imagine," said Timothy.

"I don't know, Zeke said, "I don't know myself. You remember I was married before, right?

"I didn't know that."

"Yeah. Well, when my daughter Grace was born, my only prayer was 'God, please let me have this; please don't take this away.' Then Jennifer left me and took Grace with her. At some point you wonder how big an asshole that God must think you are. You start thinking that maybe life is payback, punishment for the things you've done."

"So that's why you started getting high?"

Zeke laughed. "You're not going to let that go, right?"

Timothy shrugged.

"Getting high had nothing to do with that," he said, and was pensive for a moment, "well, let's just say it's more complicated than that. It just makes things a little easier to take, at first."

"What things? The failures?"

"Wow. You can be a real fucking asshole, can't you?" Zeke said, laughing. "My life isn't just about the things I've lost.'

"So what's on your plate now?" Timothy asked.

Zeke raised his hands in front of him and let them drop to the table. "I don't know. Maybe I'm out of do-overs," he said, then motioned to the waitress, writing in the air to show he wanted the check.

"You're way smarter than mom and dad made you out to be," Timothy said. Why didn't you, I don't know, get an advanced degree or something? Probably would have made your life a little easier. Dad had benefits you could have taken advantage of."

"Fuck him," Zeke said plainly. "He's the reason I wanted nothing to do with academia." He was quiet for a while, like he was trying to decide whether to say something or not.

"What happened?" Timothy asked.

"I didn't want to be like them. When I was a kid, I was a big time reader, anything I could get my hands on. I read Steinbeck, Jack London, Robert Louis Stevenson, all those guys with the big characters. And I devoured stacks of comics. So one day I see this ad on the back of a comic book for a submarine, and me and a bunch of my friends start talking about it. How cool would that be, right? We were ten years old, you know? We figured we could go up and down the Hudson and maybe down to the Caribbean where the pirates were." He was looking down at the table and laughed resignedly. Timothy laughed heartily, seeing more humor there than there really was.

"Yeah, go ahead and laugh. That was dad's response, too. He made it clear that it was a stupid idea, and he wasn't going to give me a dime. He made it real clear – believe me, he could be a real asshole." He pushed absently at a wing on the plate, and went on. "So anyway, me and a couple of other kids bust our asses to earn the money and order the submarine and get all worked up waiting for it. You can guess what happens next."

"Dad could be rough," Timothy allowed.

"Yeah," Zeke laughed. "Rough. It was basically a cardboard box printed with a half-assed graphic of a submarine on the side. He made me pose in front of that cardboard box for pictures, then called his friends over and they posed with it and spent the night calling me 'captain'; grown men laughing at a twelve year old. I took my submarine down to the trash, but the maintenance man, Edward saw me. He saw how torn up I was, and saw the potential in my submarine that the professors didn't. He had me take apart some wooden pallets and crates, helped me build a frame and plywood floor to fit inside it so that it could support our weight, and found me some wheels off some old dollies. By the time we got done, it was a pretty good little cart. Took turns pushing each other around and riding down the hills with no brakes, using pieces of 2x4s as oars and rudders."

"So it worked out?" Timothy asked.

"What?"

"Well, the submarine and everything. What did dad say about the way you fixed it up?"

"I don't know. I never asked him or showed it to him. At that point, I didn't care what he thought. I had already decided that I wanted to be the kind of man that Edward the maintenance man was, and nothing like the effeminate, condescending academic pricks that dad and his friends were." Zeke looked out the window, beyond Timothy and out into the darkness, like he was trying to catch a glimpse of something out there waiting for him. "Jury's still out on how that decision worked out. Didn't work out so well for Mouse."

They walked out of the diner, and each almost invited the other to walk downtown for a beer, but didn't. They hugged a brotherly hug that they'd never shared before, and then stood for a moment under the halo of light surrounding the diner and then walked out out of that circle of light, each in his own direction, into the gray darkness.

Zeke stopped into a deli to buy some cigarettes. He glanced at the copy of the Village Crier on the stand, and he had to look twice. Mouse was on the front page. He bought a copy, and walked home, not daring to open it, and not wanting to think too much about it.

He sat at the dining table, and opened the paper. Mouse's picture was there – it was a recent picture, and she was smiling. He could tell that she was explaining something to a reporter. She looked beautiful. The picture was taken in front of the squat, but he wasn't there and didn't remember the scene. Below her picture, the headline read, "COMMUNITY ACTIVIST DEAD FROM FALL. MURDER?" He had to read it three times slow. It had to have been a joke, but who and why?

The story painted her as a tireless activist that was the driving force behind the community that grew in the squat. The photo of one of the residents that they interviewed was a homeless man that lived in the neighborhood, and the other was of a lady that spent a lot of time in the community garden that backed up to the building. Neither of them were residents, both of them were bat shit crazy.

The story talked about an anonymous source at the PD that told a different story – that there was somebody else with her on the roof when she went over, and that he looked quickly over the edge and then disappeared. It also mentioned Zeke by name, and although they didn't say much about him,. they hinted that the relationship was tumultuous and described him as a former drifter. Zeke tried to stay calm.

The phone beeped, and Zeke almost jumped out of his skin. It had never made a single sound, and they had never used it. He walked over and noticed that the little "message" light was blinking out a pattern. He had five messages. He hit the "play" button. The first three were the reporter from the Village Crier. He sounded annoyed by the third message. The next was from an official-sounding middle aged man from a law firm in Jersey. He represented Alize's family in their affairs, and he said that she was cooperating completely with the police, and asked that Zeke not try to contact her directly for any reason, but to feel free to call his office.

It was the last one that chilled him. By the noise, he could tell it was being made from a phone booth in the street, and he recognized Jerry, the police officer as the voice. He said that Pete had a message for Zeke. Surreal.

Zeke grabbed his cigarettes and a glass of bourbon and walked up to the roof. He pulled a chair over to where he had stood that day, and looked to where she had straddled the parapet. He set the glass down on the deck and walked over to where she had sat. He could picture her as if she were still there, and he tried hard to read into what was in her face. He closed his eyes, and stood there quietly for a while and felt the cool breeze on his face. The sounds of the city were still there, like a continuo. He wasn't sure what he was waiting for, or what he expected, but still he waited. He went back and sat in the chair and lit a cigarette. He looked out over the sea of lights, and the rivers of headlights and taillights running up and down the avenues. He closed his eyes again, and he could picture what they looked like from above, like he was looking down from the Empire State Building observation deck or somewhere well above that.

The sounds of the city were the same, the lights were the same and the darkness was the same darkness that had always been there. He could feel the storm clouds building, and he knew that trouble was coming. It was for sure the end of something and the beginning of something else. He wished like hell he knew what.

###

# Author's Note

Thanks for taking the time to read the story, and I hope you've enjoyed the first installment of this story. Feel free to e-mail me at french@mark-french.com with comment, questions or suggestions. It's always good to know you're out there.

This story is loosely set in New York, but it's the New York I knew as a younger man. New York in this story exists only in my memory, and the geography was adjusted as needed to make the story work. Ditto with the characters – the characters are nothing more than vehicles to advance thoughts and ideas, and to give voice to the story. Please don't read too much into them, or wonder if any of them were based on real people. Yes and no. We'll always see the faces of people that we've loved in our stories.

Look for the next installment, and if we're blessed with your attention, more to come.

Visit me at www.mark-french.com

Thanks!

Mark French

Houston, TX

November 2012
