

MISTAH

by

Norman Savage

Smashwords Edition, July 2009

34 East 11th Street, 2A

New York, NY 10003

212-533-8134

917-687-2437

nksavage@earthlink.net

A note to the reader: This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. If you would like to share it with a friend, please invite them to sample or purchase their own copy at Smashwords.com. Thank you for supporting my work.

Man is born broken.

He lives by mending.

The grace of God is glue.

\--Eugene O'Neill

BABY

In the end I am possessed by my birthplace

and am possessed by its language

\--Ross McDonald

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I'd like to thank two folks who were and are instrumental to this book seeing the light of day: Curtis Thompson who seems to know more about what I'm doing or trying to do then I do; and Clara Waldhari who helped not only shape the book and offered insights into what worked and what didn't, but didn't flinch when offering what a writer hates most: criticism. I've learned in my life that nobody has to be generous to anybody else, they, both Curtis and Clara, made me regret that lesson.

Norman Savage, July 2009
CHAPTER I

***

They were chestnut & beige & ivory & black, adorned with wooden brocades across their chests and around their length, had horned saddles cinched; each had wild manes of gold being blown back by the wind. Their eyes, wild with fear, looked behind for man or the devil gaining. I put my unsteady foot in the leather stirrup, hand gripping the horn, and hoisted my husky frame onto the seat, holding the reins and imagining the horse would rear up on his hind hooves and throw me the way I saw other horses do every Saturday morning. Suddenly, it began. I chose an outside horse because not only did he seem faster and wilder but he went up and down. Although now--and here was the real scary part—I had to try to pull the brass ring from its lodging. Its metal arm extended from the rim of the carousel teasingly close to the reach of the riders. If I wanted the ring, really wanted it, I'd have to inch my way from the saddle to where almost half my lower body would be off the saddle and my upper half extended, and that was dangerous.

With only two or three chances to succeed, I couldn't afford to waste any of them. I'd hold onto the horse's neck with my left hand and lower arm and reach, reach and stretch, towards the prize. It was always lodged in there pretty tight and so each time I tried I just was able to get, first the tips of two fingertips, and then the top of two digits of my index and middle fingers through the brass, almost getting it out of its slot. Almost. But I couldn't. My fingers slipped out and I turned my head to the right, seeing the ring slip away.

I was young. And I loved Sundays, then. It was the only day I had to be with my dad, but I knew, even then, I didn't have much time. My father never had much patience for this kind of thing; the take-me-out-to-the-playground type of thing. He had one day off a week from work—even though he owned the business—and although he told me his favorite thing in the world was me, his pal, his buddy, his "Ace Boo Coo," he didn't much like spending it outside of our home. He'd wrestle with me, watch TV with me, go outside and play catch with me, but he didn't like to do anything that'd make him put the key into his Caddy's ignition.

There was this one time when I had missed all three chances to get the brass ring and I wanted to go on again and I could see my father was pissed. "Don't cry. I didn't come here with ya to see ya cry. Wait here, don't move." I was on a horse so I couldn't, for the life of me, imagine where he thought I might be going. He walked to where this skinny guy stood in a white but dirty t-shirt who had arms with faded blue anchor tattoos on each bicep who lifted up the big wooden stick that allowed the merry-go-round to turn. Even to me their language looked conspiratorial. He came back and said, "All right, champ, let's see what you can do this time." When I was near to the arm, I held my horse's neck, as I always did, and started to lean towards the goal. This time the goal, as if it were alive, rocked to meet me! I nearly fell off my horse in fear, trying to get out of its way. "Grab it!" I heard my father yell. "Grab it, Max, goddamn it, grab it!" The next time I tried to prepare for what happened the first, but I couldn't. My timing was completely thrown by the new rhythm. This time I stayed back and waited for it, but it didn't come nearly as far as it did the first time so by the time I figured it out and lunged further to grab it, it was gone. "Lean into it, Max," I heard again and saw my old man share a look with his fellow accomplice. For some reason, I could feel my face sagging when I saw their familiarity but I needed to concentrate on the third turn, and I managed to do so. This time the steel arm swung nearly into my chest but I grabbed it and wrestled with the ring, trying to pull one from its mouth. But I still couldn't. The steel arm flew from my grasp and I knew real deep down gut misery for the first time in my life.

The ride ended and my father came up to help me get off the horse. I saw in his face something I'd later learn was compassion and embarrassment; the first word not usually associated with my family. We stepped off the lip of the merry-go-round before heading for Nathan's, our last stop before going home, when he offered me a ring. It looked so small lying there in the middle of his hand. I shook my head no. "Take it, Max. You worked hard for it."

I shook my head again. "I don't want it." Tears were beginning to well up in my eyes, but I was able to control them.

"All right, Max, let's go." He casually tossed the ring away. I saw it land in the dirt and a little cloud of dust mushroomed up from its impact. I turned away and walked beside my father and never again asked him to take me to nearby Coney Island or any other place I couldn't get to by myself.

***

That was nearly fifty years ago. It was a stutterers' ball. It was before I fell in love and wanted, for the first time, another's flesh to part for me; it was before I knew what it felt like to soar, before I knew, then grooved, in this mad and twisted city that couldn't give a shit about who and what you are and what you do, but instead affords you enough anonymity to search for your own sweet rhythm in a country that encourages mediocrity, in a nasty world that's soaked in pain and sadness, to find that private part of yourself that's yours and yours alone. It was before what and who I was, and were, nearly got us killed. It was before I found out who and what I was sickened me. It was before my father and brother sent over two beefy Italian goons who nearly killed me and robbed us of the love we had for each other. It was before I knew the power of words and gestures, bone and blood and blood ties. And it was before, knowing full well the folly and futility of human kind, I decided to do one more foolish thing: Return.

***

They came to the hospital two weeks later, the same two who'd beaten the hell out of me. They knew enough to give my body a chance to mend but still be fresh enough to remember what it had been through just by looking at them again. I tried to ring for the nurse, but before I could do that, or call out, one of them was beside me gripping my hand, rupturing the splints on my fingers, and putting his beefy hand over my mouth. "If ya make a sound I'm gonna end your fuckin' life right here, right now, you understand?" I nodded my head. "Good." He took his hand away from my mouth and let go of my hand. The pain already had shot up my arm, into my neck and head. He pulled out a brown paper bag from the inside of his jacket pocket. "How ya feelin'?" I just looked at him, and the other goon behind him, smelled his after shave and franks he had for lunch, trying to be unafraid but feeling my bowels loosen. "A little broken up, I'd imagine, right Ralphie?"

"Fuckin' right," Ralphie said.

"Don't worry about the door, Maxie, ain't no one comin' in, forget about that. Now this here bag you should be interested in, 'cause in this here bag is a little over a hundred thousand g's, and it's all for you. You got two choices: you take the bag and once the docs tell ya it's O.K. to get outta here you do just that: get the fuck outta here; that means everywhere here, here and New York City, too. Everyfuckinwhere. The second choice is to say "no," to say, "fuck you, I don't want it"; you can say that, but then we kill you, right now. And, by the way, we also kill that whore nigger bitch that you were bangin' under your old man's roof. What's it gonna be? I'm countin' ta three."

Ralphie started to hum some theme song from some television game show. I didn't let him finish. "I'll take it."

"Smart man. Now listen, a few more easy to remember instructions: get in touch with anybody from here not only are you dead, but they're dead, too; try to come back—

ever—you're dead. Pretty simple, huh, no room for misinterpretation, even for a brilliant college guy like yourself. Better take care of the money, plenty of fuckin' thieves in these joints."

Come over here you little bastard, I'm going to kill you, is the first complete sentence I remember my father saying. It terrified me then, even though I can't recall what I did. My father usually got what he wanted through intimidation, and worse. My mom wasn't much help. Not only was she afraid of him but was also a narcissistic woman, a nervous woman, an anxious woman, a woman who believed there were perfect and absolute ways in which to bring up kids and be a wife, lived with a disappointment and guilt that consumed her. When I looked in her eyes as a kid, I saw only her and what she needed. Unable, or unwilling, to question either herself or her husband about the ground from which the twisted plant had grown, found only me or the entire world at fault for her situation. My mom's favorite line, although it wasn't the first one I remember her saying to me, did become her mantra: Your children should only give you what you're giving me and your father.

Books, words, language, were my methods of escape and shelter. I fell in love with them in a dark basement of a used furniture shop while my mother was distracted and allowed me to slip away. I discovered a bookcase filled with old, musty smelling hard-covered books, their jackets fading, their spines soft, but their words fixed against the page. Each letter, each word, connected to the next, stayed put but propelled me onward to what came next. I was in myself, but lost, until my mother, in a panic, called my name out and came downstairs and snatched me from the world I was in.

***

The garbage trucks come each night between three-thirty and four. It seems they always have, but now there's more to take away because there's more Korean stores, more bodegas, more bars and each, whether forced to or not, have a different contractor hauling their shit. It seems that they'd need only one to a block but they have at least three and that doesn't include the public ones. The red beady peepers on the dial say four fifteen and my eyes, as if my lids were glued, have been open since two. I've got an hour and change before the alarm goes off, prompting me to get ready to go to a job I don't really want. I'm supposed to want to help kids when it's me I want to help, and I can hardly do that.

And talk about nightmares—I was about to go back and into that black hole, that cesspool of indifference, that putrid air of obsolescence: The Board of Education, City of New York. Man! Hold on! Talk about being in it. I was sure that some crazy or dimwitted black or coffee-colored Latino kid, angry at my color or nose structure, wearing one of those "do-rags," was going to laughingly stab the shit out of me in a never patrolled, yellowed-lit, piss smelling, staircase, in a crumbling schoolhouse, in a remote, nondistinct corner of this unforgiving town.

The sonofabitch was eating me alive. The refrain, burnished from decades of use to an oil-slicked golden luster, had chiseled itself into every neural crack of opportunity. What had begun as tempest and triumph of magnificent proportions, had devolved into the acid pool of a stomach gone bad.

At my age, with the lack of credentials or pedigree, I was almost unemployable. Even the Post Office, which probably holds the record for employing the sick and demented, the eccentric and the psychopathic, would not take a flyer with me, and if the truth be really known, it wasn't exactly The Board of Ed that was employing me. It was an adjunct, an offshoot, an amputation really of The Board that had come into existence in the early 1970s only because white kids had begun to get more than just friendly with booze and dope. They had, to their parents and then to their legislators' horror, actually fallen, head first, into it. They were unequivocally, without a doubt, man, I don't believe it feels this good, in love with the shit and JUMPSTART was created to help these parents' kids fall out of love, and quickly.

I'd taken a week of training at the end of August in preparation for this task and I could tell that if that kid was going to get touted off dope it wasn't going to happen with this program or the collection of people I took training with, myself included. I quickly could see that they, although perhaps well-intentioned, knew little about drugs, counseling, kids, or human beings. In short, they were perfect candidates for this position and The Board of Education in general. It was probably no accident, that after hundreds of resumes, phone calls to those living who I thought might be in a position to help and those too dead or not dead enough to care, and scores of interviews, the job I least wanted was the job that wanted me. I had kicked dope and booze scores of times since the wondrous Sixties—with and without help—and could bullshit with the best of them about the horrors of drugs and "the best high of all is the high of success" and "the way to be is drug free," and all the rest of those silly-assed sayings and slogans that lay claim to a belief system that really helps those who've put those slogans into print or programs into action. Now, there are as many slogans as there are programs and we still don't know anything more about what makes a person get high, want to get high, want to remain high, or want to get straight. Hail the open markets and those who profit by them!

I laid there, forty years of memories buzzing through my head like a swarm of bees gone mad, first loves and old loves and people who mattered and those who didn't, and slights and acknowledgments and promise and promises, armies of deceptions, lies and deaths, waiting for the alarm to go off, waiting for a reason to get out of the bed, my body carved by surgery and disappointment, expecting more grief... more fucking grief.

CHAPTER II

She was almost as fat as she was tall. She looked like a bowling ball with legs. I was standing outside of the door to the room, inside this huge cafeteria for the students. I was told to report at nine o'clock that morning. I had been there since eight thirty or so. I don't know why, but I always get to appointments early and am usually uncomfortably anxious in situations where I have to wait. She was already thirty minutes late.

"You must be Heller," she said.

I nodded but didn't say anything. I just looked at her and at the man, also Puerto Rican and almost as short as she was, but skinny as a blade, who stood behind her. She was just a shade over five feet and, as I said before, wide. I figured her age to be around forty and the guy, whoever he was, to be about the same, maybe a few years younger. He didn't look very bright, at least not as smart as she. He carried in his hands an assortment of cleaning utensils: Windex, Endust, Pledge and some rags, which had seen better days.

"My name's Tina Lourdes; you can remember it because it rhymes with gorgeous. That there's my boyfriend, Carlos."

She fumbled in her purse for the keys before finally coming up with them and opened the door. Quickly, she sped into the room as Carlos trailed behind her and moved to the desk that sat in the right corner of a large room. "Your desk is over there," she said pointing to where a partition stood and where the desk she mentioned must be somewhere behind it. "Yeah, that partition I got because I didn't get along with the guy who was here last year... I hope I don't have the same problem with you." She began sniffling and then snorting. "Fuck, man, I can't believe it... this is what the dust does to me. Shit. Carlos, start cleaning; just don't fuckin' stand there. Go ahead," she said and laughed good-humoredly. She then, with one huge snort, which sounded like a pig in a trough rummaging around for food, inhaled all the mucus she had in her nose, and swallowed it.

"Where do you want me to start, Mommy?" he asked.

I moved around the partition as her boyfriend, Carlos, was beginning to dust her desk.

"Rhymes with gorgeous," I kept saying to myself and shaking my head as I made my way over to where I was going to be parking my ass for the foreseeable future, "Holy shit." This sad excuse for a desk had an equally sad excuse for a chair. Both were broken and filthy—the desk dirty and chipped while the chair had a broken wing that you didn't know about until you put the weight of your arm against it—but I really didn't care all that much, not in this environment I didn't. Live a life of music and mayhem, a life that skirted preparation and rules, a life that I made up as I went along, unplanned, and, in some instances, downright reckless, then, well, you get, always, what your hand calls for, I thought, and ruefully chuckled to myself.

"Tina," I hollered across the divide, "where do I pick up a time card and fill out those first day forms they were telling me about at orientation last week?"

"Go downstairs to the main office and ask Linda. She's the Chink, and she'll give you a card and the rest of the shit, but take it easy, man, it's the first day and no one does nothin' this day. Just punch in and relax. You can borrow what you want with the cleanin' stuff. I hate dirt, man. Allergies. I get all messed up; my nose gets so much shit in it I can hardly breathe and my face gets all swollen and my eyes tear and everything. I can't stand it."

"Yeah, I know," I said but didn't know anything of the kind, never had an allergy in my life, "I'm going to go downstairs and—Linda you said her name was?—and get started. I can't believe I'm punching a time card at my age. Back punching a time clock."

"I been punchin' it for eighteen years now."

"Eighteen years? Holy shit! The only thing I've done consistently for eighteen years is breathe." I got up from my desk and went around the divider, looked at her and wondered how to best live with this woman without going insane. "I saw a coffee truck outside. I'm going to get one for myself, you?"

"Black, medium, one sugar; thanks."

She didn't offer to pay and I didn't ask her. I needed some favors in the bank and knew I was going to rely on her for a bunch of things before this semester was very old. The only thing I knew how to do for sure was make it up as I went along. Still and all, I would need some cold and hard currency before then, and even if she seemed like a nutty Puerto Rican babe, she knew her way around, if not the world then certainly this school, but more importantly, this Mickey Mouse job.

The school, shaped like a triangle, was originally built to be a prison for those awaiting sentencing. Because of that, there were no real windows to speak of, only on the very top of some walls there was a slit of about a foot that ran around the width of the room. But the light it let in was minimal, consequently the building seemed always dark and airless.

I found Linda sitting behind a desk answering the phone and directing calls. She'd say by rote: Hello, this call may be monitored for future review. How may I help you?

"You can help me by showing me how the hell I can get paid around here," I said, during a lull in the action.

She smiled and held up an index finger as a call came in. I stood there feeling stupid but waited. "Do you believe there are teachers calling in and asking me when the term begins?" she said and smiled. "I'm a lowly para and some of these teachers get paid an awful lot of money to know when they're supposed to be workin'. I don't know, maybe I'm dumb, but you would think that after doing this for so long you might be able to get it right."

"Nah, first of all never say, 'think' when you're in a public school. It taxes the mind too much. Second of all, this system beats the hell out of you. I'm surprised they're able to go to the bathroom and know when to hold it and know when to sit down. That's for the guys, of course."

"You're tellin' me! Here's a card... and who are you?" She had an easy laugh, but after I told her who I was and who I was working with a cloud came over her face.

"What? What is it?"

"You seem all right. Watch that one upstairs."

"Do I have to?"

"Nobody has to do anything. This place is a perfect example. But I just did you a favor and you'll thank me later, even if you don't do nothin' with it." She got out a blank card and printed my name, Max Heller, the month, and handed it to me. "Place it anywhere on the right side there."

I took the card and printed the time I got there, eight thirty a.m. I didn't think they'd mind if I did that on the first day, but I was wrong. I placed my card by itself and walked out of the Administration Office and, turning left, proceeded down the corridor towards the tip of the triangle. I was about twenty feet away from the front desk, where a few security guards were laughing about something when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a white middle-aged guy, five feet six or so, with a military German gait, wearing a starched white shirt, striped blue and red tie, gray slacks and carrying a walkie-talkie. He came hurriedly towards the same desk from the other side. He looked Jewish, assured, and in control. The banter from the black security guards ceased. He barked something into his communication device.

"Greene," he said, "you're supposed to be at the rear. Now get there."

He sounded like an asshole, but Greene, who, though a woman, looked like the Hardy part of Laurel, quickly left and the others reverted to a more security-minded air. Clearly satisfied that his presence was noted and his order heeded, he moved off to bust some other poor bastards' balls. Before he did, however, he noticed a strange face, mine. He silently sized me up and grilled me as if I didn't belong in his universe. I looked directly into his stare but made sure I did so without threatening him while going towards the front doors. Once I passed him, I didn't look back.

It was already hot outside even though it had not reached noon. The summer was not what you'd expect from New York City. It was cool, with not too many days reaching ninety-five or above, even in the dog days of August, but today was going to be in our city's parlance, "a scorcher." Instead of going directly to the coffee caboose parked on the sidewalk in front of the school, I walked around the corner. I wanted to gaze at The Brooklyn Bridge. Every time I ever had a chance to look at it, it evoked some kind of awe in me, awe for those who built it, awe for the structure itself, and awe for the times in which it was built. I walked it—with less frequency now—every chance I got. One of the good things—if the word "good" could ever be applied here—about this gig was the fact that the school sat underneath the bridge and I could look at it, if not walk it (weather permitting) every day I decided to come to work. The other things that I liked were my proximity to water and Chinatown. I stared at her cables and the sky's robin's egg blueness for a few minutes then came back to the coffee cart where the guy inside the booth was feverishly filling orders, mostly from the office workers next door. I never had much faith in coffee sold from a cart, but since there were no shops nearby, I took a shot.

"Jesus, you all alone here?" I said to him when I finally got up to the cart's window.

"Yeah, the guy never showed up. It figures the first day the teachers are back, I'm here all alone. What can you do?"

"Two things: a small with milk and Sweet & Low and a medium black one sugar."

He wore glasses and had these jerky, almost spastic movements with his arms, hands, upper torso, and head that caused his glasses to slide down his nose. I thought he looked like the type who still lived with his parents and gave them most of the money he made for them to save it for him. He'd probably be very good to the woman he'd marry, if he married at all. I gave him the money and he returned my change without looking up. He said "Thanks" and "Can I help you?" in the same breath.

I heard the shouts fifty feet before I hit the door. Jackson, whom I'd "trained" with, was going at it pretty good with Lourdes. Carlos stood back. He was waiting to see if the knife I knew he kept in his boot would be needed. I moved over close to him and when I saw I had his attention looked down towards his feet. I made sure I didn't blink when he looked into my eyes. Some people you just know you need not fear, no matter who they think they are.

"You don't tell me nothin'. Who the hell do you think you are anyway comin' in here like you own the place? I been here for over five years and I got everything you see in this office and I'm not giving it up for you or no one else," Lourdes said in a voice that tried to end the conversation.

"I don't care how long you've been here. This here is a JUMPSTART office, and we all work here and you have to share," Jackson said in a voice that bordered on pleading. He noticed me standing there and looked at me for some sort of understanding or male camaraderie. I gave back neither.

"I don't have to share shit." Lourdes looked at me, too.

"We'll see about that."

Jackson was a pervert—at least I thought he was. I trained with him at the end of August with a crop of employees new to JUMPSTART. I was an old fuck already compared to the twenty to thirty something year olds who trained with me, except for Jackson, who must have been in his early to mid-forties. He was black, skinny as a reed, and seemed to be a combination of African-American and Jamaican with these dreadlocks that came from his head like radical television antennas, sticking straight out of his scalp in seven to ten different directions. He thought he was the smartest one in the class until I opened my mouth. If he thought I was competing with him, he was sadly mistaken, but I fucked with him just the same. Early on, I noticed that he annoyed some of the young women, even made one or two of them uncomfortable enough to go to our trainer, Roger, to complain. One chick was cute as hell but, I was sure, a lesbian. The fact that Jackson didn't have a clue made me dislike him even more. Also, he rubbed his cock without any pretense or deception. A perfect candidate, I thought, to teach in the public school system, especially in a role as counselor to high school girls. Roger called him into the corner to pull his coat about his behavior, and I could see he took great offense. Just cool it, Roger told him. Reluctantly, shaking his head like, ah shucks Jesus I can't believe someone would be sayin' this stuff about me, he shuffled into his seat, casting sideways glances at his accusers as he went.

"All right, kids, what's going on here?" I asked, but didn't really want to know. The last thing I wanted to do was mediate an argument when I wasn't getting paid for it.

"Talk to him, talk to that guy over there; he come in here like he owns the place," Lourdes said.

"Jackson, Jackson, I told you my name is Jackson, say my name," he said, with the same whine in his voice that he'd had last week. It seemed he was born with it and, through circumstance, nurtured it as well. "This is JUMPSTART. This ain't Tina Lourdes' program—everything that's in here—the desks, the computer, the phones, everything, is for us all to use. We all supposed to be helping kids and how we gonna be doin' that if we not be sharin' with each other? How?"

"Listen, I don't know about helping kids and I don't know about being nice to each other—you're too old to be singin' We Are the World type of bullshit, Jackson—but one thing we can do: not get in each other's way. And, Jackson, besides, you're gonna be doing classroom presentations mostly, hardly be in here, right? And when you are I'm sure you can carve out a space for yourself or maybe Lourdes, since you've been here for awhile you can help us get another small room for Jackson to hang his hat in and maybe get a desk and some other stuff that he'll need and that we'll need and this way we all can have some space. O.K., how does that sound? So let's just try to be easy with each other and see what happens."

"Yeah, I think maybe I should just get a room of my own, if I could; three into this room don't go; who would I speak to 'bout that?"

"Arroyo. Her name is Jackie Arroyo. She's on this floor, down the other end, complete other side, same room as this. I'll speak to her in a little while, if you want."

"I can do my own talking," Jackson said.

"Hey, man, no one's challenging you, be easy will ya, Christ," I said.

"I gotta get out of here for a little while. I'll see you later."

Jackson walked out as if there were eyes on him. And there were.

"What's with that motherfucker?"

Carlos made some kind of sound, a cross between exhaling and growling. I looked at him and moved away.

"I don't really know, but I do know I don't need the grief. You've been doing this for a long time, but I've been living longer than you have and I can tell you based on what I know about the woman we work for that the less I have to see her the better and trouble, like the trouble we just had, is a perfect excuse to bring her down here."

"I don't want to see her either; I know her for fifteen years and she was one nasty cunt then and she's worse now." She paused for a moment and laughed. "Listen, I don't mind, you can use my phone, computer, anything you want, but that motherfucker came in here so hard that it irked the shit out of me and I'm not going to stand for that. I worked too hard to get that shit, and he came in here and demanded it. The last guy that worked in here we weren't speakin' to each other for the whole year. I think he was racist, man. But, shit, I'd like to get along with you. We can help each other, too. Just go easy, man, that's all I'm sayin'."

"I just want to do my time, punch the card at three, and get the hell out of here. That's it. I'll be honest with you: I didn't take the job to do nothing except get on the city's tit, earn a buck, get health benefits, and not think too much about this once I leave the building. The last thing I want to be is a referee in here. Now, what do we have to do today? They said somethin' about meeting the Assistant Principal and the rest of the guidance staff or something like that?"

"That's at twelve. We got plenty of time."

"You have maybe—I'll be fifty-five next month."

Christ, I thought, fifty-five years and Send in the Clowns had finally come in, were laughing, and were chewing up my ass. I'd heard Sassy, Sarah Vaughn, sing that tune many years ago at Lincoln Center. Alone, she went over to the mike, placed her thumb and forefinger on its' shaft and coaxed, flirted, and bent each word until the heartache of age had seeped into all of us there. Nobody breathed; nobody dared breathe. When she finished, I looked over at the lady I happened to be head-over-heels in love with, and she, her eyes filled with tears, took my hand in hers and I thought, once again, I had the world right where I wanted it.

My feet stuck to the floor in the space around the toilet in the men's room. Mr. Ashley, who was quick to introduce himself and tell me, proudly, he'd been in the school since its inception almost thirty years ago, let me in. He told me that he didn't believe the john had been cleaned yet but assured me that it would, eventually. "The boys over in maintenance work hard, but work when they want to," he confided. Ashley appeared to be my age, but hunched over, wore a rug that was none too convincing and a rabbit's foot that hung from a belt containing keys galore, whistles, and charms, the meaning of which escaped me. The bathroom had no urinal but two stalls, one worse than the other. There was that grayish black matter around the toilet that you knew was urine, left to colonize. I planted my left foot to the left of the stains, and lifted, with my right foot, the seat. I stood, with a wide stance, and relieved myself.

But I'd be lying if I didn't tell you I felt like pissing on the floor myself. And pissing on that JUMPSTART banner that adorned the office I had to share with those two lunatics upstairs. How the hell were they hired? How the hell was I hired? Well, I knew how I was hired. I'd experimented with junk, and could bullshit with the best of them. I was a perfect fit; perfect to counsel screwed-up kids who were ready to either slit their throats or graduate.

The meeting was a half-hour old when Jackson showed up. He had to find a place among the ten people who made up the counseling, guidance, and JUMPSTART staff of the school. Ten of us for three thousand kids. Ms. Lynch, a beautiful, tall, black woman in her late forties, was the assistant principal in charge of us. With the exception of Jackson and myself, everyone had been acquainted for quite some time, yet, sitting in a circle to introduce ourselves, they still called each other Ms., Mrs., and Mr. Each of us gave a little background information and what we hoped to accomplish during the term. Lourdes said she'd like to follow the group she had last year and help more of them pass their classes. Jackson followed by saying he'd like to show his African American brothers and sisters that anything was possible. I just wanted to stay alive, but I didn't say that. I said something like trying to challenge kids basic assumptions about who they are in this world and what, if anything, the world they inhabit has to offer. It was happy horseshit, I knew, but I wanted to seem like I fit in and it sounded no better or worse than their fantasies.

Carlos was up on a ladder cleaning the windows when we got back to our room. "That's good, Popi," Tina said, "don't forget over there."

"Where?"

"Over there, there in the corner, gets so dirty in there."

He nearly fell off the ladder trying to make himself taller and stretch himself longer than he could ever possibly do in trying to see where precisely she meant. How quickly we go from Rambo to Beulah, I thought.

I went to where my desk and chair sat, sagged and broken, and looked at the papers that were given out at the meeting. They spoke about what to do in case of emergency, fire, theft, students cutting classes, pension, sick days, what constitutes child abuse, sexual abuse, late slips, field trips, personal days, holidays, and family deaths. They stupefied and mortified me. I sat there, numb, my jaw slack, my eyes waiting for pennies to be put over them.

The sound of Tito Puente brought me around. Gorgeous had put on a Latin music station and, for all I knew, was mamboing her ass off on the other side of the divide.

"I'm going out to lunch," I announced, and began the arduous task of getting up from my chair and moving towards the front door.

"Take your time; we ain't got nothin' to do today...or tomorrow. The kids don't get back 'til Thursday. Then the shit starts."

Just what I want to hear, I thought. "See ya later," I said over my shoulder.

Chinatown, a mere two-block walk from where I was, was another home, of sorts, for me. I'd been eating there for nearly forty years and knew it well. Although I never found a small steam-heated room full of opium, I did find cheap and delicious food. I'd returned after nearly two decades away from New York City to places that held many good memories. When I sat down in those familiar seats my body felt differently; I was able to take a breath and cool out. It's always struck me as strange how much harder it is for me to deceive my body, while my head gets tricked all the time.

Mei Lai Wah on Bayard offered the kind of food and sanctuary that I wanted. It took nearly ten years of patronage for them to begin to acknowledge me as I entered and to give a nod of their heads as I said good-bye. Their pork buns, the best in Chinatown, now cost sixty cents; they used to cost a quarter, ten cents for the coffee or tea, but those were different times.

The place, a narrow but deep rectangle, seemed a carryover from the 1930s, and judging by some of the men who worked there who were pushing eighty, it was. Of course, I knew most of them only by sight. Even after all this time, there were some boundaries that you just couldn't cross, ever. If they were surprised or happy to see me, they didn't let on. But I knew better. I knew at least that much. As soon as I sat down in one of their booths, a tea, a fresh pitcher of cream, and a pork bun, baked, appeared in front of me. We exchanged looks and nods of our heads and that was that. The only thing that I could tell that was different was that the cracked chartreuse, imitation alligator leather that was under my ass was cracked even more than I remembered. One edge, a bit thicker than a razor blade, was trying to eat the inside of my thigh. I moved over and opened my paper, but I couldn't concentrate on reading so I just drifted to wherever my eye landed.

"Long time, long time, where you been?" a woman's voice asked.

I looked up to find, Anna, the proprietor of the place, as radiant as ever, standing over me—a position I'd more than once fantasized about. Her perfume, a rose-scented mixture of sophistication and scandal, still claimed me. "Been away, Anna, not that far but far; you know what I mean? But thanks for asking."

"I don't pry, Max. We know each other long time, but one question."

"Fire away."

"Choice?"

"No choice."

"Concrete or grass?"

"That's two... grass."

"Bad?"

"That's three and you're out! But, no, not good."

She paused and said, "I'm glad you back."

"Me, too."

She turned away and went to the counterman who wore a baseball cap that read, "Vacancy," and said something in Chinese. She turned away from him and walked back where she'd come from and disappeared into a back room. If it offered opium, a poker game, or just a little respite from the madness I didn't know, but I had always been more than a little curious.

They never made you feel unwelcome and, most importantly, you could sit there and nurse whatever you wanted for as much time as you needed.

And that's what I did. The idea of going back to the job to be with Tina and Jackson was enough to cause inertia but the thought that in two days I'd be interacting with kids—kids who were as foreign to me as ham hocks or stuffed plantains—filled me with panic. It was within those two competing emotions that I found myself ordering another tea, and waiting.

When I returned Jackson and another black guy were sitting at my desk laughing and talking; Tina and Carlos were nowhere to be found. Both their laughter and conversation ceased as I got within earshot.

"Don't let me bother you guys," I said loud enough for them to hear it.

"Oh, don't worry you won't," the stranger said.

I could tell a few things: he knew his way around this part of the block, he knew Jackson, and he was gay. Even though he was sitting, I saw he was tall, with a good- looking face that shined with costly moisturizer and hair done in elegant cornrows.

"This is Panther," Jackson said.

"Panther," I said, "I'm Max."

"Panther was just tellin' me 'bout our girl, Tina."

"I worked with her all year. She's a bitch, and you can't trust her. The girl owe me twenty dollars and I'm just here to collect it 'fore I go my own way to another school."

"With all due respect fellas, I don't give a shit."

Panther stood up. "Well, you should give a shit, you're gonna be workin' with the bitch. The fuckin' racist."

"Yeah, man, I could see, man, like she be like goin' postal on me, man, like she don't like brothers, man, could see that shit right away."

They slapped high fives and exchanged grins. Then Panther leaned over close to Jackson and said something I couldn't hear.

"Listen, fellas, you could go outside and burn the town down for all I care, you can talk conspiracy shit all night long, you can play the brothers be wronged, nobody loves us or it's us against the world, and you're probably right with any and all of that shit, but have the common courtesy not to do it in my face. You don't know who the hell I am or what I'm about and even if that don't matter to you, it matters to me. So, Jackson, if you don't mind could you get out of my chair, let me finish up here so I could get this tired white ass of mine home?"

Jackson got up from my desk and he and Panther moved quickly out of the room to parts unknown. I didn't know, didn't ask, and didn't care. What I cared about was to wait for three, punch my card, and split.

I hit the subway station at Union Square at around three-fifteen. It's one of the hubs of New York City's mechanical and human complexities: always busy, always foul, and always brimming with hope and desperation. There is a headlong rush to metal; a feverish grab at closing doors, eyes darting for space, thieves, cops, miscreants of all kinds and confidantes.

But there, in the gauzy florescent light, standing still, was a crowd of people, men and women, young and old, black and white, and yellow and brown, staring at two figures, one man and one woman, on two pedestals three feet from one another nearly pressed against the subway tiles facing them. Each was frozen in time. Each had the appearance of marble and had the white dust that fell from the sculptors' chisel still on them. She was dressed in the flowing robes of an ancient Greek goddess and had, on top of her head, a rolled turban of some sort. Her arms were stretched towards the spectators holding a piece of the robe in almost a plaintive stance. The man was quite different. Dressed like a contemporary version of Mad Max in motorcycle delivery garb he stood, wearing a cap, goggles, denim jacket, jeans, and boots, arms ready to pump at his sides, about ready to walk, or take off. He, however, had not the pure white of marble but a greenish sickly tint to the white dust that covered him. Neither moved, but they stood there posing, as if part of the underground landscape. Though if you watched, for more than a few minutes, it happened. She'd curl her lips in a fiendish smile. He'd bob forward. Then he would roll a shoulder, slightly, and she'd wink or move a finger.

Those in this makeshift audience would smile or stare, not really sure how to react. Occasionally, a flashbulb would pop. Not too many deposited a coin or a bill that could be thrown in a box that stood between the two figures. I didn't either and moved on.

CHAPTER III

I sprinkled a little salt into the pot of water and opened up a can of crushed tomatoes and my mind flashed on them. I wanted to kill them. Especially him, the little cocksucker. I was making a red sauce to throw over some pasta and I was cutting up the olives, anchovies, garlic and basil. Every time a fist hit a different part of my body, I thought of him and when they bent each digit in my hands until they snapped, it was him in the sound. Then, not satisfied, with the internal damage they'd wrought, they got to my face. Over and over they punched and punched, until my bones, against their bones, gave way. First, I felt my nose cave in and my eyes tear. Blood and mucus began flowing down my lips, getting into my mouth and dribbling off my chin. My jaw simply came loose. The pain lodged itself into almost every corner of my face and neck. I do not really remember the socket around my eye breaking. By that time I was pretty much out of it.

When the garlic had browned in the pan I put the tomatoes in. Once the pasta was ready, I dumped the rest of the stuff into the sauce pan, with some crushed red pepper, stirred and waited, then sat down to eat.

The best thing about good Italian bread—and Zito's was as good as it comes—is that it can stay for a few days without getting stale; sprinkle a little water on it and heat in the oven and it's still delicious. I tore off a hunk of it and ate with a vengeance. I wanted a glass of red wine but resisted. I'd been getting in the habit of buying a bottle every week or so and I wanted to break that cycle. If I did something more than once, and I liked it, I became hooked. Instead, a glass of iced tea would have to do. It really didn't, but it moved the food along.

At least it tried, but when I got like this nothing moved the food along. The food and the day and the hour and the year stuck in my throat like a lump of rancid cream. The silhouette of anger and fear, so much a part of my every breath, hung inside me as I placed each forkful of food into my mouth. I stared ahead, shifted in my seat, looked out the window at an old woman in a wheelchair dressed in a warm jacket despite the heat. She wore a green wool cap and was eating a bagel with one hand while holding a cup of coffee in the other. As she bent down to put a piece of bagel in her mouth, it exploded, ripping her face, head, and torso from the rest of her body, while the coffee poured molten lava down her legs, turning them into a stream of skin. The only thing left of her was the black smoke and that flesh smell that hung in the air long after she blew apart and melted.

The pasta was cold but I had to eat it; I'd already taken a specific amount of insulin to cover my food; so hungry or not, cold or not, that insulin had to be satisfied in ways that lovers could not demand and the rest of the world did not care to.

When I began seeing carnage in babies nursing, making de Kooning's exploding women paintings seem tame, their little mouths sucking a tit unable—or unwilling—to fathom the raw sewage they were devouring, I knew it was time to get my ass back to a place where those thoughts, if not commonplace, were more manageable.

I took a sip of tea and looked around at my own particular consumption and failures: a desk piled with writings long ago abandoned and those stillborn or still dripping with amniotic fluid, books strewn around like manic bread crumbs, boxes containing clothes, pots, pans, dishes, towels, sheets, old prescriptions and bottles, photos, more books, more writings, jottings, newspaper clippings, phone numbers, pictures, book covers, and awards. I've been here for well over two years and I could not get myself to find a place for my life. The heat from each possession drew me to it, pulled me to it, then, when I almost had it in hand, scorched me.

"Put some butter on it," my mom would say. I imagined myself dripping with sweet Breakstone Butter and finally jumping, head first, into a vat of that glorious yellow cream. "Don't worry," she'd admonish, "it will blister and peel; you'll be all right." Well, it didn't exactly "blister and peel," but it did set and fuse. I laid in that hospital bed for weeks, enough time to grow a slight beard because I couldn't bring myself to look in the mirror and shave. I just wanted more and more dope. And every four hours it came; a nurse with those magical steel keys around her neck unlocked the secrets of dreams.

I turned on the Yankee game when I went to bed in time to see O'Neill throw his helmet in disgust. They were up 7-2 at the time, but the bases were loaded and he was ahead in the count 2-0. He swung at a slider off the plate, pulling the ball to the second baseman who started, what would be, an inning ending double play. At the time he threw his helmet he had gone three for three, with a home run and two doubles, driving in four of the seven runs. I knew how he felt.

I must have drifted off because, as soon as I broke the skin of sleep, I was with four or five other guys—whom I had never met and didn't know—at night on a street lit only by the yellow glow of an old street lamp. There was a thin mist that hung in the air yet the darkness that surrounded us was clear and concise. We were looking for a car to steal. One of the guys I was with carried a thin flexible metal ruler that could be slid into the rubber that bordered the window frame and jimmy the car open. Each car we came up to looked brand new and their colors seemed to glisten in the misty light. We stopped beside each, one more beautiful than the next: Cadillac, Lincoln, Mercedes, and Bentley, but none of us would linger and wouldn't touch them. There was an unutterable respect that kept us from them all except for the crazy looking Ford Edsel parked at the front. Grotesquely out of place, it sat, almost defiantly, first in line. I had not thought about Edsels, ever, but remembered the jokes and also recalled how the car was really better than most critics made it out to be. It was a two-tone Edsel, green panels running down the side, bordered by a white which had seen better days. The paint was chipped and you could see rust beginning to take hold in places that would, eventually, pit and rot the carriage underneath it. I walked around and looked at the grill—a weird looking triangle that separated the two headlights, but before I could examine it more, the guy had jimmied the door and we piled inside. We jump-started the car and off we went into the night and adventure. I had that humming feeling in my chest and scrotum that pushed whatever reason I had aside and made room for its brother, anarchy. We stopped at a light and a car full of college kids pulled along side, and when I turned to look, a girl with blond hair was laughing and pointing to our trunk. We continued to the next light and the scene repeated itself, though this time it was a guy with two teeth missing and, on the hand that does the gesturing, I saw a tear drop between his thumb and forefinger. When I turned back to him his mouth had opened wider so that the blackness in back of his throat presents an abyss of fearful proportions. I say to the driver that we should pull off the road and see what's up, which he does. He makes a right off the road and another quick right which puts us on this little dirt path adjacent to a home, leading to the garage further down, a good distance back. The only light we have is provided by the yellow glow of a street lamp far away and the reflection from the beams of our headlamps. We stop and all of us get out and go around to the trunk and see an arm, from the elbow down, sticking out of the trunk. It sticks up at a forty-five degree angle while its hand, from the wrist, is limp yet its fingers stick out stiffly at five different angles. I reach for the trunk and slowly, with much trepidation, raise the lid. The arm begins its descent and for a brief moment I am drawn to the movement but then see, from the corner of my right eye the red, hazel, and demented eyes of a Himalayan cat which leaps towards me. She—and I know she's a she—pounces on my chest and, her claws opened and precise, digs into my flesh, getting a firm hold in the space on top of my nipples, and stares up at me. I look down, thinking I am going to reason with this creature, but when I do, her eyes are no longer hazel, they're white, white and empty and blind.

My body lifted off the mattress at the waist in a ninety-degree angle. The post-game show was on. There were no guys, there were no cars and, above all, there wasn't a cat. I felt my chest, rubbing my hand over the scar that was at the middle of my breastbone and ran from my neck almost to my navel. I was intact. Trautwig and Kay were talking about how Joe always seems to push the right buttons and God knows how old El Duque is, but the team, shaped by O'Neill, his crazy intensity crying for brilliance and perfection always and constantly segues back to Orlando, splitting Cuba on a raft, dogged by sharks and O'Neill, who probably prodded and pushed him all the way to spring training, and now its Jeter soon to be canonized with all the ghosts of Yankees past who are now the stuff "that dreams are made of."

I wanted the dreams I had when I was young back. I wanted my life, as miserable and as insane as it sometimes was, back. Those fistful of years were all so nutty and quirky and full of unexpected pockets of thrills of discovery. And just as when I found myself and my world on the precipice of great things, it was busted like an old doll's seams. It was busted by my father and brother in a social club on a side street in Coney Island. It would keep me in morphine, Dilaudid, and Percocet for years while I was slowly going mad from the absence of a woman I loved and all the self-recriminations for the defeat and failure I felt deep inside me that allowed that to happen. I awoke from the dream to find the taste of metal in my mouth and a crust, thicker than Ferenczi's worst patient around my heart and worse, its lifeblood. Sew me back up, I said to no one. I made sure my alarm was set and tried to find a cold spot on the pillow for my head.

CHAPTER IV

It was nothing short of a kaleidoscope of brilliance. An attack of color, chaos, and a cacophony of voices: reds and yellows, greens, fuchsias, purples, violets, and whites adorned their shirts and professional sport t-shirts, which hung either below their cargo pants or jeans, with the names like FUBU, Phat Farm, or Sean Jean barely stuck in and flowed over the top of the top button which hung down to the cracks of their asses. Hats of every major sports franchise and caps worn at every conceivable angle over hair cornrowed, dreadded, plastered down, or ballooned out six inches from their skulls, hair. Thick braided chains of gold and silver announced their chests and necks, sometimes with their names and other times with the Church Of Christ. They moved with a beautiful nonchalance, an ease, a coolness saying, "Yeah, all right, I'm here, I know it, come and get me." And, to my surprise, I saw that these young women, in large numbers, dressed in tight jeans or black slacks, the outline of their panties displayed for eyes that could not help but first take in their belly buttons, which, had been or were waiting to get pierced, made the walk to where their guy was, waiting with his guys or waiting alone in that adolescent slump ready to receive their due. These young women had shirts, some of which said "Princess" or "Playboy," "BoyToy" with bodies that sold the advertising. I could see the inverted pistols in the offices of NOW, if NOW still existed, if it wasn't relegated to OVER. The girls were very accomplished. After years of soaking up a culture that bathed in sex, yet cautioned its enjoyment, they knew a thing or two about getting next to what they wanted. Even when I noticed those standing outside the fray, trying to look aloof by observing, I could still discern little unsaid moments that belied a keen interest in the goings on. They stood still, casually rubbing their exposed midriff between their short shirt, pant, or jean yet their body's gestures and articulations were frenetic: fingers pointing with dramatic flair; heads bobbing and rotating from side to side; eyes and lips and mouths would fly open with surprise or joy or shock showing their pink tongues and white glistening teeth or, in less fortunate cases, braces.

My head seemed to be on a pogo stick as I waited for my coffee and a buttered roll, which sounded, and was, so damn boring.

Lourdes and Jackson were nowhere to be found, and I didn't really have a clue what to do next. I didn't have to. All I had to do was open up the office and wait for them to find me. I began to write my name and the program on the blackboard.

"Mistah?"

I heard her voice but continued writing.

"Mistah?" she repeated. This time her voice was more strident.

I turned and saw this nymphet standing a step inside the room. She was five five, hair down to her waist, large oval chocolate eyes, a sensuous pouty mouth, and a body that would have made a priest kick in a stained glass window. She wore a blue and gray jogging outfit with a plain white t-shirt that ended two inches below her ample breasts. If I had a towel I'd either have thrown it in or, more likely, mopped my forehead.

"Yes?" I heard myself stuttering.

"Where's Miss Lourdes?"

Her voice was at odds with her appearance. It was coarse and whiny at the same time. "I don't know where she is, but she'll be here. Can I do something for you?"

"You with JUMPSTART, too?"

"Yes, I'm doing some intervention stuff and also running a program trying to teach students to be sort of counselors to other students."

"Yeah, that's good. Well, tell Lourdes I be here this year and be part of JUMPSTART."

"O.K. I will. What's your name?"

"Maria, she know me from last term; gotta go Mistah." She smiled and was off. I followed her high rounded ass as it left the room. I hadn't talked with someone her age in almost two decades, and even then not very often. I hoped that Lourdes would get here soon. She was almost an hour late.

The cafeteria, outside my office, was starting to fill and I decided, almost like a turtle, to poke my head outside. I gripped the doorframe with two hands and leaned into the maelstrom, keeping both my feet safely inside. The school housed almost three thousand kids and there must have been at least half that inside the lunchroom talking, yelling, screaming, and cursing. They were doing what I'd seen them doing outside but, being in this space, the impact tripled. The noise reminded me of some prison dramas I'd seen where the convicts were either talking or banging on their tin plates or both. It was a madhouse.

They seemed happy to be back, and I couldn't understand it. I remembered slumping to school those first days back, miserable that the summer had ended, and we had to get back to the grind of education. Fresh from the salt water or the sweat from basketball courts near the boardwalk, the first look at a budding nipple underwater or a cigarette smoked in secret, we trudged back to the structured repetition of almost every class. Sure, there were some teachers and classes I was happy to be in, but those were few and far between. I guess like most everything else you had to wade through a lot of shit to get to something that resembled water and oxygen. One thing stood out even in this din: I hadn't heard the word "nigger" used as much except when my father had to meet somebody in an Italian social club or on a corner in Brooklyn and took me with him, and even then it lasted for as long as a story or observation went. Today I heard it used before, during, and after meeting, talking to, or saying goodbye to just about everyone.

As I looked out at this sea of hormones I knew my diving days were over.

"Good morning, Heller," Lourdes said cheerily as she nearly bowled me over coming into the office. "How you?" She sped over to her desk, put down her container of coffee, sat at her desk, and took a long and loud honk of her nose, inhaling whatever was in there. "Fuckin' allergies, man; I can't stand it, you know?"

"Yeah, man, I know, it's rough. How come you're so late?" I asked, but regretted asking as soon as I did. I promised myself not to ask any personal questions from those I worked with. From experience, I knew it was not a good policy, but this time it just slipped. I stood by her desk as she got out her coffee and roll.

"Oh, man," she went on, "fuckin' Raymond, my youngest, can't get his ass up to go to school and I had to wake him every ten minutes and get him to brush his teeth and wash and, man, it was just like pullin' fuckin' teeth, man. Jesus. You have kids?"

"No, no kids."

"You lucky, man; kids are a pain in the ass."

"I see you're in the right job."

She threw her head back and laughed. "You funny, man; I could tell that shit yesterday. I hope we get along, have no problems—been doin' this shit for eighteen years and I used to work with this white guy who was cool, but he retired. The last motherfucker was a racist I told you that but I hope we get along, this job's easy and we can make it easier..."

"Well, I'm not lookin' to work hard, that's for sure. Just do my job and split; that's it."

"Yeah, me, too. I'm tellin' you this is a sweet job, nobody bothers you and nobody is lookin' over your shoulder except that Carver bitch, but if we're cool we can deal with her, too."

"Where do I get all the kids I'm supposed to help?"

"Right out there, man. That's the best. All we do is set up a table with some flyers and it takes care of itself. In a week you'll have more kids then you'll know what to do with; we'll put some candies out there, man, and they'll be all over us. I'm tellin' ya, we don't have to do shit. Speakin' of shit, where's that Jackson motherfucker. I hope he decided to quit," she said between her bites of a roll and sips of coffee.

"Haven't seen him." I also didn't care if he'd show up or not, but I couldn't swallow the first part of her statement whole.

I didn't have time to swallow it. Kids started poking their heads in and, once seeing Lourdes, began streaming into the office.

"Hi ya, Mommy, how are you?" Lourdes said, stuffing the last of her roll in her mouth. They congregated around her desk like she was their long-lost fairy godmother and they her misunderstood godchildren. They spoke rapidly in an English-Spanish patois; sometimes when Lourdes asked about someone in particular their eyes would uncomfortably shift to me and Lourdes would say, "That's O.K., that there is Heller my new partner and he's cool, go ahead, Mommy, tell me," and they would, most of the time in Spanish and Lourdes' eyes would open wide and she'd say, "No! Pregnant, get outta here." or "C'mon! Her, too. I told her and she kept sayin', 'No, no, no,' but I knew it was yes yes yes." or, "I don't believe it! Her mother did that?; so where she livin' now? Nowhere? You see what happens when you do that shit?" and they'd nod their heads up and down and get on with the story, if there was more, or onto another one if they had one, and they usually did. Some of them asked Lourdes a question and then it was she who dropped her head, whispered and spoke in Spanish. It was that conversation I wanted to know more about, but whatever it was I knew, from a long and honored history of dishonest actions and worse, inaction, that whatever it was they were talking about, was in the phrasing of wise guys, "wrong."

Before I could dwell on the meaning of such metaphysical ties and resemblances, a figure stood in the doorway that used all of the frame. He was a dark-skinned Hispanic, standing a bit over six feet and must have weighed near two hundred and fifty pounds but carried all those pounds on a massive frame. His hands were big with thick, powerful fingers, arms were like anvils, and shoulders like ox yokes. His head, however, seemed so much smaller than his body. It was almost comical, though you'd be hard pressed to laugh. However, on closer inspection his features were large: a large forehead with black eyebrows, black round eyes, a wide nose, and lips that were thick and puffy. This man-boy looked scared and dimwitted. If I had to guess, I'd say he was no older than fourteen. Still standing in the doorway, but towering over the rest of the kids, his head swiveled until it landed on Lourdes.

"Tina," he nearly shouted.

She lifted up her head, "Jumbo, come in, baby, come in."

He didn't walk but waddled over to her desk.

"How you, baby?"

Jumbo didn't say anything. He just stood there waiting for her to tell him what to do next.

"Baby, this is Mr. Heller, you could be in one of his groups," she said.

I stuck out my hand and when Jumbo shook it you could no longer see any of my flesh. "Sure, be happy to have you," I said, but thinking that if this is what there was I was in deep trouble.

"Sit down, baby, sit down, relax, man, it's the first day; just make sure you get your program. I gotta watch your ass 'cause your crazy mom will kill me," Lourdes said, and went back to her girls and their stories. Jumbo, at first looked confused, then, with as much awkwardness as a shy young man would have, he took a seat on one of the couches near Lourdes' desk and stared straight ahead.

Jackson, however, presented a different picture. He blew into the office like a gust of foul black air. "There's no talkin' 'bout it now, I spoke to Carver, our leader, and she said you, me, everyone got to share everything and that includes your desk, phone, computer, everything and that we better make room in this here office for all of us to get along or she be comin' down here to make sure we do." He came up to her, disregarding what she was doing, who was at her desk, me, and Jumbo sitting near her desk. The girls looked a bit disconcerted, gathered themselves and left, saying things like, "Seeya later," "Nice to see ya," and the like. I hung back, enjoying the show. She waited until they were gone, just Jumbo remained but she didn't seem particularly interested in his presence.

"Hey, Jackson, fuck you. And get out my face. I don't care what she said. She don't live here, I do. That's why we got a union. She just can't come in here and dictate what I can or can't do."

"Listen here, this is the JUMPSTART program, not the Lourdes program and all that shit you got belong to the program, that's all I know. So, you wanna play like that I guess you take it up with her."

"You ran to her like a little bitch."

"What did you say, what did you call me?"

"You heard me, now leave me alone."

"Well, you just clear off a space at the end of your desk so I can put my stuff..."

"I ain't cleanin' off shit."

Kids were poking their heads into the office but they, if they couldn't see, could feel, that all was not right in the world of JUMPSTART. They didn't bother to enter. They'd grown up hearing arguments like this. They'd become adept at knowing what belongs to them and what they have no business with. They also knew that it served them no good to be too close to the center of some of other people's anger when so little of theirs was at stake. The evolution of hostility. Shit's bred in these bones, a little bit different than Auden's "error," and their survival sometimes depended on which bone they were ducking, or sucking. Jackson was going to press this and Lourdes would fight it tooth and nail. Jackson was an asshole but would win on this; Lourdes was a lunatic but was smarter; she'd bide her time and fuck him in other ways. It was so good to be back in an office setting again.

As quickly as Jackson came, he was gone. "What's wrong with that guy?" Lourdes said. "Get a life, man. It took me years to get what I got in here and here he come just wantin' the shit handed over on a silver platter. No, man, that's not how it works. Sorry."

I really didn't give a good goddamn "how it worked" because, for the most part, I knew it never worked, was not even meant to work, was just there so it could drive other people mad trying to work it either in the mechanic's garage, the TV repair shop, psychiatrist's office, on a surgeon's gurney, a bar or dope spot, or unemployment line. Hope, what a bitch.

Jumbo never moved from his position on the sagging black bench. "I'll kill him if you want," he said and smiled with a kind of stupid dementia.

"Baby, you have to go to class; I promised your mom that after I got you into this school I look after you, so go, baby, go."

"Aw, do I have to," he said, lifting himself up and lumbering to the front door. "I got lunch the fourth period; I'll seeya then." And with that the doorway cleared.

"Who's he?"

"That's my cousins' kid—well, not really my cousin but we grew up and know each other for like all our lives. We live a few blocks from each other. One day I'll tell you about her."

"How old is he?"

"Would you believe it—thirteen. He'll be fourteen October. I'm friendly with Jackie, she help me get him in here; I just hope he stays. Maybe you can help me by takin' him in one of your classes, kinda look out for him?"

"I'll see what I can do."

I was constructing plots and story lines around this Latino giant when I heard, "Mistah, where's Andy?" Andy was my predecessor, transferred, I guessed, because of what was going on between him and Lourdes, to another school and, from what I understood, a good one for talented artistic kids, mostly white and Asian. You had to pass a few tests to be admitted.

"Andy? I don't really know; I know he got transferred to another school but where? You got me." There were three of them: the young man was Middle Eastern while the two girls were Hispanic. "You want to join JUMPSTART this term?" They all nodded their heads. "What are your names and what periods do you have lunch?" The boy was named Yasheesh and the girls were named Gabriella and Veronica. And Gabriella I couldn't take my eyes off of. Yasheesh I couldn't keep my eyes on; he had this gigantic mole over one of his eyebrows that seemed like it was going to erupt at any moment. He told me he'd been in the program for the last three years and that Andy always gave him intern credit for it and would I? I told him I would—if I could—and probably could but all the while I was stealing glances at this beautiful young Latina in front of me. She was tall, with black curly hair that hung halfway down her back and framed the milky whiteness of her skin, large gray eyes, which had discernible rings of cobalt blue, angular cheekbones, and a full mouth. Her body was still developing but what there was had the kind of invitation that few women's bodies had. The kind of sex that could not be taught but was there at birth. You simply wanted to touch her. I wondered if she knew that. Her fingers were graceful and tapered; her legs were long, well proportioned, and led to a place where, if you were very privileged, you'd be allowed to go, unimpeded and welcomed both in body and spirit. The whistle blew signaling the end of the period and my reverie. Almost in unison the three said, "Good-bye, Mistah, see ya tomorrow." And just like that they were gone. "I hope so," I thought, "I truly hope so."

As the first wave of kids left the cafeteria, another thundered in. There was a young Hispanic man at the door, Eddie, who checked each of their program cards to make sure they had lunch that period and were not cutting class. He sat on a stool by the doors and looked at thousands of cards each day, turning away those who didn't belong but were trying to get over, holding cards for those going outside to go to the bathroom, and occasionally letting someone slip by either by choice or chance. A strong, good-looking and hard-working guy, he was also the coach of the girl's softball team, but I didn't know how he went from his daytime responsibilities beginning eight-thirty in the morning and had anything left to give at practice or games at four in the afternoon weekdays and, occasionally, weekends. Like most of us, economics and love I imagined. Standing with him was Warren, a six foot four inch black giant, weighing in at close to two hundred seventy-five pounds, wearing the clothes that fit in all too well with the kids' costumes who, from what I could initially see, was much too familiar with some of the girls who walked by him. Sometimes he'd squeeze an arm, or whisper in an ear, even take them around the shoulders. He seemed to play a black Mack to their hooker fantasies. Later, he'd sometimes come into our room and ask to use Lourdes' phone. Each time he did, there'd be some shit going on at the other end. I could tell by the way he whispered, or pleaded. Eddie, a decent guy, never said anything when Warren left him alone to manage the hundreds of kids who'd file in each period for lunch, card playing, cutting or playing the hip-hop game of courtship, strutting their plumage of hairstyles, clothes, sneakers, fingernail finery, jewelry, or mouths. Maybe, Eddie was glad to be left alone, one less kid to worry about.

And there were plenty of kids to worry about. The next few days provided more than enough evidence that this system was a dinosaur, as some had referred to it for ages. It was actually a rapacious virus, destroying whole generations of kids suckered in by the hucksters of not only Madison Avenue, but by the pitches and proof of their own street corner merchants who've made it, just like the Kennedys before them, and East Side and West Side Congressional hacks, Hell's Angels bikers, Medicaid mill runners, shyster mob lawyer practitioners, corporate whore mongers, and plain run-of-the-mill liars.

Just as I began musing about canvas Converse sneakers, I was face to face with Jackie Arroyo, the president of the school's student government, a job I'd later learn came with plenty of juice. You could not help but notice her girth. Her ass looked like a Montana mule, but she moved assuredly and with grace. Her face, which was pretty without calling attention to it, lit broadly when she saw Lourdes. "Hola," she said in a voice that was both coarse and shrill at the same time.

"Well, hello, good to see you, how was your summer?" Lourdes asked, but I heard a false gaiety and "I really don't give a shit but I'm asking because that's what I'm supposed to do."

"Good, very good, but too fast, like always," and then she asked her something in Spanish that I couldn't understand and Lourdes shook her head sadly. Then Jackie asked Lourdes something else in Spanish, and Lourdes shook her head again, but this time her eyes had that, "I wish I could help it, but I can't" kind of look.

"Hi," Jackie said, "I'm Jackie Arroyo, sorry for the girl talk but we go back a long way; she's my homie."

"Hey, that's all right; I'm Heller, Max Heller."

She came across the room and pressed her hand into mine. She had a firm handshake and looked at me with eyes that were genuinely warm and friendly. I didn't quite know what to do with that.

"I saw your other partner."

"You mean that crazy Rasta fuck?"

"Yeah, that must be him," she said and laughed. "He asked me for an office of his own. He said there was really no room for him here and that you kinda threw him out anyways," and she laughed again. "You can be a mean bitch, Tina, you know that."

"I'm not mean, please, he came in wanting me to move and then he wanted me to just give him all my shit and I said, 'No, man, you can't come in here like that. No, that simple, no.' Heller didn't do that. You should try to get Heller hooked-up, Jackie: a decent desk, chair, computer—you can do that shit."

"Yeah, sure, I'll hook him up just as soon as the term gets going. I'm supposed to go to this warehouse 'cause they donating all this office stuff and I'll make sure I get you what you need, don't worry. Meanwhile, just to cool Jackson out I'm going to fix him up with a room downstairs with some of the guidance counselors. That should be O.K. But I gotta go, this week is the worst week for doin' this shit but you owe me big time for this, Tina."

"Anything, just get him outta here," Lourdes said to the side of her ass.

"Who's she?" I asked.

"Oh, man, that's Arroyo, the head of student government; she have a big job, man," she said, as her hands articulated what she was saying, waving them around the room like a conductor, "all this shit, man, all these couches, my desk, chair, all this stuff she got for me. I don't know if you know it or not but other schools, man, they don't have nearly the shit we do. Coño, the last school they put me in I worked out of an empty toilet; that ain't no shit, an empty toilet—I could talk shit and they could flush shit at the same time!"

I looked around the room as she was talking and all I saw were these tired, beaten, sagging, broken pieces of furniture that some office somewhere had been using for decades and, as a tax write off, donated them to the school. The floors were decades old and covered with sneaker marks and shoe scuffs, gum, there for perhaps centuries, stuck to plastic chairs and the underside of every surface where a student might have sat, lain, or slept. The file cabinets were broken and wouldn't close, the paint was slapped on by a brush that had stuttered across the surface and the door was, like Freddie Krueger, suffused with enough staples to impale someone who happened to run into it without first looking. Yes, this certainly was paradise. "Yeah, I can see, she's really taken care of your ass."

She looked around and started to laugh. "But no, man, I'm serious. You should see some of the shit people have to work in. We're lucky."

"We sure are."

She laughed again. "Hey listen, Heller, if I can trust you we can have a pretty good and a pretty easy time here."

"Well, Lourdes, you can't trust me—but we still can have a pretty good and easy time here as long as you don't fuck me."

"What do you mean by that?" she said with an edge to it.

"You know what I mean, so don't play stupid with me. I don't know what you had going with the other guy who was here and I don't care, but one thing I can see right away is that you're a sharpie and I guess after being in this system for as long as you have, you'd have to be a complete idiot not to know how to cut corners and get over for whatever you can... and that's all right with me, as long as you don't jeopardize my gig or the kids that come in here to get some kind of help. If you don't understand what I just said, I'll say it again. I'm no saint, and I don't believe in God or none of that other wild stuff but—and it's a big but—I do believe in giving a kid an honest shake, whatever that's worth. Besides that, I couldn't care less how you—or me for that matter—make this system work for us."

She looked at me and I could tell that she didn't know yet what to do with the information, but I could sense that she wanted to trust me. That still surprised me. No matter how many times someone from my race screwed her without thanking her, or called her back, or called her never. No matter how many times she'd been left out, omitted, denied, deprived, uninformed, ill-served, ill-advised, or sold out by anyone in a position to do that, like politicians, businessmen, union leaders, drug dealers or best friends' husbands, someone's first cousins, or omnipresent landlords, she wanted, maybe needed, to trust a white person who maybe, just maybe, had some colored blood running through his veins.

***

"Niggers and spics, they're children. I don't care how fuckin' old they really are, they stay like fuckin' babies all their lives. You better watch out," my father said with a laugh that wasn't a laugh. "You better grow-up or find a tit to suck for the rest of your life, because you sure as hell ain't sucking mine." He stopped laughing. We were riding in his new, powder blue '59 Cadillac. I felt the thrill and exclusivity of being in his "Caddy," alone with my father, tooling down the Belt Parkway doing a comfortable sixty that with the windows up or down felt more like thirty. None of my friends' parents' cars had anything like the power and grace this new age rocket had. It moved so easily with my father's hand casually gripping the steering wheel, his other arm resting on the door frame, elbow out the window while his hand dangled off his wrist, fingers holding a Chesterfield short, the sweet smoke drifting around his head, weaving in and out of lanes with an ease that I'd later associate with sex. He'd look over towards me, smile, and press his foot on the accelerator. She, (he always referred to cars as "she"), it seemed, would gather herself, then surge forward with a controlled fury that made my insides hum with an exhilaration that was impossible to reproduce otherwise. The seats were contoured and plush with the intoxicating smell that only new leather gives off, but that cushioned ride did nothing to sort through the thorny mixture of innuendo, insinuation, and unadorned, incontrovertible evidence of the world outside the car being inhabited by scumbags, cocksuckers, lowlifes, niggers, and whores who'd turn on you in a second—or worse, those of your own kind who were out to take you, but pretended otherwise. They deserved to be hung by the balls.

My father had taken me with him—to keep him company on the ride—to The Bamboo Lounge in Canarsie to meet his friend Oscar. I'd known him and his wife, Cynthia, as my parents' friends who were warm and funny and generous, who would come over for dinner, a card game with other friends, and whose home we'd be every Christmas day for a meal that lasted the whole afternoon. Now I was going to know him as something else.

The Bamboo Lounge itself looked so weird inhabiting this corner of Brooklyn. The outside had this Chinese, Hawaiian, tropical feel, by incorporating thick, but false, bamboo poles as its facade, with red oriental lettering spelling its name. It was near a laundromat, real estate office, and pizza parlor on this treeless slab of concrete on Rockaway Boulevard. The interior complemented the exotic exterior. It had a bamboo bar, high-backed bamboo stools and, in the dining area, bamboo tables and chairs, where Chinese or Polynesian food was served.

Oscar, a good-looking, balding, laser-like blue-eyed man, was sitting alone at the bar sipping a drink, smoking a cigarette while talking to the man who stood behind the bar. "Fuckem," he said and laughed as we came up to him, and the guy behind the bar tilted his head in our direction. Oscar swung around. My father stuck out his hand to meet Oscar's. "Hey, Jack, Max, let's grab a table." He picked up his drink and pack of Camels from the bar, but left a five-dollar bill as he got up off his chair. We moved towards a table in a corner of the room facing the door, and I saw the hand of the man behind the bar sweep the bill off the counter and put it in a steel cocktail shaker by the cash register. No sooner had we sat down then a waitress came over. She was a light-skinned black woman, tall with frosted hair and red painted lips that looked wet and seemed to glow, long fingers and longer legs. She looked pretty in a dirty kind of way. "Whatareyadrinkin?" Oscar saw the hesitation in my father's face. "C'mon, have a drink. Whatareyadrinkin?"

"Gimme a J&B on the rocks and Max, what do you want?"

"Can I have anything?" I asked, wide-eyed.

"Your mother'd have my ass—she has it anyway—but you're not gonna like the taste, at least not right away, but yeah, O.K., yeah, go ahead; what do you think you'd like?"

"Really? Jeez, I don't know."

"How about a Singapore Sling?" the waitress said, "it's like a soda fountain drink, but only a few will... a few will do the job."

"Yeah, that sounds good," Oscar said, "give him one of those, and a J&B over here, and I'll have another Johnnie Walker Black."

"Sure," she said and turned to go.

"Wait a minute, hon," Oscar said, "any of youse hungry? They got some very good Chinese here." Before either me or my Pop could respond he continued, "bring us some egg rolls, some spare ribs and, what do ya call those noodles? low somethin'? Bring us some of those, too; an order for all of us." And he turned to me. "Besides, Max, you're gonna need a little food—before you go out drinkin' ya haveta always remember to eat a little somethin', coat your stomach, either that or drink a little tomato juice with some olive oil in it, right Jack?"

"That's no lie," my father responded, searing it into my memory.

"These young sonsofbitches don't know how to drink anymore. You go out on a Saturday night, and ya gotta wade through the puke to get to your car. Christ. Just last week me and Cin went to this new joint in the city to hear Tony Bennett"...

"Tony Bennett?"

"Yeah, Tony Bennett, and I"...

"I love Tony Bennett. Shit, you shoulda told me."

"Next time..."

"You shoulda called me, ya prick."

"Next time, next time, I promise. Anyways, this fuckin' kid nearly puked on my new shoes and if he woulda so much as got a fuckin' drop I woulda dropped him. Don't nobody's father teach them how to drink? Just a little dropa olive oil and that's it, boom, a little drop."

"You sit good?"

"Yeah, Sal the Barber set it up with Big Al, whose kid's friends with the guy who owns it. Boom, that was it. He's tryin' to make a livin' so they get Bennett for him for two weeks; don't cost 'em nothin' and they see what they can do."

"Busy?"

"Jammed."

I soaked in the conversation like I was going to take a test on it the next morning. I was drunk by the time the waitress came back with our real drinks. She placed the Singapore Sling in front of me and I could smell the sweetness, like a Lime Rickey. "Drink it slow, sweetie," she said, as Oscar, engaged in a conversation with my father, slid his hand underneath the fold of her skirt until his hand, white on top of her light brown skin, and forearm disappeared into the material. I saw her shudder, briefly, but made no attempt to move away.

"Thanks, hon," Oscar said, "food almost ready?"

"Another minute," she said.

"Good, give us a minute, then."

Without saying anything else, she turned and left the table as Oscar's hand reappeared. I watched the fold of her skirt settle just below her knee and lightly lay on her leg. My eyes tried to uncover what was inside the slit of that skirt as she moved, so fluidly, away from our table to the end stool at the bar where she sat and casually lit a cigarette. Eagerly, I brought the glass up to my mouth and began to drink.

"Easy," my father said, "there's a way to drink just like there's a way to please a woman; go slow, take your time. Do you know what I'm talkin' about? With the woman part?"

I felt my face flush, "You mean doin' it, right?"

'Yeah, doin' it, but doin' what?" Oscar said as he looked at me and then to my father. "What's doin' it, doin' what?" he broke out in a broad grin and I felt like going under the table or just disappearing.

"You know," I finally managed to say.

"Know what, what?" Oscar pressed.

I then managed to make a circle with my thumb and forefinger on my left hand and, with the forefinger of my right hand, I pushed it through the circle, back and forth a few times. My father and Oscar looked at each other and laughed, which made my face red again.

"You better have a sip of that drink," Oscar said.

"Go ahead," my father said, "but slow, don't rush nothin'."

With an unsteady hand I brought the glass up to my mouth and, as instructed, sipped it as slow as I could without letting the fluid run down my chin. Even though it was cold it turned warm quickly when it hit my stomach. And, the interesting thing to me was, I felt that warmth spreading, slowly, across the whole of my upper body. I took another sip and saw Oscar and my father looking at me.

"There are three things, Max, that each guy I know thinks he's the best at: drinkin', drivin', and fuckin'. And most of 'em can't do none of 'em right, nothin'. They get in accidents, they throw up, and they come too quick—if they manage to get laid at all. All they know how to do is bullshit about it. You just watch and listen to your ol' man and you'll be the one the chicks'll go crazy for. I ain't lyin'."

"Uncle Oscar over there is an old cunt hound from way back," Pop said, and both he and Oscar started to laugh, "but you just go slow and learn; I can teach you everything except willpower and discipline. You're the only one that can give yourself that. I'm a good driver so you're gonna be a good driver—how good, well, I don't know; that depends on you—and pretty soon you're gonna practice with me..."

"Really?" I said, with the glow of liquor in my eyes. The room had become suffused with a kind of light that took the corners and edges off everything, making the room and what I was thinking lazy and soft.

"Yeah, really. With the booze, shit, you're gonna have to find that out for yourself—how much to have of what. A man learns how to drink and hold that drink and if he can't then he shouldn't drink. Nothin' wrong with nursin' a drink either...."

"What's that, nursin'?"

"Well, you order a drink, whatever kind it is, and just nurse it, sip it slowly, just hold on to it just so ya got somethin' in your hand..."

"And not your dick," Oscar chimed in.

"So it looks like you're drinkin but you're not, you're nursin' it, takin' care of it, goin' slow with it like it's no big deal—and it's not. But pussy, that is a big deal. A real big deal."

"Lemme tell ya somethin, Max. Those short hairs, those cunt hairs, are stronger than the cables that hold up bridges. More men have died or have gone fuckin' insane chasin' those short hairs." Oscar picked up his glass and held it by his thumb, fore and middle fingers. For the first time I noticed that when he brought the glass to his mouth his pinky was extended so that the ring on that finger was easily seen; it was a big diamond, with smaller ones around it, set in gold that seemingly glowed from within.

It was like I was watching a ping-pong match, going from one to the other, trying to understand and remember what they both said—and how they said it—all the while sipping from my glass until the ice had thinned, leaving a watery and tasteless mixture at the bottom and impossible now to hear the clink of ice cubes when I shook the glass in my hand.

"When I'm talkin' about women, I'm talkin' 'bout white women, not colored women. If I catch you with one of those I'll pull a leg outta your ass."

"And if he don't, I will; they're O.K. to get a blowjob offa, but that's it, no more."

"I wouldn't even like ya ta do that."

The waitress came back with the food and placed it on the table. It smelled so good my mouth started to water. But when I saw her honey colored arm arrange the egg rolls and ribs I felt funny being at this table. She placed the hot mustard and duck sauce near the plates of food and asked if there was anything else she could get us. Oscar motioned to his glass and then made a circling sign around the table.

"Jesus, Oscar, I better not. I'm with the kid."

"Nah, it's O.K. It's good for him; when else is he gonna learn?" He reached over and grabbed the waitress around the wrist and drew her to him. "Lemme ask you somethin'. How come all you colored girls know how to make love so good?"

She looked down at him sitting there with a wicked grin on his face and then over at me who sat there not knowing what to expect but waiting for her answer. She smiled at him but looked at me. It caused the coils in my body to heat. If she asked, I would have done anything for her. "Maybe 'cause we like it so much," she said in a voice different than the one that took our food and drink order.

"Are you saying that white women don't like it so much?"

"I can't speak for them, can only speak for me. I dig it, always have. Believe I always will. Hope to bump for as long as I can, baby. How 'bout you?"

"You better go and get our drinks—gimme a beer with that, too."

After she was out of earshot, Oscar asked, "What's the most confusing day in Harlem?"

"I don't know. What?" my father said

"Father's Day."

My father laughed, but not me. I didn't understand it or find it funny. Sometimes, I found, one has nothing to do with the other.

I ate my egg rolls and spare ribs, dipping them into the hot Chinese mustard and duck sauce. I took some lo mein onto my plate and ate that, too. I pretended not to listen to my father and Oscar talk, but I did. I wanted them to think I was absorbed in eating so they'd talk more freely, and they did. I learned that my father had given Oscar money to "put on the street" and that some guy had taken all of it, ten large, for five points a week. Oscar took a white envelope out of his sport jacket and gave it to my father. "This will pay for the kid's Bar Mitzvah," my father said.

"You shouldn't pay those fuckin' thieves anyway," Oscar said.

"I'll pay 'em—when I pay 'em—then be done with 'em."

My Bar Mitzvah was nothing special anyway, I was thinking. I'd just turned diabetic, couldn't eat most of the food that was there, had nothing of the cake or ice cream, had moved away from my old neighborhood six months before that so I had no real friends from my new place and had lost contact with my friends from my old place—

I agreed with Oscar: I wouldn't pay them either.

Oscar paid the bill—"Your money's no good in here," he told my father, from a roll of bills he pulled out of his pocket, a fifty on the table for our waitress. As we were walking out a man sitting at the bar, who I had noticed when we came in and was still sitting at the same place now, grabbed Oscar's arm and asked him to stay so he could buy him a drink. Oscar told him he couldn't, "I have to get home to the wife."

"C'mon, have a drink, one drink, all of youse, have a drink," the man said.

"Not tonight, Paulie, next time," Oscar said and ushered us out the door.

"Who the hell was that?" my father asked when we were standing outside. It had started to rain and I saw him blink away raindrops.

"Paulie's a little crazy. He kidnapped a dog this morning, made a couple a thousand, now he's spending money like a drunken sailor."

"Kidnapped a dog, huh? Very smart. Do yourself a favor: stay away from him. C'mon, Max, that's enough for one night," my father said. He shook Oscar's hand and so did I. We walked towards our car, but before we got in, I looked back at The Bamboo Lounge and saw Oscar standing with the waitress from our table. When I pointed this out to my father he said that that was his business. I got into the car and felt that wonderful soft crunch of leather when I sat down. He started the car, made a U-turn and we headed home.

Down Rockaway Parkway and back onto the Belt Parkway, we were quietly inside ourselves. When in a car, as long as it was in motion, I didn't need talk, especially if it was raining or snowing. I let the ride and the slap of the wipers help sort through and ease whatever I was thinking about the evening I'd just spent, but it wasn't easy; it was confusing. So many things folded along side and into each other, and it was made more difficult when, looking out my window, I saw my father's reflection looking at me with an awkward and hesitant expression through the beaded raindrops and a yellowish white glare from the street lamps and other cars' lights. He wanted to say something but the words just wouldn't form, or worse, they did form, but his throat just couldn't give them up. It was uncomfortable for me to feel it—which I did most of the time he was around me. It was much worse to actually see it in a moment when he thought I wasn't looking. He was a man who, if he wasn't sure most of the time, sure as hell acted as if he were. My father was an athlete, strong, powerful, even graceful and, most important to him, tough. Around me though, since I became sick, he was clumsy, butterfingered, timid, given to shilly-shallying, almost demure. The few times when I felt sick, when the disease didn't make me physically ill but emotionally sick, gut sick, I felt sick around him. And now that my brother was growing up and becoming more like him, he was struggling even harder to have something to do with me.

"I got these tickets for a fight," he began. I wasn't sure he was actually talking to me and kept staring out the window. "Hey, ya hear me? I got these tickets, Max, and I thought that maybe you'd like to go."

"Tickets? What tickets? Tickets to what?"

"Two good middleweights, Griffith and Tiger, at The Garden."

"A fight? Really? Yeah, sure, sure I wanna go. When?"

"I'm not sure; I think a week from Friday. All right, it's set, we're gonna go."

I'd begun watching The Gillette Cavalcade of Sports with my father, and at times his father, since I was a youngster. Both of them educated me in the fine art of self-defense, and I took to it right away. There was something courageous about two men getting in a small square and, without armor of any kind, battle each other for ten or, in championship fights, fifteen rounds, but I'd never seen a live bout. Now I would. I didn't know why my heart was pounding so hard, but it was. I didn't know why I wanted to shout, but I did. I didn't know how to make the weeks and days and hours move quicker, but now I didn't want them to hardly move at all.

***

"Don't worry," Lourdes said, "I'll punch you out in the afternoon and you hit my card in the morning. Nobody will know, besides it's done all the time here, everybody's hittin' everybody else. Anyway, we won't do this everyday, but on days like today when nuthin's goin' on at least one of us can get outta here; why stay when you don't haveta?"

"Sounds good," but I knew this could get sticky. Anytime I've gone down the garden path with someone I hardly knew, and done some felonious penny-ante kind of stuff, it usually ended badly for one or both of us. "I have to tell you something, though; I'm gonna be real up front about this so there's no misunderstanding," I began. She looked at me with this, "What's this motherfucker gonna say to me now?" "I know me, but I don't know you. I've got no problem punching you in in the morning. I get up real early and I'm here early, so punching two cards instead of one is no big deal, but I'm going to expect that you stay here and punch me out in the afternoon—no ifs, ands, or buts. I don't want any problems with Carver or anyone else. Also, I'm not going to cover for you should someone, anyone, ask where you are in the morning and, should anyone ask, I don't know a thing about how your card got punched."

"No, just tell them you don't know where I am, if anyone calls or even if they pay a surprise visit—which they do sometimes but after being here so long I can smell them coming, but, man, I'm tellin' you, you worry an awful lot. This is not too important, this is a public school."

"I'm white and Jewish—we're born worrying." The school's phone rang, and I was closest to it. "Hello, JUMPSTART, can I help you?"

"This is Lizzie Carver," she said, in a voice that was colder, more abrupt and authoritative then in person.

"Hello, Lizzie, Max here, how are you?"

"It's Ms. Carver and put Tina on."

I pointed a finger at Lourdes and brought the phone to her. Lourdes didn't have to be told who was on the line to know it was Carver. She made a face like she just smelled a fart that didn't give any warning. She picked up the phone, placed it to her ear, and said in a voice that sounded like all the morning cheer in the world, "Well, hello, Lizzie. How was your summer?"

That was the last full sentence that Lourdes got out. After that it was, "But Lizzie," "no, I" "I didn't," "he's lying, no," "I will, but," "yes, I" "no I don't see why" "'Bye."

"I can tell, you certainly got your point across."

"That bitch. Both of them. We have to share the room with Jackson. She don't want to hear nothin'. We need to T the room, make it so the three of us can work out of here. I don't see how we're gonna do that. I'm runnin' groups, you runnin' your groups. How we gonna have someone in here that has nothin' to do except listen in to what the kids are sayin'? You know what I mean? What a little bitch he is."

"Yeah, I know what you mean. Two things: First: Maybe he does want to listen in; maybe that's his thing, I don't know; and second: white chicks, at a certain age, get very neurotic, very crazy. Ya gotta watch both."

"With her it's not that heavy, she just needs to get laid, man."

"Listen you want me to call her back, explain the scene up here? You're right, with both of us runnin' groups or counseling kids one-on-one it could get a little uncomfortable having a guy in here who does nothin' except listen in. I mean, I'd feel uncomfortable. I'll call her back and tell her that."

"She knows the scene up here, she just don't give a shit. So don't call her back. Besides, you're new here. Lie low for six months then she can't touch you—you with the union, and she can't do shit—unless they catch you with your pants down, fucking a fourteen year old."

"You mean fifteen they let you off?"

"Maybe it's sixteen now, shit. Fuck. How you come here anyway, Heller?"

None of your business, I wanted to say, but I had to say something.

***

There have been dreams where I've dreamt whole mountains, spruce green, ice-capped, and stupendous, would be swallowed up, revealing a blood orange sky, which would shimmer and quake from the God of a Hopkins poem. Here, though, it would not be a question of faith but only of promise. It would not be a blasphemy, but a refuge. It was a purifying rage that I'd orchestrate from my bed, trying to silence the noise of the whisperers nearby. They'd wonder how they could have a son like me, having done nothing wrong in this life—or the last—guilty of no crime except the crime of excess, and I'd wonder: If I brought the elephant rifle up shoulder high could I shoot through the wall, the bullets steel-jacketed and the highest caliber, and waste those two besieged lovers in the bed that held the fast food crumbs of a television-filled evening?

She stayed in this makeshift room in the basement, adjacent to the finished den, next to the boiler, on a cot, behind a curtain that my father's workers had hung to give her—and the three maids who preceded her—as much privacy as possible. The first three maids were old, older, and grizzled. One talked as if the marbles in her mouth had been surrendered by her head, asking for, and getting, no reciprocity, just a further diminishment of wattage; another, her eyes milky with cataracts, mistook, on her first day of work, the top from the bottom step, falling head over heels from the carpeted first of seventeen stairs to last five concrete ones as she called the Lord's name all the way down, getting progressively weaker with each and every bump; the last of this colored trinity had come and changed into her maid's attire and must have surprised my mom's little white poodle who nipped and bit at her feet and ankles as she hopped around the kitchen, dining, and living rooms. Having finally sequestered herself in the bathroom, she was persuaded to come out only after my mother promised that the little "white devil" was put out of her way. In the time it took to convince her that Pepe was locked in another room and it was safe for her to come out, she'd already killed a pint of peach schnapps. I'm sure she felt no pain as she packed and left for more pleasant climes and friendlier faces.

Angela was from Louisiana, New Orleans to be precise, and had come up to New York at the suggestion of a cousin to see what it was like and to develop what she described as an active curiosity about how things worked in the world. I heard her saying the last part of that as I came into the kitchen to get a piece of fruit. I looked at her from the corner of my eyes and she looked back. I took in her hair, black, close cropped and curly, eyes so dark they held light in them, and her face, thin, angular and strikingly beautiful. Her skin looked like raw honey, radiant and silky all at once. There was a light burgundy birthmark that seemed to just sit, delicately, like a tiny butterfly, on her left cheek. I remember seeing her luminous eyes follow me to the refrigerator. By the time I opened the refrigerator's door, to the time I selected a fruit, I was hard, and didn't know how I was going to get across the room without her seeing the obvious bulge in my pants. "What are you looking for so long in there?" my mom said.

"I'll find it."

"What is it? You think you lost something in there for all the time it's taking you."

"My mind, I lost my mind and I'm seeing if I put it behind the olives. I'm gonna check the freezer next." By the time I finished the last sentence, I was cooled down, like a good quarter horse, got my hand around an apple, laughed, chose a pear instead, closed the door and smiled, because I couldn't help it, at her, sitting opposite my mother, at the kitchen table. She began to smile back, thought better of it, and slowly lowered her eyes, which began getting me aroused again. "See ya later," I said and was gone. But her face with her birthmark, her smile and her eyes, remained with me throughout the day and well into the night.

***

That wasn't the story I began to tell Lourdes. I told her something about New Orleans and coon ass women, French Chicory coffee and hot beignets, booze and dope, and swamps so thick with fog that, by the time I found my way out, I left most of my youth behind. Harry, a friend of a good buddy from my college days, was a tugboat captain on the Mississippi, and helped us get from New Orleans to a little Gulf port in Texas. We used the bread from a dope deal we put together in The Quarter, selling her daddy's grass, which put him out quite a bit, but he was a prick. I sold his skunkweed to students and his beautiful buds to the faculty of artists who were all my friends from New York gathered at Tulane at the tale end of the Sixties. He kept most of the money himself and gave me and his daughter, Jean-Marie, enough for a place in Bucktown, a beat-up car, food on the table, and a few bucks in our pockets. And, of course, all the reefer we could smoke, which was a prodigious amount. Jean-Marie, however, wanted more. Her father, though, the cheap sonofabitch, thought his generosity more than enough for his ingrate daughter and her Jewish Yankee boyfriend. Something had to give, and it was his marijuana that finally did. The rest, I told Lourdes, would have to wait for another date and time when we'd had more time than we did to continue the adventure. She appeared crestfallen.

"C'mon, Heller, shit, you shouldn't do that to people."

"I can't right now; we have to get back to work."

"We can do anything we want here; how many times do I have to tell you?"

"Tina, I have to grab somethin' to eat and then do some work. See ya later," I said, and went to my desk where I took out my glucose testing kit and began the 45 second drill: took out the machine, lancet pen, lancet, reagent strip, inserted it in the machine, pricked my finger, squeezed it placing a drop of capillary blood on the strip and waited for the 45, got my result, took my blue pack, containing my regular insulin, syringes and got the hell out of there, walking directly to visit my old flame, the Brooklyn Bridge.

It was a glorious day with the sun high up in a deep blue sky and the city still clinging to summer's heat and laziness. I bought a container of coffee and a Black Forest ham sandwich on black bread from a kiosk near the entrance to the bridge's walkway and began the climb. With cars streaming on the bridge toward the inner workings of Manhattan, or going away from me, toward the courts of Brooklyn, I started to walk. If it was only the beauty and strength from her majestic man-made pillars dug underneath the waters and rising into the skies, long slopping tubular steel cables and transoms and roadways connecting peoples and commerce, it would be enough, more than enough, but it was more, much more. It was our own literature's great dynamic faggot, Whitman, singing a song that's still being sung and, in a weird way, his black musical progeny, Sonny Rollins, not a faggot but so soulful and gay, practicing his craft, on her decks at three, four in the morning into a post-bebop sun; it was a very hip bridge.

I sat down on a wooden bench on the side closest to Brooklyn and before I ate I fixed myself an insulin shot and injected myself in my upper arm, through my shirt. I opened my coffee, put in the artificial sweetener, and began to eat. Why did I go through that whole rigmarole with Lourdes, I wondered? Why did I even bother to do that? Well, besides loving to tell tall tales and short stories, I've always ascribed to something I once read by this ex-patriot writer who'd lived in Mexico in the '20s and '30s and whose name on his book jackets was a fiction, too: The only real defense civilized man has against anybody who bothers him is to lie.

***

Angela couldn't lie; she didn't know how to lie. We were on the promenade above the Brooklyn Queens Expressway in Brooklyn Heights that first night I took Angela to see the view of Manhattan it offered. Her voice was sweet and floated somewhere above my head as we rested our elbows on the iron rails and watched the city that seemed to be looking back at us. Lower Manhattan's skyscrapers were kissed and nudged by less tall, but just as magnificent edifices, which were, in turn, bracketed by big and bigger buildings, each having lit and darkened windows presenting us with a picture of a fantastical checkerboard. Ferries were returning to their slips and going out to Staten Island, luxury liners were making their way towards their berths or away from this concrete womb, seeking adventure or, more likely, cheap pictures and cheaper sentiments.

I was standing so close to her that I could almost feel the light hair on her arm blow against mine with the slightest breeze. She smelled of Ivory soap and lilacs. How could she not know how much I wanted to touch her, to kiss her, or even just to hold her hand? I imagined taking her around the waist, resting my hand on that wonderful spot where her hips and buttocks met. She had to know how much I wanted her with me near bursting with acts of stupidity. Each time I wanted to talk, I thought better of it. My sentences were wrong. I forgot words or made up new ones. My clothes were mismatched while my movements were overly orchestrated. I turned left when I wanted to go right and sometimes I just stopped, forgetting what I stopped for, and whether or not I should get going. Angela looked straight ahead at this city that seemed to be standing straight up for her, that presented row after row of exclamation points. Not knowing what to say or how to begin, I asked the very safe question, "What are you thinkin' about?"

"If I could live here, I guess."

"And?"

"Gee, I don't know, I really don't know yet, but maybe I could."

Her breath smelled clean and sweet. I took out a Lucky Strike and lit it, inhaled deeply and savored its sweetness. I offered her one and surprisingly she accepted.

"Why do you look so shocked?"

"I don't know; I didn't think you smoked, I guess."

"I have other desires that might border on disorder."

"A Dexter Gordon tune."

Her eyes sparkled and she laughed. I saw her perfect white teeth and pink tongue. "Not bad."

"For a white boy."

"For any boy," she said with a sureness that narrowed the distance between us, and made me, for some reason, feel proud and different.

Her words had a southern melody that had an ease to them that I was unaccustomed in hearing. My language, and the language of my parents and friends, had a kind of urgency and harshness that put you on notice, announced itself. The rhythm that you gave sentences and whole paragraphs were informed by a love of music and words. Otherwise, you just spoke as if melody had never been invented.

I turned around and rested my back on the railing. The city still beckoned and I had the chance to steal glances at her, although I think she knew. Her pale lemon dress looked worn but spotless, ironed creases almost smelled of steam, accentuated a thin, but curvaceous, body. She leaned into the guardrails, making me jealous that they touched her breasts, bending her knee, which shortened her dress, giving me a chance to see her leg and shapely light brown calf, ankle and heel, beige and flesh-toned, coming halfway out of her sandal.

It took weeks of convincing to get her here. She tried to avoid me at home, worked upstairs when I was downstairs, adamantly shook her head from side to side, turned her back when I tried to talk to her, but I could tell she didn't mean it, that she was struggling with something, too. Not the same fever I was, but fever nonetheless. Finally, she relented. On the night of her next day off, I met her at the train station in Coney Island and from there we rode to Brooklyn Heights.

I turned to her and lightly touched the butterfly on her cheek. Her skin was so soft I held my breath.

"You better not do that," she said.

"And why is that?"

"You know why; just better not. Leave the night the way it is and we both be better off."

"I don't think so. There's a reason why we're both here."

"Reason don't have nothin to do with it."

Usually I was so good with words, with argument, I could bend and stretch, or contract and forge, whatever was said or meant to my own means and ends, especially with women. But not this time. This time I could only look at her, shake my head, and smile. "Well, all right, if we know that we can be smart about it."

"When was the last time that that place underneath your belly had anything that could at all be called 'smart' or reasonable, had led you anywhere 'cept into trouble?" She pushed herself away from the railing and looked directly at me. It wasn't a toe tapping confrontation but an invitation to talk, to explore this, which made me more uncomfortable.

"You're pretty smart, you know that?" I said in an effort to change the course of this conversation and wait for a better, more opportune time to pursue irrationality.

"For a nigger maid, you mean?"

That stopped me cold. It caught me off guard and bit and hurt in a place I never knew I had. "Why did you have to go there?" I said in a voice that also sounded odd to my own ears.

"Because somebody had to; we woulda been there sooner or later."

I let out a sigh and my eyes must have registered a kind of pain and confusion that I was unaccustomed in feeling because I saw her face soften. "All right, Angela, maybe this was a mistake. Where can I drop you?"

"Is that it? Don't you have no thoughts or feelings about what was said?"

"Yeah, sure, I got plenty thoughts and feelings but what the hell difference would they make? You seem to be pretty well set in what you believe, so what's the use?"

"You ever been with a colored girl before, Max?" she said in a voice that sounded like a Chinese box of questions.

"No," I said, reaching for my cigarettes.

"Don't have a cigarette just yet, would you?" I pulled my hand back from my breast pocket. "I never been with a white guy. You may not think nothin' of that, but I know different. And if you don't think nothin' of that I want to know why—but I don't think you think nothin' 'bout that. I know your folk and I know they think somethin' 'bout that."

"I'm not my folks."

"We all have a little of our folks in us. But I'm not sayin' you like them but I want to know more. I grew up down south; even standin' talkin' with a white boy down there is enough to get both of us in big trouble. And dependin' where down south that would say what part of you be cut or sometimes cut off. You might think I'm kiddin', but I don't joke 'bout that," she said, and stopped short, leaving the breath of fear hanging in the air above us. I waited for eternity to pass, not knowing what to say and hoping she did. I turned from her and looked out at New York's harbor. I took a cigarette out of my pocket, lit it, and inhaled, breaking the network of tension that gripped my throat and chest. This time she said nothing to stop me and I wanted her to. Then, when I'd all but given up on anything happening between us, I felt, like magic, her hand finding the crook of my arm and resting there. Her body seemed heated as it leaned into mine.

"I wanna be with you, too," she nearly whispered, "and that danger maybe's a part of it, but if it is, it's the less part," and here again she stopped. It's funny how everything in the whole world comes down to the next word, the next sentence. "I liked the way you looked at me that first day and how funny you are and I knew you musta had the biggest hard-on in the world to be stayin' in that icebox the way you did. And I like how we talk about things that are serious and how we talk about things that ain't so serious and most of all I like how we just talk. But let me tell you somethin', Max, I'm the type of person who believes what I'm hearin' from those I give my time to so be careful with your words to me. You might not know what you're doing here and for you that's all right 'cause you live here, but what scares me, more than scares me, scares the livin' daylights out of me, is that maybe I don't know why I'm here and that's not all right." Again she stopped and when she spoke next it seemed she'd made some kind of peace with something. "But I wanna be here much more than I don't, and that will have to do for right now."

In that moment I wanted to know myself as well as she did, but knew I didn't.

***

When I got back to the office, there were two school security guards, both women, around Lourdes' desk. From the back, they looked like Laurel and Hardy. Hardy I'd already seen. I was curious, so I walked up to see what it was about. The guards' heads were peering into a cosmetic catalogue with Lourdes extolling the virtues of each product while, with her hand, taking down order numbers and names.

"The candles are so nice in the bathroom. They smell so delicious, mmm. You takin a bath and the lights are off and just the light from the candle and the way it smells you can really just relax, man, let everything go," Lourdes said.

"Ooo," the one who reminded me of Hardy intoned, "I can just feel my man getting' up behind me and shit and... mmm, just mmm, you know what I'm talkin 'bout?" she said and laughed.

Laurel nodded her head up and down trying to show that she knew what she was talking about, but I got the feeling she clearly didn't. They both wore a semblance of the blue uniform worn by New York's Police Department, but theirs were old, the blue serge pants shiny around the ass from use and, in the case of Hardy, so tight that her flesh seemed to be looking for escape routes. They had the cop's belt minus the nightstick and gun.

Lourdes saw me and smiled. "Ladies," she said, "this here is my new partner, Heller. Heller this is Ms. Greene and Ms. Thomas."

"Hi, how'reya doin'?"

"Fine, just fine," they both said.

Hardy had a not unpleasant moon face with glasses that she kept pushing up on her nose every few seconds. Laurel, when she spoke, had a mouth of teeth that looked like a picket fence gone haywire. Most of the time she kept her index fingers resting between her nose and upper lip. Her eyes looked gentle and moist and, most of all, tired, not tired with anything like defeat, but tired with just doing, and doing for a very long time.

I was walking over to my desk when I heard, "Jasmine's nice but I love, just love, Sandalwood. That smell just gets to me, man," Lourdes said.

"Where are the kids?" I yelled across the divide.

"Program changes," Lourdes yelled back. "The fun starts Monday. I got a lot of kids for you, don't worry. Better rest up."

The truth was that I had no intention of worrying about these kids. I had no illusions about that. I'd come back for other reasons.

Everything I had on my resume was fabricated, except my name and social security number. The rest, even my address and phone number, was a lie. Should they have checked with the first of three references they would have found that not only was he not working there any longer but had been dead for the last twenty years. My second reference, while still alive, was doing a stretch of fifteen to twenty-five in Angola Prison, Louisiana, for his second arrest for armed bank robbery. The third, and last reference, Quentin T. Rush, was a name completely made up, as was his nonprofit, The Rainbow Steps, an inner-city rehabilitation center for adolescents in New Orleans. I had banked on two things on the part of my future employers: the desire for experienced white people who were willing to work for practically nothing, and the laxity of checking references that exists on all levels. I had been back for a few weeks at the beginning of July and saw the offering in the Times. Quickly, I made up a resume and cover letter and sent it away. When they called me in less than a week's time, I thought I had the gig. First though, I had to run the gauntlet of the double-barreled interview.

"Where can I find Ms. Carver?" I asked Ms. Carver when I stepped out of the elevator and saw a stern-faced woman standing in front of me.

"She's in there," she said pointing but not looking directly at me or the direction she was pointing in. Instinctively, I turned around to see if someone in the elevator had done either something wrong or something to raise her ire. But there was no one there, just she staring into the emptiness.

Quickly, I walked into the room in which I had been two days earlier, interviewing with whom I'd initially thought was going to be my supervisor, Williams. The school was one of the oldest public high schools in Manhattan and had no centralized air- conditioning, consequently on this, one of a string of high temperature and higher humidity days, the air, which had no alternative, hung like a heated horse blanket around the shoulders of all who had no choice but to be there. But there wasn't a soul in the room, which gave me pause. I looked around. No one. I ducked my head back out into the hall. Empty. I heard a toilet flushing somewhere outside of the room I was in, yet you could hear it as if the stall was only a few feet away. A few seconds later the same woman who had been in front of the elevator came into the room, stepped up onto an elevated platform and went to a desk in the corner where she sat, her back cushioned by a foam rubber support at a desk. Hers was the only desk on this level. She said nothing but motioned me to join her in a chair by her desk. This is going to be fun, I thought, as I negotiated the platform and sat beside her.

"Max Heller," I said extending my arm.

"Ms. Carver," she replied, as she shook my hand without looking at me, "now if only I could find where I put your resume." I watched for the next five minutes as she turned over, moved, made way for, shifted and sorted every paper on her desk without finding mine. "That's very strange," she finally said, "I had it a minute ago."

I'd brought one with me, if only to familiarize myself with it on the way over, and opened up my briefcase, "Here you go," I said, and handed it to her.

"Thank you," she said, put on her reading glasses, and began to rapidly scan the paper. "Yes, yes, of course." She began to hand it back.

"That's all right, you can keep it if you like."

"No thank you. I know your resume is here somewhere and I'm going to turn this office over until I find it. Maybe Williams took it back for some reason without telling me. He's always doing something like that and it just drives me crazy. How I ever gave him the job is beyond me," she said with the kind of chuckle that if it meant to show a light, off-handed humor failed miserably. She removed her glasses, brushed away some imaginary hair that she thought had fallen in front of her face, and smiled at me. "And what position did Williams interview you for?"

"I didn't know there was more than one position available."

"You see, that's just like him," she said, keeping her smile in place.

"We talked about how best to help kids who have alcohol and drug problems and other issues that lead to or are a result of substance abuse. I'm pretty good working individually with kids and I'm very good running groups. We talked a little about that—

doing 'intervention' I think he called it—and how to break down resistance, denial, and other things and may be considered different benchmarks other than strict abstinence to measure our success by."

"There is no other way, and that is how we measure our success," she said, leaving no room for a differing opinion, let alone discussion.

"Well, we were just having a conversation," I weakly said, hating myself in that moment for not just standing up and walking out the door. I was also pretty sure that someone close to her had died from alcohol or drugs, leaving ambiguity to run a distant second.

"Having a conversation is fine; I just think there are better things to talk about," she said, tapping her glasses against her lower teeth. "I think that what I'll do is assign you to Prevention. You'd go into classes and make scripted presentations about substance abuse and later AIDS and other STD's and help in school-wide projects on health-related issues. What do you think about that?"

I didn't think much but I didn't say that, nor did I mention what mostly every text on substance abuse had been saying for well over a decade: classroom presentations, in grades above elementary school, only serve to whet the appetite and do little, if anything, in preventing a person from trying and becoming a drunk or drug addict. "Sure, sounds great," I said, "can't wait to begin."

"Training starts the last week of August."

"Terrific, see you then, and thanks." I got up, stepped off the platform and left. I thought that whatever eggs this woman had had in her body were now dust. Even though I had come from the same height as she, I still had the direct impression of being pissed on.

That Friday, the last day of my training week, Carver called me into her office and asked if I'd like to do something called CIT, short for Counselors in Training. She explained that it was a program that taught students how to be counselors to their fellow students. Sorry for the short notice, she explained, but that was life at the good old Board of Education. Williams, who was sitting nearby, grinned and eagerly nodded his head. He reminded me of a big black lap dog. Anything sounded better than being tethered to a classroom five days a week. I nodded affirmatively and she gave me a two hundred page training manual with the name of the person who'd done it before me and was now at another school. "Good luck," she said, making it sound more like a warning than a wish.

I remembered those touching and portentous meetings as I clocked out and made my way back to the same bench on the Brooklyn Bridge. I brought another coffee with me but try as I might I couldn't recreate the early afternoon's reverie. It was like trying to go back to sleep on the same spot of the pillow, hoping you'd soak up what was left of a really good dream, but it wasn't happening. For some reason I didn't want to go back to my apartment just yet, and decided to follow Whitman's children into Brooklyn.

If you were inclined to go straight ahead you'd run into Brooklyn Heights, a quaint and beautiful little patch of calm, a feel and charm very much like the quieter sections of Greenwich Village. Here, the streets had names like Cranberry, Pineapple, and Pierrepont; very pretty and very English. The second, and main, exit curved to the right and led to a wide, boring and multilane street that ran past the courthouses that the area is most noted for. I was shown the first exit by my friend, Peter, a fellow diabetic and Porsche enthusiast, who, late one night—or early one morning—downshifted and took that turn at forty, the car remaining flat, with hardly a squeal of tires. I felt the kind of tingle that was reserved for sexual expectations; a year and five thousand dollars later I had a 1967 Porsche of my own, a Forest Green 911, 5-speed smooth as butter gearbox, with six finicky Webber carburetors, wood steering wheel and AM/FM Blaupunkt radio and saddle leather seats. There was not one time that I owned that car that when I got into it, it didn't give me a thrill, even when I went a few blocks to buy a paper.

My father, as did my brother, Brother Don, both Cadillac men, made fun of me for wanting the car in the first place. Don, a few years younger than me, actually got my father to buy him a car before he bought me one. It made sense and didn't bother me. He'd dropped out of college after a semester and joined my father working in his business while I had gravitated toward the written word and, not because I loved the academic life but didn't at that time know what the hell else to do. My dad was making so much loot from so many different sources that he was happy to shell out five grand, cash, to buy me my "foreign headache." But after I had it for about six months, and, little by little, begun to figure the car out, its quirks and eccentricities, and took them for a ride, they stopped smiling and began to have an appreciation for what a Porsche was able to do: perform with skill and agility. My brother, years later, though he'd never admit this, bought BMW's for himself, unable to follow that closely where I had already been.

The bridge's walkway led to a flight of concrete steps that left you across the street from the park. I turned right and proceeded into Brooklyn Heights, not stopping until I was on the promenade looking at lower Manhattan, where I'd left work nearly an hour before. I thought that what I was doing, by going back into Brooklyn, was merely goosing my seat of memories. That once I'd sufficiently aroused whatever hot buttons still existed, I could suck on that tit until the early evening.

I was wrong. By the time the sun had turned into a pre-Indian summer brilliance before its fade, I was in a miserably foul mood. No amount of coaxing, sitting, standing, remembering—or trying to remember—conversations or experiences with those living, dead, or presumed dead amounted to anything worth a damn. Even anger, or melancholy, in the right doses, is far preferable to a locked and impenetrable neutrality. The beginnings of shadows widened over the river darkening swatches of water and the buildings that stood facing me. Make a move, I said to myself, but stood where I was. C'mon, Max, time to do something, can't stay here all night, get on with it. With what? It. What it? It, and I'm not going to repeat myself again. All right, you think I know somethin' more than what I know but I know I don't know it. The other half of this dialectic was true to its word and didn't offer itself up for any further investigation. Suddenly, I felt this gnawing hunger that seemed like it was there for days. Disgusted, I turned from the beginnings of evening lights being lit on the other side and tried to concentrate on dinner but felt frustrated over not being able to eat a good memory or two.

Anna was sitting on the end stool of the Mei Lai Wah Tea and Coffee Shop talking to one of her elder countermen. The walk back over the bridge induced a real hunger in me that lay adjacent to, and, in a way, lessened, the other pain that was also about food but food of a different sort. Anna looked as natural in jeans and a sweater as she did in what she wore tonight, a red silk, open-throated shirt and a black skirt.

"Do we have a date tonight?" I asked.

"Max," she said, without turning around. She had an ageless beauty to her that, even twenty years ago, astounded me. "If you would have given me more notice I would have lied to Charles and we'd be off and running."

I sat down on the stool next to her and took in her fragrance and, after turning to me, her face. A lustrous pearl necklace and matching earrings were, beside her wedding band, the only pieces of jewelry that she wore. "'Running' is the operative word here," I said, "Charles, if I remember correctly was never a man to be trifled with. Where are you off to, anyway?"

"Gambling. He play poker and me roulette; play for hours, but if Charles feel good sometimes can go days."

"Where?"

"Private club; not far."

"Say no more." But I wanted more. I loved action—from a penny and two poker with friends to more expensive fare at many different types of games. "Good luck tonight. Is your beef chow fun still as good as ever?"

"Not really, what is? Even me... but I give you some anyway. Don't like, don't pay."

"Sounds fair to me," I said and laughed. She swung off the stool, put her arm through mine, pulling me off my stool and led me to a booth in the back. I took out my equipment and quickly took my blood sugar. It was nearly perfect, 130, which I attributed to the exercise I had by walking the bridge. I prepared a shot of regular insulin for the food I was going to eat and a lighter dose of UltraLente, a longer acting insulin that covered my metabolic processes. I then, deftly, opened my pants, pulled up my shirt, and injected myself in the abdomen. I stuffed the shirt back in, closed my pants, and zipped. I folded my hands, looked at them, and waited.

***

I was having a French Chicory coffee and an order of beignets at The Cafe Du Monde in The Quarter, I'd heard his voice. The humidity in the air always made the joints in my fingers throb, but now, it seemed, my knuckles were threatening to break through my skin. I rubbed each hand in turn, trying to soothe and warm them, hoping I'd not have to take the Percocets I had in my pocket. Slowly, I got up, left a dollar on the table, and went deeper in the cafe, until I was sure I could turn without anyone from that table noticing me. Certain I was far enough from where they were, I turned left, and made my way toward the cash register and Ernie.

"Hello, Max," Ernie said, "how's your cock?"

"Make like we're talkin', Ernie."

Ernie and I had become friends years ago through an introduction by Dolores, a waitress from Masparo's, a saloon in The Quarter, whom I met when I first got down there. Dolores was Ernie's most trusted friend and because of her I was allowed in. His father's friend's uncle had known the owner of the Cafe for many years so when Ernie, who had the blood of Creoles and Cajuns flowing through his veins, had come back from Vietnam with a stump and hook for a left hand and nothing below the knee of his right leg got him a job. He was a tunnel rat in Nam and had crawled into one, killing two enemy soldiers, but during the fighting he'd received a pretty bad cut over his right eye and, with blood flowing profusely from the wound, tried to crawl back. He misjudged both distance and direction and instead of adhering to a straight line propped himself against one of the tunnel's walls where the first blast went off, taking his leg. Instinctively, he reached for the leg that wasn't there, misjudged that, which cost him his hand in the second explosion. He was given, when he rehabbed and returned stateside, a tall stool, a few cushions, a way to go, and a morphine habit. He eventually replaced the morphine with a V.A. Dilaudid doc, and as his disgust rose, he cashed in the ease of free dope with the grind of a heroin habit. Finally, with Dolores' help, he modified it somewhat. But each time he'd go down into that tunnel he'd pick through parts of himself and when the tunnel creatures came calling at no telling what hour of the day or night, he'd still flirt with the dragon.

Over Ernie's right ear I saw my brother's profile; his right arm was draped over the shoulder of a man sitting next to him. There were two other men at the table all engaged in conversation. Each reminded me of a different strain of the same disease. They all looked like Brooklyn Saturday Night Fever: Italian—even if some were Jewish— open-throated shirts with broad collars, wide-lapel sport jackets, pinkie rings on manicured fingers, a gold chain, prominent noses, curly hair and greased. The guy next to Brother Don said something and Don threw his head back and laughed. Only it wasn't a real laugh, even though his mouth was opened and he guffawed and then coughed. But, of course, you had to grow up with someone to really know what was real and what wasn't. Even then, you could be fooled depending on how much you really saw, how much you really wanted to see, and how much you wanted to be fooled. He took his arm off his companion's shoulder and motioned to the waiter to come over with the ease and assuredness of those who believe they possess power.

Ernie twisted his head and looked in the direction I was. "Dat de mudderfucker?"

I nodded and tried to appear calm, but the more I looked at him the less in control I was becoming. I wanted to grab the knife that Ernie carried with him to shuck oysters and run it 'round his throat. "What's in town, Ernie?"

"I know he ain't no dentist, and I know he not with The Mt. Carmelite Sisters of Mercy, so that only leave one ting: tits and ass convention."

"Where they?"

"Like horse shit, all over. But mostly at The Royale, I tink."

I watched as the waiter produced a check and Brother Don grabbed it, reached in his pocket, produced a roll of bills, peeled off some, and gave them to him. Don motioned to him with a wave of the back of his hand, indicating that the money, beside from paying the tab, was all his. The waiter nodded his head vigorously and left. A horse and buggy passed the cafe, and a steaming pile of manure was deposited outside the gates that led to the park across the street. Almost simultaneously, they got up from the table and made their way out of the cafe and into The Quarter. I waited until they were nearly a half a block away and, not knowing what the hell I was doing, or going to do, followed them. "Ernie," I said, before I left, "I'll call you and tell Dolores I'll call her, too." And with that, legs unsteady, sweat breaking out in parts I never knew existed, I went into The Quarter after him.

CHAPTER V

She was the sweetest tasting woman I'd ever gone down on, and the wettest. Her thighs and my face looked like they were slathered in butter after we made love. Angela's clitoris, engorged and red, revealed itself for what it was: a second, albeit smaller, beating heart. "Max, I love to feel you runnin' down my leg. I touch myself under my dress, and it's really you I'm touchin', all warm and sticky like."

"Mmm," was all I could say.

We were lying around Frankie's fifth floor walkup in the East Village listening to the jazz albums that were fast becoming part of our lives together. We would come here to steal time. The taboo, in all its permutations, added more heat to an already sizzling skillet.

There was no stopping it, not that either one of us really wanted to. It was just too hot, too deep, too frightening. It possessed that ineffable magic that draws some people to music and others to art and, like love, its rhythmic sister, is also, thankfully, wordless. It defied and punished silence.

"You can't keep doin' this," I said to her one day, in the heat of August, the smell of sex hovered in the air, our bodies dripping with perspiration lying next to each other in my bedroom.

"Do what? Fuckin' you, you mean?" she said and smiled.

"Nah, I'm serious, you can't. I'm getting real uncomfortable with this." In truth, I never felt more comfortable in my life. I held her around her waist, my cock pressed against her ass, my lips on the nape of her neck, licking her salt, her moisture, inhaling her fragrances, and the sweetness of her skin. I slid my hand down her stomach and felt the puddle inside her navel and, with my forefinger, splashed around inside there, flicking her sweat onto her belly.

We'd grown, over the weeks, reckless in our consumption of each other, believing, as all new lovers do, that need and desire are intertwined and unalterable. At first, I'd meet her somewhere away from my home and we'd go to an old dowager of a hotel, The St. George, in Brooklyn Heights or, when we wanted to experience more of a "scene" we'd go into Manhattan and stay at the Broadway Central, where, next door was the famous artists' bar, St. Adrian's. There, with a bottle of wine or a small bag of reefer—sometimes both—we'd wile away afternoons or evenings as an old air- conditioner coughed and sputtered and leaked water onto a sad and faded carpet. Sometimes, having little money or plenty of time, I'd drive us to places familiar and foreign, on roads that twisted and turned, letting the Porsche and the music take us on journeys unsuspected. Then, depending on our mood, or our fever, I'd look for opportunity, a sequestered sexual oasis where we'd drink from each other. Occasionally, when it rained, and where we were became our only option, I'd turn off the engine, lower one of the seats to its almost horizontal position, and both of us being tall, figure out how best to do this, fumbling and laughing with buttons and zippers and legs and contortions to steam up the windows and sex up the car.

Those slow, languorous afternoons and evenings fucked with and distorted time. We were lazy yet pressed, drowsy but acutely (substitute "painfully") aware of the march of minutes. Each of us, alone with our needs, too conscious of seeming otherwise, sheltering ourselves from the obvious. This could not go on for too much longer without consequences, but like gamblers on a streak, the thought of losing a bet always lurking, more than just a possibility, as sure a bet as there was, was as remote a reality as discovering a cure for passion.

"You always wanted to be colored?" Angela asked.

"I never thought Jews were really white."

"That ain't what I asked you."

That Friday night I felt like driving so took the Henry Hutchinson Parkway where the curves and turns made me and the Porsche work a little bit more than the pedantic paving of most roads and highways.

"Light me a cigarette, would ya? I don't know, I gotta think about that. That kinda question jams me a little, makes me, no, well, not 'makes me' but it makes me question the reason why you even asked me that kind of question, makes me... I don't know, why did you ask me that anyway?"

"Easy, baby, easy. I grew up lookin' at whiteness, all over whiteness, in magazines, movies, books, playthings, everything. I be lyin' if I didn't say to you that at times I wondered what it'd be like to be white and be that kind of beautiful..."

"But you are beautiful, more beautiful..."

"Please, baby, this ain't like I want to be white; that ain't what this is about or what the question I asked you is about; I'm just so crazy about you and I'm tryin' to find out why that is. I know a little, but I gotta know more."

"My personality and good looks."

"They're good, but it ain't just them that's really doin' it for me."

It felt like I took my first breath in over a minute and tried to exhale the tension in my body. The car was cruising at seventy in fifth on the Interstate leading up to Albany and, although we weren't planning to go nearly that far, I just let it proceed. The feel of the road came up through the chassis and seats. Angela wore a white dress that was so thin I could feel the rhythms of the Porsche and the heat coming from her thigh when I rested my hand there. Usually that would have been enough to soothe me, but not tonight.

***

"It's a nigger sport," my father said. We were riding home from the old Madison Square Garden on 48th Street where, sitting first row, I watched, mesmerized by a young Emile Griffith and his dark purple black V-shaped body beating Dick Tiger whose blood flew into our row from the ring, his mouthpiece landing next to me, crowds screaming, me afraid not to look and looking and turning my head and looking some more, embarrassed by the measured hatred they had of each other yet enchanted with the terrible and vicious beauty of it, not knowing why I heated and flushed. "Hungry people go into it, have to go into it, make it what it is, but only the very hungry make a living at it and only cannibals become champions. Hard to find a good white fighter these days, they have too much store bought food to eat," he concluded. In his business he cursed "those black bastards," going home, but kissed them with, "you're my man," in the morning; lent them money, "don't worry about nothin'; you can always come to me," but in the car, "A hundred dollars in their pocket and they're nigger rich but they'll never save a fuckin' cent; they spend money like drunken sailors," and told his bookkeeper to make sure and take it from their pay, thought of them as children. "They believe the last person they talked to," but needed them to do for him what he was unwilling or incapable of doing for himself and, when some who had desperation carved into their bodies fell pray to immediacy, had them beat up for transgressions that were embellished by his need for justification. "It's good," he said, "sets a fuckin' example for the rest of the help." They feared and loved him, I thought; I knew I did.

***

I felt so ugly I wanted to slam on the brakes and stop and beg her forgiveness, for what exactly, I didn't know, only had an inkling of, could only guess at, which was worse. What I did know, knew with certainty, was that I was a sham, a fake, a fraud. But I couldn't say a word. The road, usually a balm helping to keep my inner stitches from opening, was not doing its job.

"Max, you're hurting me," Angela said, her voice catapulting me back; her words frightening me.

"Sorry." I took my hand from the inside of her thigh and nervously fingered the gearshift's shaft and rested my hand on its knob. "I brought some smoke with me; you wanna get high?"

"No, not now, and you don't neither."

"Get high, pull off the highway, find a little out of the way place..."

"Max, I know more about your hands on my body, the way your cock curves inside me, how those ridges feel in my mouth and pussy, the way you explode inside me, than I do about the stuff you get all silent about, the stuff that gets underneath your skin and mine, too. I know you like to fuck me, Max, but I don't think you wanna know me very well, not really."

"That's bullshit, Angela. I'm gonna get high. You don't have to if you don't want to, but I'm going to."

"You get high, Max, you can just drop me off somewhere near a town and I'll find my own way back."

"You're not serious?"

"You better believe I'm serious. I'm serious about you, about me, about us, so you better believe I'm serious 'bout this, too. See if I'm not."

I felt myself turning red, an anger that had always lain just below the surface started to surface. My neck stiffened, my eyes locked on the darkness ahead. The car's beams caught, ate, and digested the white line as I was only able to do one thing, mark time. When could I turn around and go back? I plotted. I don't think I want to do this; no, that's bullshit, I can do anything; I don't want to do this. Shit, who the Hell does she think she is telling me what I can or can't do? Thinks she's cute, maybe she thinks her cunt can get me to do anything? "I'm gonna have a cigarette, how's that? Is that all right with you?"

"Damn, Max, I don't know what's goin' on, but I know it's some deep shit. What nerve did I hit? What hurts?"

"Nothin' hurts." I pulled out a pack of Lucky Strikes from my breast pocket, shook one free, and tried to light it. Angela reached over to help, but I ignored her hand and pushed in the car's lighter, which, as she knew, I never liked doing.

"Where's all this comin' from? If we don't find some kinda way to talk bout this we won't get too much further—maybe that's what you want?"

I pulled harder on the cigarette and wondered when this was going to be over.

"You know being your parents' maid has a lot of advantages. They don't care what kind of things they say around me because I'm really invisible, don't really count, can't really do nothin'—except clean and cook a little, take out the garbage, wash, do laundry—so they say things embarrassing, say things hurtful—to each other and about anyone else that happens to be in their sights—and look like no kinda love passes between them. Maybe it once did, but not anymore. Anyway, both of 'em call me, 'schvartza' and think I don't know what it means, (at least your mom says it in a whisper; at least she seems like she could be upset), and your father talks about you bein' just like a 'schvartza' the way you're so lazy and spend money and 'give me that jive bullshit like the rest of the niggers that work for me' and your mom, well, your mom she says leave him alone that you have this other gift this need that needs explorin' and time to grow and he says the only gift was him being born before you and the only thing that's growin' is the hair on your ass and I'm standin' there thinkin' 'bout what you're thinkin' about sleepin' with a house nigger and what, if anything, is gonna happen between us besides these little rendezvous' that heats up the sex but dampens all the other shit. Eventually, the fires have to cool and then, if you don't talk, if you don't know and dig each other, you just can't make another meal out of the leftovers. I know. I seen it happen to my own folks and most every other poor ass fuckin' union I seen as a kid growin' up. And I ask myself and keep askin' myself, why am I with you, why do I think I love you, why, if you're the same apple under the same tree, no matter that tree be black or white, am I riskin life and limb to do, what I think in a little while, I won't be able to help from doin'?"

I looked over at her for the first time since I'd crawled into my hard and hateful shell and saw her cheeks wet from tears, her chest rising and falling as she struggled to bring the kind of air into her lungs that would allow her to breathe without hurting. And I felt myself getting hard. I couldn't stop my cock from enlarging and pushing against my dungarees. Then, gasping for air, her hands gripping her arms, she began rocking back and forth toward the windshield, unable to staunch her tears or the pain that clamped around her heart. Suddenly, she began pounding the dashboard with hard, vicious fists. Quickly, I moved into the right lane and, once sure that no cars were behind me, pulled over on the shoulder of the highway where I turned the car off with the emergency flashers turned on. I tried to put my arm around her, but she pushed it off and when I tried again she began hitting me in my arms, my chest, anywhere she could get to. "Angela, Angela," I said, "please, Angela; it's all right, it's all right, Angela," but it wasn't all right and I didn't know, in that instant, if it would ever be all right.

Headlights sped by making us appear like shadows. I looked over at her, more afraid to talk or touch than I was to stay quiet and hope that whatever it was that possessed her would leave of its own volition and allow me the chance to figure out what to do or say that might calm the rage inside her.

I watched as her pounding turned into thumps that slowed with the tempo of her thoughts until, finally, she held onto the dashboard with both hands and, with her arms outstretched, stared into blackness. Her forehead had tiny beads of perspiration that looked, in the moving headlights, like diamonds studding a darkened landscape. Although it was a warm night, spasms of involuntary shivers arched her back and moved her, ever so slightly, up and off her seat. "You ain't never seen nothin' like that, have you?" she whispered.

"No, I haven't," I said in a voice that was nearly a whisper as well.

"Don't leave me."

"I won't."

"You will, eventually, but promise, not tonight."

"I'm not going to leave you tonight or any other night," I said, but something tightened in my stomach when I said it. I was desperately trying to get from one point to the next with the least amount of difficulty.

"Don't lie, Max, it ain't you. You're thinkin' right now, right this very minute, how do I get rid of this mad woman. But if you do that, if you don't bother to take the time to see what really drew you to me in the first place, if you don't check yourself out, if you run, you're gonna run so fast you blow by the money.

"Been with a lot of men, Max, been with them since thirteen; those are the people I come from; never liked, much less loved, any of 'em. Not one. Not ever. Sure, some of 'em taught me about life but then a toad can teach a young girl about life. Mostly, they taught me about cruelty and the way, maybe only their way, of the world. Had to learn it, too. Learned it 'til I was old enough to get away and see shit for myself. Can tell, too, you been with a lot of girls. Can tell 'cause you couldn't eat pussy the way you do unless you were; damn, you eat pussy better than a woman. I wonder, though, about what you learned from these little conquests that you had; I wonder what anybody can learn unless they leave home. I wonder 'bout that and wonder if you wonder 'bout it, too..."

"Sometimes. But wait a minute. Hold on. What do you mean, 'better than a woman'? How would you know?"

Angela laughed. "No, baby, I ain't' laughin at you, but men they're funny. Real funny. Listen, I had a few little flings after I got sick to death of men—or scared to death of them—but I found soon enough that love is just love, bein' together with someone is just bein' together with someone. Sure you like to believe after you've been fucked over for so long by things with dicks that it got to be better with one of your own. In no time at all you find that that's bullshit, too. Don't matter none. If it ain't right, it ain't right. Besides, I like something real, and something hard, inside me.

"Anyway, like I was gonna say, you can tell a lot, you know, about how a man treats you after he's had you and after you had me, Max, you wanted me even more and pleased me even when you didn't have to do that no more neither. But it's really how you talked to me and touched me, Max. How soft and gentle you are. How you made me feel."

"I want to please you."

"I know you do but you're selfish, too. How could you not be? Your parents spoiled you rotten. I ain't sayin' that in a bad way; it's simply the truth."

Who really is this woman? I began asking myself. Nobody had ever told me that kind of stuff. Confronted with my masked-over ugliness also held a promise of beauty. I forced myself to turn away from my grandest conceits and look at Angela with newfound eyes.

"But you don't haveta stay spoiled," she continued, oblivious to my thoughts, which had been tossed up in the air like pickup sticks, "'cause if you do you'll be spoilin' it not only for someone else but yourself as well. Spoiled is spoiled—nobody enjoys a bite outta that food."

"Food, Angela, it's the fuckin' bane of my whole fuckin' existence," I said, disgust dripping out from, and down, my throat.

"I know that, I said it purposely."

"Can we drive? Is it O.K. to move a little? I'm gettin'..."

"Cornered?"

"Well, yeah, a little."

"But, baby, that's not what I'm tryin' to do; I'm really tryin' to free you."

I secretly knew that but must have looked at her with this incredulity on my face.

"You're an arrogant motherfucker, too!" she said and laughed. "You really think that you're freein' me, you're doin me somekinda favor by bein' with me, to show me the light, the way, the graciousness of your profound insights into the human condition? Max, baby, get a fuckin' grip."

Maybe it was what she said or the way she said it or maybe it was the day or the time or the hour or how the light from the oncoming cars caught her eyes dancing and that expression on her face that trumped my deepest sense of self-importance and righteousness, leaving the absurdities to do their own kind of tango in my head that brought laughter up from my belly into my mouth and out my ears and eyes and teeth and nose. We laughed so hard that tears welled in our eyes. It was laughter that fed off of each other's laugh and expression, producing more laughter. Finally, it began to subside, but before I started the car we leaned into each other and kissed so softly that her lips, brushing against mine, was all that was necessary to charge my circuitry and make me, thankfully, hard.

Luckily, it was Friday and Angela had packed an overnight bag to enjoy the weekend with her relatives. I told my folks that I was spending the weekend with Frankie and some big shot defrocked psychiatrist relative of his who had a home in the Hamptons. I knew that as soon as I said something like that to my folks they'd not know what else to say and would leave me alone. I turned the ignition key and the engine roared to life. I checked my rearview and side mirrors, put it in first, and eased back onto the highway. A few minutes passed in silence but Angela's hand rested on the inside of my thigh making me feel more secure than I had ever with another person. A sign came up for Exit 17, The Catskill region. Having gone to school for a short period of time in South Fallsburg, outside of Monticello, and being taken there by my folks since I was a little kid, I knew the area well. "How about spending a night in a real hotel?"

"Really?"

"Yeah, really."

"Do we have enough money for that?"

"Yeah, fuck it; I think I've got enough bread to get us through—at least a night—

the rest we'll make up as we go."

"I got some money, too. Hit it, baby."

I felt this rush of adrenaline as I downshifted from fourth, red lined it to seven thousand and then, having it up to a buck ten, put it in fifth and cruised at a respectable eighty-five. Angela slid her hand from my thigh and cupped my cock and balls, caressing them as only she knew how to do. I arched my back and moved into her motion. "Don't you dare come, you sonofabitch. I want it all inside me when you bed me down."

"Whoa," was the only thing I could manage to get out.

Once we were on the highway though, leading us upstate and the momentary rush of fever from the prospect of our new adventure leveled off, the talk between us turned back to where we'd left off. This time, I didn't find myself pressed into a hollow darkness inside myself and Angela, sensing I had relinquished—or wanted to relinquish—that senseless inviolable shell that tries to protect all vulnerable creatures, was able to touch those secretive parts of herself as well. I felt on the precipice of some sort of terrible honesty and thought of pulling my foot back a half dozen times before my hunger for purging myself, so strong most of my life and which had never achieved even a marginal release with friends, much less family, fought, struggled, climbed, and finally hurled itself from my guts and out through my mouth.

It began innocently enough. I explained the circumstances that found me going to some out-of-the-way community college after graduating from high school. I tried to make it sound like an exercise in romance, how I never fit in at high school, cut classes, played hooky, enjoyed the company of other miscreants in the pool rooms and bowling alleys in and around my neighborhood but then, after leaving high school, and not knowing what to do with my life, drifted upstate to the first and only school that accepted me to begin finding myself but thinking and hoping this would just forestall finding anything except other vehicles that would make it harder to find anything, except the easiest ways to, if not disappear, at least get lost. I played the rogue, the ne'er-do-well, the don't-give-a-fuck kid, that belied the nearly complete split I achieved with my body—

which I abhorred—and mind—which I lived in, nurtured, and protected at all costs. The diabetes had taken care of that. If my father was hard and scary before, at least we played some ball with each other, talked occasionally, and sometimes had a laugh, usually at my mother's expense. Now, while not being entirely remote, his distance had a chill to it and, at the beginning of my diabetes, it was he who gave me my insulin shot in the morning, which he did before going to his business. I'd bring the syringe into the bathroom, which had a mirror running along an entire wall, and he'd awkwardly grip the needle and jab it into my arm. I saw on his face this look of disgust and embarrassment, which has never left me. Conversely, my mom, well, she became a Jewish hawk, swooping in on my disease each and every time she saw me. Her fear, commingled with guilt, broke through the semi-permeable membrane that had always separated us, and co-opted my young universe. How fragile I felt was in direct proportion to the havoc I tried to wreak, women I bedded, friends I made and language I molded to inform myself and the world who I was and, more important, wasn't. I knew this for a long time, feared this as I feared the stranger who rode inside me and did things that made me shake my head in wonder that, when it wasn't connected to the epiphanies one gets from writing or discoveries of some sort, was tinged with loathsomeness.

The words tumbled out of me. I couldn't stop them even though at times I tried. I was convinced that I was being heard by those at home, and they'd wait up to crucify me when I returned. Most of my life, I felt I was being watched, judged and, more often than not, condemned. The jolts, promising execution, were really just small enough, to stun and shock, never rendering the mind, which craved inertness, nor the body, desiring sleep, never satisfied the hunger to destroy the ugliness that gnawed at my innards. And once I got there, once I arrived at the forest of motives, I was afraid to look at Angela, for fear she was gone.

"It's ugly in there, isn't it?"

Holy shit, I thought she read my thoughts. A thin sweat broke out on my body. I looked over at her and saw her face glistening with tears.

"How beautiful you are, and how ugly you feel. You don't know that, do you? The beautiful part, I mean. Ugly, I know you know." She wiped her face with the backs of her hands while staring straight out the window. It seemed that as her face dried it grew resolute.

"That shit's so strange, so goddamn awful strange, 'cause I felt ugly, too, baby; I mighta did some ugly things, been in some ugly motherfuckin' places with some very ugly motherfuckers while they touched me, felt my skin, fucked my cunt but couldn't make me come. And I don't feel ugly no more. No. No, I don't. And in case you wonderin' I ain't just sayin' that tryin' to convince me, 'cause I don't haveta convince myself of nothin' no more. Nothin'. And you part of that. Bet you don't know that either. That's why I haveta know. I haveta try to know why. I know you the first one, the first man to make me feel pretty and you the first, and only man, to make me come. You the first, yes, you are."

For the first time, I understood why curse words sounded so harsh to the ear, so pleasing to the tongue and lips, but so hot or coarse, so intense and abrasive to the heart and mind. Like betrayal, they stick.

"I knew young I didn't belong where I was no how. I knew I was supposed to be there; knew I was supposed to be doin' what I was doin', but I couldn't do it, I couldn't, just couldn't. My mama tried to do what mamas do: soothe me, talk to me, say it's all right, gonna pass, I'll learn. But it was shit, she knew it, I knew it.... But I can't lie, neither, not to you but 'specially not to me. When I was thirteen it was cool, exciting, my stomach all in those fishy knots, things slinkin' in an out, doin' stuff that most girls my age can only talk about in whispers; the kind of whispers that tickles the scalp and sometimes, when it gets too close, singes the skin, turnin' those girlish giggles to wide-eyed, get-me-my-mommy fear."

I'd never heard, except for the voices that composed and sung and sprang from where I didn't know but flew into and lodged inside my own head, a voice like Angela's. It was beauty stripped naked. It snarled and bit and dripped a venom that relieved itself of its obligation to poison the host but blinded its enemies instead. Her words I felt like thunderous waves of poetry and the lyrical effusions of the Miles of ballads. Each snaked its way inside my body to alter it, irreversibly. I felt cleansed in a way I never felt before, but the danger, my danger, was in that very art lived suicide, too. The thrill of art was the very mystery surrounding it and, once enamored of sound, it was so very difficult, nearly impossible, for me to inquire the meaning, so caught was I in the sensory musical brilliance. I could not tell that to Angela and besides, didn't want to break the reverie that carried us forward. Whatever happens, happens, I told myself, and knew, in that instant, much more would happen before this ride was over, even though both the experience and meaning was just beyond my grasp. It made the exhilaration of freedom feel awfully heavy.

"'Wide-eyed, get-me-my-mommy fear,' shit, Angela, that was a great line."

"It's no line, Max, I hated those girls. I hated their smugness, their innocence, and most of all I hated their safety."

"No, I know, I know."

"Do you?"

It's so much easier to lie. So much easier to say something and just get on with it for as long as "getting' on with it" means. And I was tired, too much honesty in one day, compressed into one little period, was more than I had to do ever, and it was tiring. "I ain't gonna lie to you, Angela. I'm tempted to lie, believe me I am, but I'm not gonna. Knowin' you a little more now than I did an hour ago, you'd know anyway. I'm not gonna say I know everything that you're talkin' about, but what I don't know I'm lookin' for but I'm lookin' and—I'm not sayin' this to please you—I can't ever remember myself doing that. But I got to tell you: one of the reasons I'm looking is because there's more sex to you than your covers. You have a music that I never heard before, a music that's part of your bones and marrow and now that I've heard it, tasted it, I can't turn away from you, even if I wanted to, and believe me, I don't want to do that, because, because, I didn't even know that that kind of hunger even existed in me before I met you and even though you scared the living shit out of me and even though it could be maybe easier to just like, I don't know, just like split, I can't do that. I mean, I don't wanna do that." I began to twist in my seat and I didn't want to do that either. "Angela, I want to know about you but..."

"You don't wanna bust your ass doin' it. But don't worry, I'm gonna bust your ass and my ass and we're gonna be hurt, maybe, but singin' together, too. If you believe nothin' else, believe that."

"Man, Angela, I believe that. Holy shit, I believe it." And just then I saw the exit for Monticello, South Fallsburg, checked my rearview, eased into the right lane, downshifted, put on my turning signal and, just like that, we were on another road, this one less lit, but felt infinitely more exciting.

Two hours from New York City, the Catskill Mountains served vacationers who were mostly East Coast Jews, solidly middle class for the most part, the rooms in the hotels were mostly small and the food was served in gargantuan portions and was, in fact, the Lazy Susans upon which their lives turned.

When I went to the community college in South Fallsburg, I worked part-time parking cars and waiting tables in the coffee shop at The Concord Hotel, the biggest, loudest, and most ostentatious, which was appointed with lavish bars, pools, activities, and cuisine of any paradise up there. It was also the most sexy, whether your tastes ran from the boozy Liz Taylor of Virginia Woolf, to the quiet and stylized elegance of Liz Taylor's call girl of Butterfield 8. It could all be found here. The weekend was when I made the most money in tips, but it was during the week, when husbands would slouch, stumble, and trudge, like pack mules back to the city to earn their keep, that those sexed-up and bored housewives would look for younger, funnier, and more eager diversions. "Hello, can I help you," I'd inquire. Then I'd wait and, depending on many intangibles, hope.

"You think I should wait in the lobby while you check out a room?"

We breezed into the parking lot of The Concord and, after giving the valet the car, were walking toward the front desk. Our feet bounced on the thick carpet while our eyes took in the splendor of The Jewish Renaissance, New York style: golds and reds swimming in brocade and velvets; chairs and settees and couches seating the patrons of prosperity; the air thick with perfume and cigarettes; servants waiting to properly attend the slightest of needs. But as soon as we were a few steps into the lobby proper, the air changed.

It was as if all who were present there were informed that two aliens were in their midst and, although there was no way of knowing whether or not we were friendly, it would be a good idea to prepare for the worst. In fact, perhaps it was best to make them feel, if not precisely unwelcome, then at least uncomfortable. We saw eyes swiveling to take us in, and with each step I was becoming more self-conscious and began greeting each and every stare with one of my own. I became embarrassed for Angela, thinking she must be feeling the same thing. A hateful and hurtful anger arose in my chest implicating and indicting the Jews who were there; those who had money and means, arrogance and pretensions, and most prominent, ignorance of colossal proportions.

The desk clerk, too, had picked up the sea change in the room as we approached him. He nervously fingered the buttons of his burgundy Concord vest, complete with gold nameplate, but seemed determined to protect the homogenous domain with which he'd been entrusted. I'd felt, at a very early age, out of place in my own family, but that I'd ascribed to personal failings. Here, however, it was the first time that I felt not only alienated but an object of scorn, ridicule, and betrayal, to those I'd known and lived with all my life; to whom I had done nothing, except walk in the front door. In that moment, I could sense that Angela's steps had slowed down in accordance with mine. Our hesitation was mutual and acknowledged by our silence. If I wanted to, I could have turned around, made a U-turn, with Angela's arm still nestled in the crook of my elbow, and gotten the hell out of there.

Fernando was the name on the gold plate. He was short and skinny with greased hair that still held flakes of dandruff. His eyes were a dull, watery brown and the thin mustache that he tried to maintain gave the word "wispy" too much body. It was no accident, I thought, that they gave him the night shift.

"Hi, howyadoin'?" I said as soon as we got up to his desk.

"I'm just fine, sir, thank you. And how are you this evening?" he asked in a voice that far exceeded the thirty years he'd been on this planet.

"Terrific; we're terrific."

"And what can I do for you on this 'terrific' evening?" he mimicked, keeping his eyes downcast, but every so often looking at Angela as if she'd been a lot lizard fresh off the interstate of trucker commerce.

Already the taste in my mouth was coated with bile and I could feel my chest and arms getting hot with the prospect of grabbing this parasitic ass-kisser, this cretin, and separating his head from his torso.

"Could you tell us where the coffee shop and the lounge might be at, if you please?" Angela said, in a voice so sweet and pure that if it were heroin, he would've O.D.'ed.

Although he tried to hide it, a look of mild relief crossed his face, quickly replaced by one of smugness. After giving us directions to both places he inquired, "Will that be all, sir?"

"Your name's Fernando, right?"

"Yes, it is. Of course. Why else would I be wearing a name plate with 'Fernando' on it?"

"Well, for a second I thought you were one of those butlers or man servants in an English farce who turned up their noses to anyone who wasn't part of the aristocracy. But who really hated themselves and their station in life." I wanted him to reply, wanted him to answer me in a way that would have, could have, justified me hitting him so hard it would have knocked his dick in the dirt, which would have been the first time I'd have hit anyone, ever. Perhaps it was the sound of my voice or the way I strung those words together or the fury in my eyes, but he said nothing. He pretended to busy himself by looking in the guest log and checking off names.

Angela tugged at my arm and guided me away towards the section of the lobby where we could either go and get a cup of coffee, or a taste of something stronger.

"How about a cup of coffee?"

"A good idea. It will give me just the time to tell ya how I became so smart."

I stopped, turned to her, put my hands on her either side of her face and kissed her softly on her lips. "I've been wonderin' about that for quite some time," hoping that the eyes that followed us from the desk had stayed to kiss us goodnight as well.

Angela was trying to explain to me how she came to evolve into the person sitting opposite me in the Jewish Mecca of ostentation. "Johnnie Hooker kinda growled when he sung, like he had his balls in his throat, tellin' tales of men and women getting' it right but most of the time getting' it wrong. He told me about the ways of the world, especially the colored world, and how it is with rich and poor and tryin' to live and have a good time despite the hardships and heartaches; the other, Mose, Allison that is, I don't know, it's hard to say, he, like, he was smart, sexy; he made you think and then think some more about the whole world but more about the white world and how entirely fucked up that is with its lies and deceptions and selfishness all couched with a kinda, 'I'm just doin this all for you,' kinda bullshit, and he did it with this kind of biting humor that never let himself off the hook either. Then I found Dinah Washington and that just about did it. She gave me permission to be tough and sexy, vulnerable, too, dependin' on who I was with, or the day or the hour. Those two cats, and woman, man, they made a difference in my young life, that's for sure."

Her face was lit up like crazy with her eyes shooting flames and her mouth singing her song of discovery. Her voice was so infectious, instilling the rhythms of her soul into me, that it felt as if I could just breathe with her breath, beat with her heart, feel with her touch.

But before she told me that, I had to get the taste out of my mouth of what had happened in the lobby. Angela did not seem bothered, instead she was paying more attention to the hotel's attractions in the lobby, both in decor and inhabitants, and now the booth we were sitting in. And each time she turned to look at a person, a particularly inane hotel painting, ornate lamp, an out-of-place desk or couch, pause to peek in to see the action in the lounge or feel the lushness of the carpet or the curious nature of the large yet sterile coffee shop, I got angry. My belly burned with indignation and I couldn't understand why her belly didn't burn even stronger, the acidity puncturing the protective lining of her viscera.

"Why ain't you pissed?"

"About what?"

"About what went on out there; that fucking idiot behind the desk."

"Shit, he ain't no reason to get pissed. Hell."

I swiveled my head making sure no one was within earshot. I hunched forward on my seat until my upper body was almost parallel to the table. "You're tellin me that that guy out there, that racist bastard, didn't piss you off?"

"No, he didn't," Angela said in the kind of tone that was flat, emotionless. "We're here, let's just enjoy this and figure out what we're gonna do next. Besides, I wanna tell you..."

"Wait a second, wait a fucking second," I said in a voice that was lower but strident, stricken with a kind of anger that feeds off itself. "You had to feel something, I can't believe you felt nothing, I..."

"Listen, Max, I told you that first night, the night you took me to the Brooklyn Heights walkway or whatever it's called, that I know a little somethin' about bein' black in this white world—or what most people like to pretend it is—and how this, you and me, could never happen in most places down where I come from. But that little Northern Cracker out there, shit, that ain't nothin what he did. I'm surprised, to tell you the truth, that you not more angry with your people out there that he's getting' paid to protect—

not that most of 'em ain't niggers, too—Fernando there, he just doin' what he suppose to do."

The waitress, a bored looking local, who'd I'd seen thousands of times in various forms through the years, a bit overweight, with bleached blond hair and chubby fingers, placed Angela's huge pastrami sandwich in front of her and my bacon and eggs plate where I sat. "I'll be back with the coffee in a sec."

Angela's eyes lit up when she saw the sandwich, grabbed the mustard jar and began applying a liberal amount of it onto the bread. I put some salt and pepper onto my eggs, grabbed a piece of rye toast and began to dig in as well.

"Mmm, this is some delicious pastrami," she said as she wiped away a little mustard from the corner of her mouth, "I didn't realize how hungry I am." I felt the same but didn't answer her. "C'mon, baby, don't ruin our time together. What went on out there ain't shit. Besides, Hell, Max, you as much a nigger as I am," she said in the kind of voice that was humorous but with an edge.

"What are ya talkin' about, Angela, don't get me angry; I'm angry enough."

"You angry at the wrong people. What I mean is all of 'em out there, all of 'em, are just plain stupid thinkin' they not niggers; shit, they just as much a nigger as me, maybe more and probably worse. Get up every morning, put on some black face, and go shuck and jive for a boss they'd sooner kill than fuck. Dance around for eight hours or whatever, go home, and, if they don't beat the shit outta their wife or kids, they want to beat the shit outta the niggers they think are getting' more or askin' for more than what they got. Then they all get up the next day and do it all over again. Maybe you don't like to think of your people as niggers but the Egyptians sure had no problem with it."

The waitress came back with our coffees. "Everything O.K. here?" We nodded our heads up and down. "All right. If you need anything else, dessert or anything, just holler."

"You're right about the Jews and Egyptians. They sure had to do a tap dance for those sonsofbitches," I said, and couldn't keep my laughter from bubbling up.

"That's how we stay alive, baby. You don't learn to dance, you dead. One thing's for sure: if I have to dance around you—not with you, but around you—

this here thing that we're tryin' to do is finished. I'm not goin' to try to shade my shit with you—and, and, I expect the same from you. You wanna bite of my pastrami?"

"Yeah, I do, but I really want to hear how you know what you know and when you began to know it."

And that's when she began to tell me about listening to John Lee Hooker, Mose Allison, and Dinah Washington. She'd carry around this recent import: a Japanese Panasonic rectangular little transistor radio that spit out a jazz and blues station somewhere in New Orleans. She tried to carry her radio all day and brought it into her bed at night as well. It wasn't as if anything was encouraged by her family, except to know her body well enough in the service of the men that her father groomed her to please. Yet, it was just in the purposeful abnegation of anything which required thought that attracted her to the region she was cautioned, if not to avoid, then simply use in the service of her wiles. Somehow, if her body held no safety for her, her mind, in its fortress-like impenetrability, offered, not only escape, but the opportunity to take all the ugliness that swirled inside her, sound the depths of that ugliness, go down into it and maybe, just maybe, return with a sense of self still intact. From that starting point, it would stand to reason, pride might evolve. A pride, interestingly enough, which was eventually won on the back of pragmatic reason. She knew she had little control of what was almost forcibly done to her body, and how that made her feel, but she did have the final say in what she put into her head, and, more importantly, how and what she thought about all that went on inside her. Those thoughts, first developing, not yet understood and hardly articulated, came from those parts of her formed by the entrails of experience and admitted to her private hell because expiation would falsify her own religion of objectivity and promote the death of the only thing she thought she need be obedient to: awareness.

It took a man who, for her defined sensitivity, to show her the way out from her abject misery and self-loathing. He must have seen how her mouth turned downward at the corners after her laughter ended; or how she didn't seem to belong to any group of students; or how her questions and insights into and about the books he had them read in their senior year of high school had no business coming out of the mouth of a sixteen, going on seventeen, year old, to attune him to her complexities and humanity. He asked her one day if she'd be interested in reading and discussing things just with him, after school. Angela, who had loved his class—and perhaps, loved him a little bit as well—looked into this man's face, a face that was mocked behind his back because of its illogical lines and features, was flattered and jumped at the opportunity. He was one of the first to come back from the Vietnam "action" and had stepped on a land mine which had done severe damage to his face. After many surgeries, both to repair the damage and then to repair the reparations, he went to a part of the country where he'd always wanted to go, where no one knew him and, rather than sit with the money that the government was giving him for the wounds he received, decided to teach what he loved, literature.

At first, William Rosen, had her read Heart of Darkness. After a decided upon amount of pages were read, they'd meet to discuss them. Their talks would be about the work, initially, but then they could, and often did, take off, like good jazz riffs, to parts unknown while staying true to the melody.

To say that Angela was taken with the man would not do justice to all she felt for him. It began, like many of these friendships do, with her feeling privileged to be given his time and, as importantly, she was encouraged to question everything she encountered that stretched and tickled her mind. Then, she started to wonder what he looked like undressed, how he moved, if his cock was big and did it curve and, if it did, which way? Would he want her to be nice to him in the ways in which all men wanted her to be nice to them?

One afternoon, Angela, to her astonishment, found herself getting wet during one of their discussions. It certainly didn't reflect what she was reading and what they were talking about, which was how each time Marlowe goes up river, the vestiges of civilization are left behind, and how this was reflected in the white, then dirty white, rags the natives wore around their necks. Marlowe desperately clings to the task of repairing his boat, by using one of the foundations of civilization, "rivets." She saw, by herself, how we can become, when untethered to anything that resembled Western society, subject to the wild and unbridled vicissitudes of nature. It was that, that calling, which prompted her nerves, then charged her cells' synapses, heated her body which boiled her juices, to moisten her cunt, making her pupils grow active and large.

One such late afternoon, near Christmas, they were taking about Marlowe and his morality, his "taint of death" contained in lies, when Angela put her hand on the inside of Bill's thigh. His body jumped reflexively, causing him to stand and then look at her, not in anger but confirmation. It was his expression, combined with the absence of visible desire, which caused her to laugh.

"Maybe we should get back to you calling me Mr. Rosen?" he said with a smile.

"I want to give you somethin'."

"You have, and you do."

"No, you know, somethin' special, somethin' that's me."

"You've already given me something that's priceless."

"Yeah? What's that?"

"Your time. You've given me your time, and time, Angela, is our rarest commodity, something we can't afford—and I use the word 'afford' purposely—

to waste. Not me at my age, and not you at yours. I don't know if you can understand that now, but one day you will. And please, I am not saying that to you to make you feel that you're hopelessly young and not at all able to grasp these worldly concepts. That is not it, at all. I'm not here to just give you the benefit of having lived a bit longer than you and know a little more than you, so I generously offer my time and my wisdom so this young and inquisitive mind can have a chance to strengthen itself and grow. No, that is not it, either. I am doing this because I am genuinely attracted to a young woman who's wise beyond her years, whose mind will, if not carefully watched and nurtured, turn against her beauty that is, I believe, being relegated to stand in service to a world not of her own making. Who, because of this, thinks of herself as used and, in no small measure, ugly."

Angela felt her face begin to break into small little pieces, each one jagged and sharp. They cut against her insides. She felt tears, so long in coming, run down her cheeks and chin. He did nothing to stop them. Rather he stood near her, not talking and certainly not judging, allowing her to feel whatever it was she was feeling, and intently watching, as she desperately tried to put the jigsaw puzzle together, to somehow feel complete again.

"How you know me so well, like you livin' inside me?"

"In a way, maybe I am."

"Then let me do somethin' for you, come inside me."

He held her in his gaze she thought, like a lover and said, "I am inside you already. Don't you understand that? It's where I want to be and there is nothing I want from your body that you haven't given me. Nothing. You can't pay me back that easily, it's not about that." Then he said, "Your body is too much connected to your mind for you to be giving it away as barter. It is not something you can dole out piecemeal and ever expect to feel whole."

I sat there wishing it was me that made her feel that way; wishing it was me that helped her find her way out of that ugliness and into her beauty; wished it was me who enabled her to shed the skin of a family that robbed her of youth and innocence—but it wasn't me, and I felt a kind of jealousy itch and scratch inside me. I felt a revulsion hearing of her early experiences and visualizing the hands that touched her, held her; the mouths that moaned into her neck and ears and breathed heavily on her face as they ejaculated into her. I listened, caught amid a fine tangle of emotions, nothing clear or defined, nothing I could pick up with my hands and manage to put away safely. She sat, facing me, looking so incredibly beautiful and so vulnerable, but somehow not fragile. There was an ease about her determination expressed on her face and a grace suggested by a kind of composure that suggested an acceptance that I'd always wanted but, in actuality, really knew nothing about. I thought telling her all that would be so unhip it would be embarrassing. A lot of my life had been spent thinking and gauging how others would see and react to whatever it was I wanted to do or say. Knowing that never made me feel very good, but safe.

The waitress returned to freshen our coffee and also to give us our check.

"Would you like to take a walk around here, stretch your legs?"

"Yes, I surely would."

"Good, c'mon, let's go."

We got up from the table, paid the check and, because I had worked there for a little while, knew a shortcut to get from the coffee shop to a path leading to the giant swimming pool.

As soon as we pushed through the doors, leaving the artificial coolness, the sweet summer mountain air enveloped us. She put her arm through mine and leaned her shoulder into me. I could smell her hair and feel her warmth. I wanted to take her right then and there, take her in a kind of mad frenzy, and I looked around for a secluded spot nearby. In the space of a few seconds, my eyes darted in every direction, looking for secrecy. Only after we had gone a short way, did I realize that my urgency was linked to an anger I'd never felt before. The grass, sparkling with moisture under the glow of the outdoor floodlights and cut two inches thick, felt spongy beneath our feet.

"I wanted to, just a second ago, make love to you, right here, right now."

She stopped, her hand grabbing hold of my arm, causing me to stop as well. Reluctantly, I turned around to look at her and saw this inquisitive expression on her face.

"Is that a good or bad thing—usually it's good, but it doesn't sound so good right now. Besides, what's that 'wanted to,' and, 'a second ago,' what does that mean?"

"It means what it means."

"No, it don't. C'mon, Max, what's goin' on?"

"Nothin's going on. Tell me what happened next. Get on with your story," I said, but couldn't look her in the face. Instead, I had my eyes searching out blades of grass, hoping she'd continue and I'd get back to a balance that had left me.

Of course she didn't. She held my arm firmly, and moved her body and head in such a way that her face appeared under mine, her eyes locked in an embrace that wouldn't let me move.

"It was hard listening to you," I finally said.

"What was hard?"

"Everything," I said, and wanted to disappear.

"Was it hard to listen because of what happened to me or was it hard to go through those feelings for you?"

"Man, Angela, you sure don't give a man much space to move around in."

"Not a man I believe I'm in love with."

I lifted up my head then, and without warning, felt my whole being gathered itself, and instinctively protect against this sort of vulnerability. As big and as strong as I am, I thought if I moved I'd break apart. I wanted to stiffen, but didn't know how. My eyes began to moisten.

"Damn, I hate feeling this way, but the answer to your question is both. I hated hearing about what happened to you and I hated hearing how another man brought you out of that."

"Max," she said, "Max, look at me."

I lifted my head and looked at her eyes. I still felt sheepish, entirely unsure of anything and everything in that moment.

"Baby, I need to be loved, not protected. At least not protected in those old ways I had. Like this thing here, what we're doin'. Maybe you didn't believe it—or still don't believe it—but what we're doin' is dangerous, dangerous in all kinds of ways. Think about it, Max, if you don't love me, I'll tell ya right now, it ain't worth the price. 'Cause if we go on, things might happen that's out of our control. Somethin' happened to me awhile back that made it impossible for me to play it safe. I fell in love with a poet. You. I fell in love with you. I can say it again, if you want, because if feels so good comin' off my tongue." She reached up and placed her palm on the side of my face and caressed it. I bent down and kissed her, softly.

"I didn't plan to. I didn't plan nothin', really," she continued. "I came up here prepared to do any kinda work to get some distance from the place where all those old ghosts are, to find out what I might want to do with my life. Bill always used to tell me, 'Knowledge is like love. You never know when it's gonna leap up and grab you by the throat.' I been findin' that out, almost everyday. Yet I never expected to find you—until you walked into that kitchen. Somethin' stirred, and is still stirrin'. If there was one thing I could trust, that never lied to me, it was my body. Then after we spoke and things started happenin' between us, not just makin' love—before we started makin' love--well, that's when I knew this feelin' that I had was for real, fact. It felt good, really good."

I took her hand and led her further away from the main building and toward the swimming pool. There, under the tall lamps that looked like question marks around the pool, we sat, side-by-side, on the chaise lounges that had no cushioned mats on them. Both of us leaned back on our chairs and breathed in the night around us. I extended my left arm and searched out Angela's hand. Once I found it, she held fast and, quite separate in our own little worlds, let our hands dangle in the space between our chairs. I could give myself no logical reason or explanation of why I came to be stretched out on a chaise lounge holding the hand of a colored girl at the Concord Hotel, the epicenter of the Borscht Belt as they called the gathering of Jewish shrines in the guise of Monopoly hotels of luxury, leisure, but more importantly, self-preservation and tribal dominion and domination of its own in an alien culture. If left up to me, extinction would certainly have happened already. I looked around at where I was and thought about where I'd been and knew I hardly belonged in either place. While I couldn't know precisely where I was going to go from here, I could never again give myself the option of saying I didn't know what I was doing or worse, had no choice.

"You know, in my old man's store," I began, "he had this old, and a little bit corroded, shopping wagon. The wheels were all twisted up and funny lookin' and so when you tried to move it, it looked like a crippled spastic trying to get started with some kind of motion. Well, inside that cart were cans, cans that had fallen off the shelves or been squashed accidentally—and sometimes accidentally on purpose—in packing or in transit. I have seen customers throw those sonsofbitches down themselves and step on them, because if a can is dented real bad—or sometimes even a little bit—it goes in this wagon, the wagon of damaged goods, and gets sold for a fraction of what the shelf price was. I guess that's what I've always felt like: 'damaged goods.'"

Angela didn't say anything for quite some time, but then said, "They're afraid of you, you know that don't you?"

"What do you mean, 'afraid of you,'? No, I don't know that."

"Yeah, well, they are." And she said it so matter of factly that I felt I should have known it, but very obviously didn't.

"'Specially your brother, he afraid most of all. You can tell by the way he always has to make fun of shit you're tryin' to write or things you studyin' or places you want to go or have gone."

"I don't really know what you mean."

"Sure you do. Figure it out, Max, you're smart, and I know somewhere in you, you been thinkin' 'bout this for quite some time. Figure it out." She put her arms behind her head and closed her eyes.

I knew immediately, as if she'd had a direct line of vision into my heart that what she said was true, but I was hard pressed to admit it. For years, when I'd sit around the dinner table and watch my brother look at me with derision, I couldn't understand what I'd done to make him feel that way. Each time he'd addressed me he'd preface whatever he was about to say with, "I know you're much smarter than me, but...." I finally recognized the insecurity and envy that played havoc with his belief system. Whenever he said something cutting or snide to me I'd wanted to tell him he didn't have to do that, that he'd never feel better about himself by chopping me down to size, but I never told him. Perhaps, I was afraid that I'd alienate him even more or, perhaps, I was simply afraid of him and felt that discretion is the better part of valor, especially in this instance.

"What else?" I asked Angela.

"Your father needs a lackey and that's what your brother is, but more, much more than that, he's scared of you, too."

"You must observe all kinds of goings on in my house."

As if she didn't hear me, she added, "You really haveta watch out cause people, people 'fraid of, they just go ahead and kill, if they can. My father woulda done that to me, if I'd hung around long enough. You better believe it, he would."

My head swam with what I'd just heard. All these many years it was I who was afraid of them, palpably afraid, though I wouldn't show it. Both were large, intimidating people who used bluster, bullying, threats and, in some instances I knew about, violence, to achieve their ends. I imagined, many times, when I decided to do things that I knew went against their values, or the cramped nature of their worlds, that I risked not only being made fun of but, if they chose, to physically thwart my intentions instead. No one made my brother drop out of school and go to work for my father. He decided to do that because he simply could not make it in the world of academia, but that's fine. Who cares? Well, it seems he obviously does. This to me was a new way of thinking, this, if correct, would rearrange the constellations of my universe. It gave me new avenues to walk down when putting together the pieces of my own particular puzzle. What I couldn't explain was this force inside me resisting everything I'd heard, no matter how much sense it made.

"That's some wild shit, Angela. I have to think about that for awhile. You know, you grow up and live with craziness—of any kind, no matter how bizarre—I guess after awhile it's just normal, same old shit. Mom just prostrated herself on the kitchen table, Pop then whacked-off into the tuna salad, and Brother Don whirled around dizzy finally taking a dump in the service platter, O.K., no big deal, pass the salt. Whew! Now I think I haveta smoke a joint!"

"Light it up, baby."

I pulled the joint out of the cigarette pack I had in my breast pocket and once satisfied that no one was near I lit it up, took a few pulls, and passed it over to Angela. We did that until it was down to the point that it burned our fingertips. The reefer, Panamanian Red that I got from some P.R.'s on Hoyt and Bergen Streets in Brooklyn, was pretty potent, but was the kind that gradually crawled up on you. It smelled sweet and tasted like fertile earth. All of a sudden you were high, in the nicest of ways. It didn't slam you, didn't twist you up, didn't impose its will on you. One minute you were looking up and saw stars, the next minute those stars were twinkling with the kind of glow that, in the next minute, transported you up to them. Smoothly, you sailed up and away.

I awoke with a start and at first didn't know where I was. A thin film coated me from the world at large, and I struggled to break its seal. Once through, I saw the light from the question marks and upward the stars still shone brightly so I knew I must have dozed off. My mouth was thick with the taste and remains of old reefer. I lit a cigarette to help me adjust. Angela, on the next lounge, slept, and, from the way her body casually used the space available, peacefully as well. She'd turned on her side, causing her dress to ride up her leg, revealing her haunch and the thin white lace of her panty. No matter how many times I'd seen her bare or felt her flesh with my hands or tongue or leg or thigh, each instance excited me as if it were the first secret glimpse of promise. The night, as I remembered before tumbling into grace, seemed to drift by like fine goose down feathers caught in the mildest of currents.

Once the cotton candy lightness inside my head solidified into the geometry of the night and its structures, I looked at my watch and was surprised to learn that we had only slept for an hour or so and would still need to find a place to bed down for the rest of the evening. I knew a few motels in the area and didn't think that that would present as much of a problem as where we currently were, relaxing around the pool. Even though we went through it, my mind wanted to resist the experience—just as it wanted to dismiss as false what I'd been feeling, and what Angela had brought to light, regarding my brother and father. In the battle for supremacy, the armies of truth and illusion, reality and rationalization, had already dug in and were skirmishing, the precursor to all out war. Unfortunately, I didn't yet know, let alone come to grips with, which was which.

I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the lounge and gently shook Angela from her sleep. Lazily, her eyes opened and adjusted to her place in the world. "Oh, hiya, baby. How long we been out for?"

"Not too long, but we need to go and find a place to call home."

"Hmm, that sounds good; give me a minute—and a cigarette—to get myself together."

I shook out a Lucky from my pack, lit it, took a drag, and gave it to her. After she took a few hits off the smoke and rubbed some of the sleep from her eyes, she got up and stretched her arms overhead so her dress hiked up even more. I placed my hand in the fold between her thigh and pussy and held fast.

"You sure take your liberties, don't you?"

"Wherever and whenever I can. You got something to say about that?"

"How about: Take me home and fuck me already, before I go crazy?"

"Yeah, not bad. I like that. After though, I know it's not the most romantic thing in the world to talk about, I'm going to want to talk about what we were talking about before..,."

"I hope so, but not before you do what you were born to do. Do Your Duty, as the beautiful Lady Day would say."

"You're impossible."

"I hope so."

Angela extended her hand and helped lift me off the lounge. Together, half-awake, we wove our way back to the front of the hotel to get our car. The door we'd come out of was locked and so we navigated our way around the back of the hotel until we arrived at the entrance. I fished out the parking ticket from my pocket and waited until one of the carhops was free. It didn't surprise me that on a Friday night the Concord was jumping. Couples, dressed in their weekend finery, had come from the surrounding area, as well as guests from other hotels, to have a cocktail in the lounge while listening to Hines, Hines & Dad or, if they had some connections or money, were seated in the main room waiting to hear Steve & Edie croon into each other's eyes that evening. Angela and I stood out like the proverbial sore thumb.

"Jesus Christ, who the hell do I have to screw around here to get me my car?" the voice, sounding more like a growl, said, close enough for me to feel its breath, in a kidding but very serious way. Angela turned her head slightly, but I didn't move; I knew who that voice belonged to. It was that unmistakable, and it froze my blood.

Big Al was barely over five feet. A character out of a Damon Runyan story, he was one of those tough Jews who grew up on the hard-scrabble streets of the Lower East Side, in the 1920s. He owned the trucking business that had the exclusive contract with the stores my father's franchise belonged to to bring in the merchandise that was sold there. He and my father were friends, and had been friends, for as long as I could remember. Often, I went with them to the track and Big Al let me hand the ticket clerk four or five hundred to bet on a race; whether those tickets were cashed or not was beside the point. Each of them enjoyed talking about how they came up and who they came up with. Big Al though, seemed to love the fact that he came up hard and took whatever it was that he now possessed and would, if given the chance, change absolutely nothing of what he did or the ways he did them.

If I turned around I might very well be dead. I knew it in my bones. If I tried to weather the storm, get to my car with Angela in the quietest, least noticeable way possible, slipped into the seat and just drove away, I had a chance, at least a chance, to live to fight another day.

Angela felt me stiffen yet knew enough not to expect an explanation now. From the corner of my eye, I saw her look to me, but I remained stock-still and expressionless. When the carhop came up to me, I extended my hand with the ticket stub in it without moving any other muscle in my body. Deftly, while grabbing my ticket in his right hand, he reached behind my back, and took Big Al's stub, with his left. After he had gone to get my car I moved, very cautiously, toward the curb where I hoped I'd remain, undetected, until the car arrived.

A car did arrive but it wasn't mine. A vintage white Rolls Royce with its winged lady adorning the hood came to a stop almost in front of me. Big Al, in trying to step around me, bumped into my back causing me to bump Angela in turn.

"Hey, I'm sorry," he started to say but when he looked up and saw it was me, a look of surprise quickly followed by confusion came into his eyes. His head turned from me to Angela in rapid succession. It took him just that long to size up the situation. A lump as big as a golf ball had grown in my throat in that space of time. "What's the matter, you don't wanna know me?" he growled with a smile on his face, "you couldn't turn around?"

"Nah, don't be ridiculous, I didn't know it was you," I lamely lied.

"You didn't, huh? Who's this beautiful young woman?"

"Jarlyn Cormier, nice to meet you," Angela said.

"Yeah, nice to meet you, too, but I asked Max the question; I know you know who you are, I just wanted to make sure Max knew," Big Al said in a way that chilled the blood.

"Jarlyn's a friend from school. We were hanging out tonight and just found ourselves going for a ride and we ended up here. How've you been?"

"Me?" Big Al asked, a little surprised by the question, "I'm fine. I was just gonna ask you how you and your family are?"

"Yeah, great, they're all great."

"Lemme talk to you for a minute. You don't mind, do you, dear?"

"No, of course not," Angela said but her eyes held a concern that I was sure, if I could pick up on, so could Big Al.

"Bring it around here," he called to the carhop who got back into the car and followed us as we walked to an area that offered privacy. "O.K. kid, now tell me, what the fuck's goin' on?" he said out of the corner of his mouth.

"Nothing's goin' on, nothing. It's just like I told you."

"Bullshit. You're getting' a piece of ass, hey, she's pretty, who could blame you—but she's also a nigger. You know that, right?"

"So what, she's black? What the hell does that have to do with anything?" I asked, but even as the words left my mouth I knew they had everything to do with everything.

"I'm friends with your ol' man for a long time; I know he didn't raise you to fuck no nigger, and I know if he finds out that's what yer doin' he's gonna be mad as hell."

"Listen, just let me go on my way and that's it; after tonight, that's it. He don't have to know about nothing. Right?"

"I told you I'm friends with him."

"But you don't need to hurt him."

"No, I don't need to do that. You're tellin' me that this is it; you're through with her after tonight?"

"Yeah, after tonight."

"O.K., let me walk ya back—ya think you can get her to give me a blowjob?"

My head jerked around.

"No, no, only kidding. Christ, you're too serious, ain't nobody told you that before?"

"Yeah, everybody."

We got back to where Angela stood, her back straightened, her demeanor proud.

"We just had to get some family business straightened out back there, hope you weren't offended," Big Al casually said.

"No, I wasn't offended."

"Well, all right then, you two kids need a place to stay I can let you have a cabin at my joint?"

"No thanks, we're fine. We took a place at that motel, Bernie's, a little way from here."

"Yeah, Bernie's, sure, has some great Chinese over there. Tellem you know me, yeah. O.K., kids, I'm gonna take off. Nice meetin' ya, Jar, Jar, what was it, Jarlyn?"

"Yes, Jarlyn. Nice meeting you, too."

And with that Big Al stuck out his hand, which I shook, turned around, and walked toward his Rolls. We watched as this little man got into his big car, put some bills in the carhop's hand, and made his way away from the entrance. Our car had been brought around by this time and we went over to it but when I tried to put a dollar bill in the boy's hand he told us that, "Mr. G. already took care of it."

There was this sick feeling that sat in the car with us as we drove away from the Concord and back to the interstate. Neither one of us wanted to stay in the Catskills that night and decided to drive back to New York City where we'd either find a cheap room or wake up Frankie and his wife, Francesca, and stay with them. After driving for awhile Angela reached over and took my hand in hers. "You know," she said, "he's gonna tell your father about us?"

"No he won't."

"What makes you so sure?"

"Big Al's from the old school. He's one of those real tough guys and tough guys,"—here I mimicked Big Al—"ain't rats!" I waited, hoping Angela would laugh, even smile, but she didn't. "They don't rat on anyone!" I continued. "If they do they don't get to go to gangster heaven where every bill is counterfeit, every woman a moll and there's never a cover or minimum for them—oh, I forgot, that last one's in real life, too."

Not even a giggle. "Max, he's still a guy, and guys like him like to gossip as much—maybe more—as old washerwomen. I'm tellin ya, if they have information on someone they use it, just like money, to show who has the power and who doesn't; they use information they have to their advantage, all the time, no matter who."

"You're wrong."

"We'll see. But no matter what, lemme just say this and I'm sayin' this as much for me as for you..."

"What's that?"

"If you don't stand for somethin', you'll fall for anything."

The stars and late night bugs skipped by the windshield with only some of the bugs leaving an imprint.

CHAPTER VI

***

The large plate of Chow Fun, piled high with beef, broad noodles, scallions and bean sprouts, was devoured almost as soon as it was placed before me. It seemed I inhaled it. And I was still hungry, though not for food. I sipped my glass of tea and thought, ruminated was more like it, about what I'd do with the rest of the evening and weekend before my day of reckoning: the first day of real school.

Chinatown's park, on the corner of Bayard and MacDougal, was a crossroads of its cultures. It seemed that each one of Chinatown's streets resembled a province from the mainland and the park was the city's square where they'd come to congregate, exchanging news from back home, and talk about their joys and troubles as well as fears of real or impending crises. On MacDougal, going south, were two of Chinatown's largest funeral homes, flower shops, and a store specializing in gravesites and monuments. Directly across the street was the children's part of the park, with jungle gyms, swings, sliding ponds, and those strange-shaped geometric designs that kids could crawl in and out of, going from one to the next. This was centered between basketball courts to the south and a softball field to the north. I, however, stayed on Bayard, where, once you crossed MacDougal, the wizened Chinese ladies told fortunes.

These old women, their age etched in their faces, wearing clothes as drab as their skin coloring, sat on busted chairs, broken three-legged stools or milk crates and, usually with a friend who'd translate for the English speakers, looked at hands. They'd sit just outside the park entrance or, if they were many of them, inside as well. I'd always wanted to stick my mitt into one of their hands to see what the future held for me but resisted doing so. The future should remain so, I reasoned. The truth was, however, I was scared of hearing something I'd have a hard time getting rid of, something that would stick inside me like charred meat to an old pan. They'd look up at me and I wouldn't need anyone to translate their palmistry. No thanks, I usually said to myself; I'll deal with it when it happens.

"Lay it on me," I told the old woman who cradled the back of my hand. I looked directly at her and tried to smile, even though her translator was the one who was about to deliver the news.

"You just come back from journey but you really don't want to come back."

"Yes," I said, my back stiffening, my mind going on alert. "What else?"

"You sick, been sick for long time, too bad, she say, but the sickness not what's wrong."

"What's wrong? What is it?"

"You, she say, inside you."

"That's it!? Is that all?"

They exchanged a few rapid sentences in Chinese and then she said, "Those fears will go way one day and it will be good for you." She smiled. "Five dollar, please."

I gave her the five and moved further into the park where the men played table games, like Mah Jongg and Dominos and you could hear the thwacks when they slapped down the beautiful inlaid colored ivory tiles or the numbered black rectangles with white numbered pieces, each gesture accompanied by their voices calling numbers or suits or colors or curses. I felt like I was inside the most exotic of parrot jungles, hearing the rise and fall of the music of foreign tongues but thinking of fears and sickness, death, and loss. Each thought flying into the face of the sounds of yakking, talking, cawing, monstrous birds.

Some, when they saw me, shifted in their seats or moved slightly away, as I tried to peer down into the game at hand. Most, however, didn't blink. At one time I was a little familiar with the game because, as a little kid, I'd watched my mother and some friends of hers play at our home. They'd call out, "Three crack," or "Two bam," and I'd learn to associate the pieces with the words, but I never knew the game itself. Now, I just stared, fascinated at how feverish and fast the game was played by those who'd been with it most of their lives. I wondered how much action went along with the games I was seeing. No money was on the tables, but you could be sure they knew who won and who lost.

The park, in this respect, was a time warp. Nothing had changed in all the time I'd been gone. Then, when I wandered south, and pressed my face against the chain link fence to watch, even though the games were still softball and basketball, those playing it looked different. They were mostly Chinese, both young men and women, whereas before mostly white guys played in this park. Also, some were sporting tattoos on their arms and legs or places, on the women, more provocative, like that wonderful indenture where the lower abdomen curves into that forest of motives. I watched as they threw to each other, batted and pitched with an intent that bordered on the serious. Yet it was their words, especially when I was near enough to the basketball courts, sitting on a bench which adjoined them, which caused the most curiosity.

"Yo, nigger, you better stay down," one of them said to another kid whom he was guarding from getting to the hoop.

"No way, nigger. You can't guard me, motherfucker," the other replied.

My ears did a double take before I heard the prettiest little Chinese chick who couldn't have been older than sixteen exclaim to her friend, "That's my nigger. Isn't he cute?"

I looked again at the "nigger" she was referring to. He was a skinny kid, no older than her, but motley. He had a tattoo on his left bicep that read, "Kid X," and blue looking barbed wire underneath that ran the circumference of his arm. "Kid X" wore backwards a cap from the Cleveland Indians but also had on an Allen Iverson jersey three sizes too big for him. Neither of them had made a shot since I'd been there, but it seemed beside the point. I looked from one to the other and back to the girls and wondered if they were all fucking this early in the game. I knew there was nothing new about that or young love, but the scene had me wondering if there were a few wrinkles that I didn't know about, and more. I suddenly felt like an old fuck eavesdropping like a clucking hen on young action and it embarrassed me. I got up with a start and, without looking around, walked away shaking my head and grinning as I went.

The Cedar Tavern, on the border between the East and West Villages, was as it always was: dark, dank, and cavernous. It presented itself now as an anomaly among its sleeker and younger neighbors. Home to the Abstract Expressionists in the late Forties and later the Beats and other avant-gardists in the Fifties and early Sixties, its patrons rebelled and threatened to walk out when the owners tried to put in its first juke box for fear it would diminish, if not corrupt, conversation. Now the box, the last time I looked, was not fed with dimes, but dollars; and the art of palaver, once prized by those whose need to know and explain themselves and their world, whose ideas, expressed in language, both verbal and visual were often their coinage and, to no small extent, plumage, would cringe at what passes as the "game of circles" today.

It smelled like the same heady mixture of piss, disinfectant, and stale beer inside the Cedar. Coming back to this vibrating womb, made of concrete and viscera, had jump-started my heart and senses. I'd tried, during my years of dislocation, not to be the recording instrument I most naturally was. I'd tamped down my natural inclination of turning impressions into sentences, but here it was impossible.

Almost eight and the fever was just beginning to build; it would reach its crescendo tomorrow, after midnight, when people just wanted to go home with someone, anyone. The rhythms of desire are slow to change. I worked my way between what I took to be a full compliment of students from NYU, inhaling the scents of the young ladies coming from their necks and shoulders. The school had now, from what I could see since returning, owned much of lower Manhattan, leaving Columbia University and the Catholic Church to possess the rest. The patrons, mostly students, safely stood amongst their own, shouting and laughing while they hoisted pint glasses of beer and ale to their mouths. I took a quick look at those sitting at the bar but could not identify a soul which, in my case, was not a bad thing, only a disconcerting one.

Joey, like his father and uncle before him, stood behind the bar pouring amber liquids from the taps, as if on automatic pilot, while he talked to a few kids sitting opposite. My back was to him as I slithered past and made my way to the end of the bar. I leaned my elbow on the thick slab of dark wood that dated from the Twenties. Beautifully inlaid cut colored glass, beveled mirrors and carved cabinets made from cherry wood, and built for the Susquehanna Hotel at the South Street Seaport over a hundred years ago, held the seductive bottles of spirits. The Susquehanna, at that time, served the needs of seamen and merchants who had come to New York's harbor to sell their goods, rest their bodies, get shaved, laid, bathed, fed, and made whole again. Sam and Uncle John had bought the bar and then, in the late Forties—then known as the Cedar Bar—had moved in the early Sixties a few blocks north, where it stands today.

I stood at the furthest end, almost in profile, taking in the booths in back of me and the kitchen beyond them. Some good memories resided here and some of the more indelible ones started surfacing. The bartender, a young chubby shaved-headed man, short circuited that by flipping a drink coaster in front of me and, before it landed, said, "What can I get you?"

I'd watched from the corner of my eye the coaster leave his hand and descend in front of me. "Very impressive," I said, "but you can't get me nothing. What you can do is tell that old prick behind the bar that I was getting goddamn tired waiting for him to get me the drink I ordered years ago. Either he—not you, he—makes it now, or there's going to be trouble."

"Hey, mister, we don't want no trouble here. Take it easy, I'll make you a drink."

"I'm not going to tell you again. You can't make me nothing. He's the one that's got to make this right. Go over and tell him. Go ahead. Go." I lowered my head and watched as he went over and started speaking to Joey. When I saw him wiping his hands on a bar rag I turned three-quarters around, making it difficult to see my face. In a few seconds I felt him planting tree trunk-like forearms on the wood in front of me and I saw his hands, large and detailed like a Rodin sculpture, fingers splayed, resting his two hundred and fifty-pound frame on them.

"I don't know what I did to offend you, but I'm sorry about it; lemme buy you a drink and make it right," he said in a deep voice that reflected his Italian New York ethnicity.

"'Sorry' doesn't cut it," I replied without looking at him.

"Hey, I've been nice to you, pal," he began, but his words were halting, like he had to look for them, "I don't want no trouble," he continued, "and I don't think you do either so lemme..."

"You don't know what the hell I think and besides you don't know, and never knew, the first thing about being nice. While Dutch, on the other hand..."

"Sonofabitch," he nearly whispered and gently put his hand on my shoulder.

When I turned to face him and looked at this bear of a man with whom I'd shared, in a short period of time, many lifetimes, the only thing I could think of to say was, "Do I look as old as you do?"

"Older. I thought you was dead."

"I was... and hope I still am." The room felt like it narrowed to the two of us, but I knew different and so did Joey.

"Mike, we're gonna go upstairs, if ya need me gimme a holler."

He came around the bar, and we made our way through the thicker crowd of weekend revelers to the front where a door leading to the upstairs, "Roof Garden" was locked. Joey took out a fistful of keys, opened the door, put on a light and we climbed a steep flight of stairs. Another few lights went on and we sat, near the small bar, in the middle of the flagstone floor, embraced by wooden booths and chairs, underneath the large skylight streaked with the dirt and grime of New York's breath.

"Chivas, Martel, or I could have them bring us up a fresh pot of espresso with a little Sambuca?"

In that instant I wanted all three, and a Lucky. And in the next instant decided to bend my rules. I was being bombarded by memories and needed to know which of them were alive, dead, or the worst possible state, in limbo. "The espresso sounds good. You still smoking?"

Joey laughed, "No, but I could." He moved to the intercom where he asked Mike to have the kitchen brew some brown and send it up on the dumb waiter with a pack of Luckys. When he reminded him that they didn't sell that out of the machine, and hadn't for years, he had him send one of the waitresses out for it. "That's right, haven't sold an unfiltered cigarette in here for a long time. Does anyone still smoke those lung busters?"

"I don't know. But I sure hope so. Seems we're living in the age of 'lite' everything." I was itching to ask him questions I'd been storing for years, but resisted doing so, not wanting to open anything that would be disturbed by the social lubricants. "How ya been?"

"Me? Fine. I've been fine."

"That's it? Twenty years and 'fine'?"

He looked at me for a second, his soft brown eyes had a twinkle in them. "When you come right down to it," he began, "I'm not as good with the words like you."

"So what you really mean when you distill everything that's happened to you, think about it, mull it over, digest, sort, sift, and shape it and then try to frame it so that it makes sense to you, let alone someone else...well, you simply decided that nothing you say, or ever will say, can ever do justice to what it is you mean, really mean. 'Fine' will just have to do. Is that what you're sayin'?"

"That's exactly what I meant."

We heard footsteps coming up the stairs and turned our attention to them. A pleasant-looking waitress appeared carrying a tray with a large pot of espresso, demitasse cups, lemon peels, and a pack of Lucky Strike. "Thanks, Margie, but you could have sent that up on the dumb waiter."

"Oh," was all she said, smiled, turned around, and left.

Joey and I exchanged glances and shook our heads but then, as if remembering what he'd wanted to say before the interruption said, "Max, I thought you were dead, so stop sayin' things to me that almost makes me wish you were. Stop skirting and sliding and going every which way instead of straight ahead. If you're not ready to go that way, I can understand it, but then just shut the hell up and it's O.K. We can talk about other things, like the weather." He stopped and seemed relieved to get that part over with. He got up and went behind the bar and took the bottle of Sambuca and brought it back with him. My fingers, invoking the memory of years, quickly unwrapped the cellophane ribbon on the pack of cigarettes, tore the piece of aluminum foil up to the Indian's face, and shook out a smoke. I looked at it for a second before I lit up and inhaled. It tasted wonderful, fulfilling its promise of sweetness. I offered one to Joey and he took one while he poured coffee into our cups and poured shots of Sambuca into them as well.

We sipped our coffees and smoked our cigarettes, aware of the history that hung, like a clothesline between two tenements, between us. Each garment and under- garment indicated a different size, color, and emotional attachment to them. After awhile I began with one that each of us had ties with, knowing that, in a way, a very large way, I was just stalling for time. "How's Dutch?"

"That sculpture friend of his got him a place in Jersey, last I heard."

"What, put that crazy fuck out to pasture?"

"He's probably busting the balls of a couple of Guernsey cows. You know Dutch could do some remarkable things."

"How come he left here?"

"He was what, sixty, sixty-five and he started to lose it. He always insulted the customers, right? At the end of his run here—almost twenty years, I think—he wouldn't even write their orders if he thought they weren't worthy of his, or our, efforts. Someone would order steak but wouldn't want to drink, so Dutch would walk away or they'd order one of those stupid new drinks that he refused to acknowledge existed, so he wouldn't even want to take their order. One day he cursed out this couple in Italian, and they were Italian, threatened to sue, all kinds of shit. So I tried to put him in the kitchen but he began tellin' the chef how to prepare and cook his foods. So..."

"Right. How about Les?"

"Dead, in Texas, is what I heard. Haven't seen him in years and if there was one thing Les was, he was mad about his mother. Couldn't get through a whole month without seeing or doing something for her. But he owed shys big money and took off, but he came back to see his mom and each time he saw her he'd come here, so..." And he just let his voice trail off.

"Shit, I liked him; I knew he was fucking nuts but I liked him; you couldn't help it."

"My ol' man, whenever he saw Les walk in, he'd give me his wallet to hold. There was no way, he knew, of not giving Les money, but the less, no pun intended, he had on him the better."

I sat there remembering the fifty Les owed me and raised my cup, "One for Les," I said and Joey raised his cup with me. "Brown, what's he doing now, anything?"

"Delivering pizzas in Brooklyn."

"No shit?"

"No shit."

"Damn, that's one real accomplished delivery man. What the hell is going on here?"

"Nothing but survival, but you know that."

"Yeah, I know that," I said and breathed deeply. "Yeah, I know that. I'm just trying to make some conversation because I have a question to ask but I'm not sure if I'm ready to hear the answer, but I have to know," I said, the fear bubbling up. "All right, man. Angela. Angela, that's who I want to know about."

"I don't know about Angela. I wish I could help you, but I don't know."

"C'mon Joey," I pressed, thinking that they might have gotten to him, too.

"I don't know, wish I did; if I did I'd tell you. I hope you know that."

I slumped down in my chair, reached over and took another Lucky out of the pack and lit it and just let the smoke sear my lungs before I exhaled and asked, "Heard nothing?"

"Not a word. Nothing. I heard from you twice: once while you were in the hospital and then the day you left. Or vanished is more like it. And so did she. I asked around, but nothin'. Nothin' 'til now. What, almost twenty years later?"

I got up from the chair and went around the bar. "You mind if I pour myself a real drink?"

"Nah, of course not, go ahead."

I lifted the bottle of Chivas from the shelf and, in a rocks glass, took about three fingers' worth. I opened the mouth of the little refrigerator underneath the shelf and removed a bottle of Pellegrino water, opened that and brought both drinks back to the table with me.

"I could use a drink myself," he said and lifted himself up and out of the chair.

"Sorry, man, wasn't thinking."

"That's all right," he said and came back with the bottle of Chivas and another of Wild Turkey with an empty glass. He poured himself a little off the top and sat back in his seat. We looked at each other and raised our glasses in unison.

"You know, Joey, I was here when I was a young man."

"You and me both."

"It's the first place I've been to since I've been back that makes sense for me to be in, here, talking with you. I feel like a new-born, lying on its mother's chest, listening to the heartbeat of its history." I sat back in my seat and breathed.

"I'll be back in a few minutes; I gotta make sure they're not giving away the store." And with that Joey got up and made his way downstairs, leaving me with all the ingredients of destruction including, of course, myself.

Joey had only turned on a light over the bar's cash register as well as one of the fake Tiffany lamps over the adjacent booth, so the light, diffused as it was through its colored lampshade, appeared like a muted patchwork quilt in what space surrounded me. I pushed myself away from the table, took what was left in the glass of scotch, and walked to where the floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over University Place. This was not where I ever thought I'd be: safely out of the fray, tip-toeing around the wet edges of memories corrupted by introspection and fear, thinking that if I could just be certain of one thing, just one thing, I'd know what to do. In the same rueful breath I knew that it wasn't true. I leaned my head against the cool glass and watched people walk, alone or in groups, to destinations that seemed better than where I was. They ambled or hurried with determination, talking to one another, occasionally laughing, seemingly at peace. Even though I knew their peace to be temporary, there were still hours, perhaps days, of peace. No matter how hard I tried, each and every day, I couldn't get my mind around just how much of a wound still remained on the body of the world I'd been ripped from and that some of the people who'd been part of that world simply were either dead or were fighting in their own private hells. Even Angela. No matter how much I'd tried to keep her alive, she might very well not be, or worse, was in a place I could no longer touch.

***

Angela was right, of course. I'd come home from school in the afternoon to find the house eerily silent and almost empty, except for my father who sat in the living room waiting, seemingly, for something or somebody.

His eyes gripped mine as soon as I walked up the first landing, bored into me, held me fast, and directed me to take a seat opposite him, which I did. My skin prickled and my sphincter puckered. It seemed every fiber in my body sensed what could only be construed as that very special feeling, the one that precedes death.

"Sit down, moth-er-fuck-er," he said so slow and low that I found myself leaning forward to hear what it was he was saying. The words, said as they were, unnerved me.

"Dad, what's going..."

"You're gonna ask me what's going on? Is that what the fuck you were gonna do? Pretend like you don't know a fuckin' thing, is that what you're gonna try to do? You bullshit artist. You complete full of fuckinshit no good sonofabitch bastard."

"Really, Dad, what's..."

This time he raised himself on his two forearms to where he almost lifted his body off the chair. "You say that one more fuckin' time and you won't live, I promise you that, I swear on your mother's life, you won't fuckin' live another minute. Tell me that again. Or tell me you don't believe me. Go on tell me!" he screamed.

The blood drained from my face and, for all I knew, from my whole body because I went cold and numb. I tried to look at his face, but little dots danced in front of my eyes making me squint as I tried to clear them up. My mouth went dry and I wondered if I was going into insulin shock, but if I was, I supposed I'd have to die before taking the chance of speaking, much less moving.

He brought his body back to rest against the chair and appeared to be thinking for a few seconds. "You're a cocksucker, you know that? A motherfucker. I bought you a car, gave you everything you could ever want, and this is what you do: fuck a nigger in my own home. Under my own roof. Eating my bread, taking my money. I'm a real fuckin' jerk. Yes, I am. But you know what? No more. No fuckin' more."

I was beginning to get dizzy and felt clammy as well. "Listen, I got to get some juice."

"Oh, you gonna pull that sick shit."

"I'm not pulling nothing. I feel like I'm having..."

"Oh, go ahead before you make me sick. Get away with that shit with your mother, that poor woman, thinks you're God's gift, but wait 'til she finds this out, gonna break her fuckin' heart."

I'd already gotten up and made my way into the kitchen where I opened the refrigerator, took out a bottle of Tropicana and just started to drink, grateful for the respite, if not the disease.

"Well, c'mon, don't take all fuckin' day," he shouted, "get back in here; we ain't finished yet."

Slowly, I walked back into the living and sat down. I could feel the air-conditioner chilling the sticky sweat that clung to my body. My father, I could see, while not exactly relishing this turn of events nevertheless had me, finally, within his area of expertise, and he was, for lack of a better word, comfortable. He knew, I was certain, what I didn't: where this thing was going.

"Where's mom?" The question seemed to bring him from whatever he was lost in.

"Mom? Your mother? I had your brother take her shopping for some things she said she needed. He'll probably spend twice what she does, but at least he ain't fuckin' no niggers. At least he ain't doin' that."

"And Angela?" I asked, the words slipping up and down my throat before they finally spilt over.

"Angela? The black bitch you're putting your tongue into? She's with them; one big happy family."

"What are you going to do?"

"Don't worry what I'm gonna do. You just make sure that she doesn't know this conversation ever happened. You better act like nothin's wrong." He must have seen the terror in my eyes then because he added, "Don't worry, don't worry, I'm not gonna hurt her. I'm just gonna wait a little while and then tell her we no longer need her."

"Why don't you tell her now and be done with it?"

"Because I don't wanna, that's why. You just make sure you keep your yap shut. And you will, you won't say a word, you won't and you know why?"

"Why?" I said, not at all sure I wanted to know.

"Because you're like your mother. Weak. But if you decide to be brave," and here he gave me a smile, "and try to say somethin to your little colored cunt, I'll know. Try it, see if I won't. I'll pull a leg out yer ass, or worse. And her, well, can't say what I might do to her, but it won't be pretty. I promise you that."

I didn't believe him about not hurting Angela, and I knew he'd hurt me because he'd done it before, many times. It was Angela I was scared to death about, and I didn't intend to keep my "yap" shut. What I did intend to do was not let him see my eyes while I tried to figure out what to do next.

***

Joey's footsteps were heavy as he made his way up the stairs. I went back to where we were sitting. He came into the doorframe and saw me walking toward him from the front, though I must have been almost in silhouette. He sat down at the table and poured himself a drink from the bottle of Wild Turkey.

"Your father still alive, Joey?" I asked as I put my hands on his shoulders, grateful to touch someone who was a friend, as I slid around him and into the seat.

I saw him look up at me, and he followed me with his head until I sat down. "Alive and kickin' in the stall."

"Does that mean he's breaking your balls or taking Viagra?"

"If he's fucking someone my mother will turn over in her grave, but breakin' my balls for sure."

"Joey, I'm sorry. When did she pass?"

"Five years ago, last December. She was eighty-seven which in Sicilian years, according to my father, is thirty-one, thirty-two, tops. Hell, he'll by ninety-three October. He was here last week asking if I forgot to put the rent in the mail to him and why did I have to serve all this fancy shit, like cold salads and pastas? He's still a tough man, still a Marine."

"He didn't try to have you killed, though," flew out my mouth like an unstopped gas before I could catch it. Venom trailed behind it. "You don't have to respond to that," I continued, but I was glad it was out on the table between us. "How'd your mom go?"

"She was lucky: her clock just wound down. Went to bed, never got up, but, man, let me tell you, my Pop was pissed. He got up and did what he did for over sixty years: shaved, showered, took a shit, and went downstairs expecting to find his oatmeal, wheat bran, honey, and coffee. Instead, he found only the coldness of a perfectly empty kitchen. By then, by the time he called her name for the third time, a coldness had settled into his bones as well. He went upstairs and found, 'Mary sleeping the sleep of the really dead,' is how he put it."

"Sorry, but not a bad way to go."

"No, not a bad way to go."

I reached over and poured some more booze into both our glasses, tapped out a few cigarettes, gave one to Joey and lit both. The room was silent. The only way you knew there was life beyond it was that you could see the glare from the passing cars reflected in the windows, or once in awhile hear the honk of a horn. We nursed our drinks and smoked for a few minutes.

"I would have helped back then, if you would have asked, you know that, don't you?" Joey said.

"I know you would, but I couldn't let you in for that kind of grief."

"Max, you can't own a saloon, at least not in this town, for so many years without knowin' one or two people. Comes with the territory—like friendship."

Joey must have seen how uncomfortable those words made me feel, because a few seconds later he said that he'd better get downstairs and asked me if I wanted to stay upstairs or go with him. I didn't want to be alone and didn't want to go home. "I'll pretend I'm a social anthropologist and sit downstairs with you for awhile."

"I thought you were going to say, 'social butterfly' for a second."

"Get a grip on yourself."

Joey capped the bottles and put them away. Just before he closed the door to the Roof Garden I went back to the table, grabbed the pack of Luckys and walked downstairs with him. Joey went behind the stick. There was the same seat at the end of the bar, like it was reserved for me, and I slid into the stool, put the smokes on the wood, and did what was always so very easy for me to do, I observed. He came over to where I was sitting and asked if I wanted something to drink. Still feeling the effects of the little I had upstairs, I asked for a coffee.

He brought back two coffees in Bell glasses, a bottle of Sambuca, and we each fixed our drinks. The sweet licorice taste of the liquor, braced by the strength of the Cedar's coffee, helped me regain some of the clearness I'd lost. Casually, I let my eyes move among the crowd milling about the length and width of the bar. Surprisingly, there didn't seem to be that much difference, in clothes, hair color, tattoos, and body piercings, between the young men and women. Each, in roughly equal measure, had some of their generation's social signature. Some of the young men's hair, however, had been purposely made up to look as if they'd just gotten out of bed. With mousse or gel, they pulled and teased it in a hundred different directions giving their heads the impression of being a rumpled bed, the sheets and covers indented with the shapes of bodies that had a fitful and uncomfortable night's rest. Only on tops of their heads, it seemed like they were perfectly comfortable, not a feather ruffled, every unkempt strand of hair, illogically in place. Here, in the West Village, where NYU and real estate had replaced art and bohemianism, their outward appearance spoke more to current fashion and their cultural status, than their younger, and less affected, counterparts in Chinatown. Skin, for both groups, had become a canvas but more importantly, a statement. While each had tattoos, the ones in Chinatown spelled out names of family or love interests, including themselves, and were cheap looking. Here, their art seemed more intelligent and expensive, whether demonstrated by the intricate workings of colored lines and drawings or the single-minded Asian characters adorning necks, shoulders, and backs. They reminded me though, of the thinking that went into creating your own license plates. Both the men and women gripped cell phones in hand—for the men it seemed a display of power, for the women one of connectedness. They had them tethered to their belts, or sequestered and pulled out of bags. There seemed to be an unspoken rule that when the cell phone rang, the person whose phone it was, was allowed to disengage from their original conversation and turn their attention to whomever was on the line, as if the person in front of them no longer existed. Conversations that I'd have thought private and restricted for living rooms or even bedrooms, were now conducted with all the animation, exuberance, expletives and in some cases even grunts and moans, on the sidewalks of New York. Self-centeredness was amusing when seen in each of the four main characters on Seinfeld, but seen here, in all its three-dimensional glory, it seemed all too real.

How and what each generation loves, defines itself, I thought, looking out into this particular batch of hormonal stew. Whatever it was they were, they seemed slicker, more polished in an advertising kind of way, than what I remembered we had been. I doubted that this generation would be arguing, fervently, among themselves about literature and writing or art and ideas. Where were the Pollocks who fought everyone, or Frank O'Hara who wrote about love and Lady Day, about things that transcended their fleshy frame. Twenty years hence, would these people remember anything more than somebody puking on somebody else, or how they ran out without paying the tab? Maybe we were worse; for all our posturing, our lasting memories would be rampant addiction to everything, and AIDS.

Also, if one can tell anything, anything at all, by observation, they were far more comfortable with sexuality, theirs and others, than what I thought those I'd been around had been, myself included. Yes, we pushed fucking and sucking to new heights. I could remember feverish couplings in the back booths, next to the kitchen, at four in the morning. Yet I remembered it being softer, too. Now, I saw no man softly stroke the side of a woman's cheek or brush her hair back, ever so slightly, from her face. I noticed no young woman, standing, or in the intimacy of a booth, casually rest her arm across the shoulders of her mate or twist the hair that curled at the nape of his neck. And I didn't know what to do with these observations.

Having had enough impressions of modern romance, I turned around, facing the beautifully carved cherry wood cabinets and the two bartenders filling orders. I've always found a person impressive who, using the least amount of conscious flare, still demonstrate an individual style in fulfilling his position. And I knew a little about bartending. Joey, of course, could do this in his sleep. Mike, his partner, was not as good, actually a bit clumsy. I watched for awhile as they filled orders.

When I had to find some kind of job outside of New York City, I already knew I was a very good bartender. Joey taught me well. To do something that well without thinking was very liberating and fulfilling. If you were good, working an "action joint," you made money, lots of money that never had to be declared, and you could usually go home with a woman on a pretty regular basis, if you so desired. Even if you didn't though, the flirting was fun, and it was nice to know you could.

Flirting, well, I loved to do that, but Angela was there most every night I worked. Angela knew how the game went. She was smart enough to know how tips were generated.

***

"Flirt all you want baby, but I can tell if someone's getting' any of my sugar. You hip to that?"

"More than hip, scared shit."

"Ah, baby, that ain't no good."

"Only teasing, sweetie. You're it for me. Simple. Anything else would complicate and compromise the system so much it would just die. I don't want that. Never want that. How about you? You want that? You think about getting down with someone else?" I nearly whispered the last few sentences.

"Listen, baby, neither of us is dead. You see a pair of tits in the right package, or I see a guy with a scar in the right place and he looks like he's fuckin' when he walks, and I say, 'Hey, hold it, stop a minute, let's talk,' that shit's natural. You just don't act on it. Simple. If things get a little weird between us we talk and if we can't talk, after a period of time, we try to figure somethin' out. We just can't lie. Conrad was right: There's a taint of death in lies. And baby, right now, our relationship's alive. And me? I aim to keep it that way. I seriously do."

***

A sadness, a melancholy, settled over me. It always seemed to do so every time I thought about Angela and there was nothing I could do or think about that didn't bring her back to me: I turned towards the bar and I saw her reaching over the wood to kiss me; I looked at the crowds and remembered Angela and I, Frankie and Francesca commandeering a booth for the night of drinking and talking until Joey threw our asses out into the early morning light. We'd then go to Ratner's or Dubrow's for a coffee and bagel before heading back to Frankie's place, where Angela and I were living, too.

I pushed myself off the stool and motioned to Mike that I was going to the bathroom. After I washed my hands, however, I did not want to leave. Instead, I went into the lone stall there and just sat down. I leaned back and felt the cold of the metal flusher. The cold was uncomfortable so I pushed myself further up on the wooden seat and leaned forward, thankful for the quiet, which was short-lived. In a few moments, the door to the john opened and two people who knew each other sidled up the urinals and relieved themselves; another man came in, but seeing the stall's door closed, pushed against it anyway and then left. I heard the pisser's handle being flushed and the two guys shuffle out, without washing their hands, and as they went I heard another, probably the same man as before, come in. This time he asked, "How long you expect to be in there?'

"Not much longer; a few more seconds and it's all yours."

He left, I waited a little bit, then I got up and made my way out of the stall, stopping by the sink to wash my hands again. I opened the door and went out, passing the guy waiting to go in. He nodded his head to me, and I did the same to him. Joey was serving a couple at the bar when I reached him. "Could you watch my seat, I'm going to sit outside for a little while?"

"You O.K.?"

"Yeah, I just want to clear my head, that's all."

"You can take your coffee with you; I won't tell."

"Thanks."

I went back to get a clean glass, poured some fresh coffee in it and took the bottle of Sambuca which had been left there and poured some of that in as well. Then, glass in hand, I moved outside where I sat down on the little brick edge that stuck out a foot from the front of the building's facade. The night air smelled cleaner and cooler. There was a slight breeze, lifting summer from its torpor and ushering in the fall. I took a sip and watched people of all different ages, in their capricious yet, with slight deviations, homogenous armor that indicated to me just what age and class they were from, or wanted to be from. Not only did the crowd seem younger than I'd remembered, it also was represented by an African-American and Hispanic presence that was almost invisible when I hung out here.

I stared at couples maybe a little too long and dangerously. I couldn't help it or, even better, didn't want to help it. I lit a cigarette, took a long sip of coffee and looked down towards the sidewalk below me as I blew out the smoke, watching it curl around the place I sat.

I'd tried to tell Angela. Everyday. Every moment we were together. At times she looked at me strangely, but wouldn't ask, giving me time to work it out. But I never did.

***

Autumn arrived. The trees had turned, the weather had cooled and the air had that wonderful smell of leaves turning the colors of sunset and finally brown, getting out of the trees' way, leaving them barren and somewhat forlorn as they waited to endure the frigid days ahead.

I'd had plenty of opportunities to tell Angela about my suspicions, but I hadn't yet done it. Each time we were alone together riding in my car, having something to eat or seeing a film, my mouth failed me. It was worst when we made love and worse still after we'd finished. I felt like a thief, an asshole, a fraud; a complete coward. How could I get so much pleasure and honesty from her and give nothing in return? I never believed I was that selfish, but I was, and I was also every other loathsome attribute that cowards and selfish people possess. Angela's words, 'If you don't stand for somethin', you'll fall for anything,' came into my head a million times a day, but to soothe my contemptible, self-serving fear, that's where they stayed. I was afraid she'd ask me to leave with her if I told her, and I wasn't ready for that.

One gray late November afternoon, in a cold and piercing rain, the first taste of real kick-ass winter was in the air, and a phone call came in from my father telling us that he wanted to have dinner that night at Lundy's, a well-known seafood restaurant in Sheepshead Bay. It was unusual for us to eat out any night but Sunday, and especially at the time he said we'd be going, eight o'clock. My father, a large man who bordered on fat, got home on most evenings between six and seven. He had to have his food ready by the time he got out of his pants and arrived at the kitchen table, in his jockey shorts. My mom, a terrific cook, served mostly meat and various forms of potatoes or rice, fearful always, that the meat wasn't done perfectly enough for him. Many a steak was flung back into the sink, barely missing her face, because there was a little too much blood-red meat showing. When he got into this kind of rage, each one of us, Brother Don, mom, and myself, would react with averted eyes and silence. A bubbling fear would move around my chest, and I prayed he wouldn't throw a glass or upset the table, which he sometimes did. It was only after he felt somewhat calmed by eating that he could direct his attention to other matters.

At seven, I went downstairs to tell Angela that we'd be leaving soon to have dinner out. She was lying on her cot writing a letter to one of her relatives down south, and I felt I was intruding. I cleared my throat loud enough for her to hear and when she turned her head towards me I told her what I'd come downstairs to say. She turned her head, acknowledged my presence, said, "Yeah, fine," and went back to what she was doing, but then added, "You sure actin' all funny these last few weeks. I know you know that, too. And I don't know why and it fucks with me."

I went over and sat at the edge of her bed and put my hand on her shoulder. "I know," I said, "I've wanted to tell you something a thousand times, but I just couldn't get it out."

She turned back towards me and looked at what she must have interpreted as anguish. "You still love me, right?"

"Oh, hell, more than ever."

"Then what is it, baby?"

I squirmed on the bed and moved my hand down and placed it on the inside of her thigh where it was so soft and warm.

"You can't get out of it like that, baby."

"No, no, I wasn't trying to. I can't tell you right now, it's going to take a little time and I have to leave in a few minutes, but tonight, when I get back, we'll find a place and time to talk and after, after you've heard the whole thing, you tell me what you want us to do and we'll do it. O.K.?"

"Not exactly, but it'll have to do. Gimme a kiss."

I leaned toward her and she sat up. Our lips met, it felt like the first time in months. We pulled away and smiled at each other.

"I'll be back as soon as I can."

I got off her bed and made my way upstairs where I knew my mother was waiting, always afraid of being late. My father was a real stickler for time.

Holding an umbrella, which I hated to do, I walked my mother to my car and, while protecting her from the chilling rain, opened the door and helped her navigate getting into it. Each time she'd gotten into the car she exclaimed, "Oo, Oo, Oo," as she sank lower and lower into the bucket seat. I scooted around to the other side, opened the door—never expecting my mom to lean over and do it—threw the umbrella on the ledge in back and slipped into the other seat. I put the key in the ignition, cranked it up, put on the lights and windshield wipers, slipped it into first, and released the clutch.

"Don't go fast," my mom said.

"Don't worry."

"That's what you say every time, and every time I have my heart in my throat. Don't go fast."

"It just seems like it 'cause the car is low to the ground and the way the hood is constructed..."

"Max, don't kid me, please. And don't go fast."

"I won't, I won't, I promise," I said, smiling.

The car's lights illuminated the leaves, wet with rain, exposing the brown, green, and red colors as they clung to the road or next to the curb. I was concentrating on keeping the car in check, hardly taking it out of third gear by taking the long way to Lundy's.

"Max, you like that girl, don't you?" my mother asked, her voice sounding younger, easier.

"What girl, mom?"

"Angela. Max, you can fool a lot of people but never a mother; you can't fool a mother's heart. Never."

I sat there surprised, but didn't know what to say. I just drove.

"I hope your father and brother don't know. Let me tell you something," she began and sighed. "Before I met your father I was very much in love with a Frenchman, Paul. He was many years older than me. Don't forget this was in the Forties. We met in Manhattan at a job I had and he fell head over heels in love with me. Well, let me tell you, he romanced me, really romanced me—not like your father does or has ever done—he took me to operas, ballets, beautiful films and I, I fell in love with him, too."

I looked over at this woman, my mother, and she changed. She looked young, alive, fragile almost. "What happened? What did you do?"

"Nothing. I thought I could do nothing. We could go away, he said. I couldn't. I couldn't go through with it. His age, his race, and then his religion. My parents would have died."

"Hell, mom, no one ever dies over that."

"You're right, you are. Nobody dies because of that. It's a real shame I didn't know that at the time."

I looked at her differently. I don't really know you, I thought. My mom and I had this terrible wedge between us, attributable to my diabetes and her mania of perfection. And I'd been anything but happy. I was downright moody. If I complained about something, got angry, upset, melancholic—about anything—it was viewed first with skepticism then outrage. Because she provided me with everything she could—while my father gave me enough money to be comfortable—there was nothing to be unhappy, angry, sad, or even confused about. Yet when I looked at her, over the years, there was no one in my memory who was more unhappy than my mom. To listen to her, one would get the impression that nothing in her life had ever gone well and worse, nothing would ever go right for her in the future. No wonder she waxed rhapsodic about her first love, Paul.

The entrance to Lundy's parking lot loomed up ahead. I put on my right blinker and eased the car into it and found a parking space close to the back entrance. I got out first, grabbed the umbrella, and helped my mom out of the car and into the controlled chaos of this revered seafood eatery. We'd come here often for many years and liked to sit with certain waiters who liked to have us sit with them because my father tipped well.

Lundy's was enormous, serving almost five thousand patrons, on two levels, on their busiest nights; it reminded me of a Spanish castle. The staff, all colored, made it seem like you were down south about to eat in an old Pullman car. They carried trays, almost at a gallop, piled high with the food orders for as many people as sat at any one table, which could reach ten or more. From the trays and the kitchen you smelled the thick red clam chowder, fresh biscuits, old-fashioned butter, steamers, clams, oysters, crab meat, lobsters steamed or broiled, fifteen different varieties of fish, fresh apple and blueberry pies topped with rich ice cream.

My mother and I stood by the lip of the dining room when Cap, a large black man who'd worked there for twenty years and who usually waited on us, came over. He told us that our father and brother had been sitting at the Oyster Bar waiting for us. I thanked Cap and we walked, dodging waiters, as they kept their trays, piled high with dinners, aloft with one arm over their heads. My father and brother sat on stools with another man whom I'd never seen before.

When we were nearly on top of them, it was not my father or brother who noticed us, but the stranger. We were at least ten feet away when, sensing a foreign presence, he swiveled around on his stool. His movements caused my father to turn as well. He leaned close to the stranger, and I could see him saying something. This caused his body to relax but still watched us draw near. My brother didn't look up or turn around. He lit a cigarette and drank his drink.

My father introduced this man as Whitey, someone whom they'd run into when they arrived at the restaurant, though judging by the number of butts in their ashtrays, liquor in their glasses, and money on the bar, it appeared they'd all been there for quite awhile. Also, looking down at the bar I noticed Whitey's left hand gripping the round wooden handrail that ran the length of the bar. It had only three fingers. His index and middle finger had been cut off at the first knuckle and the skin had scarred over and hardened.

"Very pleased to meet you, Mrs. Heller," he said.

His voice was soft, almost ingratiating, not at all what I expected. As he was saying that to my mom, I was looking now at his features. He was wiry and muscular and five feet seven or eight inches in height. His face was thin and angular, and he had eyes that were a blackish blue and dead looking, like a shark's. He saw me looking at him and he returned, ten fold, the appraisal, until I had no choice but to look away. As soon as I did that, he got up from his stool. "I'm sorry to have to leave, but my wife must be worried silly I've been gone so long. It's been very nice to meet you. Jack, good running into you. Let's keep in touch."

"I will. Definitely."

"You take care of yourself, too," he said to my brother and put his hand on his back as if they were old friends.

"Yeah, you too," Brother Don mumbled.

Then he was gone, walking out swiftly through the side doors at the front of the room.

My father got off his stool and nudged my brother in the side. "Let's eat, I'm starved. Way past our dinner time, but this just couldn't be helped we were so busy in the store; just impossible to get out." The four of us, with my father taking the lead, moved into the main dining room where Cap, seeing us, brought us to his station.

Once seated, I couldn't get comfortable. There was this unnamable anxiety and concern running through my body. I certainly wasn't hungry, and I said that to them. I said that I'd go home and fix something there.

"You're here already, eat something," my father said.

"No, I think I'll go home and have something there, a little snack or something."

"Max, you have insulin working in your body and you should've eaten already. So eat something and then go," my mom implored.

"O.K. All right. Let's order." I looked around, trying to capture Cap's attention.

The rain had let up when we got outside, but it had gotten colder. My mom chose comfort over company and rode home with her husband and younger son. I watched as they ambled over to his Cadillac with my mom apparently talking very animatedly to Brother Don. Suddenly, he turned to her, his face scrunched in anger, and said something and raised his arm in the air in a get-the-hell-away-from-me manner. They put her in the back seat, got in the front, and drove off.

Even though they left first, we still arrived home at just about the same time. We all must have seen the same thing: every light in the house was on.

Brother Don, almost before the car stopped moving, jumped out and ran into the garage, which my father had automatically opened a block away.

I pulled up behind my father who left his car in the driveway with my mom outside. When I tried to get in the house, he told me to stay with my mother, but I couldn't. We heard Angela's piercing screams, like an animal caught in a trap, and, although I was far away, I thought I could hear her sobs as well.

"Go," my mother said, "go, I'll be all right." I think she said that to my back because I was already steps away from her running into the darkened garage. I pushed through the door that led inside and bounded up the stairs, my heart beating ferociously while my brain tried to compute what was going on and, more importantly, what had happened to Angela.

'Goddamn, sonofabitch,' I heard myself saying as I took the steps two at a time. The house had been ransacked, that much was sure. In the living room, drawers from the desk and small antique wooden cabinets had been taken out and turned over, littering the room with their contents. I didn't stop but followed Angela's sobs into my parents' bedroom where she was handcuffed in the small bathroom, to the bars of the stall shower. She wore just a bra and slip. When she saw me, my face a mask of fear, she said, "Help me, please."

"I will, don't worry," I said, "you're going to be all right." Guilt, anger, and a feeling of being despicable washed over and lodged inside me when I thought of the dinner I'd just eaten. I went up to the handcuffs and tried to jiggle them free, but this hurt her so much a howl of pain came from her throat and out of her mouth. Tears ran down her cheeks and shivers ran up and down her body. I saw the deep cuts that the cuffs had already made. Her skin had been ripped and smeared with blood, some of which had already caked around her wrists, trickling from the open wound. Her hands and wrists were already turning black and blue. "I'll be right back." I saw her eyes, so vulnerable, pleading with me not to go but I did. I ran downstairs to her room where I saw my brother and father going through her things. "What the fuck are you doing!?" I nearly screamed.

"Somethin's not right here, I can tell. There's some shit goin' on, and we're goin' to get to the bottom of it, you can take that to the fuckin' bank."

"Why don't you stop playing detective," I said, "and call the police? They have to have keys for the handcuffs. She needs to get the hell down from there. Call!" I grabbed Angela's bathrobe and brought it up to her and wrapped it, the best I could, around her body. Also, I brought in a stepladder to see if we could remove some of the weight that was pressing her wrists down, inflicting more pain and bruises. Luckily, it worked. I then went to get her a drink of water, thinking anything stronger, which she surely needed, might dull her ability to recall what happened when the police showed up.

By this time all the members of my family had gathered in the bedroom, where every drawer was dumped onto the bed, my mom was staring into her empty jewelry box with an equally empty expression on her face. My father was at his side of the bed, running his hand underneath the bureau drawer by his bed searching, no doubt, for the money he'd hidden there. "Cocksucking bastards. Motherfuckers. They took everything; seemed to know where every fuckin thing was, too. Sonofabitch." Brother Don just sat there, looking in at Angela.

"Did you call?" I asked as I passed them.

"No, not yet. We want to ask her a few questions before the cops get here," my father shouted.

When I reached the kitchen, before getting the water, I picked up the phone and dialed emergency. They answered quickly and assured me they'd have a patrol car there in a few minutes.

I got back to Angela just as Brother Don began his interrogation. "Now tell me—

and don't lie..."

"Wait a minute, easy. I just called the police and they told me they'd have a car here in a few seconds. They know how to do this better than you do. Leave them do their job and leave Angela alone until they get here." I went and let her sip from the water, hoping they'd show up soon. I felt sick, nauseous, while I fought being intimidated by either one of them.

"Oh, Max, they stole your gold pieces," my mother said, a hurt I'd never heard before in her voice.

My father's mother, since I was the first born from her children gave me, as her legacy and heritage, extremely valuable pre-Civil War gold coins.

"They were worth enough money so you wouldn't have to work after you graduate, you could do what you want; you could take time off to write, anything you wanted to do. Oh, God, this is awful," she concluded.

It didn't improve my already nervous stomach, but I was far too concerned about Angela to process that information now. "You can ask her who came in here, can't you? That won't hurt her feelings, will it?" my father bellowed.

"There was two of 'em; two coloreds."

"Colored guys, huh? How could you have let 'em in here? How the fuck could that happen?"

"They said they worked for Big Daddy, and I remember you callin' yourself that quite a few times, said you told them to drop some stuff off here," Angela said, struggling with each word.

"Bullshit! We don't have workers like that. Somethin's wrong, I'm tellin' ya."

"They had bags with the name of your store on them they..." Her voice faltered and I gave her some more water.

"Don't say anymore, just take it easy. You're just going to have to do this again when the cops get here."

There was a knock at the door that Brother Don leaped up to answer.

When they didn't appear for what to me seemed like an interminable amount of time, it felt like bugs were crawling in my veins. I put the water glass down and, like a man possessed, went to see why they were taking so much time.

There were four of them in the living room, two uniformed and two plainclothes detectives, talking with Brother Don. The uniformed cops were much younger and innocent looking than their superiors. One of the uniformed cops had a wispy mustache and seemed to blend into the background, while his partner looked wide-eyed and ready for whatever trouble had occurred. The plainclothed ones were each heavyset and looked like they lumbered when they walked. They wore inexpensive sport jackets, ties, and slacks worn from constant use. All of them were listening to Brother Don.

"Fellas," I began, my voice strident, but struggling to control the feelings churning inside, "there's a young women handcuffed to the shower with bruised and bloodied wrists. Could one of you please get her down?"

"Sure," one of the uniformed officers said, after looking for approval from his mates, and followed me to where Angela was. He looked her over once or twice before getting out his keys and inserting them in the cuffs. When they came apart Angela's body just sagged, but the cop was able to keep her from falling. He walked her out of the bathroom and put her on my parent's bed, getting a disgusted look from my father. My mom, though, came and sat beside her, putting her arm around her shoulder. Angela, in the most natural way possible, leaned her head and rested it against my mother's arm and closed her eyes. My mom stroked her hair. There we were, with this eerie current flowing between all of us, bumping against our agendas.

Soon the detectives were in the room adding to the alchemy. They glanced at my father and all three nodded their heads in greeting. They turned to me, and, I thought, half-heartedly gave a similar nod to me. Then they said to my mom that they were very sorry that they had to be here for something like this and asked her if she could make a detailed a list of missing items. Next they spoke to Angela, first asking if she could talk and next if she wanted them to call an ambulance or take her to the hospital. She acceded to the first question, but declined their other offer. She basically told them the same things she told us but tried to give as much detail about the men who looted the place as she could. They asked her, in escalating fashion, if she was sure she'd never seen these men before. Each time she said she hadn't and grew wearier with each response.

"How could she know these guys?" I blurted out. "She doesn't know these people, stop badgering her, will ya?"

"Easy," the biggest detective forcibly said, who'd been asking the questions, "let us do our job."

"Yeah, O.K., do your job," I replied, cowed and too meek sounding for my own liking.

Brother Don came in the room and said that my mother's furs were gone. My mom, without looking up, simply added them to the list she was making. There was a resignation and determination to her face. Watching her now, dutifully recording the stolen items, almost moved me to tears, although I couldn't tell you why.

The detective told my father that they'd be back tomorrow to get the list and bring Angela to the local precinct to look at mug shots. Again, they asked her if she wanted to go to the hospital to be treated for her bruises, but again, she declined. My father got off the bed and, with my brother, followed them out to the living room where I heard them talking for awhile before leaving.

When they returned, I helped Angela to her feet and, without saying anything to anybody, helped her off the bed, leaving them in the bedroom. I took her into the large bathroom where I knew certain items were that were needed. I brought from the cabinets underneath, hydrogen peroxide, Mercurochrome, and gauze bandages with tape. I had her hold her wrists in the wash basin as I poured, as gently as I possibly could, the peroxide over her cuts. I turned the tap water on and, as the white foam bubbled up, I put her hands under the water and began to clean her wounds. She winced a few times, but never complained. My body moved with her pain every time I applied the peroxide and then the Mercurochrome, which stung even more. I dressed her wrists the best I could and then we walked downstairs to her room and sat down, bone weary, on her bed.

"Your mama's real nice."

"I'm beginning to find that out."

"Somethin's most definitely wrong. I can feel it. This is not gonna be good—for either of us."

"I know that. Get some rest. We'll deal with whatever we have to deal with in the morning."

I helped her get out of her bathrobe and into bed. After putting the blankets over her, I kissed her on the lips, her cheeks, ears, her forehead, the lids of her eyes, her hair; any part of her that was exposed. Not getting into bed with her that night was one of the most difficult things I ever had to do. It felt like a piece of flesh had been ripped from me when I left her in that room.

By the time I got up the next morning, Angela was helping my mom put the house back together. They seemed to have gotten closer in the last twenty-four hours, and I was happy about that. When the same two detectives came to get the list of stolen merchandise and then whisked her away, it felt like I'd never see her again.

"She had nothing to do with what happened. You know that don't you?"

"Yes, I believe that. They're just going to show her some pictures and then she'll be back."

"I'm not too sure about that. Maybe I should go to the precinct as well."

"I'll make you something to eat; what would you like? How about a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich?"

"Yeah, O.K."

But the low energy current of doubt and uncertainty would not leave me, even after Angela came home a few hours later. Besides showing her the mug shots they asked, repeatedly, if she was sure she didn't know what happened, who she knew in the metropolitan area, what she does on her time off, and any other questions that might implicate her in the theft. I couldn't decide if they do that as a matter of course or if they did it because my brother and father made it seem like she was involved. My mom encouraged us to get out of the house before the others got home. We dressed in some warm clothes and decided to take a walk on the beach.

The rain the previous night did nothing to improve the weather, but at least it had stopped, leaving a rich grayness that, in its own way, was soothing. We took our time walking, meandering the long way around the circumference of this unlikely New England-looking village at the tip of Coney Island in Brooklyn. We didn't talk, but I put my arm through the crook of her elbow, resting it there. For the first time that I could remember, I didn't feel self-conscious walking with her so close to home. She glanced up at me and smiled. I stopped, bent down, and lightly kissed her, lingering for a moment before we moved on.

Winter, I always thought, was the best time to be on the beach. The sand was thick with moisture and cold and, as we walked towards the surf, there was desolation all around us, like we were the last people on earth. We held each other tighter as we went. The water imitated the dark grayness of the sky and the surf itself, rough and filled with higher waves than usual, was dotted with whitecaps that broke in the distance and continued assaulting the shore. We walked up to the mahogany-colored sand at the surf's edge, and inched our feet toward the water line. There was a delicious smell of the sea that was strong, briny, and clean. We walked along the surf's edge, each lost in our own thoughts and, with me at least, the thoughts of her as well.

"I can't stay here, baby. I was awake all night thinkin' bout what happened and, as much as I hate to give in to cowards, I'm 'fraid ta stay. I gotta go, you know that don't ya, baby?"

I didn't say anything.

"Max, I love you, I know you know that and I just began to feel so fond toward your mama—she know don't she? about us I mean? yeah, she know—but it ain't no good for me. I'm gonna get hurt, I can feel it."

"I'm not going to let them—or anyone else—hurt you. And wherever we're going to go we're going to be going together. I love you, too. Very much. Deeply, madly, completely, sincerely, unavoidably in love with you. And I can't do, don't want to do, a goddamn thing about it, except keep loving you until you either can't stand it or don't want me anymore."

"Baby, that won't ever happen. Not by my doin'."

We stopped, not caring that the surf was coming in over our sneakers and boots, and held each other until we felt it was all right to go back to my house.

It happened quicker than either one of us expected. Three days later when I returned from classes, after having told Frankie what had gone down, I found all of them sitting in the kitchen, under the bright overhead light, with Angela crying.

"What's going on here?" I asked, my back arching and stiffening.

"She and her fuckin' relatives stole every fuckin' thing. I don't care what you say, can't trust a nigger, simple. And here," my father exclaimed, "is more proof. We found your coins in her things downstairs. I guess she likes fuckin' gold."

"I don't believe it, not for a second," my voice rising in decibels, my face turning red. "Where are the other things, then?"

"In the bedroom, everything. The dicks went to her relative's house in the city and there they were, except for the coins."

"It's bullshit. Both of you made this happen for whatever sick fucking reason you had. Well, did you call the cops, have her arrested? What?"

"No, we ain't gonna do that. Gave her the chance to just get the hell out of our house quietly—though I'd really like to beat the shit outta her."

"You'd have to go through me first."

"Hey, I wouldn't mind doin that either," Brother Don said.

"No, I know you wouldn't." I went over to where Angela was sitting, her color was ashen. "Angela, pack up your stuff, we're getting out of here."

"We?" my father exclaimed.

"Mom, I'm sorry it had to come down to this." I placed my hand on her shoulder and she took her hand and rubbed it up and down on mine. I could sense she knew I was doing the right thing, the only thing. "I think I'll take my coins now."

"Like hell you will," my father said, "you leave and they're your brother's."

I looked at my brother and wondered how we came out of the same womb. "You like that, don't you?"

"Sure. Better me than you."

"You know, I always thought you were stupid, but now I know you're a coward as well. A sick, selfish, jealous, envious, want-it-all sonofabitch. Stick those coins up your ass." As I turned to leave, grabbing hold of Angela's arm, I felt a vicious slap to my face, which spun me around. I saw him grinning at me. Tears welled in my eyes and then he slapped me again.

"Coward, huh? I'm a fucking coward? You're a pussy, a big soft cunt. Your girlfriend here has more balls then you do." He hit me again. "Pussy, do somethin', pussy, do somethin'. I'll make it easier." Then he slapped Angela, too.

I was frozen, as if cast in cement. It was my mother who stood up and held my brother's arms. "You touch him again I'll never speak to you. You'll get nothing from me, not a morsel to eat, not a piece of your underwear washed, nothing."

"Let the bum leave," my father said, "but if you leave you ain't comin' back, ever. Not to see your mother, nothin'. And don't call because if I find out you did, I'll find you, I can promise you that. And there'll be hell to pay."

"Not as much to pay if I stayed." I pulled Angela up, kissed my mother, and then the two of us went downstairs to pack. I made sure to pack my diabetic items and the things I needed for my classes, then threw whatever clothes I thought I'd need immediately into a duffel bag knowing, I could, if I wanted to, come back here and get more of my belongings. I went into Angela's room and saw her stuffing her things into the same two suitcases she arrived with. After she finished we decided to go out the garage. We threw our things into the car and were off.

We'd not driven long when Angela started to cry. I looked over at her and put my hand on her inner thigh and stoked it. "It's going to be O.K. It is. It's going to be all right."

"I know; I know it is. But right now I feel so goddamn violated," she said as angry as I'd ever seen her get.

"I can't imagine what being handcuffed to some bars is like, but I'd feel violated, too."

"No, no, it's not that; if it was only that, if that was the only fuckin' thing I had to deal with it be all right. But it wasn't. Your brother, your fuckin' brother, that jealous, envious, triflin', motherfucker was feelin' me up and down when I was handcuffed in there! Perverted motherfucker! Every goddamn thing I ever had to goddamn endure came back to me like a flood of slime. I haven't felt this ugly in so long," she said and paused, "I thought all that shit was behind me." And then she started sobbing again.

I kept my hands where they were because if I lifted them from her leg or the steering wheel I don't honestly know what I would have done to myself and then my brother. I wanted to rip my teeth out, the pain for Angela as intense as I'd ever felt in my life. I wanted to turn the car around and go back to maim, beat, dissect intimately every piece of putrid matter in his body and then, after his screams were answered by the gods, destroy the necrotic matter. I didn't. I knew I had to be right where I was, doing just what I was doing, until the time came when to do anything different would appear.

"Was that the first time my—how do I say even the word?—he, tried to do something to you?"

"No, not the first, but the worst. He'd be lookin' at me for quite awhile then started to like come up to me and try to seduce me with his stupid bein', but I laughed it off. Then, one day, he just came up to me and whispered in my ear, 'You know, if I want it, I'll just take it,' and moved away smiling. Well, I know men and I thought he was just tryin' to get what you got and fuck you, too—he's really a down low homo, that's what he really is—but I didn't think about it much and thought itta be stupid tellin' you then and so I went about my business."

"I'm glad we're out of there."

"Not more than me, baby, not more than me."

I never did call the detectives to verify my father and brother's story, but I knew I didn't have to. It was obvious that they'd set up the robbery, probably with that guy, Whitey, they were with that night at Lundy's. I didn't have to call the cops to find out what I already knew. What I didn't know was why they did it that way when they didn't have to. But we were in much too much of a hurry to get out of there and had other more pressing issues, like finding a place to stay and get some work to pay our way.

Both issues were solved pretty quickly. We barged into Frankie and Francesca's pad and were able to stay with them. Then the next day, Joey offered to teach me bartending at the Cedar. It didn't take long before I was earning a decent buck. We began, what we thought, was our new life together. We thought that things in our lives, including the love we had for each other, could and would just get better.

***

When Joey came out, he found me leaning back against the brick with my eyes closed. He shook my shoulder until I opened my eyes, surprised that this was almost where I'd left off a few short seconds ago.

"You all right?"

"Sure," I said, nodding my head as if to prove to him I was.

"What are ya gonna do now?"

"Try to get into some kind of trouble."

"Not a hard thing to do in this town. Why don't you hang out for awhile and stay with me and Diane tonight? You'll come back with me tomorrow."

"Thanks, but no thanks. I got to really psyche myself up for this gig on Monday. I don't know how I'm going to do that yet, but I have to try to figure out something...or I'll blow my brains out. Quick." I pushed myself away from the bricks and stood up. "Thanks, Joey. I'll be seeing you soon, maybe sooner than you even expect. Thanks for everything." With that we hugged each other and I turned to leave.

"Hey, Max, lemme ask you somethin'. You know about your mother, don't you?"

I turned around and felt a jab in my gut. "What about my mother?"

"Oh, shit, I'm sorry..."

"She dead?"

"No, not dead, but pretty sick. Your friend, Esther, has been keepin' in touch with me almost every month to see if I knew where you were. She called just the other week to tell me your mom was taken to the hospital. She ain't doin' too well. I thought you knew. I thought that's why you came back."

"You know what hospital?" Joey shook his head. "You have Esther's number?"

"I have that, wait a second. It's in my book inside. I'll get it for you."

Joey came out with a slip of paper with her name and number written on it. I took it, looked at it for a second, and stuffed it in my breast pocket. I looked at Joey for a moment, turned around and left, bound for I knew not where.

By the time I was out of sight of the Cedar, the feeling of wanting dope—heroin, scag, smack—overwhelmed me. The jab I felt a minute ago was replaced by an old familiar knot in the pit of my stomach that made me feel queasy, and those scary, expectant, anticipatory feelings of copping, procuring, and mainlining the dope had me. It gripped me with a certainty that had me walking east, where I knew poor people lived who needed that kind of hope.

The effect of just knowing I was going down there to get some dope had the desired effect. I was so concentrated and focused on the task at hand, it obviated all my other concerns, until, at least, I'd crossed First Avenue and needed other powers of observation.

After First Avenue, from Fourteenth to Houston Streets, the Lower East Side was, and still is, known as Alphabet City because of the Avenues, A, B, C, and D that followed. When I'd lived there during the Sixties, it did not feel dangerous. Aside from those minorities who were born there and stayed, there was also a smattering of eccentric college types and artists who could afford the types of rents that we were paying, sixty-seven fifty for a four room, five floor walkup in a tenement, with the bathtub in the kitchen. We'd be out until all hours of the night prowling around looking for some kind of jolt: something to hear, see, or eat. Sometimes we'd go to Slugs or the Village Vanguard, two legendary jazz joints. While there was drug dealing going on, it wasn't aggressive in the way it is today. A bad economy, the rich stealing more for themselves, and crack severely worsened these urban pockets of extreme poverty across the country. I could see and feel what it was doing to New Orleans through the late Seventies and Eighties. I'd read and saw the pictures of what it had done to New York City as well. It gave the terms "governmental neglect" and "devastation" bad names.

Now, however, when I passed First Avenue and got to Avenue A, I knew something basic had changed. I saw white people, lots of white people, not running away from, but strolling along, seemingly without a care in the world. They did not look like those I remembered from my days here. Some looked very professional, coming in or going out, in expensive sport jackets or dresses. They prominently displayed jewelry as well. "Success" is what it was meant to say, and it did. Walking further, I began to notice that some of those buildings I'd seen on TV or read about that had been gutted, and all but abandoned, except for squatters or drug addicts, had been refurbished. Gentrification had taken place. They looked old and new and provided a pleasing aesthetic for those accustomed to, and needing, pleasing aesthetics.

When I hit Tenth Street I turned left and went further east. Here the block, adjacent to Thompkins Square Park, was beautiful. The park I remembered was usually littered with drugs, drug dealers, and addicts of all types and persuasions. Now it seemed calm. Perhaps, the police presence, in cars both parked and cruising, might have had something to do with it.

There was an indoor-outdoor cafe at the corner of Avenue B and Tenth Street, crowded with people enjoying a drink, a late dinner, or coffee. The music was modulated and well selected, by a hip jazz New York standard. I turned left and walked a few steps and saw small boutiques that sold expensive styled clothes and jewelry. I turned around and went the other way, thinking that the way I was walking did not bode well for my purposes. When I passed the park and crossed Seventh and then Sixth Street, I became alarmed that everything about this part of the city had changed. There were small restaurants and bars crowded with potential artists and other young adults who looked as if they had put themselves together by the recently hip John Nagy school of drawing and painting. They all looked the same, no matter how different they tried to appear. Their clothes, different colored hair styles, piercings, and tattoos belied the club they really had and wanted to join. It was a ticket to fun and romance and certain conversations that, had they presented themselves differently, they'd have stood a very good chance of not being allowed to join. They affected the same pose, smoked the same light cigarettes, and drank these colored cocktails that I'd never seen before. Outside of bars or restaurants, they gathered, each with his or her cell phone, smoking cigarettes, holding their drinks, and talking. It would seem intolerable if they weren't talking to somebody, every minute of every day. The city seemed to have these invisible electrical umbilical cords criss-crossing like a laser light show gone mad across the skies. They looked like life was treating them very kindly, and maybe it was, but I had my doubts. America was preparing for The Millennium and endless good times. Maybe no one had ever really read, The Great Gatsby, and never knew the unavoidable cruelty of human hope and who watched the American Dream emptied into a collective bedpan.

At Third Street, I turned further east, believing that if there was still a drug scene it would be where the subsidized projects were. Three-quarters down the block, I automatically looked left and found myself in front of the tenement that Angela and I used to live in. I felt repulsed, nauseated. I forced myself to turn away and push on only to find myself further sickened by the reality that on Monday, two days from now, I'd be a junkie counseling kids to stay away from drugs.

Then I saw them. The rushes that I got in my belly told me all I needed to know about who they were and why they were here. I moved back into the shadows of Third Street and watched. Groups of young Latinos were on three corners of Third and Avenue C wearing the de rigueur urban outfits. They reminded me of vertical cockroaches with clothes on. People were coming up to certain of them and whispering something. Money would be exchanged and I'd see the person who got the cash hold up his hand or hands, indicating the amount that was purchased. Then the person copping would walk down the block where another person, who stood in a doorway, would usher him—t usually was a him, though often enough it was a her—into the building where the merchandise was secreted. One time I observed the guy who got the money take the customer down the block himself. I surmised that it had to be a bigger purchase.

Each time I attempted to stand up and go over to them, I was pushed back down. I looked up and down the block and expected her to be walking down to me, coming home.

***

Slowly, over the course of many weeks and hundreds of hours, after we'd gone off together that crazy night, our lives ebbed and, at times, flowed out of us. The cruelty of our families, each in its own way, was a recipe for disaster. I listened raptly, both to her story and to the sound of my inner being shifting with each disclosure. I found it very difficult to reconcile what she'd been through in her early adolescence. I felt partly repulsed at knowing that so many men had had her, even though it was against her will. The cheap morality I had disgusted me and, thankfully, I was able to get beyond that.

I would like to have killed her family, her father in particular. I would have liked to have been able to cut into her memory bank and excise every ugly incident and experience from her ability to recall. I realized that that's what I wanted, but maybe Angela needed to use those memories in a different way. I recognized, also, my primary wish was to see my father and brother dead.

The saving grace for both of us turned out to be English teachers and reading. My eighth grade teacher must have seen how forlorn I looked and noticed my ability to put words together somehow and thought I'd like to do some extracurricular projects, which I desperately did, though didn't know I felt that at the time. Angela had to wait until high school to find her savior, but find him she did. It was the tapestry of the world's literature, each work conflicting and complementing what went before it. Angela was led to stitch together her own universe that had, as its only blueprint, only which was thought out by her. The nature of belief, she came to believe, is fraught with risk. Yet, not to believe in something leaves the spirit spare with little place to go except through the body's geometry, in a closed entropic system. Risk was the only thing in this life that made sense to her. She also knew, that next to having sex, reading was the most intimate and arousing activity she could engage in. Not surprisingly, I felt, from an early age, the same way, though I hadn't, up until then, equated it with sex.

"I gotta tell ya somethin', Max, and I hope you don't take it the wrong way, but those French philosophers and writers really taught me somethin'. They taught me not to feel sorry for myself and expect others to do likewise 'cause then I'd be practicin' with what they call, 'Bad Faith.'" Her teacher had her reading, "those crazy French cats."

"Why didn't you sleep with him?"

"I wanted to, I told you that already, don't you ever listen to what I say?"

"All the time, and you know I do," I said laughing and she laughed as well, though at first tried her best to hold it in.

Frankie and Francesca were very good to us, and after I'd been working at the Cedar three nights a week and Angela had a job as a security guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, we could afford to get a place of our own. Luckily, an apartment became available where we were and although it had fewer rooms and the bathtub still in the kitchen, it was more expensive. We thought that seventy-five dollars a month was highway robbery, but we took it.

Our lives settled into a comfortable routine. Angela would meet me at the Cedar and wait until I got off. She developed a relationship with Joey that turned into an abiding friendship. I'd occasionally surprise her at the Met, trying to rub up against her as she worked. Fortunately, her station was guarding the halls of the European painters and sculptors. Often times I'd go visit her with Frankie, who knew a lot about art, and these artists in particular. As a matter of fact, Frankie knew a great deal about a great many things, without being preachy or pedantic. Being with him was like plugging into an electrical socket.

We still had the Porsche and we used it as our escape vehicle. When the weather was too oppressive, or the apartment too small, or you looked up and discovered that you hadn't been off your block in weeks—or so it seemed—then we got in the car and went somewhere, even for a day or night. We did this just to air out or, sometimes, we wanted to sleep in a strange bed. The only real problem was moving the car mostly every day to find another parking spot because of alternate side of the street parking regulations.

A year later, Frankie and I were a few days away from The New School graduation. He and Francesca planned to travel to Europe on vacation and then relocate to New Orleans or Baton Rouge, where Frankie had a job lined up in a college teaching art. If Angela and I could afford to take a vacation and could coordinate this between our two jobs, we planned to see them sometime after Christmas. We didn't go to our graduation, but ate at Katz's instead.

Over the summer, for entertainment, we often found ourselves at night at the Schaffer Beer Music Festival in Central Park, where for two dollars we could find ourselves a front row seat to hear Nina Simone, Miles Davis, and others of their stature. Sometimes we brought a blanket and stretched out on the grassy hill that overlooked the arena. You couldn't see that well, but the music was live and the evening's air sweet and lovely.

One evening late in August, Frankie and Francesca were just back from Europe and packing. I was at the Cedar, bartending. It was a quiet night. My conversations with customers were few and far between. I didn't mind; I was never much good with the kind of small talk that went on between people who hardly knew each other. It was almost three thirty, and I began getting ready to close when an idea hit me so powerfully I stopped, dead, and thought for another second to make sure it was real. In that brief instant, I decided to write a novel loosely based on my father's and brother's criminality, and what they'd done to me and Angela. I had all the exuberance of a first-time writer writing his first great American saga.

When I got home, I was surprised, but glad, to find Angela up and sitting at the kitchen table, reading and drinking a glass of tea with honey.

"I've got something to tell you," I blurted out.

"I'm all ears."

It didn't take long to spin out the ideas and story as I had it and I could see Angela grinning and nodding her head enthusiastically as I spoke.

"Baby, get to it. It's a story waitin' and needin' to be told. I love that three part angle, literary Rashomon, good, baby, good."

I sat back in my chair, exhausted from the night, but feeling giddy about the idea and her excitement.

"Max, I got somethin ta tell ya, too," she said.

"Shoot."

"Well, you know that Chinese chick, Wo-Is-Me, Wo-Lan, Wo-Somethin'? Well, as old Wo said, 'I am with child.'"

To say I was "stunned" would not be doing that word justice. My mouth hung open, my eyes dilated, and my expression must have seemed to be a mix of jubilation... and terror.

"Baby, don't panic; we can do this."

"I know we can. I'm just a little overwhelmed. I've been called a lot of things, but never, 'father.' Maybe we can teach him to say somethin' else like Dada."

"What happens if 'he's' a 'she'? Only kidding, baby, only kidding."

"We're going to have one smart and beautiful kid. And you're going to be a great mom."

"Tell me you want to have a kid. Tell me, I need to hear it from you."

"I want to. I'd be lying if I said to you I thought about it before this very instant, but Angela, I want to have this kid." I went over to her and put my arms around her waist and rested them on her belly.

"Two months old and countin'."

"I love you."

"You better."

The next morning we had breakfast with Frankie and Francesca. He was much more interested in what I had to say, while Francesca kissed Angela and bumped me out of my seat in order to sit next to her, while I eagerly moved next to Frankie. He was more than encouraging, he even sounded excited about the baby, which for him was like talking about an extraterrestrial. I whispered to him about how I was able to not show Angela the anxiety I felt and he assured me that things would work out just fine. He really wanted to talk about my idea for my novel and seemed to be as revved up about it as I was, throwing out ideas and suggestions like he was on fire. We made up that I'd periodically send down to him what I'd written, and he'd try to offer what suggestions he could. The day after next, they were gone to New Orleans.

September was a busy and productive month for us. Angela, besides working at the Met, was reading all she could about being, "with child." I'd started to outline my novel and papered mostly every available spot by my desk—the kitchen table—with character sketches, plot developments, subplots, lines that I'd overheard through the years by eavesdropping and those that stuck in my head and, of course, the title of the work, "See the Light."

The title came from conversations between my father and brother when we gathered around the dinner table. At first it made me feel uncomfortable without really knowing why. Then, as the line took shape and came out of the shadows, it was very disturbing. Brother Don would come home and my father would say to him, "Well?" Don's response would often go, "Oh, believe me, he saw the light," or, "It was hard as a bastard, but he saw the light." Sometimes, he'd add things like, "If he didn't see the light then, believe me, he ain't gonna be seein' any light in the future," or, "It took awhile, but after we turned the lights off and showed him what the dark could look like, he was dyin' and I mean dyin', to have us show him the light again."

After hearing these exchanges a few times, this form of moronic Morse code, I wanted to jump up from the table and scream, "Oh, Jesus, why don't you say 'I killed or hurt or maimed' the sonofabitch and be done with it?" But I couldn't. Now, I had every type of coded exchange displayed in front of me waiting to be set down and recorded in this book. Of course, I knew I'd have to change the characters considerably, but I wanted to have something in front of me, something I could use as a starting point to set the foundation before I fictionalized the work.

There was the delicious jolt of crispness in the air on the first weekend in October. I'd gone out early to get a few things for breakfast from Russ and Daughters, the most celebrated outpost of smoked fish and appetizers in Manhattan. I'd brought back Lox, smoked white fish, bagels, vegetable cream cheese, and pickled herring in cream sauce, the one thing Angela didn't touch, for us to feast on.

At first, I watched surreptitiously, while Angela stood in front of the mirror. She looked at her belly, trying to see if it was rounder and bent back trying to exaggerate the size. I'd become more comfortable with the idea of having a kid, and was once again relieved to discover that her condition did not deprive me of her and her pleasures. Our love making, while as exciting as ever, was even more tender without being tentative. She was as interested as ever in my progress with the novel, and I became more interested in how she was doing in her pregnancy. I even began leafing through some of the books she'd bought in preparation of the birth of our kid. Watching her watching herself and touching herself in the mirror got me terribly aroused. Soon we were back in bed, heated and then spent.

Central Park was glorious that day. New York City was on the cusp of fall, where the sunshine still held the heat of summer, but the colors were becoming muted and the air smelled earthy and sweet. The leaves had barely started to turn, let alone fall, but you could feel it would not be long before they turned into many-colored peacocks and slowly, caught by the wind or by their own cycle, drifted downward.

The park was still showing signs of the democratic uniformity of radicalism. Tie-dyed t-shirts and patchwork dungarees were walking side by side with Paul Stuart and Bergdorf's.

Bethesda Fountain and Terrace was the park's epicenter. Designed in 1867, it had, as its centerpiece, sitting in the fountain itself, a sculpture by Emma Stebbins of a winged goddess taken from a biblical account of the miraculous pool of Bethesda. There were sandstone sculptures adorning the sides of the two granite stairways, leading down to the red brick set in a herringbone design that served as its floor. The Victorian encrusted tiles, made by in-laying colored clays to form a pattern, borrowed from those crazy monks of the 12th century, were contained, all sixteen thousand pieces, on the ceiling of the Terrace, where hundreds of pigeons cooped and shat.

Lining the rim of the fountain itself, were guitar players and folk singers. Mostly, they sounded like Dylan, looked like Hendrix, and posed like Morrison. There, among the sounds of guitars and bongo players and the thick aroma of reefer, which floated in the air as naturally as spores, Angela and I walked down the two levels of stairs and into the throng, observing and hearing the sounds of fanciful youth already on the threshold of growing old and metallic. We knew about, and in some cases enjoyed, some of those who came of age when we did and who transformed our times into breakthrough art. Both of us couldn't help but be swept up in the electrical climate and immediacy of a bloodletting that purified a country by stating the obvious. Things were decidedly wrong—and had been wrong for a very long time—and needed confrontation to survive. However, when it came to satisfying our souls, we stuck to those we gravitated to and grew up with, jazz artists and rhythm & blues singers.

As we were starting to leave the fountain, I noticed a heated buzz of conversations, like ripples in a lake, move in concentric circles all around us. The rumor was that there were big trucks coming into the park and people were unloading gigantic amps and speakers and setting them up on the stage of the band shell located across the road. "Dylan's comin with The Band." "The Stones, man, it's The Stones." "Hendrix. I bet it's Hendrix." Angela and I went underneath the Terrace and out through the other side, ascending almost right where the band shell stood, and there found hundreds of people already filling the benches and surrounding area. The band shell itself, was a hive of activity. There were those setting up the speakers on either side of the stage, amps on it, and the myriad equipment—blinking lights, feedback circuits, sound level checks—that were part and parcel of rock & roll shows on a large scale and order. The amazing thing was that it didn't take those people long to get it all together.

Then we heard it. It began as a distant roar, gathering force as it drew near and finally exploding with pounding sound and controlled fury as hundreds of Hell's Angels drove their bikes into the park and, forming two distinct lines, moved onto the walkway from the south that led directly to the band shell, scattering the inhabitants along the way. They had, on the backs of their bikes, five members of the Grateful Dead, led by Garcia, bearded and grinning, wearing his customary black t-shirt and jeans. The Angels drove to the stage, commandeering it while pushing back those who had already planted themselves. Nobody protested. The Dead, as they were called, got off the bikes and moved onto the stage where they began to set up the equipment already up there, tuning their guitars, piano and organ, and drums. By this time the crowd, who'd found out by what had to be, mystical means, had turned into thousands.

But we didn't stay. We went west and exited the park on 72nd Street, looking at the gothic steeples and turrets of the eccentrically beautiful Dakota apartment building and, to its north, the majestic spires of the San Remo. Then we headed for Cafe La Fortuna, a small espresso, and Italian pastry place that we'd discovered one night during our secretive forays into the city. The sounds of Caruso singing the aria "La Donna e Mobile" greeted us as we came in and the waitress, who knew us, seated us at a small table in the back. It was nice and dark and warm. We ordered some espresso and Italian cheesecake and sat back and just talked about nothing in particular, which served both of us well.

That Monday, I gathered some of my writings and headed for the public library on 42nd Street and Fifth. Sometimes, when I felt stuck or insecure, I'd go there to feel more like a writer. In the main reading room, an oasis of literature, you could sit at a long and beautiful wooden table under Tiffany-like green hooded desk lamps and imagine being anything. After spending three or four hours there, I'd finally broken through on a section that had proved to be very difficult. With a sense of power and accomplishment, I left and headed home.

I thought it strange that Angela had forgot to lock the top, and more secure lock, before she left for work. As soon as I entered I sensed a weird and evil presence had been there. I walked more cautiously into the kitchen. There, pooled next to the bathtub, was a viscous liquid with a burgundy ribbon of blood directly in the sun's light. It looked like a blood yolk. When I turned towards the bedroom, to see if Angela had gotten sick and was home, I saw that all my work, all the papers that hung by, and on, the kitchen table, had been ripped off or scooped up, and were gone.

Blind with fury, I locked the door and, thinking of the baseball bat I had in the car, turned right towards the staircase, and ran into the arms of Ralph and Ralphie.

"Whoa, where ya goin' so quick? Hang on there," Ralph said.

"Get out of my way."

"Hey, Ralphie, the writer wants us to get out of his way, whatdayathink about that?"

Ralphie stuck a gun into my side. "This is what I think about that."

"Listen, if ya come with us real easy you stand a shot at seein' the nigger again. If ya don't, neither of youse got a shot—no pun intended for you writerly types."

"Where are you going to take me?"

"Hey, live dangerously; get some fun outta life. C'mon."

"You know what?" I said, "She's dead and I'm going to be dead. Go fuck yourselves. Kill me here."

"Hey, Ralphie, a real hero; never expected this, especially from one of those artsy types."

I leaned back and slid down the wall and sat on the top step. "Yeah, us faggot 'artsy' types aren't as tough as two big fucking assholes killing people they don't know and have less to do with."

Ralph hit me with a pretty good punch on top of my head and I felt myself getting dizzy.

"Stand the fuck up!" Ralph said.

"Fuck you. Kill me," I said and stared at him. I saw him exchange a glance with Ralphie and the next thing I knew something hit me on the back of my head and the day turned suddenly blurry. They propped me up between them and carried me downstairs. I knew I was going to die. Their car was parked across the street and they dumped me into the back seat, with Ralphie getting in beside me. Leaving my block and neighborhood seemed to happen in slow motion. Ralphie, who had his arm around my shoulder, had a big tattoo of Jesus the Savior done in blue and red ink on his right forearm.

"Nice tattoo," I managed to say.

"You like it?"

"Not really; I think it's dumb. The only people who should have tattoos are old sailors and the Yakuza."

Ralphie hit me in the nose, causing my nose to sting, my eyes water, and blood flow freely down my chin and onto my shirt. "Keep it up, wise guy. Ain't no telling what I might do to you."

Down Houston Street, past Katz's and Russ and Daughters, we rode until we were underneath the West Side Highway. Turning left of West Street, Ralph drove slowly past the abandoned hanger-like warehouses that at one time served as loading docks and the like. Now, these battleship gray tombs were home to rats, pigeons, and the homeless.

Casually, with one arm draped over the steering wheel, Ralph turned into the entrance of one of those huge warehouses and, like we were supposed to be there, drove through its opened mouth. The panes of glass on the outside were mostly broken or shattered, the concrete floor was encrusted with pigeon droppings and the partial skylight over part of the roof emitted, through its own grime of decades, a dirty light into the space. Once inside, Ralph quickly proceeded to almost the end of the structure and stopped.

There, he got out of the car and opened the door to the back. Before I had a chance to react, Ralph, cobra-like, struck. He grabbed my hair and dragged me out of the car and onto the concrete. My body thumped as it hit the ground. Ralphie put his knee in the center of my chest and leaned into it, making sure I couldn't move. I saw Ralph come around to my right arm and also, with his knee, pin it to the ground. I was paralyzed with fear. I couldn't imagine what they were going to do, but I knew there'd be pain.

I noticed, when I turned to look at Ralph, the classic grill—even though I could only see half—of a Cadillac. I could hear pigeons cooing.

"We ain't gonna kill ya, you was wrong about that—though I couldn't really give a fuck either way. We wanna make sure you never write any of that fuckin' shit again."

"I won't. Is that it?"

"Yeah, well, we gotta make sure. Sure that ya really gonna remember because time is funny, ya know, after the pain goes away people got a tendency to forget and we don't wanna take that chance."

"No, I'm telling you, don't worry. I won't..."

Ralph grabbed my hand and brought it up and held it firmly in one hand while his fingers held my index finger.

"What are you doing? Don't do that, please."

"If you ever, CRACK!, tell anyone, CRACK!, or write anyfuckinthing, CRACK!, I will personally, CRACK!, cut off your fuckin' hands, CRACK!,

My screams echoed in this cave and the pain was so intense I hardly noticed him leaving my right hand and putting himself in the same position over my left arm.

"And let you watch yourself, CRACK!, as you bleed the fuck out. I left your pinkie to remind you what you got comin' if you become a bad boy again. I guess you'll just haveta learn how to hold chop sticks with your left hand."

Then Ralphie took both his legs and pinned my shoulders down. "I want you to remember me, too." With that, I saw the face of Jesus on Ralphie's arm hit me, like a piston hammering a cylinder, repeatedly in my face, until I lost consciousness.

***

A series of profound guitar chords brought me back to the present. The beginning of "The Wind Cries Mary" rained down from the windows of a tenement building across the way. I struggled to see where Hendrix's voice was coming from, but I couldn't. Whatever kinds of speakers were up there carried his blues mournfully across the distance with a lucidity that penetrated the most callused of hides. Once again, I looked up and down the block and thought how to do this.

Then I decided to compromise and just get drunk. After I did that, my feet began to work. The dealers were there, however, and I struggled to get by them. I tried not to look directly at them as I passed, but I stole glances, as my stomach flipped over a few times.

I went into the first saloon I saw after I'd crossed Houston Street. It was dark, but not so dark that I wasn't noticed. I was measured by the Hispanic patrons and bartender. She, big chested and pretty, looked me up and down as I took a barstool. I felt the others' eyes, whether at the bar or sitting in booths, sizing me up. I placed a twenty dollar bill on the bar and asked her to pour me a double of the cheapest, rot gut, speed rack scotch she had, neat, with a water back. Without much expression, she pulled something out of the rack that sat beneath her and poured me a generous double into a rocks glass, and then provided me with a glass of water. Quickly, the drink was gone and I sipped at the water while she made my change.

***

An ambulance arrived just as I was starting to come around. I had no idea how they'd gotten there. All I knew was that I'd never suffered such immense and intense pain in my entire life. I couldn't see out of my right eye. My jaw was inflamed and I couldn't move it without sending jolts of white light into my brain, and my fingers, bent into these grotesque shapes, throbbed with excruciating, almost exquisite, suffering.

They lifted me onto a gurney and into the ambulance. One attendant asked if I could talk and I shook my head, "No," but I tried to roll on my side and gesture with my elbow toward my back pocket, where my wallet was. He understood, got it out, and found my drivers license and diabetic card that I carried near it. He made some notations on a sheet of paper and, in a matter of minutes, as the siren wailed, we arrived at St. Vincent's Hospital's Emergency Room.

Once the doctors examined me and saw the extent of the damage, they put a morphine drip into me and took me up to a room. A doctor came in shortly after to ask a couple of questions that I answered by shaking my head. They figured out how to give me my insulin and feed me as well, even though I couldn't eat solid foods. That, too, they dripped into my arm. I fell asleep through a warm cloud of morphine and my thoughts slipped, and then disappeared.

My jaw, luckily, wasn't broken or fractured and in a week or so I was eating solid foods, soft though they were. I was still getting a diet of Dilaudid through the day, though now it was spaced out in four-hour intervals. I used to look, and then react, in a Pavlovian fashion when I saw the nurse, a short Irish older woman, dressed in a nun's habit, who had her grayish hair pulled severely back and tied in a bun, who had those magical keys around her neck.

It was a week later that Ralph and Ralphie came to visit me with the bag of money and the ultimatum. There was really no question what I'd do.

Two weeks after that, after spending a month there, I left the hospital and went home for the first time. I had fear in my heart and two prescriptions: one for two hundred and forty Percocet and the other for ninety Dilaudid for when the pain became intolerable, in my pocket, and a bag with one hundred and twenty-seven thousand dollars, in twenties, fifties, and hundreds. I gripped it tight by my three good fingers.

By the time I'd gotten to my home I'd filled the prescriptions at Bigelow's—all they had to do was see the splints and bandages, not to mention the sad hues of bruises still on my face (I also carried a note, with doctor's letterhead, informing them of why I needed this amount of narcotics). There was a note slipped under my door when I got home that told me that my car had been impounded and was down in a holding pen by the pier—near the place I was beaten.

The thick bloody pool of liquid had dried, leaving the stain firmly embedded in the wooden floor. I placed some newspapers over it and walked into the bedroom. I stood and watched her pose in the mirror, ran my hand over her perfumes and earrings and bracelets on her bureau. I opened her drawers and smelled her sweaters, her blouses, her underwear. I sat on our bed and curled into the fetal position on her side, inhaling her pillow and trying to will her back into my life.

It was dark by the time I awoke. I felt disorientated and afraid. After getting my bearings, I reached over and turned the light on and looked at my watch, nearly seven. I hid all the money, with exception of twenty dollars, and went to Katz's. It was the food of the gods. Afterwards there was nowhere to go. I was not safe and would not put anyone else in harm's way. I went home, took four Percocet waited for them to enter my bloodstream and when they just began to work, took another two. I turned on the television and was surprised to find the World Series on. I lit a cigarette and was careful not to fall asleep with it burning.

There was really no time to waste. The next morning I took three hundred bucks from the bag and went down to the pound were my car was being held hostage. I paid the fine and drove off, trying to manage the gearshift with a bum right hand, but I did it.

What I'd been thinking for weeks was that if Angela was alive, chances were that she went back to her folks in New Orleans. Also, my only close friend who was almost safe from what had happened was Frankie, who lived down there as well. I packed two suitcases and my duffel bag. The suitcases contained my clothes, books, LPs, and other items, while the duffel contained my insulin, medications, toiletries, and odds and ends. I had to make two trips down to the car, holding the suitcases in one hand by three fingers and a thumb. A few blocks from my apartment, I realized I'd forgotten to take the money and went back.

In a little while I was through the Holland Tunnel, headed for the New Jersey Turnpike, and south.

***

I woke up Sunday morning, fully dressed, and felt a sheen of thick sweat underneath my clothing. My mouth tasted as bad as my breath smelled, and my mood was as foul. In fact, I had many moods, none of them good.

I knew that what I'd felt about my mother was an innate twinge of something that might be birth love. The idea of seeing her was unsettling, not because of what might happen to me—though that, of course, had something to do with it—but arose from the uncovering of feelings I'd had for her that years of therapy had raised. No matter how much she said she loved me, she couldn't, or wouldn't show it. My obligation now, of calling Esther to find out what I didn't know, filled me with anger. The reality that tomorrow was my first day of work filled me with dread. Both feelings, I knew, had to do with staying alive.

I crawled out of bed, took an insulin shot, and went into the bathroom. After brushing my teeth, I put some coffee up to brew while I showered. Sitting at the table sipping this dark and magical liquid I mulled over whether to call Esther or not. I had been her first, and not very considerate, penis. You really can't say, "lover," because I was anything but that. There were some laughs during the year that we occasionally got together, but eventually she became much closer to my mother than I became to her. My mother liked the fact she was Jewish and wouldn't cook. Esther was and wouldn't, even then, let me get away with much, besides fucking her when it was convenient for me to do so. I didn't think any less of her at the time, because I didn't think much about her at all. Now, I had a pretty good idea why I did what I did to most of the women I knew before I met Angela, and it was anything but heroic. Esther had opinions and wasn't afraid to share them. I knew I'd be crawling into her sights as soon as I dialed her number.

"Well, what do you know, the prodigal son returns."

"I just saw Joey last night and he told me you'd called and..."

"Called? Twenty years' worth of calls is not just, 'you'd called'."

"Listen, Esther. I've been back for nearly two years and it's the first time I saw Joey. So lighten up, will you? How's my mom?"

"Aren't you going to at least ask me how I am?"

"Oh, Christ. Why the hell do I have to be cordial now?"

"Still not a drop of foreplay with you; fuck me and get going. Don't worry, Max, I won't ask you to stay. I'm just teasing you a little after all this time. You want to tell me where you've been for twenty years?"

"No, and it's not that I don't want to, it's other reasons that I can't go into. Leave it at that for now. Please."

"I've been all right, thanks for asking. I've been a drunk teacher, a drug addict slut girlfriend and teacher, a praise the Lord converter and now, now, a pretty laid-back spinster. You can still fuck me if you want, and in a few years get a pretty good pension."

We both uncomfortably chuckled.

"Your mom is not doing too well," she said, her voice lowering an octave. "She's dying, Max. She's had diabetes for the last ten years and it's caused her to go blind, a leg amputated, and now her kidneys are failing. They don't think she has long and neither does she. She's been asking for you for quite a long time, said she wants to tell you something, but now I think she's a little delusional."

What could that be I wondered: Fuck it, I said to myself. "What hospital's she in?"

"Shit, Max, what happened?"

"Life, my dear, that's what happened. I hear it happens to everyone, if they hang around long enough; at least I hope it does; hate to think that I've been singled out for this."

"Coney Island. I just saw her a few days ago," she said, her voice flat and removed.

Coney Island, I thought, couldn't those bastards put her in a better hospital than that? Probably not, because any place else would be too long for them to drive to see her. My head was consumed with not only how, but why, I'd want to visit her, even though she was dying. Many things had happened since I left, especially in putting together the pieces of my family, particularly my mother.

"All right, Esther, thanks."

"That's it? I'll go to see her with you if you want? I'd like to see you, too."

"No, Esther, it's not going to work that way. If I go, I'll go alone."

"If you go? Max, what is going on here?"

"I'd like to tell you, but I can't; I really can't. Better for all concerned if we just leave it that way for now. I've got to go."

"To hell, Max, that's where you're going."

"I've been plowing that acre all my life."

"Oh, all right; try to keep in touch, will you—a woman never forgets her first prick, no pun intended."

I laughed to myself and hung up the phone. Perhaps I'd become a bitter and cynical man. If I did, I knew it was merely the flip side of romanticism gone bad. What I did know was that inside I was still like a marshmallow, but the difference was I was no longer interested in anyone putting me over the flame.

Tomorrow I was going to try to take this jagged outline of myself and try to fit it into the system. My whole life, aside from the one I'd had with Angela, I'd never wanted to fit in, I'd wanted to fit out. How I was going to do this was anybody's guess.

The football season was starting up today. I decided to go out and bring back something to eat, and watch the war about to be played out in living color, with pads. Baseball was a little bit more honest. The only protection between you and eternity was a batting helmet. Unfortunately, life didn't even protect you in those ways. It compromised, corrupted, and destroyed flesh and spirit in arbitrary and decidedly unholy ways. It was useless to try and figure it out, although that made for some interesting art. Life was the best teacher I'd ever had; it taught me there is no better teacher. Until I could figure things out, and see if I could survive the next onslaught, that would just have to do.

MISTAH

Only the dead have no fear.

\----Harry Crews

Chapter VII

"Hey, Mistah, what here's this JUMPSTART shit?"

"Fuck if I know." I peered over my reading glasses and saw two young black kids, probably freshmen, looking incredulously at me. They'd never heard a teacher, especially a teacher and older white guy they didn't know, say the word, "fuck" in such a way. Casually, I went back to reading my paper.

"Mistah, what you mean you don't know? You here ain'tcha?"

I took off my reading glasses and put down the paper. "That don't necessarily mean I know shit about anything, does it? Just because you got a teacher teaching a subject does that mean they know shit about how to teach, just because they're in front of the room?"

They looked at each other, eyes as wide as their grins. I could see that the one who asked the questions emboldened the other.

"You're a cool dude."

"No, I'm not; I'm an old fucking white guy, but that's O.K. I appreciate you saying that. I really do."

They kept exchanging these wonderfully spontaneous looks at one another that melted what barriers existed between us—for now, at least.

"Listen," I went on, "this place is a place to come if you're having trouble with stuff in or out of school. If I can help, I will. If I can't, I'll tell you that, too. And—and this is important—if you guys are having sex, I have the condoms. I give them out, all day, in this office. All right?"

"Yeah, that's cool."

"Good. Now get the fuck out of here and let me finish the paper." Again, I looked over my glasses as they went out shaking their heads and laughing.

It doesn't take that long for your life to fall into a pattern, especially if you become part of a giant and lumbering system, like a hospital, jail, or school. After a few weeks, mine certainly did.

I'd arrive at seven-thirty. Lourdes would come in an hour after that (even though she was supposed to be here the same time I was), and Jackson, he'd show-up an hour after her, if he showed up at all. He seemed to think he was working a three-day week, usually taking Tuesdays and Fridays off. Lourdes and he were still battling each other. We were moving closer and closer to Carver having to come down. Certain people, and I was one of them, like to think that nothing that could happen to them in the future was as bad as what had happened to them in the past. Consequently, I didn't pay too much attention to something that I didn't have all that much to do with anyway.

The school was a twenty minute walk from where I lived and since I didn't have to do much to prepare for the day, including what I'd wear—khakis or dungarees, sport shirt and sneakers—I'd get up, test my blood, take an insulin shot, shower, dress, have a cup of coffee, and leave. Before the term began, I debated whether or not to dress up and try to be some kind of example to the students whom I'd be trying to serve, or just try to be easy and be comfortable, which is what I decided to do. Besides, they need role models of color, I reasoned, which, no matter how much I thought I was at one time—not a role model, but colored—simply wasn't me.

Each morning when Lourdes arrived she'd walk in as if she were speed walking. And each morning, smiling and apparently out of breath, she'd tell me of her travails, either with finding a parking space, or getting one kid up for school and her other kid awake and looking for a job, since he was almost twenty. As soon as she sat down, the phone would ring and it would be her youngest, Raymond, who was just beginning junior high school. She'd ask him whether he'd brushed his teeth, gone to the bathroom, showered, and gotten dressed. This conversation would be repeated every fifteen minutes until she knew he'd gone to school with the admonishment not to get into any trouble today. He was not to hit kids, touch the tits of the young girls, or curse out his teachers. Interspersed with those calls would be other calls to her other son, Julio, whom she'd tell to either get a job or take in her car for service. Then it would be her boyfriend, Carlos, to get an earful. Usually they'd have fallen asleep drunk and angry. She was tired, she said to me, of keeping him with her, especially since it was her apartment, and very often she'd tell him to get dressed and go back to his mother.

"Sounds like you're living the good life," I'd say.

"Problems, problem, problems, man," she'd say. "Nothin' but fuckin' problems. What the fuck do these people want from me?"

"Your big tit," I'd reply and then we'd laugh. When she laughed, her whole body would shake, which would make me laugh more.

"You see that Jackson prick yet?"

"Not yet."

"Good; hope he died last night."

It bothered me when she was late or didn't come in at all. I needed her to grease the wheels for me here at school and to introduce me to those students I could put on my roster. When I no longer needed her and felt comfortable, I knew I'd stop caring if she came in at all.

Arroyo had found Jackson a room—a cubicle was more like it—downstairs inside an office separated by cubicles. When he came in, he usually stayed down there for most of the day. However, when he came upstairs into our office—big, bright, and at the center of the action in the cafeteria—it drove him mad. You could almost see those stiff Rasta tentacles that shot out of his head crackle with electricity.

"This shit is whack, man," he'd begin, "ain't supposed to be like that. No. And I'm gonna tell you one other thing," he'd say to the air, or wall, or to someone only he could see, "it ain't gonna stay that way. That much I know." Then he'd gather some things and be gone.

Lourdes would usually be on the phone talking in a combination of English and Spanish; English when she didn't care who heard, and Spanish when she did. As Jackson was going on, I'd look across the room to see her rolling her eyes, gazing at him, then the ceiling, sipping her coffee and ignore him. In the three weeks I knew her, I never saw her do any work related to the job she had.

Whenever I'd ask her to help me get kids her response usually was, "Relax, Heller, relax man. You Jewish guys are so nervous, man, relax. The term ain't even begun; you don't haveta do that shit for awhile. Relax. We gonna get you students. Jewish Holidays comin' up soon. Nobody does nothin' till after they're over. I'll help you. Don't worry."

"Famous last words," I replied.

"Really," she laughed, "don't worry."

So I did what I could. Every kid that came into the office for anything, even if they just needed directions to the bathroom, I made them fill out a form before they'd be allowed to relieve themselves, and put them, for the time being, on my caseload. Many a kid would have their legs shaking up and down, trying to hold whatever they had to do in, as they filled out forms.

"Mistah, I gotta go," "Mistah, please, this ain't no joke," "I ain't playin', Mistah, I'm gonna go right here."

"Wait, I'll get you a sock," or, "Pee in that giant Penny Harvest water bottle over there."

Between folding their arms across their stomachs, the moans, groans, and laughter, they'd finish the forms and run from the room. Usually, one or two out of ten would come back. Sometimes they'd come back because the cafeteria's din was too much for them and they'd be able to eat lunch in my room and talk quietly amongst themselves—very few came back without a friend—but sometimes they'd come back for all the right reasons.

It continually astounded me that as knowledgeable, grown-up, and sophisticated as these kids tried to be, they knew nearly nothing of the forces that had conspired to cripple them from birth: generations of family and relatives who'd been involved with alcohol, drugs, sexually transmitted diseases, particularly HIV/AIDS, unwanted pregnancies, stupid and cruel parents—if there were still two in their household—and an apathetic, if not indifferent, and still racist public.

But, as time went on, what surprised me even more, was the general idiocy that permeated the administration and faculty of the school itself. Except for some of the school's social workers and grade advisors and the assistant principal of guidance, the rest of the staff were clueless about what these kids were made of and where they came from. If in fact, the public schools of this city had become minority dominated, which they had, where was the sensitivity to them and their cultures, not to mention their place in this city and the world of business, that was so fundamental to giving them a fair chance to succeed? It seemed to me, that what had happened in the twenty years I'd been gone, was that this city had effectively ghettoized the school system and, in so doing, could afford, for the most part, to turn its eyes away from the blight. And the reasons they could do it were pretty simple. Black and Hispanic educators and administrators who'd climbed the ladder were so afraid of falling off, they'd decided to keep the old system going, much to the delight of the old guard. They were making money off it, just like their white predecessors, and it felt too good to change the status quo. Also, given the fact that these kids' parents were, for the most part, aside from making babies, were politically impotent made it just that much easier to disregard what these kids deserved and needed. The parents, too, either didn't know how, were afraid to learn, or simply couldn't be bothered to pressure these teachers and leaders to lead and teach their children.

There was one other entity that conspired against these kids, the teacher's union. The gains that Shanker, the then president, had made in the Sixties and Seventies for his constituents were now used to retard and subvert the customers of that union, the students. Everything these teachers were willing to do was contained in their contract. The old teachers, sometimes worn to a nub, were not willing, or able, to do much. The new teachers, often times teaching out of subject with no real feel for their students or the classroom, were lost, intimidated, or both. In order to fire a teacher they damn near had to be caught—frequently—with their pants—or dress—down with an underage student during a fire drill. Even teachers who were getting high on their school's grounds had the benefit of the doubt and could not be summarily dismissed without due cause and a proper hearing. If they stonewalled and tried to tough it out, they usually were reassigned to another school, where both predators and substance abusers were left, for the most part, free to swim and pray in a new pool under unsuspecting and innocent eyes.

"You're back," I said.

"I'm gonna check it out, Mistah," Gabriella replied, a hint of humor and seriousness in her voice.

She was there with a friend of hers, Veronica, also very attractive, but not nearly as fascinating and beautiful as Gabriella was to me. I knew that instantly. I'd have to be careful not to cross any lines, and mindful of her not to do the same thing. "Hello, Veronica."

"Hello," she said in a shy, but playful voice.

"Sit down ladies and let me explain what this program is all about."

They, both seniors and more sure of themselves, pulled chairs up to my desk. Gabriella and Veronica both wore skin tight dungarees. While Gabriella wore a black t-shirt, Veronica, the more full-figured of the two, wore a shirt opened, revealing an ample amount of breast. "Christ," I said to myself, "this is wonderfully painful."

JUMPSTART, I began, was designed to help high school students deal with whatever difficulties they were having in their lives. "Instead of subjects," I explained, "this was a kind of university for the emotions. All those things that you never talk about with anyone, you get a chance, if you want it, to talk about in here. Everything that's said in this room is confidential; in fact, you get a paper and we sign an agreement to that effect. The only things I have to report is if someone is threatening suicide, or saying that they had, or are about to, commit homicide; or if their parents or guardian have been physically, emotionally, or sexually abusive to them or one of their siblings. If I should tell anyone anything else, without your permission, you could sue me—and you should. We'll meet together as many times as we need to individually—my door's always open and I'm here from seven-thirty to three—and in group a few times a week."

They nodded their heads up and down like most people their age do but I thought they seemed genuinely interested in signing aboard.

"Sounds good, Mistah," Gabriella said, "count us in. Could always use a place to talk about my shit that's for sure. 'Cause I got plenty of shit to talk about. Don't I, Veronica?" she said for emphasis and looked at her directly when she did.

"Yes, you do, that's for sure. And me too matter of fact."

The bell ending the period rung and they stood up to leave.

"Listen, ladies, I want you to drag anyone you know from this period in here when we get back from the little vacation we're about to have. I'd like to start a group this period."

"O.K. Mistah, we know a few people out there," Gabriella said.

"Have a nice weekend and days off," Veronica added, as they both flew through the door.

"You do the same," I replied, but they'd already turned the corner and didn't hear me. It was Wednesday, which meant I'd have to wait until next Monday to see her again.

"You religious Jewish, Heller?" Lourdes shouted over.

"Not really. I guess I'm a little like what this Spanish writer, Marquez, said about that, 'I don't believe in God, but I don't want him to get angry at me,' I'm a little like that."

"So you don't go to that religious place of yours..."

"A synagogue?"

"Yeah, the syna...synag...the gog, whatever the fuck it's called... and wear one of those upside down bra cups and do your thing?"

"No, haven't done that in a very long time. One time, when my father's mother and father were still alive, he'd drag me with him to sit with his father. But as soon as he checked-out that was it."

"Where your family now?"

"Let's leave it at that."

"Sure, have no problem with that. My mom has this demented thing goin' and I go visit and she don't know who I am, man, it's tough, man, tough."

"I'm sure it is, but I wouldn't know. Listen, I got to go to the john and then I'm going to get something to eat. You mind waiting until I get back?"

"No, of course not. Take your time, man, nothin' happenin' today. Vacation time. This shit is the best job you ever had or gonna have. Almost like free money, man, enjoy it; just take it easy.

I pulled out my little glucometer, tested my blood, took an insulin shot and left, happy to steal away.

I went back to the basketball courts in the park in Chinatown, adjacent to Mulberry Street, with a box of five, delicious, fried dumplings, that cost me a dollar. The sun was strong and it seemed like Indian Summer. I sat on a bench and watched the young Chinese mothers with their kids who played in the children's playground nearby. Since the park was located near One Police Plaza and directly behind the municipal buildings and courthouses of lower Manhattan, there was a lot of foot traffic. Cops, detectives, lawyers, secretaries, teachers, and service staff, each with their own definable uniform and conversation, ate lunch at places known for their quality and, just as important, value.

Family. Religion. God. What a joke. Taken individually or in context, the bedrock of America's fundamentalism, belief system and, most importantly, consumerism, was tattered and frayed, not only around the edges, but in its heart. It might very well be crumbling. Our captains of industry and political opportunists were shouting it was this very belief system that was putting our economic fears to rest. I had my doubts. Yet it bothered me, gnawed at me, that since I spoke with Esther, nearly three weeks ago, I'd not yet summoned whatever will, courage, or love necessary to visit my mother. The squirrels were skirting around the edges of the park, beginning their efforts to eat or bury whatever food they could, before the weather made their jobs that much harder. I wondered if their squirrel eyes held as much fear as they seemed and, if they did, was there a squirrel psychiatrist to help, with either verbal or pharmacological therapy, to work that out.

I'd called the hospital periodically to inquire concerning my mother's status, which was the same: in and out of consciousness. When I'd ask if her death was at hand, they'd respond that they didn't know, and even if they did, they couldn't give out that information unless I was a member of the immediate family. I tried to picture my mother lying there with one of her legs cut off, blind, and tethered to tubes and catheters that did for her system what her system could no longer do for her. Sometimes the images made me turn my head away, but most of the time I couldn't conjure up a damn thing. If I went now, before their store closed, and the chances of them coming to see her were greater, I'd stand a better chance of walking away with my life—or what was left of it—

intact. I'd leave directly from work.

The D train slowly climbed the upgrade of the Manhattan Bridge, which connected Manhattan to Brooklyn. It felt like I was crossing into, if not foreign then certainly, hostile territory. Between the girders and cables of the bridge I saw the skyline of lower Manhattan and the old tenements of Chinatown. On the one hand you could look down and see the streets teeming with activity: open food stalls with people going every which way, buying fruits and fish and meats for dinner and, on the other hand, to the south, the cold austerity and anonymity of the buildings and skyscrapers that dwarfed their neighbors to the north.

Once past the midway point, the train began its descent into the tunnels of Brooklyn. I felt like I was sitting in the seat naked, my genitals exposed to everyone in the car who, not surprisingly, held an ax. With each stop, I could feel my heart rate increase and my body, an already compromised mechanism, go on ever-escalating degrees of alert. Why I'd want to put myself through this after the horrors of my past, I didn't know. My mom, whom I'd begun thinking differently about since our conversation in my car that night was, in fact, pretty remote and had been too scared herself during my early years. There was, I later discovered through the pain of peeling the onion, almost a frigidness about her. No matter what her intentions might have been, I was left out there, alone, to fend for myself in the tank of male sharks swimming around me.

Church Avenue, and I couldn't believe my eyes. Once, when I was a boy of sixteen, this was a neighborhood that was ritzy and somewhat exclusive. My father would tell me of times, even before that, when women would shop in his store wearing furs, diamonds, and white gloves. By the time I came, the bloom might have been off the rose a little bit, but it was still fancy enough. I did not see a white person either get off the train nor on the platform waiting to get on. Instead, I saw those exotic faces and bodies of Africans, African Americans, Haitians, Trinidadians, Jamaicans, and other people of color. Their language was alive with song or lament, their dress was vibrant, and they had the casualness—some would say carelessness—of a life on the islands, filled with sunshine and music. Children, who came or were forced to come to the land of heartless numbers, where ruthless Draconian measures were taken by all who'd come before them to insure and increase their holdings, were unaware what fate really awaited them. They'd not get hunted down and killed in religious or political purges. No. Instead, they'd be left on the very margins of this society, in sunless airless apartments to toil for strangers, breed endlessly, and drink away their newfound prosperity. They'd always be regarded as either interlopers or slaves, certainly by my father and brother who, I knew, would rape this population for whatever they were worth.

Above ground the rest of the way, I watched intently all the faces that presented themselves to me. I needed to know if any of them were the least bit familiar. At each stop I'd get up and move my seat, stopping by the subway map to surreptitiously look and see if I recognized anyone or if anyone's eyes were upon me. I was as satisfied as I could be, but still had this weird feeling of being watched; I couldn't shake it.

Brighton Beach, and for the first time in nearly thirty years, I saw the Atlantic Ocean live and in living color. Here, another language began to permeate my ears, Russian. I saw some older women get on the train, big-boned and strong looking. Their hair was a beauty parlor blond, faces with thick red lipstick, and when they smiled, a few badly inlaid gold teeth were revealed. Even the sound of the conversations seemed aggressive. Some brought onto the train shopping carts while others carried shopping bags in both their arms. A stop later, Ocean Parkway, most got off, with the remainder departing at West Eighth Street.

Coney Island Hospital was closer if I'd gotten off at Ocean Parkway, but I didn't. I needed to try to pick up a few things, if I could, in the amusement area in Coney Island itself. The train curved toward the water and I could see, much closer, the sea and its colors that were still so much a part of me. Yet, as much as the water seduced, and the salt air cleansed and invigorated, my body began the slow and steady climb toward the hatred I'd harbored for as long as I could remember. It would begin with any one of a million remembrances of childhood's power of infinite possibilities. The senses as strong and as fertile as civilization's crescent. But in time—a second, a minute—sometimes more—it would begin changing, first to the smell and taste of soured milk and then the angered bile that wanted to extricate itself from my innards.

I knew I couldn't afford that hatred now. Anger and hating were luxuries I couldn't allow to soothe me and dull or obviate my other and more important senses. I needed to know where I was, but also what and who were out here.

The D pulled into Stillwell Avenue, the last stop for it, and many other trains that came into Brooklyn. I stood at the window, facing the amusement area and watched as we passed the Cyclone, our famous roller-coaster, curved round to where Nathan's held court on the corner, with the Parachute Jump and the boardwalk in the background.

The old concrete tunnels, a viaduct for the millions who came from all the boroughs to enjoy Coney Island's heyday, first from the Twenties when Luna Park and Steeplechase reigned, to the more recent Sixties, when Coney was still alive, but wheezing and gasping now, and holding on for dear life, had begun to corrode from the salt air and neglect.

"Let me have two franks and a bag of fries," I said to the young Hispanic girl who was wearing her green and yellow Nathan's uniform. She was working under a sign that said, Order Everything Here. I'd remembered only men working here and usually older men who'd been here forever, working in white aprons over short-sleeved white shirts splattered with grease and juices. Usually, they didn't move from what they knew and did best. A hot dog man would remain so, as would a soft-shell crab or lobster roll guy or French fries preparer, and so on. The place was nearly deserted. If that was because of the Jewish Holidays or just the way it had come to be, I didn't know.

I kept looking around as I ate, making sure I was there alone, undetected, safe. I finished and then tried to find what I came there for, a disguise. Even though I'd aged in these years like most people, I needed something more. Quickly, I found an arcade and store where I bought a Cleveland Indians baseball cap with that maniacal Indian insignia staring at me, large, black-framed sunglasses and, to add an oversize limp to my walk, a walking stick that I could lean on. With those items in hand, I walked to the boardwalk and the beach to first feel the give of the wood and then know the sand and surf once again.

I decided to walk a little way, next to the shoreline, until I came to the beginning of Ocean Parkway, where I'd exit and walk over to the hospital. I knew how ridiculous I must look in this outfit I bought, but as stupid as I felt, it relaxed me. I found myself actually walking with a kind of jaunt, as I nonchalantly took in the colors, smells and textures that surrounded me. And then, as if caught on a breeze, I heard Angela's voice singing one of her favorite singer's songs: Dinah Washington's' rendition of Blue Skies. I saw her, heard her, in the kitchen, pregnant, stirring up some of her gumbo, the record player on in the bedroom, lost in the ingredients—and for all I knew inside her womb as well—singing her ass off as Dinah did every time she put her lips to a microphone.

"She's so goddamn salty, baby," she'd say, and throw her head back and laugh. I knew, no matter how much I loved Dinah and her music, I could never know what Angela knew. Maybe that's why, I thought, I loved that music to begin with.

The hospital smelled of disinfectant and death. Past the entrance and through the lobby, I weaved this path of madness behind the costume of derangement I'd selected. Past mothers holding their children, whose cries of anguish or frustration—

perhaps fear—mixed discordantly with the canned music coming from somewhere overhead. Men, slack-jawed or vacant eyed, sat or slumped on row after row of attached stools waiting. I went to the bank of telephones near the elevators and dialed my father's number in his store, twice. First I asked for him and then my brother. When I was told to hold on for a few minutes while they got to the phone I hung up. In the elevator, I pressed nine, and leaned back against the far wall with an opened newspaper pressed near my face. I knew I'd have to take off the sunglasses when I reached her floor, but until then I decided it was better to keep them on.

One of the worst parts of life—and there are many—is not knowing where to go in both major and minor decisions. If I could believe whoever picked up the phone, fine, but her voice did not convey the certainty my head and instincts needed. When the door opened and I walked onto her floor, I tried to convey, while I might be a little nuts, I knew where I was going. Having spent so much time in hospitals helped. I nodded to nurses and attendants as I passed each room, looking for 921. Nobody paid much attention to me. I forgot that this was a public hospital in one of the largest boroughs—

the size of most any major city actually—and that each one who worked here was besieged and pretty much used to the whole spectrum of human folly.

Her eyes were closed and her lips slightly parted. I could see her chest and floppy breasts rising and falling under the thin covers. I walked over to her bed and sat on a chair next to it, not wanting to wake her because I really didn't want to talk to her. I just wanted to look at my mother for awhile and leave. There were tubes that led into her, and some that led out. I recognized the slow drip of morphine that ran into her arm and those which delivered fluids and nutrients. Another tube snaked from under her covers to a bottle beneath her bed, emptying her bladder. Her skin was yellowed, liver spotted, and parchment thin. My mother's face, once attractive, now had bones protruding, wanting to break through that thin veneer of protection. I looked over to where her left leg should have been, but wasn't. Instead I could see the outline of her stump that began well above her knee. When I placed my hand over hers my breath, involuntarily, went in as a gasp, and exited as a deep sigh.

"Mom," I whispered. Soon enough she'd be returned to inanimate matter and then, depending upon what they had in mind for her, be consumed by worms or fire. And then, in that instant, I saw myself, in a few short years—or months—lying there like her, maybe even beside her. My whole body shivered for the briefest of seconds. I wanted to take out her morphine drip and put it into my own arm. I nearly drifted off.

"Max, pull the tubes out of me," her voice rasped. It frightened me so much, my heart nearly stopped. I didn't move; I hardly breathed.

"Max," she said again, "please, you're the only one I can ask, please. I can't live with my own thoughts anymore, please." A nurse poked her head in and I smiled to her. She smiled back and left.

My mom was in a four-patient room. It had the sweet sickly smell of decaying flesh. There was a Hispanic woman of indeterminate age in the bed opposite my mother's, next to the window. She was watching Oprah with the sound turned down and she seemed to be drowsing. The black woman nearest the door had a pleasant face and white hair. She was doing a crossword puzzle from a book and didn't pay any attention to us in the corner.

I patted my mother's hand gently and looked into her eyes which, I knew, never saw me.

"I was a no good mother to you, I know. I wanted to do more, but I couldn't."

"Take it easy, mom, relax."

"That's what I want; please let me go, please." Tears were falling from her eyes down her cheeks. I reached over, got a tissue, and wiped them away.

"I can't do that, I can't. I'd better go."

"No, don't go. They don't come, don't worry. They haven't come in weeks. All these years I've been haunted, tortured, with what I let happen. I can't take it no more."

"They might come today. I can't take that chance. I'm going to go, but I'll be back," I said, and just by imagining it my whole body began to go on alert again. The sun had begun losing its strength and had turned into that reddish orange ball descending upon the skyline.

"I've got to tell you things; promise me you'll come back," she said, and I could hear her voice, with the effort of talking, starting to falter.

"I promise."

Slowly, her eyes, whether from the morphine or exhaustion, began to close. I watched for a little while longer as she drifted off to sleep. It seemed as if a strong breeze could lift her off the bed and send her out to tumble and rise, tumble and fall, with all the rest of the world's wastes. Why not unhook her from those machines and send her on her way? Why not try to expel the fear she'd been living with forever? It wasn't as if someone was waiting for her to cast her magic or prepare a meal. It seemed the only thing that needed her now was perhaps the earth, but even the earth could get along without her very well, thank you very much.

The world, for that matter, doesn't need any of us, I thought; when it's time it will just kick us off the planet like the deadbeat renters we are and probably, had always been. With my disguise and my limp still in place, I took the stairs going down. Nine flights later I pushed the door to the lobby open, ever so slowly, and made sure no one I knew was waiting near the elevators. Quickly, I left the hospital, my heart beating rapidly knowing I was almost free and, taking the side streets, walked to the train station wondering why those other two bastards weren't lying in some industrial strength disinfectant's hospital room, catheterized and suffering and praying to die instead of my mother.

I spent most of the ride home imagining as many variations of painful deaths for them as I could. Each time the scenario was ratcheted up a few notches, a few more stations had passed. By the time I arrived at the Manhattan Bridge, I'd fantasized some juicy ones: horses pulling limbs apart, tweezers coaxing flesh from bones, or piranhas nibbling on only their lower halves.

Anger and hate, rotten cores of a sickness that, if left to brood and fester, could only worsen, nipped at my heels as I walked home from the station. In my apartment, I threw some clothes in a duffel, with my insulins and testing equipment, pulled the same brown paper bag that I'd left with all those years ago out from a compartment in the hood of my down jacket, extracted a thousand dollars from it and, as old as I was, sprinted downstairs and into a cab.

By the time I boarded the bus at the Port Authority, Jews from all over the Northeast, who still believed, were too young to desist, or were mired in their own version of superstitious strategy, were on their way to the synagogue of their or their father's choice. I, on the other hand, was on my way to Atlantic City.

***

I'd periodically used some of the money the two goons had given me in the hospital for alcohol, dope, whores, or gambling, but not necessarily in that order. Aside from using some of it to pay for gas, food, and other expenses on my way to New Orleans, I'd used very little of it. When the bouts I was having with my demons were cauterized and under control and after my hands healed enough so I could hold a liquor bottle comfortably, I got a bartending job at a local dive, just outside the French Quarter. The owner, Henry McGee, thought it'd be interesting to have someone from New York City working at, "Take a Load Off," "The Friendliest Little Saloon In Town." It should have really been called, "Put a Load On," because those who walked in there were soon enough unable to walk out. It was almost like one of those roach motels, for people. "Max," he'd say, "it's people's birthright down here to drink and almost their mission to get drunk. You're an instrument of holiness, that's what you are, Max, a mere instrument in the service of the divine spirit. And speaking of that, I'll have a drink." Then he'd laugh, and every ounce of his three hundred-pound frame would jiggle and shake.

***

There were hardly any people on the bus, unusual for this milk train run. I'd gone down there a number of times since returning and it was more often than not filled with those who's age and dreams demanded some kind of divination. You could tell the gamblers from those who lived or worked there. The latter were black and had that tired look about them. The former were white, older, and vacant eyed. Each of us needed what we didn't have much of, dreams. Our halfway point, Cheesequake, didn't produce anymore passengers. I closed my eyes and tried to conjure up numbers.

When I awoke, I saw the number fourteen inside the moon's face, as we pulled into Atlantic City proper. We passed a stone fortress junior high school that could have been a penitentiary built a hundred years ago. It sat, ominously, across from Caesar's Palace with its faux marble statues of Roman warriors sitting astride their chariots, whipping their steeds, waiting to go into battle.

We were dropped at the Taj Mahal with a coupon redeemable for twelve dollars. Before leaving I cashed in my coupon and decided to go to the nearest roulette table where, not wanting to waste any time, exchanged ten dollars for two chips which I put on the number fourteen. In thirty seconds time I walked away with three hundred and fifty dollars worth of chips, cashed those in and got into a taxi, and asked him to drop me at the Ascot Motel.

Perhaps it was more dangerous for me to be in Atlantic City than to visit my mother in the hospital. Certainly there were as much a likelihood of being seen there than anywhere else. Each time I went down there I took precautions. I always gambled wearing sunglasses—though expensive ones—and a hat of some kind. This time I brought the deranged looking Indian with me.

The Ascot had reached a level of seediness that could only be attained by being in a gambling town that had not only seen better days, but had never had them. If not for the casinos this would have long been a ghost town, with a boardwalk.

"You think you might have a room in this dump?" I asked the twenty-something, pockmarked face gentleman behind the check-in counter. He looked away from the miniature TV that was on and turned towards me.

"Hey, how've you been? Sure I got rooms. That's all I got is rooms, no fuckin' people, but rooms. Fuckin Jewish holidays, man; deader than Kelsey's nuts."

"Give me one that doesn't face the garbage or anyone's asshole."

He laughed and turned to get me a key out of the boxes behind him as I signed the papers. "Here," he said, "top floor. If you strain your neck real hard you might be able to grab a snatch of the ocean."

"Speaking of that. If I get lucky tonight, I'd like you to help me get a whore. I know you could get me all the nice girls there are in this town, but I want a whore."

"I'll need about two or three minutes for that. They're hard to find. You think you could give me a heads up?"

"I'll try," I said as I made my way to the elevator and my room with a view.

Hooters, downstairs in The Tropicana Hotel, was pretty busy. There, scantily clad waitresses were serving hamburgers, fries, and beers, to over- and under-aged jocks, who came there to ogle them. The overhead TV's were tuned to ESPN as the speakers next to them blared out Sixties and Seventies oldies. The food however, for a national chain, was decent.

My waitress, who'd served me a few times in the past, came over and took my order. She was a shade over five foot seven inches, pretty in that bleached blonde small town kind of way and would, and would if she stayed at this gig, become old before her time. Already she seemed beyond her years. When she asked for my order, I could see her pierced tongue. A tattoo on her right shoulder had a bird flying into a distant sun. Maggie said her nametag and she still had those magical hips and those two indentures above them that led down into the elastic band of her orange latex shorts. Her tight fitting Hooter's t-shirt allowed her ample breasts to breathe freely.

"Marry me," I said to her.

"When?"

"Tonight."

"All right; I get off at midnight," she said, and went to put in my order. She did that by attaching the slip to a fastener and then to an overhead pulley system. Maggie then wound up and, with all her might, threw the slip into the kitchen. Each time I watched, I was fascinated by the contraption and the tautness of her body.

"I'm gonna wait for you," she said when she brought my food over, "see if I'm not serious. Midnight."

"What happens if I'm not done by midnight?"

"Then you'll be done shortly thereafter. I do mean, done."

"I'll be at one of the crap tables, if I still have any money left. Will you still love me if I'm broke?"

"Not likely. I can't be seen with you cause that would be soliciting and they'd fire my ass and believe me I need my ass. I'll be right upstairs havin' a drink. Find me and order one, finish it. and leave. Go out to the boardwalk, then I'll find you."

'Why me, Maggie? I'm an old man."

"Precisely." She turned and went to another table where a group of sweatshirters just sat down.

Half believing her, I finished my food, had a cup of coffee, and went out to the boardwalk to clear my head. It was nearly deserted. The moon provided a spotlight to the beach and surf below. Even from where I stood, I could see and hear the waves pounding the beach. The closer I got the more pronounced they became. Here the sea seemed freer. There were much fewer man-made jetties to thwart the waves. However pleasing the sand and surf were, there was a bug inside my head as big as a Buick calling me to gamble, but I tried to fight against it. I let the beach lead me for awhile, reasoning that the tables will be there when I got back, but in a few minutes time I knew it was futile.

The bells and whistles from the slot machines were nearly deafening; the cumulus nimbus cloud of smoke I had to walk through to get to the crap tables nearly choked me. It never used to bother me, but I'd stopped smoking five years ago after going through quadruple by-pass surgery. Not that I stopped after the surgery. I stopped after the depression, which began three or four weeks after the operation and lasted almost a year, lifted. Then, having a drink with Joey that night, I picked up a cigarette again, though this time I was somewhat able to control it. I fingered the money in my pocket, as I moved toward the back of the casino.

There were six tables in operation: two five-dollar tables, three ten and one twenty-five, each with quintuple odds. It was unusual to have the five-dollar tables going at this hour of the evening, but I'd supposed this was a pretty light night. I tried to see which of the ten-dollar tables had people with the most chips, but each of them seemed to be about the same. I liked a corner spot, next to one of the stick men and I waited until one opened.

Atlantic City was not Vegas. Here, the level of play, and those who played, were mostly down and outers, retirees, or here on one type of convention or other. Their expressions, when not in the rarified air of jubilation, were, more often than not, haggard, even despondent. Sometimes, if coupled or in groups, they tried to be happy, and usually failed. It seemed they knew where they were.

A slot opened and I slid into it. I put the three hundred and fifty I'd won, plus another one fifty, on the green felt and said, "Change only, please."

When the pit boss behind him saw how much money it was he came over to me. "Would you care to be rated, sir?"

"No thanks," I said. I wanted no record of me ever being there and didn't need the "free" or complimentary gifts—such as rooms and food—the casinos provide to those who gamble large sums of money at one shot or over longer periods of time.

I took my chips and put them in the rack in front of me. Then I placed ten dollars on the "Pass" and ten dollars on the "Don't Pass" lines. The casino workers at the table didn't much like that, but there was nothing they could do about it. I wanted to see what kind of table I was on—hot or cold—and bet appropriately. There was a time when I couldn't bet against a shooter, but that time had long passed.

There was an old man next to me and a kid in his twenties next to him. The old man held, in his hand, fifty or sixty dollars in chips, and didn't bet every shooter. The kid, though, had a few hundred in his rack, and had to bet. The six or seven others betting were your average Atlantic City rollers: two guys, friends since their school days, rooting each other on; a woman in her sixties, alone, doing this off memories of times gone by; and four men, rather nondescript, but liking the promise that crap tables enjoy.

The table was "choppy"—some would make a number or two, then seven out while others would roll twos, threes or twelves like it was their birthright. It was hard to make money on this table the way the dice kept getting passed. I decided to wait for awhile and see if any single personality developed.

From the corner of my eye I watched the kid, as his betting took on the air of a mania, known all too well to those who gamble. Once the losing starts, and a certain dollar point is reached, it becomes a Herculean effort to pick up what money is left and walk away from the table. Instead, you say to yourself something like, "This can't go on forever," and you begin to press your money. You bet more of it to make up for your losses. However, it can go on forever. Numbers and colors have no memories and, more importantly, no consciences. Winning streaks are few and far between, while losing, is simply business as usual for the casinos. The house always has the edge, both in odds and, as importantly, peoples' emotions. Just because red at the roulette table appeared twenty times in a row, doesn't mean that it won't appear for the twenty-first time. In theory, black never has to appear again.

The table waitress came around and I asked for a bottled water, my throat dry from all the smoke. Then the dice came around to me, but I passed them on, even though I was itchy to try and turn mine and the table's luck around.

The two friends opposite me had exhausted what money they had and drifted away, replaced by a couple who looked as if they'd come from a trailer park across the way—if there were such a trailer park, which there wasn't. Each was about five five; he, thin as a rail, sported tattoos on his forearms, a three-day growth of beard and a trucker's cap while she, broad as she was tall, had a pleasant face and engaging smile. Also, she had an ease about her that drew me to her. They placed a ten-dollar chip on the pass line, and I did the same. She rolled two sevens in a row and then a nine. I had ten on the line and put another thirty behind it. Also, I placed twelve on six and another twelve on eight. She came right back with a nine. After hitting another seven, her number became four, one of the most difficult numbers to make, which is why the odds are two to one. Inside, I could feel myself percolate. I increased my bets on the six and eight to fifty dollars each and placed, for twenty-five dollars, all the other numbers. Number after number she made and then rolled a four. Our table was applauding each time she rolled and whooped and hollered when our number came in. From ten dollars on the line I quickly bet twenty, then a hundred, and then, increased my bet behind the line to five hundred. She could do no wrong and was making 4's and 10's like they were 6's and 8's. She held the dice for almost thirty minutes. By the time she sevened out, I must have had at least fifteen thousand dollars, in green, black, and lavender chips, in my rack.

All during her run, I saw that she and her boyfriend or husband were betting the minimal amount of chips. If they made a few hundred dollars they were lucky.

The dice passed around the table, but no one could do much with them. When they came back to me, I rolled for about ten or fifteen minutes, made another couple of thousand and quit. I threw a black hundred-dollar chip toward one of the stickmen, said thanks, and got up. Nights like the one I'd just had were about as common as the Pope throwing a good hump into the Queen Mother. The pit boss came back to me and asked if I was staying at this casino. When I replied I wasn't, he asked if I wouldn't like to have one of their suites and complimentary food and passes to the strip's entertainment. I told him I had to get back to Philadelphia and fly home to Cleveland the next day. Let us drive you, he offered. I have my own car, I replied. He offered to bring me here anytime I wanted, but I declined that as well. I caught up to the couple who'd made me all this money and stood with them on a line at the cashiers booth laughing and congratulating each other.

Knowing that I couldn't cash out anything more than a dollar less of ten thousand, I dropped my voice to a whisper and offered them two thousand to cash out the rest of my winnings. Both their mouths dropped open. We couldn't make the exchange on the floor and so decided to split up and then meet in a men's room across the way. After giving him over eight thousand dollars in chips we went to separate windows and then met again in adjacent stalls in the bathroom, where we exchanged the money. I counted off two thousand dollars and passed it back to him. He left first. I waited for a few minutes to go by before I exited and then, looking at my watch, walked over to where I was supposed to meet Maggie. It was eleven and I needed the time to unwind. Before going to the lounge I bought a pack of Lucky Strike at the newsstand.

"A Martel, please," I said to the bartender. I wanted to treat myself to a drink, if "treat" was the word that would apply here. I sat, with my pocket bulging with cash, and looked around for the variety of predators that were or were not part of the establishment. Each of the varieties presented a different set of problems, and I had to be vigilant about them all. I'd have a maximum of three drinks, I decided. If she didn't show up by then, I'd leave as quietly as possible.

A woman took the seat to my right and I could tell by her perfume that she was expensive, at least in her tastes. She ordered a Courvosier and black coffee. When she went to pick up her brandy, her left hand had no rings on it, only a fine gold bracelet and Cartier tank watch.

"How'd you do?" she asked, in a very sexy and husky voice.

I turned to her and took her in. If beautiful looks could kill, her face would be on display in every post office in America. "I held my own," I replied.

"That's unfortunate."

"How's that?"

"One, that you didn't break the bank, and the other that you held your own." We both smiled and each of us lifted our glasses in a toast.

"Here's to better days and better luck," I said. We clinked, then drank.

"My name's Harry," I said.

"Me, too. Isn't that strange?"

I'd seen and been with enough hookers to know she'd be better off plying her trade somewhere that could afford to pay for her looks and wit.

"Harry," she said, "how come you're wearing that crazy Indian cap?"

"It usually brings me luck; besides, that's my team and where I hail from."

She looked at me disbelievingly and waved off my last remark with her hand. "O.K., Harry. If you're from Cleveland, I'm from a convent. I think we both know better. Hell, I've played a lot worse hands."

"Speaking of worse hands, Harry, what the hell are you doing here?"

I motioned for the bartender to refill our drinks and casually looked around for something I knew I'd never see, shadows, but was compelled to look anyway.

"How about the one where I needed bus fare to get out of town, but never made it?"

I shook my head, no.

"All right. How about my sick mother needs me?"

"It seems we're destined to be two ships passing."

"We could bump up against each other before we passed."

"Drink your drink and let me think about it for a few minutes, all right?"

There was something wrong with this picture. I felt it in my bones. She could have come over after seeing the action at the crap table and sat near me because I was alone and seemed to be available. Yet, I was sure she was here at somebody's urging. Who or whom that person or those persons were was anybody's guess. And I couldn't afford to guess.

"Harry, you're lovely, but it's late. I need to get up early tomorrow and get back to Philadelphia, then Cleveland, even though you think it's not so, it is. Maybe next time; in fact, I hope next time." I looked at her and tried to appear sincere.

She smiled a smile so fetching that I nearly recanted. Slowly, she finished her drink, slid off her stool and, touching my hand lightly, went back into the casino. I watched her go until I could no longer see her, drank down what was left of my brandy, paid my tab and placed a fifty dollar bill on the lip of the bar and went downstairs to where the bell captains stayed.

I put a twenty dollar bill into a bell captain's hand and asked him to call a cab for me. I waited inside until one came up to the curb. It was now twelve-thirty, and I was getting just a bit anxious. I simply didn't know what had driven her over to where I sat. It was more than concern. It frightened the hell out of me. While I was mulling this over, Maggie walked out the other entrance to the Tropicana and hurriedly passed me by seeing, but not seeing, me.

"Hello," I said, "I thought we were going to get married?"

"Oh, hi," she replied, obviously uncomfortable in seeing me.

"Don't panic," I joked, "a woman's allowed to change her mind."

"Did you really take me seriously? I didn't mean..."

"No, of course not. Relax, have a nice evening, what's left of it."

She proceeded, without saying another word, to the escalator, just as my cab pulled into the space in front of the revolving doors.

"Should I get a whore for you?" the desk clerk asked. My coming through the door woke him up.

"How about a limo?"

"Hard to fuck, but I can get you one of those, too. Where to?"

"Philadelphia."

"Fifteen, twenty minutes."

I went to my room, threw my things in my duffel and, by the time I settled up with the desk clerk—and tipped him handsomely for his services—the limousine was there.

I settled into the cushioned leather and asked the driver, once we were under way—and I'd checked for any headlights following us—if he'd be able to take me to New York City instead. For a hundred and fifty dollars more, he accepted. After we'd said that, we said nothing more until we were on the other side of the Holland Tunnel. I thought I might be able to close my eyes and sleep for a little while, but I couldn't. I was still too hyped. Thoughts swirled in my head like a kaleidoscopic candy cane, each color running into the next, making boundaries or definitions impossible.

It was nearly four-thirty when he dropped me in front of the Cedar Tavern. I pretended as if I was walking to my apartment. I saw him, from the corner of my eye, turn the corner, and then, sure he was gone, hailed a taxi.

Upstairs, I threw my bag on my bed and pulled the bills from my pocket and threw them on the bed as well. I counted out nearly sixteen thousand dollars in hundreds and fifties. Almost incredulous that I'd won that much, I stared at the bills for a long time before I stuffed them into the creased, tissue thin, brown bag with the rest of the original money. Afterward, I took a long hot shower, had a healthy glass of red wine, and went to sleep. It was a hell of a beginning to a new year.

Rich Jews had gathered outside the synagogue of the wealthiest reformed congregation in the world, Temple Emanuel, on Fifth Avenue and Sixty-Fifth Street. It was St. Patrick Cathedral's counterpart, down to the stained glass and religious majesty. I wondered what God would have to say about the stained glass which cost ten thousand per pane and the Chinese, Korean, Dominican, Mexican illegals living ten to a room without a toilet or running water, a few miles from here. The temple had so much clout that an ambulance from Lenox Hill Hospital was parked across the street, waiting just in case something should happen to their worshippers.

They were out there though, men in their expensive suits and Doe skin blue blazers and women in their fall finery, shopping carefully for each other's eyes in this rite of seeing and being seen. Even the young girls and boys had on the pages that could be seen in fashion quarterlies or inside the Sunday Times magazine. They all stood, some smoking and chatting away, taking a break from the intense onslaught of God and God's minions. What the hell, they must figure, a small price to pay for the good fortune that's been bestowed on them. Besides, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur were opportunities to engage their wealthiest constituents, rarely come along. Happiness this week on the Jewish New Year, then cast away sins the next on the Day of Atonement. A nicely conceived package.

I'd taken the train to 59th Street and walked up Fifth, alongside Central Park. It was a glorious fall day, crisp and clean, with the sunlight enhancing the colors of the trees and buildings, making them bold and deep. When I got up to the temple, I stopped to observe these High Holidays in full splendor. I leaned back against the stone wall separating the park from the rest of the world and let the sun warm my back as I looked across the street.

A cigarette's smoke drifted over to where I stood and I turned to where it had come from. A very well dressed and attractive woman in her mid-sixties was also leaning against the stone wall smoking what I knew to be a Pall Mall. On her right arm, near the wrist, there was a delicate tattoo that read, "Foxy" in blue script. She looked directly at me and it was hard to turn away. I figured her to be a scotch drinker and, at one time, very good at whatever she wanted to do. Finally, I managed to stare back at the crowds outside the synagogue, but not without inwardly laughing at some of my thoughts. I remembered there was probably a time when she'd walked into a room and everyone had taken her very seriously. She reappeared in my line of vision when she crossed the street and joined the throng, sidling up to a man who must have been ten years her senior. Again, she looked back at me, but I pushed off the stones and, underneath a blanket of royal blue sky, I moved on.

I'd thought, when I left my apartment, that I'd go to the Metropolitan Museum and lose myself for a few hours, but it was impossible. It wasn't just Angela's memory that made me fidgety. It was the museum itself. Sometimes, I thought, museums demanded that you be too attentive to what they held.

Roller bladers, skate boarders and Frisbee players had replaced bongo drummers, blatant pot smokers, and warm-weather squatters. There was an air of casualness about them. Their movements had an ease that indicated that nothing too wrong was happening or was going to happen. The garb they had on combined the baggy excess of the urban hip and the new sports wardrobe of the upper classes, expensive microfiber running suits. All wore sneakers that could have cost the down payment on a home. There was no fever in the park. There was only sweat.

Bethesda Fountain had no water in it and was nearly empty, except for the tourists with cameras and food-cart operators with hot dogs, pretzels, and bottled everything. I walked around the rim of the fountain and made my way, around the edge of the lake, to the exit on 72nd Street. After buying a newspaper I returned, past The Dakota, to the benches inside the park. There I saw the monument to John Lennon, a tiled circle with the word, "Imagine" in the middle of it and flowers and candles left there by his fans.

As I sat and read the paper, people stopped at Lennon's memorial and took pictures, put down candles or flowers, or simply paid homage. I wondered if people did that at Sonny Liston's gravesite or Bird's or Billie's or Monk's. There's something about rock's icons that taps into the naive childishness of us all, and stirs, if not the misguided passion of universal love, then the siren call of youthful utopianism.

What was I doing? I thought. Where was I going Monday, if not to give birth to more lies, lies that said that if you work real hard, abstain from all substances that could retard or cripple growth, that you, too, could be anything you wanted to be? Like Mike. Like J-Lo. Like Jeter. Maybe even like Tony Soprano if, of course, you had the intelligence, barbarism, and scriptwriters he does. It reeked so badly of the Puritan Ethic that, if I allowed myself to think much more about it, I'd never show up to work; I'd be too busy vomiting.

There were no bag people or homeless where I sat. There were the elderly and infirm in wheelchairs taken care of by their private nurses. There were little children in strollers wheeled by their private nannies, and there was the cross section of people accustomed to the kind of aesthetics this part of town provided. It seemed that those who lived on Central Park West or Fifth Avenue, from 59th to 96th Streets had chipped in and bought the very air we were breathing. The real difference I discerned, since being back in this city, was the gap between the rich, marginally rich, and the poor, had opened up tremendously, so much so that those who were wealthy knew next to nothing about their poorer neighbors, while the poor, or borderline poor, knew the rich and the phenomenally wealthy only by what they saw on TV. Unlike the tone of the Sixties, there wasn't a real anger about the differences between rich and poor, which was felt by the poor, the radicals, and the campus activists of the time. There was only a widening of the physical and emotional moats that separated the two these days.

Why the hell was I even thinking about all this stuff? If I was right or wrong, who'd care? I was just thinking to hear how I sound, a little mental masturbation is all. I knew, though, it was more than that. Every time I became too nervous I latched onto anything that presented itself, hoping it would distract me from feeling things that were too painful or uncomfortable for me to tolerate. In point of fact, I was still so spooked by the goings on of yesterday, that I craved a kind of solace that only very few things provided, like drugs, alcohol, or gambling. No longer did I look forward to any real company to subdue the demons; no longer did I believe that having another person to talk to would matter one iota.

***

It took me three days to get down to New Orleans. My hand and heart throbbed, but the Percocets numbed the pain. I couldn't chance driving at night so, when I found myself on the road and the sun was setting, I looked for a place to stay for the night. Because of all the money I was carrying on me, I kept to the main highway and the motels that stood beside it.

I'd taken with me, before I left my apartment, all I could find of Angela's ties to New Orleans and pictures we'd taken together. Her letters and address book with phone numbers stayed beside me wherever I went, and, at night, I'd look at a particular letter or annotation in her address book and try to discern where she might be right now. I refused to admit she was dead. She might be hurt, perhaps badly hurt, but not dead. Under the balm of substances I'd call those numbers at night from a motel. I knew it offered more turmoil, but Angela had become a hot grid that I couldn't keep away from.

Half stoned and liquored up, I'd ask whoever came on the line if Angela was there. When they asked who I was, I hung up, afraid to either reveal my name, or inquire any further. I'd take another drink, or swallow another pill, and in a mild stupor, fall asleep. Next morning, bleary-eyed and usually in the same clothes I'd worn the night before, I would take my insulin shot, shower, order up a large pot of coffee and face a new day. Getting down to New Orleans was the one thing that made sense to me and my world, which had become inchoate and grotesque. I feared, even if I was able to find her, there was no guarantee she'd want to see me.

It ate at me that if I'd been stronger, if I'd been smarter, if I'd gone with my instincts instead of my appetite, this rupture, this senseless and useless path our lives had now taken, could have been avoided. The incessant recriminations were merciless and constant. The only things that marginally eased them were alcohol and drugs, but I told myself that I'd use them only until I got to New Orleans. After that, I needed to be fully conscious, no matter how bad the pain.

The air, by the time I'd hit Chattanooga, had grown thick. When I reached Louisiana, it had become heavy with a kind of humidity I'd never felt before in my life. It felt like I was living inside an orchid greenhouse. Frankie had told me how New Orleans, especially in the summer, challenged a person's patience, not to mention endurance and sanity, with its relentless wet, sauna-like, heat. This, however, was fall and it was still nearly impossible to take.

I was tempted to detour and see Angola Prison. Articles had appeared in some major newspapers and magazines exposing some of what went on inside those walls. It was said, if a prisoner was caught trying to escape, they'd cut his hamstrings so he'd never even think of trying that again. Most men caught by the law were black and poor and would become convicts in short order. It was not uncommon that they never see the outside world again. "Son," the warden would say to his new inmates, "by the time you're ready to get out of here, you'll be lucky if you're able to gum your food."

I didn't stop; I couldn't stop. Instead, I pulled in at a road-side shack that promised homemade fried chicken, catfish, fries, slaw for a dollar and a quarter, coffee and cold beer too, clearly displayed on a cardboard, hand-lettered sign, twenty feet from the turn in. I made a quick right and kicked up the dust that was the parking lot in front of the Chicken Shack and could see that my car, with New York plates, had already drawn the attention from the six or seven men who stood outside, near their cars and pickup trucks. When I got out of the car, I could feel their eyes watching and measuring me, and the splints I was wearing. I nodded to them and they returned the greeting.

Hey," one of them called out, "what kind of car is that called?"

"It's a Porsche."

"A who?"

"Porsche, made in Germany," I said as I was angling to the front door.

"Never heard of no such thing," another said. They all turned to look at one another and exchanged glances that were curious, like a strange odor had just been emitted.

"Looks real fast. I bet it's real fast," said by the boldest one who'd walked up to the car and pressed his face against the driver's side window.

"It can move," I replied and sheepishly smiled.

"It's damn funny lookin', but I kinda like it. Order the chicken, real fine, real fine."

"Thanks," I said and walked into the shack. As I did, I saw the rest of them sidle up to the car and peer into the windows, alternating sides and trying to see the instrumentation. Once sure it was not going to kidnap them or render them impotent, they walked all around it, felt its lines and contours, as if it was a flying saucer.

Inside, it took me a few seconds to adjust to the darkness. Whatever light was let in by the few windows was tempered by the grease and age on the glass and sucked into the wooden tables, chairs, and floor that seemed to have been there since man decided to make something out of nothing. The dust, circulated by two fans in opposing corners, spun the fine particles in the air like specks of gnats. The wood was burnished a beautiful mahogany color from a hundred years of frying thousands and thousands of food orders.

There were two young black girls who, except for their coloring, looked so much alike I took them for twins. Both had the kind of youthful playfulness that made them appear even younger. They grinned, snickered, whispered to each other, or rolled their eyes in unison in the direction of the eight or nine people who were there. Instead of laughing outright, they leaned into each other to control that impulse, but did not hide their amusement at things, I was sure, that only they could see. When they saw me standing there, they stopped what they were doing for a second, measured me, and went on with their chores. Their fingers never stopped moving. They cut whole chickens into parts, sliced catfish, and then breaded them both. The flour covered their hands—when they were not wet with fish or poultry—and settled, like a downy white blanket, in their hair. Each sweated profusely, making their smooth skin glisten. The sweat ran down their necks and into their checkered handkerchiefs. It poured off their foreheads and onto the thin white shirts they wore. The air was thick and infused with the aroma of the sizzling chicken and fish, spices, oil, and lard. These smells intermingled with the sweet smell of beer, cigarettes, and age.

As I was standing there, a bit self-consciously, trying to decide what to order, I looked around to try and see what others were eating. I couldn't see anything unusual to send these sisters into fits of paroxysms. The people who were eating kept to themselves, not saying much to those they were eating with or to those sitting close by. Maybe it was me they were laughing at? I decided to order, eat, and be on my way.

Each time a person came in to pick up food, the food appeared as if by some weird magic, precisely when they did. Each customer nodded to the sisters, but said not a word. They simply paid and left. I walked up to the counter where the sisters looked at me as if they were studying a bug.

"You havin' the chicken and fries, ain't you?" the lighter skinned one said. Her eyes were the color of cobalt.

"Jeez, I don't..."

"Chicken and fries," the darker skinned sister reiterated. Her eyes looked like a pool of India ink.

A voice behind me whispered, "Best take the chicken and fries."

I looked around but couldn't see where the voice had come from. By the time I'd turned around, the plate of chicken, fries, and slaw was waiting for me. The sisters stood, hands on their hips, not defiantly, but sure that this was the right thing for me to eat.

"You New York, ain't ya?"

"How'd you know?"

Again, they bumped against each other and smiled. "We know, Mistah," they said together. "You wanna drink sumpthin'?"

"Well, you ladies seem to know more about me than I do, so what do you suggest?"

"A Dixie with your chicken and coffee after," the darker toned one said.

I took my food and beer to a back table where an enormous black man, easily in his sixties, his gut hanging over his trousers nearly onto the seat, sweat falling off his forehead, was busily consuming his food. He was eating with both hands, one holding a biscuit of some kind was mopping up a brownish red gravy, while the other was holding a chicken wing. The gravy was getting on his fingers as he dragged the biscuit through the sauce. He'd place as many as three fingers in his mouth, which he would then eagerly lick and suck at, removing whatever gravy was on them. I sat at a table next to him when again, I heard a whisper, "Best not be sitting there." I looked around, but again couldn't attach the voice to a person. As I did, I saw the sisters looking at me, their eyes were wide and their brows crinkled. They, and the rest of the customers, looked frozen in time. They all were waiting, but for what I didn't know.

"Strange bunch," I said to myself and prepared to bite into the chicken.

The aroma from the plate had already made me salivate and I greedily grabbed a breast to taste, but as soon as it reached my lips a sound emanated from the table beside me that reminded me of a sonic boom that I'd only heard in movies. It had the same effect of a hundred-piece band of all tubas. He didn't just break wind. He fractured it. Finally, after many such emissions—which transfixed me—a slightly higher pitched sound, like a trumpet, signaled a coda and the end of the song. He leaned back in his chair, grabbed his bottle of beer and bubbled it five or six times before draining it. By this time the odors had wafted to where I sat, too stunned to move, but I did. I quietly got up, took my tray, and changed seats. The others had their heads lowered trying not to laugh. "Holy shit!" I said, and that elicited a few, "Amens."

As I was moving from one seat to the other, one of the sisters passed me carrying this gargantuan plate of catfish piled one of top of the other, with a bowl of slaw, and headed for the gentleman tune smith in the corner. "Good with hot sauce," she said and never broke stride.

At the first bite, my teeth sunk into the crisp peppery batter that was hot and sweet at the same time. The chicken's juices spread into places in my mouth I never knew existed. I took my time, had another beer, finished my plate, and then ordered coffee. The coffee was thick, yet so delicious I had a second.

When I went to pay my bill and thank the sisters, one of them, the lighter-skinned one, said to me real low, "You under a dark cloud, but you know that, but don't let that stop you none. It might stay with you for awhile, maybe a long while; might take its own sweet time to go on its way. Maybe even get worser, no way of knowin' that, but it'll lift, and you be fine. If you remember nothin' else, remember that."

I looked from one to the other, but they said nothing more, and it didn't seem they were going to either. I'd wanted, of course, to stay where I was until they told me everything they knew, everything they saw, but they just looked at me. How hard was it to tell I was under a dark cloud anyway, I thought. I knew how I looked. I should be carrying an umbrella.

The car was sitting alone in the lot with the sun beating on its roof. Inside, I felt like a piece of meat roasting and the sweat began, once again, to pour off of me. It was the first time I was almost sorry that I didn't get it with air conditioning, but in those days it would have compromised the engine's power.

The drive from the sisters past Baton Rouge and down into New Orleans was easy and short, but, traveling the Interstate, also boring. The car purred along at an easy eighty, and I found a jazz and blues station on the radio that made me want to continue driving, even off the face of the earth. Not knowing where I was going actually made me feel that the world was flat and that sooner, rather than later, I'd be arriving at the edge.

I had Frankie's address but had no idea how to get there. Instead, I followed signs leading me to the French Quarter, where I'd find a saloon and wait until I was able to call him. I'd decided, from my hospital room, that I didn't want to call him and have to explain what had happened. There'd be too much to tell, too much to absorb, and too many questions to be asked and answered. Besides, I needed to see his reactions and not imagine his expressions over the phone. Also, at that time, I didn't yet know how much to tell him. I'd be putting his well being, if not his life, in danger, and he needed to know and understand that first and foremost. And for me to make sure he did, I needed to see his face.

There wasn't much Frankie and I didn't talk about since we'd met each other on our first day at The New School. That day, during orientation, as I watched from a perch high in the auditorium's reaches, I saw him come in, as disheveled in appearance as I was internally, and, with a cup of coffee, mount the levels to where I sat, alone. The coffee sloshed around and spilled over the lip of the container and I offered to relieve him of it while he put his papers down and got himself settled. "Easy," I said, "you'll kill yourself."

"Death by scalding is not the way I envisaged going out," he replied.

After introducing ourselves we asked each other what had brought us to this hotbed of higher learning? Unlike myself, who came here after knocking around to and from various two-year schools around the state, Frankie had done his first two years at Yale, Tulane, and Northwestern. At the time, The New School constituted only the junior and senior years of college. In my case, a professor from one of the community colleges I was at in Brooklyn suggested, after having me as a student for a year and serving on the literary magazine, touted me on the place. Frankie, on the other hand, was a philosophy genius and was told that this was the place for serious philosophy students to study.

Frankie's father had been a high school principal somewhere on Long Island for most of his life and his mom, a bona fide schizophrenic, when she wasn't in bed with the covers pulled over her head, was sitting, wearing a headset, snapping her fingers to Thelonious Monk. Often times, she'd sit Frankie down, after he'd gotten home from school, and regale him with stories about her nights on Fifty Second Street in the Forties, as she went from the Three Deuces to the Onyx Club, catching Bird and Diz, Miles and Billie. How his parents got together was a mystery that ended with his conclusion it was a one-night thing that turned, through the circumstances of the times, into a marriage. Perhaps, he reasoned, it was during one of her blackouts when she'd awakened the next morning to find herself married and pregnant, though not necessarily in that order.

"She likes her liquor," he often said, "and I'd rather she go out drinking Courvosier than bar brandy." In that regard the marriage worked.

I'd begun to trust him enough to tell him of my own situation at home, and the danger it presented to me.

"They must think you're a faggot," he said. "The writing and the way you think must scare the hell out of them. Fuck them. Let them keep thinking that. Probably the only reason they leave you alone is because being scared of you and you being sick keeps them at arm's distance—just where you want them to be."

His words would be echoed by Angela in less than a years time.

Masparo's, one of the old slave exchanges and now a saloon that served food, in the French Quarter, was where I decided to stay until I was able to reach Frankie. It had begun raining after I'd parked my car and it was one of the first bars I saw. It reminded me of the Cedar Tavern, old, dark, and cavernous. It still had an elevated viewing platform meant to judge which of the black bodies that were paraded on it were more valuable to the buyers of flesh. Once inside, I was able to relax and take in some of what I saw both inside the saloon and outside its windows.

There were people walking around outside the Quarter, but not so much you'd think you were in a city that held as many people as New Orleans did. The narrow streets seemed quirky enough, cobblestoned and old, having wood-shuttered doors facing what looked to be alleyways, but containing apartments and what looked to be carriage houses. What I could see of the wrought iron balustrades and balconies overlooking the streets were interesting, with their laced grilled ironwork, but nothing, save the one person who I was looking for, made me want to find out any more about them. I'd cultivated a ridiculous arrogance from living in New York all those years, but confronted with the mystery of a city steeped in religion and miscegenation, my curiosity was aroused. Also, I knew that if caring about where I was would bring me closer to the person I was looking for, then I'd become as interested in the place as a historian. There were few patrons in the saloon this time of day, and I took a seat in the back, near the phone booth, in the darkest part of the room. I placed my small duffel, which held the money and my diabetic supplies on the chair beside me, stretched my legs out and looked around at the emptiness. There's nothing quite like an empty saloon on a slow afternoon to help you realize you're at potentially your last stop in life. The only thing missing was Coltrane's playing, Lush Life. Instead, I was listening to a Bessie Smith recording of St. Louis Blues, which was fine with me.

I tried to bend my mind to how Angela's flesh would feel the first time I'd touch her. I tried to think about the first things Angela and I would say to each other, how her hand would feel in my back pocket, how she'd taste and how we'd begin to mend ourselves and put our lives back together again. Nothing came. I tried again. I tried to conjure any tactile sensation from the past, but, again, nothing. "I'm too tired to think," I said to myself as Bessie became Billie and Billie became Pops. I allowed myself to shut my eyes, a luxury these days, when I felt the presence of someone standing close to me. Instinctively, my body went rigid and I turned with a start.

"How about some thick French chicory, wake you right up?"

I saw it was a waitress. "Christ, don't do that!"

"Sorry," she said, "it just seemed..."

"What it seems and what it is are two different things." She was tall and attractive, very attractive, with a deep set of mournful eyes that held my gaze without making me feel self-conscious. "You just surprised me is all. What's that coffee you just said?"

"That's the coffee we drink down here, love. The spoon can stand straight up like a good man do sometime."

"Not me lately, but I'll take a beer."

"Any particular?"

"Just cold."

She turned to go but not before she looked closely at my hand and the assortment of bruises still turning colors on my face. "Sure," she added, "who wants to wake up anyway?" I took in her ass and legs, which weren't bad either, as she went to get my beer. As soon as she left, I reached into my pocket and pulled out the vial of Percocet, which had significantly shrunk in number since I left New York, and took two out ready for the drink when it arrived.

While I waited for the drink, I tried to call Frankie. The phone booth was a wooden affair with a door and three windows looking out onto the saloon. To my surprise it only cost a nickel to make a call from the Quarter, but he wasn't home at any price.

The darkness of Masparo's helped. After the heat and the glare off the road, I felt melted, and the cool interior restored me. As soon as the waitress brought my beer I immediately swallowed the pills and noticed she gave me more than just an interested glance.

"Those ain't aspirins."

"No, not aspirins. I've got pain in my hands that aspirins won't touch."

"Me and pain are no strangers—all kinds of pain."

"Is that so?"

"You a long way from home, sugar."

"What is it about this place—everybody's a mind reader?"

"It ain't that, sugar. None of us here is from here. Everybody been travelin' one way or another, mongrels and Cajuns and Creoles have all kinds of blood in their veins from a million and one different places."

"Hell, you can say that about just about all of us. After the womb we're all tourists."

She tilted her head back and laughed. Her laugh had the touch of authenticity about it, something that I particularly valued.

"I'll go get you another beer, sugar. My name's Dolores, just in case you curious."

"Max, just in case you're not."

She laughed again and went back to the bar. I went back to the phone booth but had the same result. I shook out a cigarette, lit it, and waited for the beer, thinking about her remark about "pain." I knew that even though I'd decided not to take too much dope, (and had saved most of the Dilaudid), until I reached New Orleans, the truth of the matter was I'd be needing some more just to manage the pain in my hands and might, in a short period of time, need a doctor to prescribe them for me. Maybe she knew where I could find one?

"You never did say where your home is," she said as she placed the fresh beer in front of me."

"I'm looking for one. That's why I'm here." The rain continued to fall unabated. It splashed off the roofs and balconies and pooled itself into puddles outside where people, who had to be out, gingerly navigated around them. The rain and humidity had made my hands throb more once I'd reached the Deep South. "Does it always do this, the rain, I mean?"

"Always, all year. If you're thinking of living down here, I sure hope you brought your rubbers."

"Never use them."

"Me neither; never liked them. Something unnatural. Besides, I like to get wet." She smiled the kind of smile that opened the way onto the next level. I didn't want to, but I returned the smile. "If you can't reach the people you're trying to reach, you can crash at my place. Right here on Bourbon Street. You can't get a better idea of the Quarter than from there."

"Thanks, I might have to take you up on that."

"I get off at six," she said and then left me alone, probably to mull over the possibilities. What my eyes fixed on as they followed her to the bar was the platform upon which slaves where judged and then, after examining teeth, legs, shoulders, and arms, were sold. I saw the hands of white men fondling the asses and breasts of women and, in some cases, the genitals of men. I saw their nervous laughter as they examined the cocks of those they had to dominate, and the leers they exchanged with friends as they stared at those they wanted to penetrate.

Now, you could have a hamburger and a drink and be near the beginnings of genocide, without smelling the stink of fear coming from the bodies about to be separated from family and going to places where the only animals, besides the mules and horses, were them. They were inches away from pain and death, and they knew it. Still, you could have a second drink and think about all the things you still wanted to do with your life tonight, tomorrow, and forever, or more probably, you just waited for something to happen while you thought about nothing at all.

When I returned from trying, to no avail, to reach Frankie again, I wanted to boost the pills that had started to take effect. After I took two more from the vial, I caught Dolores's attention and she came over to the table.

"No luck, huh?" she said, looking down at my clenched left hand resting on top of the table.

"I think I'll take that standup coffee now."

"Have a cup of tea; those pills will come on faster."

"Thanks, but I need the coffee."

"Coffee it is."

She returned with a mug of steaming black coffee, a glass of water, and a copy of the local newspaper. "Might as well get a lay of the land, so to speak."

"You have any Sweet & Low?"

"You ain't fat, what you want with that?"

"Diabetic," I said, with a trace of embarrassment.

"Sure, I'll get you some."

I quickly took the pills and looked at the thick black brew that stared up at me, like a dark well. I stirred it and felt the spoon struggle against it. I tentatively took a sip and enjoyed the unusual taste. She came back to the table and dropped five pink packets of the sweetener on it. I opened one and put it in. Hardly anyone, who wasn't familiar with these packets, knew how many were used in drinks of this kind.

How much easier it would have been for me to have died on those tenement stairs a little less than two months ago. I began to think that it wasn't the pain I was afraid of, it was having hope that I'd be able to find and reclaim a life that had been stripped from me. I had never thought how cruel "hope" could be, but it was, especially when all your thoughts, waking or otherwise, were geared to what you "hoped" might be, instead of what was. I looked down at my right hand. The bandages had begun to get dirty and somewhat unraveled. The splints had gotten soft, allowing my fingers more room to roam until they hit wood. It held all the memories of recent times: the handholding, the caresses, the discoveries and gestures and now, the pain and desperation. I purposely tried to flex my fingers and the pain shot up from them into my arm, elbow, shoulder, and neck. It wasn't unpleasant.

I leafed through the paper, read some stuff about the usual goings on in a big city: killings, corruption, and wedding announcements, but couldn't really concentrate on anything. Dolores came and refilled my coffee and told me she was getting off in a half-hour.

"What's good to eat here?"

"Pastrami and melted Swiss, but sweet Jesus, not on your first night here. You're in New Orleans, sugar, you should eat New Orleans in New Orleans."

"Which is?"

She began to tell me, but thought better of it. "I'll take you. I'll show you."

I told her I'd wait for her.

"Where did you park?" she asked, as we turned the corner from Masparo's and began walking on Bourbon Street.

"In a municipal lot not far from here."

"You can leave it there, if you've put enough money in the meter."

"Twelve hours," I said.

"We'll feed it after we feed ourselves."

The rain had not let up a bit. It was coming down so hard it exploded when it hit the street, cars, and off one umbrella and onto another. As we danced under balconies and awnings, skittering from shelter to shelter, we made our way to her place. Each time we stopped to catch our breath, I was able to allow New Orleans' French Quarter to begin to seep into my system. Even Times Square had not prepared me for this. While Forty-Second Street had fallen into disrepair and seediness over the past twenty years, there was an inherent sense that, New York City, one of the worlds' hubs, had, at one time, been on a grand scale in regard to entertainment, amusements, and pleasures of the flesh. Here, I had the impression that the street had always been this way, beautifully lucid, with a wonderful combination of religion, food, jazz, and fornication, Dixieland and swing, all of equal proportion, and all of equal importance.

Quarter peep shows, with their nondescript windows of porn, stood next to fine restaurants, their hushed yellow glow, white table linen, and heavy looking tableware beckoning onto the street. A barker tried to seduce two young kids to catch the next tits and ass show at a nearby nudie bar, the Flesh Pit. Mardi Gras masks, in gold, red, black and ivory, emblazoned with feline markings, feathers, and encrusted jewels stared out of shops' windows.

"I've got to take a shower, make yourself at home," Dolores said. Her apartment, just outside the Quarter, a bit past Canal Street, was the definition of chaos. Down a small flight of steps and into a courtyard, her wooden shuttered door was just off a small stone fountain steeped in wisteria plants. Their pungent sweetness followed us inside.

Her kitchen, if you could call it that, led into her one room, used, I imagined, as a bedroom and living room. Her bed took up much of the space along with a few chests of drawers with lamps on top of them beside her bed, a closet and, standing in one corner, a coat rack upon which there were an abundance of jackets, rain gear, coats, and hats. On top of the rack was a court jester's mask, its painted face and floppy ears with bells attached, staring at me. Behind this room there was a bathroom, its door ajar.

"Just push those things any old place," she said.

I sat at the edge of the bed, and moved away the articles of clothing that lay there and watched, as Dolores dropped off her things and began, with the least amount of self-consciousness, to get out of her clothes. She took off her boots and threw them in a pile in a corner, pulled up her sweater and loosened her belt, unbuttoned the top of her jeans and let them fall around her ankles. I tried not to look, but I couldn't help myself. There is something so seductive about watching a woman undressing, whether she means to arouse you or not. As she inserted her thumbs inside her waistband and wriggled out of her jeans, I watched to see the color of her panties, but, instead, saw only flesh. I felt myself instantly springing to life. At the first sign of her downy brown pubic hair, I was almost painfully hard, even after all the pills I'd taken. It was the first time, since Angela, that I found myself in this state. I looked around for something, anything, to concentrate on, but found myself drawn back to her.

Finally, I got up and went into her shell-shocked kitchen, which looked like it hadn't heated water in a very long time. I opened her refrigerator and what looked like an igloo stared back at me. Inside, there was a rose, still wrapped in plastic and nearly dead, a half drunk bottle of white wine and one of mineral water, and a chicken bouillon cube. I felt her eyes on me all the while and, as I peered inside, somewhat astonished, I heard her laugh. There was nothing in there, or the kitchen, to suspect any food had been made there in the past or would be in the future. Instead, there was underwear in the sink, bras hanging from the oven's handle, socks and shirts adorned the little counter space there was, with bottles of every conceivable vitamin on top of the mess. I heard whom I'd later learn was Hank Williams, Sr., coming from her phonograph. I'd never listened to Country Western music or anything like that before, but I was immediately attracted to his voice. When I heard the shower running, I knew it was safe to return to the bedroom.

There was a cardboard box that contained record albums that I didn't bother to go through and next to them, a four foot piece of plywood held aloft by two bricks that acted as a shelf for her books. It was an odd assortment. A trigonometry text stood next to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a primer on Freud rubbed shoulders with America as Civilization, which bordered A Season in Hell and Les Fleurs du Mal. Thankfully, I didn't find anything by Gibran or McKuen.

I pushed her things to one side of the bed and, putting my arms behind my head, closed my eyes, listening to the sound of the shower running and smelling the soaps and perfumes and powders coming from her bathroom.

By the time she'd gotten ready, evening had arrived. Dolores no longer looked like the waitress I'd met a few hours ago, but as a beautiful woman ready to meet the night with her own style and enchantment. She wore a bandanna over her hair, which served to accentuate her forehead, high cheekbones, and hazel, deep-set eyes. Her full lips found my ear and whispered, "Let's eat, sweetie." I turned my head toward her mouth and saw her more than ample breasts bobbing and pushing against the V-neck sweater she wore. I sat upright and swung my legs over the bed and stood.

"How safe is it here?" I asked.

"Safe?"

"I'd like to leave my stuff here, but I have most of my valuables and my medications."

"Very safe. Three locks and gates on the windows. It's safe, believe me, it's very safe."

"Lead the way."

We sat on rounded red leather stools at the counter of a seafood restaurant on a corner in the Quarter. The counter was shaped like a horseshoe with bins of ice holding clams and oysters lining the other side of the counter. The countermen all nodded to Dolores, and she returned their greetings. I never tasted anything as delicious as the dozen and a half oysters I had with lemon and hot sauce, sweet and briny at the same time. We chased them down with some tap beer and then waited for the bowls of gumbo to arrive. Without asking, the counterman refilled our glasses of beer.

Steaming, in its own iron pot, the gumbo was placed before us. Shrimps, two blue crabs, crabmeat, and oysters were swimming with stewed tomatoes, spices, herbs, and okra. Angela had, of course, made gumbo, but never like this, never with crabs. Dolores showed me how to eat them while she informed me on the art of making the soup, which, as Angela had told me, was as varied as each chef was. Some gumbo had seafood and chicken, or seafood, chicken, and duck. Some cooks decided to add their own ingredients, which had been in their families for generations. Each bite, each spoonful, offered up flavors that held new meaning to the classic definition of soup. It only got better as it simmered. I mopped up the remains with this wonderfully doughy bread with a hard crust that had come with it.

The oysters had cost twenty-five cents each, a dozen for two dollars and fifty cents. The gumbo was four bucks each. No wonder Frankie had extolled the virtues of Louisiana cooking.

We floated through the streets after our dinner, people and colors running into each other. The rain had finally stopped, but a thin mist, like a laced veil, hung in the air. My car was where I'd left it with a few hours left on the meter. I began to put in coins when Dolores said, "You have a Porsche? Never knew nobody with one of these."

"You do now."

"It ride like people say?"

"Better. Sometimes it feels like an extension of my body."

"Damn," she said and thought for a second. "There's an all night lot I know. Maybe you should put it in there?"

"You think I should?"

"Yeah, I do."

Dolores ran her hands over the dashboard and the wooden steering wheel, nestling her ass and back against the bucket seat. The engine roared to life. "You got to take me out for a drive in this. And soon."

"Sure."

"Twisty back road driving, not that straight highway shit."

"I will," I laughed, "I promise. You drive a stick?"

"Hell, I can drive anything that moves. My old man drove one of those eighteen wheelers. He made damn sure I knew the difference between a stick and a dick—and how to handle both."

"Then you'll drive me, show me the sights."

"Really?"

"Really."

She directed me to the lot, just inside the Quarter on the north side. After we left the car there, Dolores began showing me some of the more obvious tourist attractions that the Quarter held. We passed an old herbalist shop, Madame Zora's, said to be able to cast spells and alter the course of one's future—if one indeed had a future—

and past Gallatois, said to be, next to or better than, Brennan's, two of the finest eateries in New Orleans. Its white tiled floor and black tuxedoed waiters who hovered around the mannered gentry, presented a Southern tenaciously holding onto its roots and traditions, no matter the cost.

Old bars, almost empty, stood next to raucous ones, filled with people and music. It was in a quiet saloon that Dolores, over a bourbon and water, asked what had brought me down here. I sipped at a Martel, and didn't tell her much. She was smart enough though, to know there was something more than "coyness" that prevented me from saying more.

"You must love her very much to come all this way."

I didn't say anything.

"She seems like a fool to leave you."

I still didn't say anything. Instead, I looked at the two old gentlemen sitting three stools apart, having a drink at the other end of the bar. One was clean shaven and wore a worn blue sport jacket, shirt, and tie. The other, a grizzled veteran of the wars, had a striped shirt worn around the collar and frayed at the cuffs.

"You're not too big on information, are you?"

"It's better that way, for both of us."

I looked at her and she smiled. "You're a sexy fuck."

I didn't say anything.

"You know that, don't you?"

"Look who's talking."

"Only when I want to be; otherwise I'm plain as dirt."

"Dirt doesn't have legs and hips and breasts and a mind like you do," I said, and looked squarely at her, "and Dolores, don't play me for a mark."

Her smile disappeared and she grew quiet for a moment. "All right, I won't, but it works both ways."

I nodded my head in agreement. We exchanged parts of our lives that would mostly be forgotten by the next day. When I tried to order my third cognac she stopped me.

"Don't. I've got something better at home."

It was just past midnight when we returned to her apartment. Instead of turning on her kitchen light, she went directly into her bedroom and lit the candles that stood, in various sizes and colors, on a small chest of drawers beside it. I stood there not knowing what to do.

"Come in sugar, don't be afraid," she laughed, "nothing in here bites, if you don't want to get bit."

Cautiously, I moved forward and sat on the edge of her bed.

"Have you ever smoked opium before, Max?"

"No, never."

"Pot?"

"Many times."

"It's much different than smoking pot—the high that is—but the same principles apply."

The light from the candles flickered about the room, creating shadows and sensations, one of which was excitement.

First, she reached under the bed and took out an inlaid wooden tray and placed it on the bed between us. Next, she slid her hand around the back of the chest and brought out an iron box and, with a key she had on her chain, opened it. From the box she produced a much smaller wooden box, with enamel red and gold colors on it, a pipe meant for smoking that I'd never seen used before, a lighter, and what looked like a larger than usual sewing needle.

"Naked would be better, but I'll put on a robe. I think I have one your size."

"Robes sounds fine for me."

When she went to her closet to search, I thought about how much I'd wanted to try opium—heroin, really—for a very long time. Ever since I'd discovered that those I'd read or listened to used narcotics, I'd wanted to try those drugs myself. Now that it was right here in front of me, I tingled with anticipation. The taboos surrounding the drug gave me a moment of pause, but only a moment.

She tossed a white terry cloth robe across my legs that had a monograph, in gold, with the head of a lion. "Royal Orleans" was written underneath it' mane, near the breast pocket.

"Thanks. I'll take a quick shower. Be right back."

Dolores was lying on the bed in a matching robe, the slit revealing much of her leg and thigh, when I returned.

"Feel better?"

"Much better."

"In a little while you're going to feel much better than that."

I sat down next to her and took the oddly shaped pipe in my hand. It had what seemed to be a small clay bowl under which was a brass fitting surrounding a hole at the bottom. From this cylindrical piece of brass was a longer, but slimmer, glass stem with an opening at the end.

She sat upright and placed herself next to me, her breast rubbing against my arm. Gently, she opened the wooden box and took from it a piece of tin foil that was rolled into a ball, twice the size of a marble. Next, she peeled away the edges and a black, gummy ball sat in the center of it. Taking the sewing needle, she rolled some of the opium around the tip and told me to put the pipe to my lips.

"Take it in gently, and keep it there," she instructed.

Dolores held the opium a bit above the center of the clay bowl and, with her lighter, heated it. As soon as the smoke began to form I inhaled it. It tasted like incense, but the taste began to change once it inhabited my mouth. It became sweet and pungent at the same time. By the time I took in my second lung full, I felt a warmth creeping up my spine, into my neck, and spreading to my shoulders. Things began to fall off of me, like dead skin.

"Now me," she said. She rolled a little more of the opium onto the needle and handed it, and the lighter, to me.

I watched as she sucked on the end of the pipe and drew in those magical vapors.

We repeated the process three times and stopped because we could no longer negotiate the physical dexterity needed to continue. She managed to roll up the opium in the tin foil and place everything back in the iron box and put it on the side of the bed.

"Lie back," she said.

My mind, free-floating, but lucid, rested comfortably inside my skull. It seemed to curl up in a place where ordinary things could not go. Concerns and worries that I'd had an hour ago were banished to a place far beyond my reach or memory.

"How do you feel?" she asked.

"Wonderful."

"Wait, it gets better."

"Really?"

"Yes, really." She paused. "You never hesitated. I didn't think you would, but you never know. And you didn't."

I didn't say anything. I was too enthralled in being transported to the places where dreams are born.

"I need to touch you. Do you mind?"

"No, go ahead."

"I won't take advantage of you, I promise."

A smile crossed my face as she opened my bathrobe and placed her hand on the inside of my thigh, and rested it near my balls, her pinky just near enough for my cock to feel her warmth. It felt something more than erotic. With each passing second I'd become looser and looser, gradually drifting off into a gossamer web that held me. I suddenly realized that for the first time in months, my hands and face didn't hurt. In fact, nothing hurt.

***

I felt as if I'd aged a lifetime when I awoke, and I had. The sleep I fell into on the wooden park bench I was on, put a major creak in my neck and pain in my shoulder. I was in my mid-twenties a moment ago, now I'd be fifty-five in a matter of weeks.

Nowhere did I feel this more than where I worked. I felt like a calendar that the kids used to measure time by. They passed me in the halls and on the stairs as if I didn't exist. The need that these kids had—and would have—for me was based not on physical attraction, but, like most adolescents, self-centered interest. Intellectually I knew this, but it made me feel older than I was, a fact that disturbed me no end.

"You pray for forgiveness, Heller?" Lourdes said once she came in—late—and sat behind her desk with her coffee and roll.

"That's next week, this was Jewish New Year."

"Seems ass backward to me. Pray first, party after." She was busy opening up the mail while she sipped her coffee and devoured her roll. "Shit! Carver be here this week with Williams. 'We will address the issue of office space and the sharing of information. We will work together, or we won't work at all.' she read from the memo. That fuckin; Jackson, man."

"When will they be here?"

"Says Thursday, but you never know. She just drops in anytime she wants. I got the union on her ass a few years ago, but she does whatever she wants to do. Be prepared."

I said I would, but I didn't know what to prepare for. I knew from my first and only dealings with Carver that she was strange, to say the least, but how that would manifest itself in this instance I had no idea. Instead, I thought about Gabriella and whether or not she'd show up during the third period. Lourdes had advised me to make an already easy job easier by submitting the names of the students I wanted to work with to the head of guidance, Ms. Lynch, in order for her to program them in for the Spring term, which seemed so far away, but, Lourdes cautioned me, wasn't.

Gabriella, with Veronica trailing behind her, waltzed into my room right on time. They had in tow two other students, Candy and James. Lourdes was on the phone—which hardly ever left her hand—calling in a cosmetics order. Jackson had not yet shown up, at least not here. I began arranging chairs in a circle and took a seat, inviting them to do the same. A few minutes later, five others appeared looking lost. I asked to see their program cards and saw they'd been assigned to go to "Group Guidance," a euphemism for JUMPSTART.

There was Darnell, a handsome young black kid with bright clear eyes, smooth, (almost buttery) skin, and large inquisitive eyes. He was a sophomore. Christine, a six foot Nubian goddess, slumped down in her chair, but seemed friendly. Sheila was a full- figured Pakistani who wore an outfit meant to reveal what she thought was probably the best parts of her. Katie was the only Caucasian in the group and the only one who voluntarily walked in with no prompting or pressure from anyone. She'd heard Lourdes and I describe briefly what JUMPSTART was and where it was located when we made our presentation in the auditorium the first few days of school, and she just showed up. A plain-looking Polish sophomore, who wore these endearing glasses that she constantly pushed up on her nose, was charming in a vulnerable kind of way. And then there was Paulino, the last to be seated. He seemed to check out the most advantageous position for himself, then squeezed a chair between the two people he wanted next to him, and sat down, his arms crossed over his stomach, and a wary expression on his face. He was short and wiry, and he was devilishly handsome.

"Thanks for coming," I said to all of them. "I mean that, too. In this life, there's many things that we feel we have to do, but still no one really makes us do them. I imagine that if you wanted to, you'd get out of coming here, too. If you decided to do that though, I think you'd be making a mistake, but only time will tell. I'm going to ask you to give this a solid month. Then we'll see what's what. O.K. I'm going to give you a questionnaire to fill out. Bring it back with you tomorrow. I need it for my files, which no one sees except me. Your names will not be used. Instead, I'll use numbers so no one will know who the hell you are, except me.

"Speaking of that, of confidentiality, that applies to all. You should know that whatever is said in here, whether it's a one-to-one talk that I'm having with you, or in group, stays here. If I find out otherwise, if I find that one or more of you are gossiping, then the person or persons will no longer be allowed to attend this group. I'd still see them individually, but not in a group setting. If you find out that I've gossiped, sue my ass.

"Also, I'd like to say, 'Fuck math!'" I paused. "That's right, you heard right, 'Fuck math.' You were taught all through your school years and probably in your home as well, that two and two equals four. Bullshit! That's fine in class or when your family is trying to make you feel bad about something you did or didn't do, but unfortunately life sometimes is not that simple, that clear-cut. Sometimes two and two equals five. Like you say, 'How the hell can that girl go out with that guy?' or, 'He's doin' that with her? Shit, no way.' But it's true. The strangest, most bizarre behavior happens all the time. This program is really a school for the emotions, and emotions are messy, often times senseless, illogical. 'He told me he loved me last night, but today won't even look at me.' 'My mom said she cares about me, but hasn't been home in days.' Shit doesn't make no kind of sense, but we have to deal with it. How can we do that and keep going to school, doing homework, studying for tests—that all seems so meaningless—and get on with our lives? Hopefully this can help you do that."

"Mistah, you tellin' us that nobody don't haveta know about this, about what's said here?" Candy said.

"Nobody—with four exceptions: suicide, homicide, physical or sexual abuse. I have to say though, that should you tell me about those things I have to, by Federal law, inform the proper authorities. It's a matter of safety. I will tell you though, between us, that if you're having or have had feelings or experiences like those, we can talk about them before I let someone know, if ever, about them. You'll just have to get to know me, before you trust me on that. Trust is earned over time. If you hang with me, I think you'll come to understand and believe that."

With that the whistle blew, signifying the end of the period, and they filed out before I could give them the forms. I wondered if anything I'd said made a much of a difference to them.

"Don't give them no papers to take home. They lose them, eat them, shit on them, but hardly ever return them. Besides, you could take a whole period to fill them out. Just sit back and relax." Lourdes called over to me.

I didn't have that long to think about that or anything else, before the next group of students entered the room.

Kimberly Castillo, a feisty Hispanic cutie, was the first to enter with three of her friends following her. "What is this here, Mistah?" she asked and stamped her feet in mock indignation. She wore a white t-shirt that said, "Angel" in pink lettering.

"This here is for little devils who've failed two or more courses last term, those who've been absent most of last year, or who've cut more classes than they went to. Do you fit any of those categories?"

She looked down at her sneakers, an impish smile crossed her face, and she said, "Maybe."

"Maybe?" I returned. "Either you're pregnant or not pregnant."

She laughed. "I guess I'm a little pregnant," she said, looked at me, and smiled the sweetest smile of a teenage girl.

The others who had come in with her laughed, too.

"What you all be laughin' at?" she said. "None of youse can't say nothin' 'bout me; you all be failin' and cuttin' and doin' whatever, just the same like me."

They stopped laughing, but held sheepish grins.

"Come in, come in. Sit down over there. Make yourselves comfortable. This isn't any kind of punishment. This is going to be good, for all of us."

Kimberly went over and took a seat and was followed by, those I later learned were Christina, Maria, and Elizabeth. Then, two black kids I'd spoken with about the program after an auditorium presentation, Emerson and Troy, showed up with Felix, a surly Hispanic junior with a huge chip on his shoulder, came in and showed me his program card. Unfortunately, I said to myself, he's programmed in here, too.

Maria could be, if she didn't gain any more weight and didn't fall prey to urban rot, a Playboy centerfold in a few years. She had that kind of face and body. Her only physical drawback was her speech. She didn't really talk as much as she whined her words. Christina, on the other hand, was unintelligible. A pretty, but slightly overweight freshman—a super freshman really, for she'd failed all her courses last year, including Spanish—had all of three credits. She talked so quickly and mumbled all her words in a Hispanic dialect that made it impossible for me to comprehend anything she said without having her repeat it two or three times to me. She wore tight dungarees and a blue t-shirt that stopped an inch above her navel. Her flesh hung almost to her belt. Elizabeth was homely with coarse black hair covering her chubby arms and underneath her chin, which she'd recently shaved. She seemed quiet and withdrawn. Sitting between Kimberly and Maria, she'd laugh or grimace, depending upon what the others said. Felix, an angry and confused-looking student, with a tattoo of some kind of death head on his arm, endeared himself to the group immediately by inquiring, "How come so many bitches are here?"

I looked at him and summoned up a reasonable amount of anger. "You can say anything in here as long as you don't put down anyone or other people. If you do, you have to go."

"Can't go. I haveta be here," he shot back.

"I really don't give a shit about what you have to or don't have to do. That's your problem, but if you stay you're going to respect everyone in this room. You don't have to like anyone, but respect them you will."

He frowned and pouted, but grew silent, crossing his arms on his chest and staring off in the distance.

Emerson, big, heavy, and jovial looking and his friend Troy, tall, thin, and athletic looking, sat back and clocked the action. They tried, I knew, to learn what this was about and how to act.

I repeated what I'd said to the first group and once again the whistle blew without me giving out the questionnaire to them.

"See you tomorrow, Mistah," some of them said as they left. Felix didn't look back, but bolted out of the room.

Again I asked myself if what I'd said had any effect whatever on them, but this time countered that question with another one: Why do I care? I had no answer to either one.

"That kid Felix is a bad one," Lourdes called over. "I know him for two years and for two years he's been fulla shit."

"He looks like trouble, but we'll see."

"You won't have to wait long."

"I'm going to duck out and get something to eat."

"Take your time. When you come back, I got an appointment to get my nails done. It's not far from here."

"You got some racket going."

She laughed. "Hey, I deserve it after all the time I spent doin' this shit."

I brought my testing equipment out of my bag and took a glucose reading, two hundred. I had time to give myself a shot and still be able to get to Chinatown and have lunch before the insulin began to work. I decided to have a bowl of dumpling and duck soup at Noodletown and measured out the appropriate shot. I turned my back to Lourdes and, through my shirt, injected myself in my upper arm.

Chinatown was teeming with people at noon. Shoppers and businessmen crowded the streets and doorways to restaurants. A mob hovered around and over the Off Track Betting emporium, with a cumulus nimbus cloud of smoke over their heads. Workers, their trucks double-parked, had whole gutted pigs slung over their shoulders. The pig's flesh was a soft milk white with slight strands of pink running through it. Their snouts hung over the backs of those who carried them down into the basements where they'd be boned and offered to customers in one form or another. I stopped and bought a lottery ticket. Who knows?

Noodletown was crowded, but they found a place for me at a round table for eight. I squeezed between two older Chinese men and ordered. The soup was as good as I remembered it being. The broth was delicious, the dumplings filled with shrimp exploded with flavor once I bit into them, and the duck was just the right combination of sweetness and crunchy, flavor-packed skin.

I was in no hurry to get back to work. Less than three weeks into the job, I was bored and restless. I'd said or heard the same things I'd spoken to the students today for the better part of twenty years, in groups and in private therapy. I no longer believed that fundamental change was possible in the majority of human beings, especially adolescents. Convinced that they would never die or fall into the same hole as their friends or parents, they acted recklessly. They had no real incentive to do a goddamn thing about their situation, except escape and have some fun in the process. Besides, how the hell could I help those I couldn't possibly identify with, and them me? How could I understand their lives, so foreign from the ones I knew? Shit, I'll just fake it, I thought. Get through it day-to-day and make some money—and health benefits—besides. I'd be doing something to eat up the hours while I tried to decide how to right my past. Angela was dead. I was pretty sure of that by now. How they'd pay was still an open question.

Lourdes' nails were done in a thick salmon color with criss-crossed lines of navy and black running through them. She looked like a short hooker trying to make a comeback.

"I used to look gorgeous," she said and pointed to some photographs next to her desk. "Check me out. I was thirty pounds lighter and I could do it. I mean I could really do it."

"I believe it," I responded. "Listen, Tina, I still need a third group."

"Heller, Heller, you worry so damn much. I'm gonna ask Arroyo to give me some money they hold for us and buy candy and then we gonna put it out front any period you want and by the time you turn around you're gonna have more kids in here than you know what to do with."

"When?"

"After that Carver bitch comes here and then after that other Jewish thing of what, giving up your sins and shit."

"Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement."

"Man, that sounds so heavy!"

"Well, it's some serious stuff to those who believe."

She didn't answer. The phone had rung and she immediately began to speak Spanish.

The Cedar Tavern was quiet when I got there. Joey was sitting at the end of the bar talking with someone I didn't know. I went over to him and put my arm around his shoulder.

"Stranger," he said, "how goes the battle?"

"It goes... and goes... and goes."

"Time passes quickly for you, I see."

"Like a fucking kidney stone."

"Have a cocktail," he said laughing.

"Don't mind if I do. A Chivas and soda," I said to the bartender.

"You hungry?"

"I could eat."

"Excuse me," he said to the person he was talking with, "a very old, and I mean old, friend is here. He got up from the stool and grabbed his bottle of beer. "Let's mangia."

I took my drink and followed him to a booth in the back of the saloon. Soon a waitress came over and he ordered the chicken cacciatore, made in a light tomato sauce with artichokes, olives, and capers over penne. I took the same.

"What's up?"

I took out a cigarette, my first of the day, and lit it. "Nothing, man. My life's in the shitter. I get up, go to work, come home, and go to sleep. Get up the next day and do it again. I work with this insane Puerto Rican babe who does nothing except yell at her kids and sell cosmetic products at work, if she does anything at all. The kids who come to see her sit around and wait for her to get off the phone. The kids who I see are still trying to figure out why I'm doing what I'm doing at the school at all. Believe me, if I knew I'd tell them. Besides, I don't know anything about them. How could I? I'm old, white, and beaten up. They're young and beautiful, Hispanic and black and full of piss and vinegar. They're cut from a different cloth."

"Sounds like you're having a ball."

"Yeah, give it a name."

People were being seated all around us, and I began hearing the sounds of easy conversations and laughter that I hadn't been involved in for so long I didn't know if I'd remember how to do it should the occasion arise. For the briefest of seconds, I felt a jealousy. It was the first time in a long time.

We ate in silence and when the waitress came over to clear our table, he motioned her to bring me another drink and him another beer.

"I'll take one of those lung busters now."

I reached into my pocket and shook out two cigarettes and gave him one.

"That was good, Joey. Thanks."

"Don't worry about it."

"There is something that I'm worried about," I said and paused. "Joey, I'm not asking, but if I was asking, could you get me a piece?"

"Christ, Max."

"I'm not asking."

"You're asking all right."

"I'm not; I said I wasn't asking."

"Bullshit. You're asking."

"All right, I'm asking... but I'm not asking."

"Come back to me when you're asking asking, then ask me."

The waitress came and put our refills in the space between us.

"Joey, I'd never get you involved in anything."

"You just did. I got a family Max."

"I know."

"I ain't gonna do nothin' to jeopardize me or them, but maybe I could put you in touch..."

"That's fine. More than I have a right to ask."

Joey sipped his beer and drew on the cigarette. "Remember what you said before about those kids being cut from a different cloth?

"What about it?"

"I don't believe that and what's worse, neither do you. We all, every one of us, walk through the same fire, but our flesh burns differently. That's all the difference between any of us."

"You're becoming a poet?"

"I've had a family, a big family, to raise and I've seen it in action," he said, not bothering to address my inanity. "Give it and those kids a shot, you might surprise yourself."

"Well, it would shock the shit out of me."

"Get ready. Life's got a way of challenging your heart."

"Give it a name."

My apartment, dark and empty, stood before me. I didn't want to go in. I wanted to stand there forever, not taking another step. I switched on the light and TV in almost the same motion.

The Yanks were beating Seattle in the last tier of the playoffs before the World Series began. Clemens seemed like he turned back the clock ten years and was pitching a nasty masterpiece. He knocked down Rodriquez in the first inning, just missing his batting helmet with a ninety-five mile an hour fastball. He didn't stop there. Clemens made him bail out twice more before he weakly grounded to Jeter. After that Seattle folded. I was hungry for sweets. I ate a Milky Way bar I'd had saved in my refrigerator. Fuck my blood sugar.

Thursday, bright and early, Carver walked into our room like a czar. She took a moment, much like a queen surveying her surroundings and supplicants, to take in her domain. Of course, I was the only one there. She looked with disgust at Jackson's broken down and piled up desk in a corner and Lourdes' desk. Lourdes' empty chair served as a reproach to Carver's Imperial decree and importance.

"Where's Tina?" she demanded.

"I don't know."

"Where's Jackson?"

"I don't know that either."

"What is their reporting times?" she asked Williams, though she didn't turn around to address him directly.

"Both at seven-thirty," he responded, obviously knowing the question was for him to field.

"And what time is it now?" she inquired, although she wore a watch.

"Almost eight."

"Almost eight," she muttered. "This will have to stop. All this will have to stop." She continued looking around the room. She addressed those last remarks to neither myself nor Williams, who seemed to be waiting for her next command.

A few students I knew poked their heads in to say hello and ask if they could do their homework there before their classes began. I had to tell them that I was in a meeting and that I'd see them later.

"Do you have all the students you should?" she pointedly asked me, a thin veil of condemnation covering her face.

"I'm a few short," I replied.

"A 'few short,'" she mimicked, "simply won't do. You have a contractual obligation and I expect it to be honored."

"It will be. I'm a little new at this."

"That's no matter to me. We hired you to do a job and part of that job is having the proper amount of students in your groups. If you're having trouble doing that I want you to call Williams immediately. Is that understood?"

"What's going on here? Did I do anything to offend you recently? Kill your dog, kidnap your cat? Do I owe you any money?"

"We expect you to perform responsibly. The students you must have is one of the ways this program gets funded. Less students, less jobs."

"There's still a way of talking to people. I understand the reality of funding obligations, but I find it less than professional to be spoken to that way. I'll get the job done, I just need a little more time to do it."

"If you don't like how I speak to you, I can't help that. We will help you get the job done, if need be. Make sure that by mid-October you have all the students you should have. I want the numbers on the monthly forms you submit. Williams, I want you to be here in two weeks to see the program operating correctly."

Williams looked at me with a hang-dog expression. He'd be no help whatsoever. In fact, maybe just the opposite. He'd been enslaved so long that he was in love with his oppressor.

Lourdes, more than a half hour late, rounded the corner like a bowling bowl dropping into the gutter before hitting the ten pin. She careened off the edge of the doorway and just missed Williams who was standing on the inside of the frame, stumbled, righted herself, and made her way to her desk. Puffing and out of breath she took her seat. "Parking is just ridiculous around here. Sorry I'm late." If she tried to use a preemptive strike, it wasn't working.

"I've been hearing that excuse from you for ten years. What's going on here, Tina? Why do I have to waste my time coming down here to make sure you do what I want? You should know that if I have to, I'll be here every day to make sure this program is up and running properly. You should know that."

"I do know that, Lizzie, but it's Jackson. It's Jackson, man, it's Jackson. He's impossible. From the first day he came in here and wanted my stuff. All the stuff I've worked years for, just like that it became his. Take my computer and move it to the center of the room; put my phone on the table over there; move my desk into the far corner so he could put his in the center. Shit like that. It was crazy. I'm not going to go with that. I'm not. You can't ask me to," she ended, more plaintively than declaratively.

"Unreasonable or not, you're just going to have to learn to work with him. That's all there is to it."

On cue, Jackson sauntered in full of righteous indignation.

"There's Antenna man, now," Lourdes said.

"You see what kind of shit she says to me?" Jackson stammered, his eyes going from one to another and finding no sympathy whatsoever.

"Your start time is at seven-thirty sharp. If this continues, I'm going to dock you for every minute you're late. Then, if it goes much further you'll have to come up with your union rep and be sanctioned."

"What else is new?" Jackson mumbled.

"Jackson, you just made it back here by the skin of your teeth. You realize that we gave you some break by allowing you to continue working for us."

"Some break. Her case could never be proved, and she dropped the charges. So what break did you give me? What you did was saddle me with this mad woman. She crazy."

"I'm crazy? You come in here and demand what ain't yours and I'm crazy?"

"Let's all sit down," Carver said. "Williams," she continued, "go find me a tea with one sugar and lemon. We'll wait until you return." Without saying a word, he got up and left the room, a black lap dog who weighed well over two hundred pounds had just been told to fetch something. The only thing missing was his tongue hanging out as he went to do it.

The sound of her voice connected to each word, each sentence, made me despise her more. Who, possibly, could love or could have ever loved, this woman? I wondered. And for what reasons? In her late fifties, her skin falling away from her bones, I knew she no longer had a husband. I'd heard he'd left immediately after their son was born, leaving her with means, but no physical companionship, except her own. I'd also heard that she'd fallen into this job when the program was created, nearly thirty years ago, after teaching history and hating it. An acquaintance, who'd started JUMPSTART, asked if she'd be interested in doing this kind of work. Having had a mother who died of wet brain, the end stage of alcoholism, she jumped at the chance. During her tenure of drug goddess, her son, after experimenting with as many chemicals as she told him about over the dinner table, threw himself under the wheels of an oncoming number five train. She mourned exactly one day before continuing her rule, more convinced than ever that her way, a strict adherence to abstinence, was the only way for drug treatment to work. Through attrition and death she'd become the sole arbiter of this program in Manhattan. Carver guarded this position with her life.

I'd heard these rumors while in training during my first few weeks in August, but not having met her took them with a grain of salt. After meeting her, that first time, and seeing her staring into an empty elevator, I began to believe some of what I'd learned. It was when I spoke with her that I became convinced that she bordered on the maniacal. She knew just enough to be dangerous. She'd picked up enough clichés, generalizations, and theories about substance abuse, but no hands-on knowledge of the dynamics of those engaged in this behavior. What was worse was that she trusted no one who had more experience to offer the kind of leadership that would make a difference to the clients she was supposed to serve. For the last five years she'd been rumored to be retiring, but no such luck. Williams had positioned himself to be next in line, but so far the only line she'd have him stand on was one that dispensed beverages.

"I don't like doing this," she began, "I have better things to do with my time." What bullshit that was, I thought.

"Lizzie," Lourdes began weakly, "Jackson's got a room downstairs. Jackie Arroyo gave him one. All his materials is down there. Except for when we have our weekly meetings, he don't haveta be up here at all."

"I don't mind that he's up here," I lied, "but it does seem a little crowded especially when I'm running a group, Tina's running a group, or we're both doing individual counseling. Jackson becomes the elephant in the corner. I know he's here, Tina knows he's here, and what's more important, the kids know he's here. It's hard enough to get them to open up to someone they know let alone say things when someone they don't know is sitting right there."

"They're kids, they'll adjust. What I'm interested in is having a smooth running program and for that to happen you all will be working out of the same office."

Williams came back with her tea and placed it beside her. She never offered to pay him for it, never opened the container, never even looked at it. She got up, walked around the room again, and began to point. "This goes there. That goes over there. Put this divider up against his chair," and so on. "Well, there you have it. You want me to repeat it while one of you takes notes or draws a diagram?"

"No," I said, "I think it's pretty straightforward."

"Lizzie," Lourdes said, "I'm not going to do this. I can see you wanting us to share the things we have here and that's all well and good, but telling us where to move, where to sit, how much space we should have, that I can't agree with."

"Call your union. You have two weeks to implement my changes, then I'll be back."

"Ms. Carver," Jackson began, "I got eight kids that I got to get off everyday for school. Some days I can't help but be a few minutes late."

"Not my problem. No one asked you to have eight kids with five different women all of whom are not living up to their responsibilities. I can't help you with that. You can't be here on time, you'll be docked. After that, I told you what would happen. I've got nothing more to say on the subject. Williams, let's go."

He got up, looked at the container of tea sitting on the table, took his briefcase with his initials, Q.W., on the side, and opened the door for her.

"Nice pleasant meeting," I said when they'd gone.

"It's your fault, Jackson. You got nothin' that you wanted and we all got somethin' we didn't need: her on our asses."

I laughed. "Now, Jackson, instead of having a room all to yourself where you could do just about anything you wanted, you're going to be stuck in what looks like a little urinal in the corner. The only sunlight you're going to get is the kind that clings to your clothes on your way into the building. You did a hell of a job."

Jackson turned around, but before he left the room, he told us that those charges against him from his other school was, "Bullshit. That crazy woman took out an Order of Protection because she wanted to get back at me for breaking off our thing. Nothin' more than that. Nothin'. That Carver is a bitch, a real bitch." Then he left, probably to seek solace in his room downstairs, leaving me to think about those eight kids, five women, and what was he doing teaching in a Manhattan high school with a large and vulnerable female population.

"I'm not doing a thing," Lourdes said once Jackson had gone. "And she can't make me either. She can't tell me how to arrange or decorate this room. She don't live here, I do. She tried to do that with someone else I know and the union stepped in quick. She's just trying to make our lives miserable. She needs to get laid."

"Don't look at me."

"I'm going out for coffee and I'm gonna do a little shopping, too."

"Finished your work already," I laughed.

"Fuck, she's been here already. She ain't comin' back. The day is free. I'll just be back to punch out. I'll punch you out if you want. I'm tellin' you she ain't comin' back."

"No thanks. Things I have to do."

"Would you mind punching me out? I'll return the favor anytime."

"Sorry, Tina, don't want to get started with that shit."

"See ya," she said without missing a beat.

"Yeah, see ya."

"If anyone calls, just say that you don't know where I am."

"That's the truth."

With that, I watched her hefty huge ass churn up and down as she rounded the corner, and then she was gone, too.

It was pleasant with both Lourdes and Jackson gone. I didn't bother to open the door any wider than she left it. Partially closed, it muted the noise from the students in the cafeteria. I didn't know what period it was nor, of course, what period was about to come up, so I just tried to reflect upon what had just happened. After thinking about it for a few minutes, I decided that it really came to nothing at all. All that noise about the room, the contractual responsibilities and that bullshit about how we have to all work together was nothing more than her hearing herself talk. Gauging the people I worked with, what she was asking added up to the typical bureaucratic bullshit that the Board of Ed was so famous for. Nothing would be done. It was just about waiting until this little storm blew over and then, as in all large bureaucracies, it was on to the next crisis.

Candy poked her head through the door just as I was beginning to wonder what had happened to my third period class, if this was the third period. She entered cautiously with a warm and somewhat caring smile on her face.

"Is it safe to come in here now?"

"Safe?"

"Mistah, me and Veronica and Gabriella heard what was goin on in here. It sounded pretty bad."

"Sure, it's safe. Get everybody and bring them in here. Stop kidding around."

Her smile widened, and she went back into the cafeteria to round up the rest. Soon, they all filed into the room and took their seats. Even after only sitting in those seats a few times, they felt they owned them and would take offense if somebody tried to change things. It seemed, in the last few meetings, they'd moved their chairs a bit closer to mine and adopted a familiarity that had been missing during our initial encounters. I had decided, a few meetings ago, to go against Carver's dictum of never divulging anything personal about yourself. I told, and would tell them, things I thought to be relative to what they were going through—and might go through later in their lives—including my experiences with alcohol, drugs, and relationships, including family. I'd be as careful as I could by just, "laying it out" without embroidering it or making it seductive. I knew I'd have no way of knowing immediately if I was successful, but what I did know was that the old-fashioned way of just trying to be another aloof, though friendly, counselor had not really worked in the past for me so I would try something different with them.

"What's up, people?" I asked.

"Just chillin'," came the response from three or four of them.

"Well, I wasn't 'just chillin'' as some of you noticed. I was involved in another stupid adult version of, 'Who can piss the furthest.' My boss, as most bosses do, made sure that everyone knew she had us all beat and pissed all around the room."

"Oh, yeah," Gabriella said, "been around that shit a lot. Boys do that shit all the time."

"Girls, too," James mumbled, as he and Paulino, simultaneously, lowered their eyes and slumped in their seats.

"Not as much as guys do," the four girls said in unison, their voices so high pitched and perfect you might have thought you were listening to an urban Greek chorus. Katie smiled, but kept quiet.

"Guys just be boys, babies really. Lyin' on their backs with their little dicks in the air and just pissin' all up in the air, whatever it hits, even themselves, they just be laughin' and havin' a good ol' time. But then they learn to aim it at someone else, then there be trouble, you know what I'm talkin' 'bout? Most guys are just players, tryin' to get whatever they can from whoever they can get it from—no matter if they got one girlfriend or ten."

The girls nodded their heads in all seriousness, like a sage had spoken.

"James, what did you mean when you said that girls did it. too?" I asked.

"Girls—and I'm not sayin' there's anyone in here who do it—they players, too. You know, they know you got a woman, still they come up and rub themselves against you just daring you, you know, not to like do somethin' about it. What they like they want to take no matter what. Sometimes it seems like they 'specially want to have what some other girl got, you know what I'm talkin' about? They piss pretty good, too. No matter how they do it: up, down, sideways. It comes out, you better believe that!" He turned to Paulino and they gave each other one of those secret handshakes that I could never remember how to do.

The room broke out into laughter, but then turned silent, each gender, was trying to figure out how to tend to their wounds, and strike again.

I let them think. I looked at my watch and saw there was only five minutes left to the period and let it wind down to two. "We're going to have to end this pretty soon, but I'd like you to think about this over the holiday. If both guys and girls are doing this to each other—and listening to all of you it appears they are—how is 'trust' ever going to be established? And 'trust' is the basis of any good relationship. If everyone you know is a player then everyone you know, including yourself, is getting played, and really, if you think about it, you can't really expect any different. Think about it and we'll pick it up again when we get back on Monday."

With that the whistle blew and, quieter than they were when they walked in, they left. A few said goodbye, but most didn't. They seemed to be thinking.

We basically talked about the same thing in my second group. They, however, perhaps because of their ages or experiences, didn't take it quite so seriously. Kimberly Castillo was quick to say that she'd been seeing "her man" since they were in seventh grade and planned to have ten kids. She knew that he wasn't "playin' her" because if he was she'd simply kill him. Christina said she, too, had been seeing "her man" for five years and their relationship was "tight, Mistah, tight." Both of them were quick to point out that most of their friends were being "played" and they were just stupid not to see that and not to do anything about it.

"They stupid, Mistah," was Christina's succinct summation.

Maria was more animated. "John wants it, but I ain't givin' him no ass until I want to. I don't care if he begs and pleads, but I ain't givin my cherry to him, not now. Let him fuck all the bitches if he wants, but he knows I'll be in the wind if he do. I let him touch my titties, but that's all I'm willin' to do, now."

Maria was fourteen and did have marvelous "tits" and I could imagine some pimply, little adolescent's hand fondling them, but I honestly didn't know how to address what she'd said. I didn't know how to speak to her about her use of language nor how to address what I perceived as her dishonesty about what she was willing or not willing to do. I decided to wait until I knew her a little better, then make an appointment for her to see me for an individual session.

Felix, too, felt like she wasn't telling the truth. I could see that in his doubtful expression, which he didn't try to hide when, he looked at her. "All you girls are crazy," he finally said. "You really think that us men are going to wait until you get good and ready to give us some?" He laughed. "Yeah, sure, we'll wait until another bitch comes our way that is gonna give it up. None of us don't haveta go dry if we don't wanna. That's just the truth. And all of youse know it. I don't believe any of youse all are virgins, but if you are, you ain't gonna be for long, not if you want to hook up with somebody."

The girls jumped all over him, protesting his view of them and his idea of what was the wrong and right thing to do.

"That's mad stupid," Maria said.

"You shouldn't be talkin' that dumb shit," Kimberly chimed in. Emerson and Troy were, once again, silent, content to watch the fray without wading in.

Felix sat smiling like a Buddha, but finally threw up his hands. "Believe anything you want," he said, the smile still glued to his face, "but you are just foolin' yourselves."

I looked at my watch and saw we only had a few minutes left. "Listen up," I began. I told them the same things I'd said to my first group, only quicker. We'd continue this on Monday, I promised, and they seemed pleased at that prospect. Unlike my first class, they laughed and whispered to each other as they left.

After they left, I was lost. I had nothing to do with the rest of the day and didn't know how to fill it. I got up and locked our office door. I thought I'd take a walk downstairs and explore. As I walked through the halls, I passed classrooms where teachers were talking to their students, putting notes on the blackboard or, in one case, calling security to remove a student who was giving them a problem. The security guards all had walkie-talkies, and I could hear them speaking in code, their radios crackling. In a matter of moments, four of them converged on the classroom and the offender. Sarge, a tough-looking black man was in charge of his troops, barking out orders to them and the students, trying to reason with him to come along quietly, lest the real police would have to be called in. The offending student came out and was led away between a bracket of two guards to what I imagined would be a dean's office or some kind of detention center.

Linda was sitting in her customary position by the phone as I checked to see if I had any mail. Why I would, I didn't know, but I looked anyway. She saw me and motioned for me to come inside.

"How's it going up there?" she asked.

"I don't know. It's pretty weird in that office."

"How could it not be with those two beauties they stuck you with?"

I didn't say anything.

"That Lourdes character, she's been getting away with a lot of shit for a lot of years. This isn't her first school, you know? She's pulled scams in at least four or five other schools, and now she's doing the same thing here. Don't think people don't know it either. They know. And that Jackson guy. Every time I see him—which isn't often—

he gives me the creeps. We heard he had an Order of Protection taken out against him by a girl he was seein' and now he's here. Around young girls, if you can believe that. But I guess if you're black or Hispanic you get away with a lot of shit. Around here anyways."

"You know a lot, don't you?"

"More than most people think I do. We heard already from the kids that they like you. It seems you're doing a good job with them. Somebody has to. They sure need someone to."

I smiled, not really believing what she'd just told me. "Thanks," was all I could say.

"Watch yourself around those two," she said as I turned to leave.

"I will. I'm going to Chinatown, you want me to bring anything back for you?"

"I'm Chinese, Max, we bring our own lunch, but thanks for the offer. You just watch it. They can do anything, and you'll get caught holding the bag."

I gave her a wave of my hand as I left her office and made my way towards the front of the building. Instead of going down the stairs leading to the front doors, I made a right and went into the Guidance Office where the social workers, grade advisors, and Ms. Lynch, the assistant principal of guidance called home. I'd not seen any of them since our introductory meeting, and I just wanted them to know I still existed.

Each of them sat in tiny cubicles, with a desk, phone, computer, and a few chairs squeezed into a space not designed to hold it all. I nodded to those I recognized and went around the bend where I poked my head into Lynch's office. It was a space befitting an A.P. It had a large desk, many seats, and a small conference table and chairs by the door. She was on the phone, but quickly called me inside.

"Someone's here to see me," she said, "I have to go." She hung up the phone and smiled warmly at me. "How's it going, Mr. Heller?"

"Max, please," I said, "and it's going fine."

"You've been meeting with students already, I understand."

"Yes, I've got two groups and am working on a third. If you have any kids you feel would be appropriate for the fifth or sixth period, send them to me."

"I will. No shortage of work around here. I take it you like the school."

"Very much," I lied.

"Well, that's good. We're happy to have you."

"Just wanted to say 'hello.' I'm going to lunch now. See you later."

"Yes, stop by anytime, and if there's anything you need don't hesitate to come down here and tell me about it."

"I won't, and thanks again."

There was no denying that I was attracted to her and wondered if she was happily married. I hadn't gotten laid in so long that every time I lowered my zipper to take a piss, a bugler blew "taps." Her friendliness was akin to foreplay for me, stupid as that sounds. I shook my head trying to get that out of my mind as I made my way into Chinatown.

Not because of my sins, but because of hers, I decided to visit my mother on the eve of Yom Kippur.

At six I called the store and found them both there. I stood in a Russian bar, underneath the train station on Brighton Beach Avenue, listening to a fierce and urgent language amid red lights, flashes of gold teeth, and a feeling that I shouldn't be there. The air had a chill to it, and being so close to my history put a chill in me as well.

The women had yellow teased hair, over powdered and painted faces, had bodies that promised a certain reward for someone who was wealthy, powerful, or just plain mean enough to arouse their interest. Some who had the feel for words or perseverance did all right, too. I threw back a double vodka, chilled, given to me by the strong, meaty, and hairy hands of the bartender who wore golden, thin and delicate bracelets around both wrists. He snatched my ten-dollar bill and returned two.

"The sign says two bucks a shot," I said.

He pretended he didn't hear me.

"Hey," I said, "the sign says that vodka is two dollars a drink."

He turned away from what he was doing and placed his two arms on the bar opposite me and leaned in. "For Russians," he said.

"Tell that to the tourists. If I don't see another four in a few seconds I'm calling the Sixty-First Precinct."

He prefaced a Russian word with the All-American one, "Fucking" and got my four dollars. I left without another word. It's bad to get upset while you're drinking. The alcohol gets used up too quickly.

I moved through the sunset and the salt breezes toward Coney Island Hospital, watching what Jews remained in what used to be almost an entirely Jewish enclave, walk, sometimes singly or two-by-two, some with their entire families, generations and generations, walking shoulder-to-shoulder, holding the hands of sons and daughters, making their way to the synagogue to hear the melancholy chant and the singing of Col Nidre. It signaled the beginning of a day's worth of prayer, remembrance, and fasting to remove the sins that stained their souls. Sacrificing food, work, and leisure that day for a year of God's grace and good fortune. It seemed like an easy trade off. How easy, I supposed, came down to a matter of belief. And control. And integrity.

Superstitious I was, but I lit a cigarette, wondering what I'd have for dinner somewhere that night.

Fasting to my father was worse than being deprived of oxygen. In the latter, you merely couldn't breathe, then panicked, fear overwhelmed the senses and eventually you'd suffocate and die. To be without food for him presented a far different hell. He'd first get restless, then edgy, surly, and finally, angry. Food, in all its glory, was there, accessible, being prepared by his mother and mine, the smells, so seductive, wafting through the house. His desires and untamed emotions ran crazy through his veins. He'd sneak a smoke at first, then steal a piece of rugelach, hide in the bathroom with chopped liver on a piece of challah. If there was anything good about his mother dying—his father was the first to go—he knew he'd never have to pretend to go through "this shit" again.

His mother, Franny, was tyrannical. His father, Abraham, a sweet and gentle man, almost thirty years her senior, hardly mattered. It was her, after coming over from Eastern Europe, who, with her sister, owned truck stop saloons in a town in Pennsylvania. She drank and cursed with the best of them, throwing out those who got too rowdy, and loved a few of them as well.

Arriving in Brooklyn in the early Twenties, she opened a "Mom & Pop" store, making enough money to feed and take care of her entire family. She was a large, big- boned woman, whose one obsession, besides her family, was food. She was fiercely loyal and protective of them and expected no less from my father and his younger sister.
My father would quote her often: "I yam what I yam," was his favorite. If my father did something that displeased her or slighted her, harmless though it may have been, she wouldn't speak to him for weeks, sometimes months.

Her last act of defiance came on her deathbed. Dying of stomach cancer, she threw him out of her hospital room on, what turned out to be her last day on earth. I remember him coming home crestfallen, devastated. It was the first—and last—time I saw him exhibit any kind of vulnerability.

"Why did she do that to me?" he asked my mother, tears welling up in his eyes.

"She didn't know what she was doing. Her pain must have been so bad and she was so doped up that she just didn't know."

The next morning, all of us gathered for breakfast, he tried to hurl a piece of bacon that wasn't crispy enough into the sink. He missed and the bacon landed at my mother's feet.

"What did you do?" my mother exclaimed.

"Never you goddamn mind."

"Can't you talk to me like a human being. You're an animal, your whole family are animals," she said, and paused. "I know," she continued, "your mother would never ever dare to serve you a piece of bacon that way, would she?"

He got up from the table, went to her, and cuffed her good behind her ear. She staggered against the stove, but righted herself. He stormed out of the kitchen and the next thing we heard was the garage door opening. It took me a good five minutes to find my bearings again. I looked over at my brother to see the same fear I had in my body. There was a slight grin on his face.

"You O.K., mom?"

"The hell with him. The hell with him," was all she said.

A nurse and nurse's aid were giving my mom a sponge bath when I peered around her door. Her head hung down like a broken puppet. Her unseeing eyes faced one of her legs and her stump. Her shoulders rolled forward. Her back had what appeared to be a rounded hump stretching between her shoulder blades. All her flesh sagged. Her breasts, once so rounded, full, and beautiful, had shriveled. They now just looked like loose skinny sacks with fluid in them. Her cleavage, once so enticing, had come to resemble rolled reddish strands of fresh spaghetti-like chop meat dividing her breasts. I took a step back and waited.

Yet there was something urging my marrow to lean forward toward my viscera's mirror. I knew it provided me all the ingredients to live a fractured life: belonging and alienation.

Here I was, leaning against a doorway at my mother's deathbed. I was near my fifty-fifth year, and felt as afraid as I was when I was five.

When I heard them gathering their equipment, I entered the room. They paid no attention to me as I pulled a chair beside her bed and sat down.

"Is she conscious?" I asked the nurse.

"In and out," was her only response.

There was a thin ribbon of purplish, pink, and red light outside her window, which looked toward the ocean. The wind had picked up because I could see branches and leaves, from the tops of trees, bend and flutter down to the ground. It seemed more solemn than an ordinary Thursday. I took her bony hand in mine and felt the thinness of her skin. Bones and veins were protruding from the top of her hand. I looked at her face, gracefully asleep, the morphine still dripping into her black and blue arm and vein.

I had this sudden urge to see it all. I bent over and lifted up her covers to her bed and looked at the bags filled with her urine and feces. Lightly, I lifted the left side of her blanket and saw the scarred over stump above her knee. I had an overwhelming desire to kiss her breasts and to see her cunt. How she pushed and struggled for nine hours with my birth, she'd told me. Did I leave any scars, any sense of what we both went through? Could she still touch herself and remember?

I felt a tightness around my hand which frightened me. At first I tried to remove it, but she held onto it with a grip that surprised me.

"It's all right," she said, "leave your hand there, it feels good. I'm happy you're here." And then she added, "Where's Angela?"

All of a sudden I felt creepy, and wanted to leave.

"I was beautiful, too, once." Her head fell back into the pillows and I thought she went back to sleep. Lightly, I tried to extricate myself from her grip, but, once again, it got tighter.

"Horrible, I was horrible, but there are books. He thinks I don't know, but they can't fool me. Pornography, that's what he likes, wanted me to do these ugly, disgusting things, but there's books in the liquor cabinet. I was the good one though."

"What are you talking about, mom?"

"How are you, Maxie?"

"Maxie?"

"Maxie, don't you remember, I used to call you that."

"No, mom, mercifully I don't."

"Why didn't you bring Angela. I like that girl so much, both of you have given me so much pleasure, the most in my life."

Her eyes closed and her breathing became labored. I thought of calling the nurse, but it settled itself into an easy rhythm and I sat back down.

"How beautiful I was, do you remember?"

It caught me unawares, but I said, "I remember, ma."

"My shape, my bust, legs, they were the talk of the neighborhood. I could sing and act, too, you never knew that, did you? And then he had to come. He fooled me. And as soon as I wouldn't do the things he asked—those things—disgusting and awful things—he found others who would." And then her voice trailed off and I thought she'd gone to sleep when a terrible scream came from her, filled with pain. I turned toward the door hoping a nurse would come in, but one never did. Her hand reached for the leg that wasn't there and began to rub, furiously.

"Oh, I can't take it anymore, why don't they just let me go?"

Awkwardly, I placed my hand on her stump and began to massage it.

"You were always such a good boy, so obedient, so respectful. I love you so much."

I cringed inside, anger wanted to bubble out of my guts.

"But how come Angela isn't here, Phillip too?

Phillip, maybe that was the Frenchman. "Angela's dead. Phillip is probably dead, too."

"No, no, I saw them just before. Go get them and bring them to me, like a good boy."

I didn't move, of course, but waited until this wave of memory passed.

"Bring them!" she demanded angrily.

I stood up. "Dying hasn't made a fucking bit of difference to you. If I don't do exactly what you want, you turn into this mad woman. As soon as I say, 'No," or become angry, sad, or upset myself—anything beyond your capacity to understand—

you just shut down, or get furious with me. Stop talking to me as if I didn't exist."

She blinked once. Her hand came off her leg and covered her eyes. "I was so beautiful, I didn't deserve this."

"We deserve all of it, and none of it. Isn't that how it goes?" I bitterly said.

The shadows had shifted, all the bed lights in her room remained unlit. The smell of disinfectant and sickness made me nauseated. The nights I'd spent—that she never knew—in Charity Hospital amid the stench of bodies decomposing with cancer, AIDS, and other Pac Man like diseases made me wretch. Everything they tried to do to dispel the smell only made it worse.

"When you come the next time, don't forget to bring the books and Angela—

Phillip lives in Gramercy Park, him, too—and maybe if you remember, bring me a little piece of halvah."

"Sure, ma."

"The books in the secret liquor cabinet. They'll prove I was right about them all along. They hold their dirty secrets. And then I can be free; I can dance again. I did one of the most lovely dips. People looked and held their breath."

"I'll bring every thing the next time, but I have to go."

"You're just like them," she said, anger inflaming her blind eyes.

"No, I'm not ma, you are."

"I'm not, I'm not," she said, tears trickling down her cheeks.

"No, you're not," I finally said, "you might be many things, but not like them. I'm sorry for saying that. I love you, mom, but I gotta go."

"Don't forget the halvah, just a little piece," she said as I left her room.

I never saw myself in her eyes, I thought, as I bounded down the nine flights of stairs and into the night. I'd seen a lot of things in there over the years, but never myself.

I pushed hard through the doors, shoving out of the way a Hispanic couple coming in. He cursed me in Spanish. I hope she isn't pregnant, I thought. Head down, I pushed on to the train station, eager to leave this place, the vortex of my dreams and nightmares. When all the elements of my life intersected in this mad, nonsensical world that, as hard as I've always tried, I could not connect the dots.

The air had gotten cooler, but was still salty, as I walked back to the train station. An autumn wind blew in from the ocean. I walked into the same Russian bar and was met with a cold and angry look from the bartender.

"A double vodka, straight up," I said, and put four dollars on the bar.

He served me without saying a word.

"Here's to the good ol' red, white, and blue. The United States, land of the free, home of the brave." I raised my glass and drained the drink in a single swallow.

This time I rented a car to drive to Atlantic City. I made sure it had a cassette player. As soon as I was out of the Lincoln Tunnel and on the Jersey Turnpike I slipped in, "Bags Groove," and tried to find another rhythm to take me to the craps tables.

I found a Holiday Inn next to the Tropicana, instead of going to the Ascot, and rented a room overlooking the ocean. I unpacked my duffel, which contained only a change of underwear and socks and pulled out the seven thousand dollars I'd taken with me. I stood by the large panes of glass and watched the Atlantic pound the shore, thinking of what I'd do after I returned from a night of gambling. Nothing came clearly to me, and so I decided to test my blood, take an insulin injection and go to Hooters to eat.

Hooters was nearly deserted. There were more waitresses and staff than customers. Usually on nights like this, they'd be standing together trying to amuse themselves, but by this time they were even bored with each other's stories and upset over the lack of money being generated this holiday eve. They stood separately, listlessly leaning against the back of a chair or staring through the windows at the boardwalk and the beach. Some just stared into space.

I went in through a side door and sat for ten minutes before a waitress, coming out of her stupor, went to the waitress whose table it was and told her she had a customer. They exchanged a remark and a laugh. Maggie ambled over and said, without looking at me, "Have you decided what you'd like?"

"I'll take a hamburger, rare, with fries."

Maybe it was my voice she recognized. "Hey, it's you."

I looked up from the paper I was reading. "Hey, it's you, too. How are you?"

"Me? I'm all right, fine," she hesitated, "not great. Nights like this kill me."

"You'll live, fortunately."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because someday you're going to meet someone and nights like this will be something to remember, laugh about, and never go back to."

"Hope you're right, but it ain't happened yet."

"Hang in there."

"How've you been?"

"I've seen better days."

"Wait, don't tell me now, but I want to hear about it, but first let me put in your order. Anything to drink. Oh, coffee, right? I'll go get that now."

Her ass jiggled just the right amount as she went to do that thing with the pulley. Maggie put my check on the long string that went from the cashier's counter into the kitchen, wound up, bringing her right leg in the air like a pitcher winding up and, with all her might, let it fly. I saw the chef look at her and laugh. "Can you handle that" she asked him, "or are you too swamped?" All those within earshot of her remark laughed, along with me. I took a long drag off my Lucky and wondered if any Jews on this night gambled in Atlantic City. If so, I was going to a Hell where all the crap tables ran worse than cold, they ran choppy. I went back to reading my paper, but every once in awhile lifted my head to view the flesh of other waitresses, imagining which of them would be the best lovers.

"Listen, I'm sorry about that night," she said as she placed the food in front of me."

"Think nothing of it."

"But I do, and I did. I'm really sorry."

"It's all right, believe me. Don't worry about it," I said as I salted and peppered my food.

She started to say something, but stopped. "Hey, I don't even know your name. I'd hate to keep calling you 'Hey.'"

I kept my head lowered in case I decided to lie. "Max is my name," I replied, looking up at her.

"I like that name, 'Max.' Max, how about tonight?" she blurted out.

"Maggie, I think there's an obvious age difference we can't ignore."

"For who?"

"I don't really know," I chuckled.

"Besides, I just want to sleep with you, not marry you."

I looked at her for more that a second. A different kind of sincerity was in her eyes.

"Maybe, if I win."

"Especially if you lose."

I laughed the kind of laugh that loosened my chest. "Maybe."

"Here, I'll give you my address and phone number. Come over when you've had enough, whatever time that is." She ripped off a dupe check and quickly wrote her information on it and handed the paper to me. I folded the paper and stuck it in my breast pocket. Maggie then left me alone with my food.

The tables were more crowded. Maybe the Jews just eschewed food, not play. I did my usual tour, but couldn't detect any noticeable pattern and, once again, settled for the same ten dollar table that I'd recently won all that money at.

I cashed two thousand dollars and, once again, the pit boss asked if I wanted to be rated; and once again I politely declined. Instead of waiting, or playing my "Pass" "Don't Pass" philosophy, I put a ten dollar chip on the "Pass" line. The table was the worst of the worst, choppy beyond belief. And I, in rare moment of incongruity, kept pressing my bets. I kept looking for the trailer park couple, but they never appeared. A person would make a number then seven out. Or they'd make two numbers in a row, and I thought that indicated a start of a run and doubled my bets only to see them seven out a second later. People's appearance signaled the certainty of good fortune. An aged lady with thick red lipstick, obviously drunk and loud, meant a turn of the dice. A Korean War veteran, wearing an old and beaten cap from his Army division, meant pay back. A first-time novice, wearing spectacles and asking the stick men how to play this game, meant the luck of the new, all rolled craps. My first shot at the dice drew snake eyes, boxcars, and a hard to make ten. I tripled my bet on a hunch and promptly sevened out. I kept throwing good money after bad. Desperation's fever raised inside of me until a waitress came over to take our orders, broke my temperature just as I was about to take out another thousand. I stopped my hand, already halfway down into my pocket and pushed away from the table, taking the fifty or so dollars in chips with me. The pit boss caught up to me as I was going to the cashier's window.

"Can I do something for you?" he asked.

"Heat up the table."

He laughed. "I wish I could do that. You know, of course, that we want people like you to win. It's good for our overall action."

"I never knew that. I guess this was a lose-lose situation for both of us. I hope the Trop will survive."

"Come back anytime and let us do something for you. We'd certainly try to please you."

"Thanks, I'll think about it."

When the cashier handed me the paltry sum of fifty-three dollars I decided to take a break and go for a walk.

It bordered on eleven when the cool, almost cold, salty breezes tried to get through the fall jacket I'd brought along with me. There was one Ten Dollars For Everything store still open and a half dozen Psychic Parlors with neon moons and stars in the window and open signs on their closed doors, their rooms dimly lit and empty. There was also one open bar on the corner of the boardwalk, directly off the ramp leading up from the street. I went in and being only the third customer there, ordered a double Chivas, neat. The bartender, a grizzled veteran of the city, placed my drink in a rocks glass in front of me. I drank it down quickly, gave him a five for the drink and a five for him, and left. The liquor already was warming my chest and stomach.

I saw an opening that led to the beach, and I walked down it until I came to the lip of the surf. It pounded the sand, the waves high and breaking from far away.

Without thinking much about anything, least of all about losing my money, though I kicked myself in the ass upon leaving the casino about abandoning my principles, I walked along the shoreline, looking out into the dark Atlantic and the churning whitecaps above the breaking waves. Through their noise and their rhythm, there was a silence about them, almost a feeling of not belonging to everything and anything that stood outside of them. People had been coming to oceans for millenniums, looking for answers and forgiveness. Suddenly it seemed more logical to use the ocean as a prelude to sex. That seemed to work best as far as I could tell.

There was a swath of light that shone, almost as a path, in the water's blackness that made me look up. A big, luminescent, silver moon hung in the sky like a Honeymooner's commercial. For the briefest of seconds, I wanted to jump in and get wet. More than wet, I wanted the water, and waves and surf to cleanse me, take all my memory and let me start fresh and clean.

It was then, in the surf's whitecaps, I saw my mother. She was looking at me with a nurturing mother's look and smiling with love as she rocked back and forth with the tides. I looked with disbelief as she came in and went out with the ocean's rhythms. The moonlight had made her body and face young, beautiful, and glowing. She offered no words, no language of any kind, just the silent and somewhat secretive flow of blood from one heart to another. I kept my eyes fixed on her, but her demeanor didn't change. I moved closer to the edge of the surf and got my feet wet from the tides.

Tell me something, I asked, but she wouldn't.

At the end of this stretch of beach, I exited and went into Caesar's Palace, where I found a Starbucks still open. I ordered a large container of black coffee and sat quietly until I'd drunk it down.

Back at the Tropicana, I made my way to the same table. I placed another two thousand on the green felt and said, "Change only." The pit boss acknowledged me without coming over. They pushed over the chips in stacks of tens, twenty-fives, and hundreds. Once I put them in my rack, I looked up in time to see my mom squeezing between two men on the opposite side of the table. I blinked my eyes once, twice, to make sure it was her I was really seeing. The dice was three shooters away from me. I put a ten-dollar chip on "Pass" and another ten-dollar chip on "Don't Pass." The table was still as cold as ice. Don't be stupid, I told myself, what you saw you didn't see.

But without hesitation, when the dice came to me, I placed a hundred on the "Pass" line. I immediately crapped out. I put another hundred on the line and crapped out again. "Three's a charm," I said to no one in particular. I rolled a seven. I left the two hundred there and threw another seven. Four hundred on the line, I rolled a six. I took the remainder of my money from my pocket and placed two thousand behind the line. Also, I placed the eight and, just because it felt right, another five hundred on the nine. I picked up the bones and rolled a four, then a five, ten, and finally a nine, then the eight showed, and then my number, six, showing up last. The people around the table cheered and clapped. I placed five hundred on "Pass" and threw a four, one of the toughest numbers to make. Conservatively, I put a thousand behind the line. I still had the nine and eight working and increased those bets to five hundred each and added the six for five hundred. Once again, each came in in succession and once they did I had the dealer take my bet down, handing me the winnings. Then, as if it were preordained I said, "Show me the four." Before I shot, I put five hundred on the hard four, two twos. Six, ten and then the two dots on the two die looking up at the heavens. The shouts and yells made others from the other tables concentrate on ours.

"That's it," I said, "color me out." I pushed my chips in stacks of red, green, black, and the lavender five hundred dollar chip toward the stickman. He sorted them out in piles of hundreds, then thousands of dollars. Including the two thousand I'd dropped earlier, I walked away with nine thousand in winnings. The pit boss didn't bother to come over to me. He was too busy talking with someone on the phone. After cashing my chips, I went to the nearest phone booth.

"Come out for a drink," I told Maggie.

"Don't be ridiculous," she replied. I thought of history repeating itself. "We'd just be wasting precious time; come over here for one."

"What do you have over there?"

"Stoli, Johnnie Walker Black, Chivas, Glenlivet, Wild Turkey, Gin, wine—red and white—and I might have a few beers in the ice box."

"Christ, am I going to a home or a saloon?"

"Get your ass over here."

"Give me an hour."

"Fuck that hour shit. You got thirty minutes at most, then I turn off the lights."

I laughed and hung up. As I spoke to Maggie I kept checking around me to see if there were eyes watching. Before leaving the casino, I stopped at the same bar I had last time, expecting to see Harry again, but she wasn't there. In fact, I was the only taken stool among the fifteen that circled the perimeter. Quickly, I drank a single Martel and went down to the lobby where I had a bell captain order me a car service. I pulled her paper from my breast pocket and read the driver her address. I sat back in the car and drifted, thinking that winning two times in a row indicated that my luck was turning or about to turn. To believe that kind of pap was a gambler's fantasy and was, for me, just a way to invite trouble into my life. I had plenty of that, and there was bound to be more: Guaranteed, or your money will be generously refunded.

I must have slept for a few minutes because when I felt the car come to a stop, I jerked my head up and found myself in the hard luck section of town.

"Are we here; is this it?"

"Yes, it looks like we've arrived," he said in this stentorian voice, resembling Barrymore's, the first, that is.

"What's your name?"

"They call me, Dutch, my King. Your liege, at your service. Do you wish me to turn around?"

"No, but I will take your card."

"Certainly, sir. I drive all night. The days present so many problems, as you most certainly know."

"Yes, I most certainly do. If I call, will I get you?"

"Ask and ye shall receive."

I paid the tab and tipped him fifty, making as sure as I could that if I'd ask, I'd most certainly receive. He paid little or no mind to the money I gave him, but sped off into the night leaving me in a place where, to be white and alone, was unwise to say the least.

Gratefully, I wasn't alone for long. Maggie must have been looking through her curtains because the moment I closed the car door, she was standing on her rickety wooden porch waving me on.

"Come in, Daddy, I'm so glad you're finally home," she said in a voice much louder than she needed to use.

I laughed in spite of myself.

"I thought the plane might have crashed, you were kidnapped—who knows what in this day and age?—and I called the airlines every fifteen minutes. I'll make us a warm glass of milk like the old days, and we can catch up with each other's lives."

"That sounds so good," I said, as I approached her stairs, "during the turbulence we had I actually prayed for a last glass of warm milk drunk with the person whom I love and care most about in this life above all others, you."

Maggie grinned from ear to ear, but quickly said, "Watch that third step, Daddy, or you'll be drinking that milk through a straw while in traction."

I lifted myself over that stair and approached her on the porch where she gave me a daughter's embrace and kissed me lightly on the cheek. She smelled nothing like a daughter.

"No bags!?" she exclaimed.

"They misplaced them as usual. They'll send for them in the morning. The whole flight was a mess, dreadful."

"What else is new? Now you can relax, you're home." With that she put her arm through mine and ushered me into her home. I heard a few venetian blinds click their way closed.

She placed me in the most comfortable chair she had in the living room, an old and cushioned armchair, but I was anything except relaxed. Maggie stood looking at me before she asked if I wanted a drink. She went to a liquor cabinet and poured, into two rocks glasses, a finger's worth of Chivas and whatever she was having.

"What's this, a child's portion?"

"Max," she laughed, "we have a lot of exploring to do. I don't want you to fall off the mountain."

That made me more anxious, and I withdrew a little more. She had the same amount of what I had, and sat on the arm of the chair I was sitting in. Her silk robe, a deep burgundy with blue and golden patterns of birds in flight, had opened just enough for me to see the perfectly rounded flesh of her breast. I couldn't help myself from staring.

"How long has it been?" she quietly asked.

"How long has what been?" I replied, her words pulling me out of a trance.

"Since you made love with a woman, or even had sex with one?"

I looked up at her and said, "Since Atlantic City was a destination, not a desperation."

"Ooo, I like you, Max."

"I'm beginning to feel the same about you," I replied and half meant it, too. I found myself concentrating on the stud she had in her tongue.

"How long?"

"Two years, maybe more."

"Two years, I can't believe that. It can't be your looks and it can't be your age, especially these days."

"Let's not go into it. It won't do either of us any good."

"Let's not then. Oh, and if you're worried about my stud, I can take it out in a second."

"Worried?, a little; curious, more."

"Good." She put her drink down, stood up, and opened her robe. She then came as close to me as my legs would allow and with her arms braced herself on the back of my chair, lowering herself to me until her whole upper body enveloped mine. I breathed her smell in, my head against one breast, my nose and mouth touching her other one. When she felt what I felt she backed away and closed her robe.

"I haven't had sex—let alone made love with another man—in a long time either, except self-inflicted sex. And I want to, bad." She enunciated the word, "bad," like an animal would. "I want to do something first. I want to make you come."

"But then..."

"No, no, no, don't worry. Let me do all the worrying for you tonight. Believe me, it won't be the only time you're going to come tonight. Take off your clothes, I'll wait for you in the bedroom."

With that she left me, a drink in my hand and a bemused expression on my face, but I did as I was told. First, I drained whatever was left in my drink and thought about sneaking another one, but I didn't. I removed my clothes, hating how my body had grown old and heavier, my stomach grown almost large, making my genitals appear that much smaller, less potent. Slowly, I walked toward my hour of truth.

Scented candles were scattered throughout her room. Mirrors were at odd angles, reflecting our images back and forth at each other. She'd placed a wash basin filled with rose petal water beside her bed.

"Lie down," she said, her voice softer than the one I'd heard before. Again, I did as I was told.

Maggie took a wash cloth and gently began on my body, beginning with my forehead and face, washing away the day's grime. She did not miss a spot. Slowly, working her way to my balls and cock, now erect, as it hadn't been in a long time. She placed the wash cloth back in the basin, leaned over and kissed me. Her tongue found mine and I felt the stud caressing the inside of my mouth, sending shivers up my spine. When I tried to touch her breasts she pulled away.

"Don't, Max, don't do anything. Close your eyes and relax. This is my pleasure."

And so I did what I was told, letting her have her way with me, running her hands and mouth over my body, starting from my face, nibbling my neck then my nipples, and finally placing her hand around my cock and lightly stroking it. Cold flashes moved my body this way and that. I looked and found the mirrors and watched as parts of her body—head, tits, cunt, and asshole—swayed to a music I'd never heard before.

Finally, sensing I was losing control, she bent her head over my cock and took me into her mouth. It was as if I'd gone into a pool of warm honey. She licked me up and down, her stud creating sensations like nothing I'd ever experienced and then, placing her lips and tongue just on the tip of my cock she ever so slowly moved them round and round. When she felt I was ready to explode she took me whole, down her throat as I came deep inside her. She moved slowly up my shaft until, once again, she had her lips around the tip and just sucked the last of my juices from me.

I was in another world and seemingly so was she as she lay beside me.

"That was one of the best orgasms I've ever had," she said.

I looked at her incredulously and laughed. "You!?" I exclaimed.

"Yes, me. You were so full and tasted so wonderful. I didn't want to come, but I just couldn't help it."

"I'm done, kaput, finished."

"No, you're not. Trust me. How about another drink?" She padded out to the living room and returned with two glasses. We sat upon the bed and sipped them.

After awhile, she said that she thought a bath would be nice and got up, went to the bathroom and ran the water.

The tub was huge, easily accommodating both of us, and we slipped down into the sudsy water amid five rubber ducks and some boats. Candles lit the room. Her back to me, I washed her with a sea sponge that floated on top, caressing and lingering over every part of her body. I felt the firm roundness of her breasts, the shape of her belly, the silkiness of her pubic hair, glistening in the light and then, with my hands, rubbed gently her clitoris. She turned and stayed on her knees as she did the same for me. An Al Greene album played in the background.

We dried each other and then she went into the kitchen where I heard her putting up a pot of water on the stove. I went back to the bedroom and got under the covers.

Shortly, she returned holding two baby bottles. "It's a special kind of massage oil that you can actually drink," she said, "lie on your stomach and spread your legs."

This hot oil smelled like papayas, coconuts, and mangoes. She lightly began to spread it on my neck, shoulders, and back, rubbing it in in concentric circles as she went. She dripped this oil on the small of my back and my ass and teasingly slow she worked it into the crack, rubbing this soothing liquid around, over and into my anus, reaching underneath and covering my cock as well. From that point on she never forgot about my anus. Each time Maggie rubbed one place her hand slid down into the crack and caressed me there, too. I became hard, once again.

She placed the other bottle in my hand and I began doing the same to her. Each stroke, each rub, was met with her moans, some pleasurable, others deep. I kissed her head and neck. I slathered the oil onto her back and legs and worked it into her anus as well, sliding my finger inside her. Back and forth, while my other hand found her cunt and clitoris and played with them.

"Max, now," she said.

She rolled over and I positioned myself between her legs, tasting her pussy, kissing and pulling on her clitoris, her cries filling the room.

"Now, Max, now, please. Fuck me, now, please Fuck Me."

My cock slid inside a wet pool of her cum and she gripped my shoulders. We moved with each other as if we'd known this ecstasy for years. Just as we were both ready to explode she slid her finger into my anus and found this spot that made me ejaculate over and over and over again. As I did, nearly lost and out of control, I felt a rush of her fierce and hot juices bath my cock in her own loss of time and place.

We lay back spent. Then, a moment later we turned to look at each other and laughed like we hadn't done in ages.

"Thank you."

"No, thank you."

"No, thank you."

"No, thank you."

"No..."

"Shut up, already," she said, and I did.

It was like someone had just turned off the lights. I awoke the next morning not knowing how I got there. I quietly slipped from under the covers, and went to the bathroom, pissed, and used some of her mouthwash. In the living room I got dressed.

"You're not leaving, are you?"

"You surprised the shit out of me."

"Better I surprised it, than beat the hell out of it."

Maggie was in her robe and without make-up. In the harsh light of day, she still looked beautiful. Perhaps it was the kind of beauty caused by vulnerability and what it brings to the face and body.

"You're not going?" she repeated.

"I have to."

"Let me make us some breakfast first, then..."

"That's just it. I've left my insulin at the motel."

"You're diabetic?"

"Yeah, forty-four years and counting."

"Wait, I'll get dressed and we'll have something to eat. Wait." I heard the water running, the toilet flushing, dresser draws opening and there she was, dressed.

She drove us to the Holiday Inn and watched me take a blood test and pack, throwing the little I had into the duffel. The light was so bright and clear coming into the room that it hurt my eyes.

"Maggie, I want to give you something."

"You did that last night," she said, but already she knew what was coming and started to back herself away from me and toward the door.

"Something more tangible."

"If it's money you're talking about, forget it."

"It's not like what it sounds."

"Everything's like what it sounds. Besides, I don't give a good goddamn what it sounds like. I'm not a whore and I'm not a pro." She turned around and started to leave.

"Wait a minute, wait a goddamn minute. Hold on. Let me explain. If you still don't want it, O.K. But wait."

Her hand still on the doorknob, she turned and stood there.

"I won nine thousand last night. I wanted to share some of that with you, that's all there is to it."

She stood there and thought for a second. "It's still bullshit. Men don't want to share. They use that money to own, they all do, no matter how they put it. Take care, Max."

"Wait, please, wait."

"You know why I didn't stay with you that first night?"

"Because you had other, maybe better things to do."

"That's really bullshit. And you know it. Don't get me angry. You don't want to see me angry. It might have been other things, but not that."

"Then why?"

"Because you reminded me, in some ways, of a hundred tricks I used to turn. I used to be a pro when I lived in Philadelphia. And doing that with you that night was too close to the bone. Then when I saw you again and looked at you and saw you looking at me even in that fucking ridiculous Hooter's outfit I knew you were not like the men I used to know, and now you offer me money. Shit."

"Your past is your past, not mine. I got to deal with my baggage, not yours." I went over and put my arms around her and felt her body relax just a bit. "If I'd lost," I whispered, "I wouldn't have offered you a dime."

"You're a sport," she managed to get out through her tears. We laughed and I moved her to my bed and put my arm around her.

"This is a tough fucking life. If I can make your next month easier, let me." I pulled from my pocket the roll of bills and counted off twenty hundreds and put them in her purse.

"That's too much."

"Nothing is too much."

"Thank you."

"No, thank you."

"No, thank you."

"Shut up," I said. "Let's eat."

I followed her in my car to this old southern black restaurant where we had biscuits, eggs, and thick slices of bacon. For desert they served us peaches and cream.

"What made you come down here from Philly?" I asked.

"The water, the boardwalk, taffy and a man, not necessarily in that order."

"I want to see you again," I said.

"Then stay. You can see me this evening."

"I've got to get back. There are things I've left that have to be taken care of before Monday. I would if I could," I lied.

"Call me," she said, "if I say, 'Fuck me,' it's cool; if I say, 'Fuck you,' it's not."

"You want me to write that down?"

She laughed this beautiful and free young laugh.

"I'm curious. Why did you decide to stop your professional life?"

She looked at the table, then at me. "I knew one day I might want to have a kid and if I did, I'd have to answer to him for the life I was leading. I thought I owed the kid that much."

At my car she threw her arms around me and we kissed, the stud no longer in her mouth. Almost regrettably, I got into the car, and waved goodbye to her as she stood, isolated, next to the restaurant, South of No North.

Gray clouds and rain followed me from Atlantic City to the Cedar Tavern. I didn't care. I was full of sunshine and sex. I put on an Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong tape that took me into the city of spires and skyscrapers. I sang both parts.

I put two hundred dollars on the bar. "I always wanted to say this: 'Buy the bar a booze.' For me, well, I'll take a coffee... and just a whiff of Sambuca." People in both directions looked me up and down. Joey, sitting at the end of the bar, motioned me to wait, but he had a forced grin on his face. He was talking with a liquor salesman and looking into a black loose-leaf notebook. The bartender was making drinks, backing up the ones already there and asking those who've finished their drinks if they wanted a refill. None declined.

The Cedar in the afternoon was far different than at night. It still had the same diffused light coming into the saloon, swallowed whole by the time one got to the fifth stool, but the patrons were polar opposites of the night. While the evenings drew mostly unscared and young revelers, the afternoon had blue collar workers and old men sitting around talking, laughing, sharing stories and reminiscences, berating the ways of the new world as they saw it. There were still a few alkies talking into their drinks, but they were few and far between.

The old men talked of disabilities, retirements, pensions, and death, comparing how America took care of those their age fifty years ago. Circumstances dictated what they drank. Those that still could—physically and economically—drank their favorite highball, while others stuck to beer or coffee.

Maggie was a welcomed, even needed, distraction, but more than that I didn't know. Besides the sex what else was there? She was too young for me; her life revolved around a dump in the dumpiest of towns where the only ends in sight were dead ones, and I'd heard nothing to indicate she was planning any way out, not that I asked. The coffee was nice and hot, and the Sambuca warmed me. Most of the women I'd fallen in with were mad, to one extent or another: runaways, exiles, dreamers, child favors, or prostitutes. What I needed was a nice quiet woman who was grounded in a job and was making real money at it, maybe had a home (or just a nice apartment would do), who knew how to dress and take care of herself, and me in the bargain. Maybe I should go down to Miami where wealthy widows were hanging like so many coconuts on a tree and all you had to do was shake one or two of them down. Jesus, what a disgusting scenario that would be! How do you do it with someone you don't want to do it with? I know it's done all the time but, Christ, I don't know how. Still, I'd like to find someone I could love and who'd love me back before it's too late. But damn, last night with Maggie was good, better than good, great. In fact, every time I made love with these crazy, smart women, it was the best sex I'd ever had. The last time I'd had sex like that was in New Orleans with Dolores, but it took a real long while for me to be able to do it. Smart and crazy and beautiful, what a combination.

***

I'd awoke in the middle of the night, the first night I was down in New Orleans with Dolores, with my cock in her mouth.

"Whoa," I said, "what are you doing?"

"Pleasing myself. You can't have any objections to that?"

"I do, Dolores," I said while moving slightly away from her. "I'm torn up enough inside, this would only make it harder to repair."

She propped herself on one arm and looked at me. "I hope one day somebody's gonna love me that much. A man refusing head, now I've heard it all."

We laughed and I moved closer to her and put my arm under her back, around her shoulder and drew her to me. "It could happen between us. I'm not saying that to keep you on a leash. First, I have to try to find out the story about Angela. If we make love, that compromises the whole thing. It gives me a hedge, less of an incentive. You understand that?"

She nuzzled her face into my neck and pretended to go back to sleep.

***

There was a tap on my shoulder and Joey stood behind me. I looked up at him, "Have a booze," I said.

"I thank you, The Cedar thanks you, and most of all these denizens of the deep thank you. Where were you, Atlantic City?"

"Just got back, figured I'd spread the wealth."

"How much did you take them for?"

"Nine grand, minus two."

"What was the two for?"

"Pleasures of the flesh, but it was more than that. Don't ask me to explain. I can't."

"All right, I won't. I have to talk to you, though."

"Shoot."

"Not here. Why don't we take a booth in the back."

"Hey, what's up?" I started getting nervous as I took my drink, lifted myself off the stool, and followed Joey towards the back.

We sat in the very last booth, next to the kitchen where Mike, the evening's chef, was lazily slicing a large roast beef into English cuts.

"Hey, Max, man, what's happening?"

"Nothing much, still the same ol' minstrel show. Put on some black face in the morning and get on with it."

His laugh warmed me, as it always had. "Jets gonna do it this year, man, you just watch."

"I'd watch if they didn't get me so goddamn sick to my stomach."

"You gonna be surprised. The whole world gonna be surprised."

"Sure," I said and turned to Joey. "What's up? If we sat any further back we'd be in Pittsburgh. Shit, you could have just whispered whatever to me."

"Max, Esther called me."

"And?" I already knew what was coming after "and."

"Your mother passed last night."

She gave me nine thousand dollars and a night filled with the kind of sex and love she never could have given herself, I thought. "And?" I said.

"She wants you to call her."

"My mom or Esther."

"She wants you to call her," he repeated.

"Mike, it's New England this year," I shouted.

"Jets, man."

"No, I'm telling you, it's the Pats."

"Max, Max, listen will ya? This isn't easy for me either."

"I'm listening, but Joey, she just wants to tell me when they'll put her in the ground. What the fuck's that? She's going to tell me that I should be there... and I'll tell you, I should. Somebody from her family should be there who loved her, even if it was too little too late. She deserves at least that."

"Don't do nothin' stupid."

"Maybe it's time I did something stupid. I'll take that drink now, if you don't mind?"

"Maybe you shouldn't?"

"Jesus Christ, Joey, don't nursemaid me. I need a friend, not a mother. I had one already, and one's enough—in this lifetime at least."

"O.K., all right. What do you want?"

"Something with guts."

"We serve nothin' here with that. We only serve the blood of cowards: booze, beer, and wine, but you know that already."

"Give me a coward's Chivas, buck up my backbone. And Joey," I said as he was getting up to go to the bar, "I don't know shit, never did, did a good job of faking it though, didn't I?"

I was sure the world was going on in its worldly way. Dogs were pissing on hydrants, people were in the throes of passion or separation, some had guns pressed to their temple, others were planning vacations and new homes, orthodontia for the kid or chemotherapy, some were at cemeteries burying family or friends, while others were plotting to do harm to others, but I just somehow wanted the world to fucking stop, this once, and honor a death and my own grief. But there simply was too much pain, joy, and money to be made to do that.

Joey came back carrying a whole bottle of Chivas, a rocks glass and two beers, one for him and one for me. I poured a healthy shot for myself and sipped it. The first taste of the liquor warmed and grounded me, brought me back to a semblance of reality. If that's what it really was. Surrealism eventually becomes realism, LeRoi Jones once said. I suddenly wanted to hear Trane's later works: Live at The Vanguard, Meditations, Impressions, Expressions. Let him blow some of this foul air out of me.

Joey was watching me all this time, sipping his beer. He reached over and put his hand on my shoulder. I looked up and grinned at him. I shook out two Lucky Strikes.

"Whatareyagonnado?" he asked.

"I don't know right now, but it'll come to me. What I do know is whatever I'm going to do there's going to be some risk attached to it. That I know. I'm not going to lie to you. Remember that conversation we had a few weeks back? I'm asking, really asking you this time."

"Wait here." He got up without saying another word. My eyes followed him as he made his way to the front and up the flight of stairs leading to his office. I finished my drink and poured myself another. I decided that this would be my last drink for awhile, so I made it a hefty one.

"Just call and say your name, he'll know what it's about," he said, as he slipped back into the booth. He handed me a piece of paper with the name, Sig, on it with a phone number.

"Thanks."

"You're welcome, but I can't be involved."

"You won't be, I promise you that."

"Famous last words," he said and laughed.

"Hey, Joey, you want the number back? You want me to swallow it in front of you? What?"

"I don't want to see any of us get hurt in any way, shape, or form."

"You're in the wrong life, my friend. I promise you that you or your family will not get hurt. But if I do, I do. It won't be your fault, though. Please don't engage in that cheap form of sentiment."

"O.K., I won't," he said a little more distance in his voice.

"Don't go away from me, Joey. You mean a lot to me, man, if this jeopardizes that I'll find another way. Hell, I live in gun central. If they don't kill my old white ass, I'll find one, one that works, hopefully."

"Here's to you, Max," he said, raising his glass. May the wind always be at your back. He got up and left me with the bottle of Chivas and a fresh beer. I'd already buried the note deep in my pocket.

I got home at ten that night. It seemed like I'd been gone for a long time and had to familiarize myself with this strange feeling that my apartment had. I emptied my duffel, put the money away and then put my dirty clothes in a laundry bag. I stretched out on the bed with my clothes on and tried to think about what I'd do next, but all my thoughts were blurred.

***

At the water fountain, on the outside of the park, I took two more Percocet and walked at a safe distance behind Brother Don and his cohorts. They ambled easily along, pointing at store windows and the odd assortment of people who inhabited the Quarter. At the Royal, they went up the stairs and into the lobby. Cautiously, I went in and stood by the entrance as they went toward the elevators and went up to their rooms. I waited another few seconds before I approached the desk clerk.

"Damn," I said, "I just missed my meeting with Don Heller, what room should I go to?" I said it so fast, and so earnestly, the clerk without thinking much looked in his register and said, "Mr. Heller's in room 522."

"Thanks a lot," I said and hurried toward the elevators, though I didn't take them. Instead, I went to the side of the lobby where I slipped out a door.

That night, I waited across the street in a tavern with Dolores and Ernie, nursing a beer while waiting for Brother Don to return from another tits and ass show. We'd all taken a few Percocet that I'd gotten a week before in my annual renewal package from Charity Hospital's clinic. The dosages remained the same, but the quantity had steadily diminished. And, if the truth be known, so had the pain. The splints had long ago been taken off, and I'd begun flexing my fingers and was now able to write.

My eyes were riveted on the entrance to the Royal and when I finally saw him navigate the stairs drunk and awkwardly push himself through the revolving doors, I motioned to Dolores and Ernie. We left a few bucks on the bar and pushed off our stools and went across the street. I still didn't know what I'd do or say, but was happy to have some friends with me, just in case I'd lose my nerve.

We walked in like we belonged there and went to the elevators where I pushed five. In a matter of moments, I'd be standing face to face with him and my body started to slowly vibrate. Dolores put her arm through mine and steadied me. Quickly, I dry swallowed two more Percocet.

"Easy, brother," Ernie said, "we be all right, don't you worry."

His voice and demeanor calmed me, but still with electricity buzzing through my body I knocked on his door.

"Who is it?" he said.

"Special compliments of the Royal," Dolores said.

"Shit, it's about time I got somethin'..." he said as he opened the door. I pushed him so hard he landed on his ass inside the room. The three of us entered and Ernie closed the door.

It took him a second to take it all in. "Well, well, well. Whaddayaknow?" and, looking at Ernie and Dolores, " It's my brother and his little gimp friend and, my God, a white woman. Don't tell me you're fuckin' white chicks now?" He pushed himself to his feet, composed and not showing the least amount of fear. I felt I'd lost already.

"Where's Angela, you prick?"

"How the hell should I know. Suckin' a white cock for all I care."

I started to make a move towards him and he just stood his ground.

"Well, you came this far. It seems that you have balls, now let's see if you got some hair on them?" He waited for me to do something. When I didn't he came toward me and smacked me on my face. "That's the old Max I knew and loved."

Ernie, as quick as a cobra, was in his face; his left hand had removed his knife used for shucking oysters and it swung open and clicked into place. He put it up against Brother Don's neck, just puncturing his skin. A little trickle of blood dripped down. Ernie took the knife, with the blood on it and rubbed it against Don's lips and then dipped it down to his genitals. "You know, brother, how quick this knife shucks hard shells? Quick! Imagine how it do against some weak and soft flesh like you dick?"

"You know who I know in this town? Who I had dinner with just the other night?"

"Marchello, the fat prick Mafia mudderfucker? That Marchello? He don't mean shit to me, or my people. You want, call him now, if he say nothing, I take your cock home wit me and feed my fish." He took the knife away from his genitals. "Make de call."

My brother didn't move and for the first time I saw fear in his eyes.

"Listen, I don't know where Angela is. She was gone, just like you."

"You're full of shit."

"Well, if you think so, kill me."

"Ernie, give me your knife." I held it up against my brother's throat, but couldn't do anything with it. There was a knock on the door and we all grew quiet. Dolores went over to open it. There stood a woman, obviously a hooker.

"This is the wrong time sweetie, you better come back later," and she closed the door.

"If it wasn't for money you'd be one lonely sonofabitch," I said to him.

Brother Don turned to Dolores and Ernie, "You sure have a nice city here: good food, good drink and fine pussy. Every thing a good man could want."

Ernie went over to the king-size bed, took out his cock, and began pissing on the sheets and the pillows. He then came over to me and took the knife out of my hand. "If anything happens to him down here, you'll have hell to pay."

"If you and I have to dance, we will. Now if there's nothing else you want to piss on I'm callin' the maid."

"I'm going to piss on your grave," I said to him, red lines of anger rimming my eyes.

"Sure you will."

The three of us turned toward the door, but then I looked back at him. "Why'd you do it, you prick?"

"Why?" he smirked. "For fun. We wanted to have a little fun before we threw her black ass out."

"You're an asshole; a fucking asshole."

The three of us backed out of his room and went to a bar on the outskirts of the Quarter where we had a few drinks and talked through the night. I went to the bathroom where I feverishly and secretly took four more Percocet. Neither did much to settle me.

***

Spanish music had clung to the side of my building, drifted up and into my windows.

"C'mon, Mama, show me your cho-cho," was the first thing I heard when I opened my eyes.

"Get out my face, Manny."

"Ah, c'mon, just a little peek, that's all. I know it gotta look so good."

"Fuck you, Manny."

Their fifteen- and sixteen-year-old voices sounded so young, but so coarse and crude as well. Is this the new variation on Hide n' Seek? All I wanted to do was sleep. Just let me get a few more hours, but each time I rolled over, or turned the pillow on its cold side, I kept hearing my mother's words: "books," "liquor cabinet," "compartment."

Cursing, I turned on the light, picked up the phone, and dialed Esther's number. Her voice was heavy with sleep when she answered.

"When and where's the funeral, Esther?"

"Tuesday, the cemetery on Bay Parkway." She didn't bother with any wise cracks this time.

"Why'd they call you, you think?"

"Huh?"

There was something about the "huh" that awakened something in me.

"I asked, why do you think they called you? It isn't like you're a member of the immediate family or anything. I'm even surprised they're having a funeral for her. I thought they'd just let the hospital dispose of her remains in the Gowanus Canal."

"Max, I don't know. I was close to her, I guess. She liked me. You know that."

"Yeah, that must be it," I said.

"Are you going to go?"

"I'll take a pass."

"It's your mother, Max," she said with as much inflection as she could muster to instill guilt and responsibility into me as she could.

"That she was," I said with as much neutrality as I could muster.

A silence hung between us like a steel vault.

"You ever suck my brother's cock, Esther?"

"Max!"

"Be honest."

"Max, I can't believe you're asking me this."

"Just asking, Esther. Don't take offense. It's a harmless question. What difference could it make now one way or the other?"

"I'm going to hang up now."

"Do that, if you want to. I'm just trying to get the lay of the land."

"Yo, nigga', where you goin, it's early?" shouted into my window.

"Where are you?" Esther asked.

"Never-Never Land."

"You're a paranoid bastard, aren't you?"

"Rationally paranoid. Listen, I'm sorry for what I said, but I'm not going. I'll say good-bye to her in my own way."

"You sure? I can pick you up if you want. You can stand behind a tree or something."

"No thanks. I'll speak to you soon." I hung up the phone gently, hoping she didn't have caller I.D. or any of that other new stuff. I knew for sure they knew I was back. I also knew I didn't have much time. Why else would she be calling Joey nearly every month for twenty-odd years? Damn, if I wasn't smarter than this, I'd be lying next to my mother, if there was anything left of me to bury.

Later, I dug the number Joey had given me from my pocket and dialed. A voice on the other end answered, "Mary's Place."

"Is Sig there?"

He shouted across what was obviously a bar of some kind, "Sig, phone."

A moment later a man's voice came on that sounded older and also sounded like so many voices I'd heard from Brooklyn. The only thing he said was, "Sig."

"This is Max."

"Where do you live?"

"I could come to you."

"Where do you live?"

After I gave him the address, he said he'd be there within a half-hour. I hung up the phone and waited. In what seemed like fifteen minutes, my buzzer rang and I let him in. I stood by the door and watched this sixty-something-year-old man, with gray shoulder-length hair, wearing a crazy cowboy hat and white sport jacket with jeans, come up the flight of stairs and into my apartment. He carried a case that he put down on the bed.

"Before we begin, you don't know me. You never did and never will. Should you know me ever, you'll never know anyone again. Is that clear?

"Clear."

He opened the case and there were three guns. I stared not knowing what to do next.

"I see you're confused, that's good. It means you're teachable. The one in the middle is a 38-caliber revolver. The other two are automatics. My choice would be the 38. It's more expensive, but much more dependable. The others could stick, misfire, whatever, but not the 38. And it stops what it hits."

"I'll take the 38."

"Three hundred for the gun, fifty for the box of slugs."

I reached into my pocket and counted out the bills and handed them to him. He counted them twice, stuck them in his pocket, closed his case, and went out the door. I felt the heft of the gun in my hand, studied the bullets, tried clicking the trigger a few times to see how stiff it was, inserted the bullets two or three times, aimed it at nothing in particular, emptied the gun's chamber, and placed it in the duffel bag lying at the foot of my bed. I felt no safer.

It seemed nonsensical to get into the office so early Monday morning, but it made less sense to twist and turn in my bed. I'd been up since four and by five I knew it was impossible. Showered and dressed, I opened my office door at six-fifteen. It was so quiet in the building that it comforted me.

Richie, a large Chinese man, appeared to be one of the engines that drove the train. He was at the school from early in the morning until late in the day. He coached the basketball team, hired the many substitutes needed to cover classes on any given day, and acted as a student disciplinarian when necessary. When he saw me, he gave me a "You-gotta-be-kidding," expression. I told him I had extra work to do, and he asked if I wanted a cup of coffee. I showed him the cup I'd carried in but said I'd like to know when his kids would be playing or practicing next. He shook his head but was on the phones fielding calls from teachers calling in sick.

My head was buried in the newspaper while I sipped my coffee when Gabriella popped her head into my office.

"Well, you're up early," I said.

"You busy, Mistah?"

"No, not really. Come in and sit down."

She walked in without her usual swagger. Creases of concern were on her face as she sat in the chair opposite me. Her black hair hung in shiny black curls over her shoulders, but her face seemed drained of blood, white and ghostly.

"What's the matter?"

"You can see it?"

"Hell, Stevie Wonder could see it."

She forced a laugh, but she was struggling to keep her composure. I waited, without saying another word. Finally she said, "I don't know, Mistah, remember what we were talkin' about on Thursday about bein' with people who play us, lie to us, and we doin' the same to them..."

"Sure, I remember, I planned to continue with it today."

"Well, that shit really don't apply to me, Mistah, it don't. But me, I don't know, Mistah, me, I fall in love with bad men. Really bad men."

"How bad?"

"Tony Soprano bad. Mean, Mistah. And they ugly, the men I fall for are so ugly," she said and laughed again. "I swear, I don't know what's wrong with me."

"How bad's the man and how bad is your situation?"

"I knew who he was and he knew me; I made sure he knew me. I was always be passin' by the barbershop where he hangs..."

"Barbershop?"

"Mistah, that's the place that dope gets sold."

"So he sells dope?"

"Mistah, he just don't sell dope. He runs the whole dope scene where I come from. Been to jail for a lot of things, too. At first I was scared every time he looked at me, but then less and less until we be talking. He'd have his boys meet me when I walked to the train station to come here and wait for me to get home and walk me to the barbershop, then just like that we goin' out, then, well, Mistah you know."

"So you began sleeping with him."

"Yeah, Mistah, of course. But now, I want to go away to college and he says I can't, says he needs me, says he wants me to have his baby—even though he already have a baby and a wife though his wife don't live with him. She back in the islands or somewhere, but she come back sometimes, but he says that we should begin living together and I don't know what to do."

"Have you talked with him about this?"

"Mistah, please. Every time I try to bring it up, he just blows me off. He says, everything be all right, just do what I tell you to do and we be fine."

I could feel the anxiety rise inside of me. A few students came to my door, and I waved them off. "Everything won't be all right. You know that, don't you? In a short period of time, he's going to have you pregnant, out of school. Maybe he'll support you and maybe he won't, or maybe, with your belly drooping over the seat, you'll be sitting on that bus in Queens with all the other women going to Rikers Island to see their men. And then your life, as you've imagined it, will be effectively over."

Tears began falling over her cheeks, and I handed her a tissue from the box I had on my desk. I let her cry without saying anything.

"There's more," she whispered. "We poor, me and my moms and little sister. My mom works, but doesn't get very much, and my little sister's in day care and that costs. Anyway, one day Compton says to me let me help and at first I says no, but then he says it again and says it's no big deal—and to him it's not, cause Mistah, the man's the man—so he begins payin' our rent and shit, expenses and everything..."

"But?"

"His boys are there sometimes in the afternoon doin' their thing. It's not like our home anymore and my moms she scared that somethin's gonna happen..."

"It's already happened."

"What am I gonna do?" She hung her head and placed it on her forearms, which were crossed on my desk.

"The police."

"Mistah, please. You can't tell this to no one, please." Her head jerked up and her eyes engaged mine and pleaded with me not to tell anyone, certainly not the authorities.

The bell signaling the first period sounded and Gabriella got up to go. "Mistah, please don't tell anyone."

"I won't, but we have to talk."

She nodded her head and then left, relieved for the moment to get away from this hothouse she'd stumbled into. I followed, in my mind, her going out my door and around the corner. I imagined her going up and down the stairs and into class, having to think about math or English or anything other than what was consuming her.

I'd like to help her, but she'd have to go through her own hell—not that she wasn't going through hell now—which would only worsen before she'd be willing to do something to stop it. Probably, by that time I'd be gone.

I busied myself filling out forms that were part of the student questionnaires that JUMPSTART deemed necessary. I repeated almost verbatim the same information on all three forms. If there was one thing I wanted to avoid, it was giving Carver, the witch, any reason to contact me. What I found, however, written by the students on these simple, badly Xeroxed, unprofessional-looking questionnaires, was quite astounding. Most of them contained information so sensitive, so personal, that they almost embarrassed me. It was hard to understand why they trusted me with such sensitive information. Maybe that was just that I was old, white, and did not judge them. Often times, when telling me about a teacher who treated them poorly, or who didn't teach at all, I'd go to some lengths to either defend them or get their points across to someone in a position to help. I never tried to hedge or fudge the truth about their situations as I saw them.

As soon as I scanned the top few lines of their questionnaires, I knew something was terribly wrong. Their script—or scrawl—was remarkably juvenile. Most of the girls had this flowery way of spelling letters, putting happy faces or flowers above their names or certain letters, like "i." The boys' handwriting was hardly legible at all.

Under their names, they listed how many classes they'd failed and how many days they hadn't been in school last year. With few exceptions, each had failed at least three subjects each semester. Some had failed all seven, fourteen total. Their absences varied between sixty and ninety days for the year. One young girl had nearly one hundred and twenty days that she was somewhere else, certainly not in school. The next question asked their projected date of graduation. This was usually left blank. They were then asked what college they planned to attend and what they would be doing after they graduated. Some of their responses included, Yale, NYU, Columbia, Harvard, UCLA, MIT, and some lesser institutions of higher learning, all of which were well beyond their reach. Some wanted to go into the Marines. Their professions ranged from doctors—pediatricians being the most popular—to business lawyers, rap impresarios, forensic scientists, strip-club owners or just plain rich. Usually, the professions and the colleges were spelled phonetically. I wondered who had passed all these kids through the lower grades. Who were the teachers who, because a kid looked pretty, or was quiet, or helped erase the blackboard, moved them along through the system? I guessed that some of the boys, whom they couldn't handle, were passed on to get rid of them. And where were their parents in all of this?

The etiology of the mess that made up their lives began on the second page. They listed divorces and separations, stepmothers and fathers, whole and half brothers and sisters who lived with them. Some listed physical and/or mental problems with a family member or hints of sexual abuse within the family. Some had made suicide attempts. Others came from the shelter system because of crack- or junk-addicted mothers or because the male of the house left suddenly leaving them with nothing. One youngster had dealt with the deaths of his parents from cancer two months apart and was now living with an aunt who kept their government checks and refused to dispense any of it to them for food or clothes. There was a father who stole his son's money and girlfriends. There were more and more variations on the same thing of bad luck and neglect.

Their lives and the lives of their families were littered with alcohol and drugs, but they didn't see it as a problem, only a way of life. So endemic was it to their culture that they couldn't make the connection between that and the difficulties in performing well in the society they inhabited. Some parents were in alcohol or drug rehab, others in jail, doing time for selling or manslaughter connected to the drug trade. Some seemed proud of that fact—My pop's in the joint for killing some no good motherfucker who tried to take him off. Can't do that with my pop. No, they were not concerned with ever becoming involved because they knew better. They were not concerned with sex or with diseases spawned by unprotected sex. In a way, I felt I was reading literature.

They wrote that they wanted to join JUMPSTART because they wanted to help other people and find out about other cultures. They felt it would be a good experience and were very hopeful about their future.

I felt weary and old. I closed the last folder with a thud and rubbed my eyes, pinching the corners so hard they began to hurt.

"Are you without sin?" Lourdes asked, as she burst into the room, an hour and a half late.

I picked up my head and looked at her.

"If I gave you a blowjob does that count?" she laughed and sat down with her coffee and roll.

I had a desire to tell her about my mother and her funeral tomorrow, but I didn't.

"You see Jackson?"

"No, but speaking of Jackson, we have to change the room."

"Fuck that. And fuck him."

She hated him so. I wondered what it would take for her to hate me. Not much, I guessed.

"I want to do it before that Carver witch comes back or her lap dog, Williams."

"They can't make us do shit. Just leave it, will ya?" Carlos, that motherfucker acted up again. Gave me some weekend. I threw his ass out, back to his mother's. I'm payin' the rent, the bills, the food. He ain't doin nothin', 'cept layin' around drinkin' and wantin' my pussy. Fuck."

Taking a huge bite from her roll, she picked up the phone and was immediately engaged in the same conversation she had every morning with her youngest. "You up? You better be, no foolin' around this time. I let you stay home last Thursday, not today. You go, you bastard, and brush your teeth!"

Disgustedly, I got up from my chair and, without saying a word, went out to buy some coffee.

The fresh air felt good. If it was possible, I'd never go back inside those doors again. I wanted to walk and keep walking across the Brooklyn Bridge into oblivion. I could think of nothing that would help any of the kids whose profiles I'd read. I thought, when I took the job, I'd just be counseling kids who had come, or been referred to me, who wanted to overcome an existing alcohol or drug problem. Substance abuse! This was life abuse! Shit, if I were them, I'd be high from sun up to sun down. How else, growing up and living like that, could you have dreams and hopes, or, at least, forget for a few hours, all those dreams and hopes that died.

"Medium coffee, one Sweet n Low inside," John said, as I stepped to the counter of his truck.

"Give me one of those French crullers, too," I added. I needed something sweet.

When I returned, Lourdes was just getting off the phone and finishing the last bite of her roll. She started to turn the pages of her paper.

"Listen," I said, "we have to arrange the room."

"Fuck that, man. She ain't comin' again for a long time."

"Maybe yes, maybe no, but I don't care. If we do it, it's done. It's here, and she can't say anything about it."

"No, man I ain't gonna do it. Relax."

"I'll relax when we finish. C'mon, get off your ass and do some work. You'll feel better."

"What's got into you?" she said, much more annoyed with me than before.

"Nothing. Let's just do it and be done with it. You'll put in your cosmetic order later."

"What the fuck's got into you?"

"I don't know. Maybe it was the profiles of the kids I just read."

Reluctantly, she got up and came over to where I was standing, next to a divider. First we took Jackson's beaten up desk and moved it into a corner, facing a wall. We put an old plastic chair next to it and then circled it in with two dividers. It took less than five minutes. His "office space" looked like an entrance to a bathroom.

"I feel like pissing in here," Lourdes said.

"Go ahead. I'll stand behind the screen."

She began to lower her pants to where I saw this enormous underwear thong, then she laughed and thought better of it. "You're one nervous motherfucker. And about those kids, don't believe them. They exaggerate, lie, make up stories. Half the shit you read or hear is bullshit."

A few female Hispanic students came in and gathered around Lourdes' desk. I watched out of the corner of my eye.

"That's no good, Mommy," Lourdes said. "You can't keep doin' that. I know you like him, but you gotta be more careful than that. All of youse are playin' with fire." They nodded their heads, but there was nothing more.

Her second period kids came in and after they signed the attendance sheet, she had them play a game. They'd take a minute, speak to the person sitting next to them and find out certain information—name, favorite color, music—and then remember it in order to relay it to the rest of the class when their time came. This took up a period, and I'd seen her do it before.

After they left I went over to her desk. "Aren't you supposed to at least try to help these kids?"

"Hey, Heller, what's your fuckin' problem? Didn't you get laid last night? I could help with that."

"I mean it, Tina. What do you do with these kids?"

"You mind your business and I'll mind mine."

That successfully ended the conversation. In fact, we didn't speak to each other for the rest of the day. I felt pretty uncomfortable, but by the time my third period class had come in and taken their seats, all except Gabriella, my mind had turned to other matters. In a way, I was relieved, disappointed, but relieved. I went over and took my chair and looked at them, looking bored and tired, especially since this was a Monday. Ferenczi's crust applied to them as well.

"I can see that you're all thrilled to be here this morning." None of them paid the remark the least bit of attention. "Let's continue what we began last Thursday, but this time concentrating on 'Bad Men' and women, too."

James and Paulino groaned. "Mistah, it ain't always about us," Paulino said.

"I just said we need to talk about women also. The more I think about it, the more I believe it's a two-way street.

"I'm gonna go into the Marines," Paulino said. "This shit makes no kind of difference to me."

"Me, too." James said.

"If you're both going into the Marines, you better graduate high school first. They don't take dropouts."

"Mistah, I'm smart, I'm gonna graduate, that's for sure."

James remained quiet. He knew he wasn't graduating anytime soon.

"Maybe I can help you, help all of you, graduate, but I can't help anyone if they're not here, or cutting classes and doing stuff like that. I can't help you if you don't try."

They all remained silent. They'd heard this same song so many times before it had lost any meaning it once had for them. They had tried—some mightily, others little—and they'd failed anyway. The ones who'd made it and advocated for hard work in the face of any and all adversities had little impact on those too mired in the shit of their circumstances, natural intelligence, talent, and the colossal force of will it to took to overcome those obstacles.

"Listen, people, let's get back to what we were talking about. What is it about bad men or women that make them so attractive?"

Paulino and James looked all around the room, trying not to make eye contact with anyone.

"Fellas, don't look so scared. The women love you guys, you know that. The good guys stay home and you guys make off with all the fine young girls. They stay home and study, you guys play around. They get good grades, most of you guys drop out. You get laid, and they masturbate. On the surface, not a bad deal." Everyone laughed, including James and Paulino. "But then, then, it happens to you guys. You meet a girl who you like a lot and she, once she has you, pulls your strings like you're a puppet and you can't understand it. I thought I was tough, you say to yourself. I have a reputation to protect. How can I let this happen to me? The thing is though that she's so fine, so good in how she makes you feel—when she lets you be with her—that there's nothing you can do about it. Well, she's bad, too." They laughed again, though this time not as loud. "So, what is it?"

Christine, all six feet, two inches of her, said with the kind of assuredness that seemed irreproachable, "They the best fucks, Mistah," and quickly added, "Nothin' leaves here, right?"

"Nothing," I said and looked at each student individually to drive the point home. "Well, maybe it's that, but I think there are other things at work here. I think it's danger, and drama, and inconsistency that keeps you coming back for more. The badder they are the more trouble they—and you—can get into. The badder they are the chances are greater that they're more likely to cheat on you. The badder they are the more inconsistent they are because they're into so much stuff—much of it bad—that they're never are around when they say they're gonna be around. They never call you on those cells you carry night and day waiting for their phone calls. And so you're constantly worrying and worried where they are, who they're with, what kind of trouble did they get into now. You're never sure from day to day, hour to hour, moment to moment where they are or what they're doing, or who they're doing it with. It keeps you anxious and it keeps you close because you're always thinking about them, never yourself and what you should be doing because you don't really exist without them." I stopped and waited for some of it to sink in. "Danger, drama, and inconsistency, three of the major turn-ons in the lives of people, young and old."

They all looked at me for the first time with a kind of innocence that I'd never seen in their faces before. Also, there was a hint of expectation. They wanted to know from me what they could do about it. Aside from rearranging their entire lives, I didn't know what to say.

"There are things you can do about it," I said, "but it will take time to work those things out. Because the consequences you'll have if you don't start to work things out will be your worst nightmare. The dreams you have will die and you'll be living the life you said you'd never live." I stopped for another minute, then continued, "Listen, people, I have something to do tomorrow and so will not be here. You can certainly use the room to talk about this or anything else as long as Ms. Lourdes doesn't mind. We have five minutes left. Why don't you begin thinking about your lives and what they mean to you." I stood up and went back behind my desk where I pretended to look over papers.

Instead, I looked at the kids sitting there and I felt drab and colorless. Even the two boys were sexy in the finery and their cologne smelled good. Paulino, with an earring in each ear, wore his hair slicked back, accentuating an attractive and beguiling face. He wore an oversized white Devils jersey, white ballooned pants, and patent leather black loafers, no socks. James had layered himself all in black and was wearing a tasteful gold crucifix to set it all off. Christine, stretched out on her chair wore skintight black jeans, Nike sneakers, and a white tank top that perked up her nipples and rose above her pierced navel. I gazed at her brown, flat stomach when the whistle blew and watched as she got up, smiled to me, and filed out with the rest of them.

My entire fourth period students were missing in action. I heard more noise than usual coming from the cafeteria, so I went to see what the fuss was about. Lines had formed from both ends. They were giving away Tommy Girl and Tommy Boy cosmetics, colognes, and lotions. I saw many of my students standing on line. When they saw me some reacted sheepishly, but most were too fixated on the products to pay much attention to me. I went back in my room and thought about what I'd have to do this afternoon, but my mind circled back to Gabriella and the files I'd read that morning.

Lourdes steamed back into the room with Jumbo, her giant "cousin," who looked more like Baby Huey, in tow. She grabbed her purse and jacket and steamed back out with him following behind. "Good," I thought, "I won't have to see her for the rest of the day—and tomorrow—but what was she doing dragging one of the students out with her? "You mind your business, and I'll mind mine," were her words. Maybe I should heed them.

If you want to learn about a specific disease, you go to where the plague is. I went into the teacher's cafeteria.

A large rectangular room, with three long plastic picnic-like tables stretched nearly from end to end. They all had different colored plastic chairs on each side, in various states of disrepair: faded colors, cracked seats and backs, legs that wobbled held the frames of the teachers and aides who sat in them.

The food was served in the very back of the room by a short, slightly heavy and jolly-faced Hispanic woman, Sonia, and her Jamaican counterpart, Enid, a sullen-faced lady of the islands. Both of them wore ill-fitting latex gloves and hairnets.

I passed fifteen or twenty people in various states of filling their time or their stomachs. Eating ravenously from their plastic plates with plastic forks, knives, and spoons. The food did not look appetizing, but they shoveled it in without thinking too much about what it was. I noticed old and frayed polyester shirts, some with ties that had been popular twenty years ago, but most had none. Some men were closely shaven, but most had a two- or three-day growth of beard. The women looked a little better put together, but not much, except for the youngest of them who seemed to sit by themselves talking on a cell phone or reading Cosmo or Vogue. The other women wore clothes that looked like their school attire, nothing flashy would be a gross exaggeration. Dull would be more like it.

The closer I got to the food, the less real it looked. Sure, it had the right shape and color, but that's where the similarity ended. I stood above the canned broccoli, peas, and carrots that were steamed out of everything that made them vegetables, the baked beans were congealed, and, unless dynamited by high-energy explosives or diuretics, would not budge from the body's system, ever. The French fries were so floppy they couldn't possibly withstand a light crunch without dissolving in one's mouth; the pizza could have been a cutout from a magazine and the tuna and shrimp salad had more mayonnaise and filler than either fish or crustacean.

"What jou like?" Sonia asked.

"It's a hard choice, but I'm not that hungry. I think I'll go with a cup of tea and a package of those oatmeal raisin cookies over there."

She rang me up at the register and gave me a Lipton's tea bag and the cookies. It was over two dollars. I poured the hot water myself and found a seat in the middle of two distinct couples, immersed in conversation. I nodded to each couple and they to me, as I sat down.

They talked to each other as if I wasn't there. And why not? I really wasn't there and had nothing to do with their world. They had enough years in the system to know who was important and who wasn't. They could do or say just about anything they wanted, no matter who heard or watched.

They talked of retirement and pensions. The ones who were closer to the finish line inspired envy from the others. They spoke of how poorly the school was being run now as opposed to ten or even five years ago, of how the new head of security was not nearly as tough as the former guy, and that the discipline was lax and the school would come to a bad end if the current situation was allowed to continue. They laughed over kids who spelled Plato, "Play Dough." It brought them to a new level of stupidity. This new crop of youngsters cared even less than the ones who had come before. Their attitudes reflected a brazen, "I don't care," posture, one that was not altered by their usual threats. "And now," one of them said, "all I get to do is teach for the mandatory tests that they take. I can't teach what I think they'll like or, more importantly, what I like. They're going to be drug dealers and have babies—that we're going to pay for—

at least let us do what we want to do!" her friend exclaimed. "I can't wait until I can put in my papers." They all seemed to acknowledge that last remark and nodded their heads in agreement.

"No hope, huh?" I quietly said. All their heads swiveled in my direction.

"Hope?" said a guy who looked like a gym teacher, "hope, the only people who have hope are the people who build the prisons."

They all smiled and grimly shook their heads. I looked around again at the rest of the cafeteria. The same people were there. The young women teachers had brought a salad from home or the outside. They still chatted on their cells. I sipped my tea, broke off a piece of cookie. There was nothing else to observe here. I got up, walked down the flight of stairs, and out the doors and into the light.

Instead of going to Chinatown, I went under the Brooklyn Bridge, its belly and stanchions strong enough to hold up the world, and made my way toward the South Street Seaport. I walked over years of encrusted pigeon droppings and stood and looked at the length of the bridge. I kept walking and turned left at Peck Slip. The smell of fish had permeated every stone, every building facade, and every street of the Seaport. It didn't smell unpleasant today, perhaps the cool air had something to do with that. There was a bar, the only bar in New York City, that had been granted a twenty-four hour a day license to serve booze, because of the round the clock traffic the area produced.

I turned left at the bar and went down another side street and found a little lunch spot. I sat in a booth and sipped a delicious espresso and read the paper. Nobody else was in there, except for a woman who looked like she owned the place. I tried to concentrate on the baseball playoffs and the team match-ups for the new football season, which had just begun a few weeks earlier, but I couldn't. I hadn't followed football in so long I really had little interest in it now. I got up, left a tip, thanked her, and walked back to my school.

Jackson was behind my desk lecturing a young black student—who couldn't have been more than a freshman—who seemed to be standing at attention in front of him.

"Whatcha gonna do with these damn things, man?" Jackson demanded.

"What you think I'm gonna do?" the kid replied, a tone of annoyance in his voice.

"You gotta tell me fore I give em ta ya."

"Why?"

I stood, ten feet behind the student. Jackson looked at me briefly then went back to the kid.

"'Cause it's my job to make sure you're responsible with 'em, that's why."

"Why you think I ax for them in the first place?" he shot back. The student was obviously a step ahead of Jackson.

"How good are your grades? Who you gonna be doin' this with? And where are you gonna be doin' it?" Jackson barked out all at once, flustered and angry.

"Why you axin' me all this shit?"

"Just answer me."

"You gonna give me them or ain't you?"

"Wait a second; wait a fucking second!" I said loud enough to get both their attention. I stood in front of the student. "You want some condoms?"

"Yeah, that's all. This dude's hasslin' me and shit."

"I'm sorry about that. He's not supposed to hassle you—or anyone else—at all. Come with me." I went behind my desk to the cabinet where, on top, the box of condoms sat. I took out a strip of seven and handed them to him. "Listen," I said to the student, "you don't have to answer shit, ever. Not in here at least. All you have to do is come in here and ask and I'll give them to you. No questions, no problems. You hear?"

"Yeah, thanks. What's his problem, man?" he said as he put them into his backpack. He gave Jackson a look that said all you needed to know about dealing with stupidity. Then he left.

"What is your problem?"

"Nothin, I just wanna make sure the brother be a man."

"He's not 'a man' and he isn't your brother. Save that shit for when you're with your 'brothers' uptown. A kid—girl or boy—comes in and asks for condoms, you just give them. If you can't for religious, moral, or ethical reasons then bow the fuck out! 'Cause if you can't do that, I'm calling up the Board of Education and the Department of Health to make sure you stay the hell out of those decisions. You understand me? And one other thing: don't sit behind my desk, ever. Even if I'm not here that desk is mine and I don't like anyone sitting behind it unless I'm here and say it's all right. Is everything I said clear?"

He got up and came from behind my desk. "You got me all wrong."

"Maybe I do, but this is no way for me to know that."

"I love these kids, man."

"Don't love them so much. Just try to help them."

Without saying another word, he went to his desk, gathered his things, and left.

"Two fucking lunatics they saddled me with," I said out loud. "Christ." I looked at my watch, two forty-five. Fifteen more minutes and I could get out of here. I sat and counted off the ten minutes, which seemed like ten hours and punched out at two fifty-eight. I thought that was close enough.

I got off the train at Bay Parkway. I could see, as we were pulling into the station, the tens of thousands of gravestones in the cemetery. I looked to see if I could find a freshly dug grave, but I couldn't. The cemetery was on both sides of the parkway. I walked around the black wrought-iron exterior until I came to the entrance, which led to the office. There, a woman greeted me at an old wooden desk. I pretended to have a worried expression on my face and hurriedly asked her if I was too late for the funeral of Ruth Heller. If she'd have asked, I would have said I was a relative of a relative who couldn't attend herself. I'd come in her place. She never asked. She said that the funeral was scheduled for the next day at eleven. I asked if I could see the burial site, and she called to a Singer, one of the caretakers, and told him to take me there. He consulted a map on his wall and then I followed him to an open Jeep outside. I got in and, without saying a word, we drove off, down the avenues of the dead.

Driving to her site, I saw these nondescript plaques or headstones indicating those who were buried there. It was the most uninteresting graveyard I'd ever seen, especially compared to the flavorful and exotic graves in New Orleans. Some headstones here were cracked and broken, plaques had been worn to illegibility, paper wrappings and plastic or dead flowers littered the grounds. Even the grass was brown and lifeless. I wondered if my father chose this site just for the sake of expediency. He'd never allow himself to be buried here, I thought. It stood to reason that wherever my father's bones would rest so, too, would Brother Don's.

Singer turned in at a certain point and there it was, a freshly dug grave, waiting for the recently dead body. There was a white canopy covering the open hole. Shovels still stood at the ready.

"Anything else?" Singer asked, "I gotta get back, plentya work here, let me tell you."

"One thing, it'll just take a second." I got out of the Jeep and went over to the gravesite and looked down into it and imagined my mom being put in, and resting there in the dark. I picked up, and threw, a handful of moist earth in there. That was enough. I got back into the Jeep, and he drove me back. All the while, I was looking for a safe place to observe the funeral. I saw one or two spots but wasn't sure they'd provide anonymity. I thanked both Singer and the secretary for their trouble and walked back to the train station.

Standing on the elevated platform, waiting for the F Train, fear started to dig inside me. The first thing I craved was dope, then a Percocet—a handful of them—and finally a drink. I shook my head from side to side and vowed to myself I wouldn't go there. Still, it persisted. The closer the hour came, the more I'd be drawn to them.

The Brooklyn that stretched out before me seemed so old and useless. The signs on the stores were dimmed and discolored from age. There must be a new wave of immigrants who keep this old dowager of a borough vital, but the Brooklyn I remembered was all but gone. Maybe some artists, those young and fearless souls, are, right now, turning it into something fresh and alive, but I didn't know where or if, in fact, it was happening at all.

The sun's last strong rays shone directly in my face, making me sleepy. I looked down the tracks and saw the train in the next station. I turned again to the cemetery trying to see her site and where to hide myself as the train rumbled into the station, making the old concrete and wood backing shiver and shake.

The train was nearly empty, except for a few single women sitting by themselves and two black youngsters who seemed to be going over a math problem opposite me. They had their books open, and one was showing the other what an hypotenuse was. Damned if I knew. I leaned my head back against the steel facade of the car, against a beautiful photo with luscious black women promoting a new colored liquor and tropical drink to their target audience, young African-Americans who couldn't tolerate their liquor straight and needed a fruit juice component to get it down. I closed my eyes.

I tried to imagine how I'd orchestrate tomorrow's reality, from calling in sick in the morning, to renting a car, coming into Brooklyn to steal the books—if there were books—to seeing the earth thrown onto my mother's box of wood—or maybe, with books in hand, go to the gravesite and stand opposite them with opened ledgers, their writing exposed and let the proverbial chips fall where they may. Fuck hiding, and getting safely back to the city, evidence in hand! Or maybe, I should wait? Later, perhaps a week, make the phone call that would bring them to their knees? Maybe I'd have them bargain with me first, beg and plead, while I'd hold on to them and their fates, each day a new torture. Each day would be interminable for them, while they waited and waited for what I'd decide to do next. I let those thoughts drift around my head and sort themselves out. I'd waited a long time for this moment and I wanted it to last.

***

At first, after the swelling in my fingers and hand had gone down and I was capable of holding a pen, I wrote letters to Angela's folks from the address I had. When I received no response from them, I wrote all her relatives and friends. It seemed that the mailbox's mouth led to the world's dead end. Each letter that was returned to me acted like a silent rebuke or worse, a mockery for my attempts merely to regain a piece of who I was and a person who I didn't think I could live without. I just couldn't accept that something like this could happen to two people so obviously in love with one another. Finally, I stopped writing what had now become a collection of impulses that led nowhere. I thought that by not writing it would free those juices to pursue the fissures and caves of a part of my mind and a language that was no longer being used, perhaps saving them for a time they'd, once again, be needed.

By this time I was living with Ernie in a section of New Orleans known as Bucktown. He offered to share his house with me, and I thought it safer and less complicated than remaining with Dolores. Besides, I'd already seen Frankie over that first weekend, and we'd spent a lot of time together bringing each other up to date. He told me that he and Francesca were having problems and the time was not good for me to move in. She, like her mother and his mother as well, was becoming more schizophrenic, and he was not very good at handling it. It used to be fun, he said, when he'd sent her back to a bookstore to return a book because she got an edited, rather than unabridged, edition. Now, she'd walk into a bookstore and remove all her clothes, and he'd get a call from a hospital asking him to pick her up. She refused to take any medication claiming, as her mother had, that all medications were the Devil's trap. Probably that's why he was spending so much time in Baton Rouge teaching and painting. He was hardly ever home.

Ernie liked it hot. He refused to have an air conditioner. Maybe he'd gotten acclimated to the jungle, both in Vietnam and New Orleans, and preferred to sweat, but it was next to torture for me. There were, thankfully, two ceiling fans, one in each room that helped somewhat with the oppressive humidity and sometime heat. Ernie's house was an old wooden structure with a front room—which turned out to be mine—wooden flooring, a large living room-bedroom that Ernie used, and a bathroom that we shared. On top of his bed was a sign with the Marine Corps insignia: If You're Not Living On The Edge, You're Taking Up Too Much Room.

We strung up white sheets that acted as curtains to give us a little privacy, and I began putting away what stuff I'd brought. It didn't take long. It was one of the cleanest homes I'd seen. Ernie took it upon himself to G.I. the place once a week, whether I helped or not. If I did, he said thanks. If I didn't, he said nothing. He didn't resent me not helping, quite the contrary. I'd got the feeling after helping once or twice that he preferred to take care of it himself. Many times I saw him go over the places I'd already cleaned. When I pointed that out to him he just looked at me and went on with it.

We lived next door to Carlotta, a lady said to be near one hundred years old. What was certain was that Carlotta had at least two hundred cats. Every morning I'd see her, a tall spinster, dressed in a long black dress that could have come from the Thirties or Forties, cans of cat food in her hand, being trailed by fifty or sixty cats, placing the food under her house, porch, and front yard. She knew that I was watching her and would look at me and smile. The teeth she had left were broken or brown from her constant chaw of tobacco. The bones were protruding from her parchment and liver-spotted skin, but her eyes, a dazzling blue, were laser-like and clear. I once tried to speak to her, but all she said was, "Non comprend'," and turned to her cats.

The first thing Ernie and I did was go to Charity Hospital, doctor notes and x-rays in hand, to establish a legitimate pipeline to the nether world. After examining me, taking more x-rays and making the appropriate phone call to St. Vincent's, Dr. Passionne, a senior resident—and a very beautiful one at that—prescribed the same amount that St. Vincent's had, with the caveat that I had to return the following month to repeat the process. She told me that the new x-rays showed the bones still separated, but healing. I thanked her (and also thanked my hand for taking its time), and Ernie—

"just in case," he said—took me to a private doctor whom he knew would, probably under any circumstances—write the same prescriptions. Ernie, of course, got free Percocet at the veteran's hospital. They were reluctant to get him addicted—"they had no problem trying to get me killed, maimed, or crippled," he said—so, only under extreme duress would they offer twelve or fifteen Dilaudid, which were gone in no more than three days. I was able to modify my usage and, often times, would give Ernie enough of my own to get him from appointment to appointment. Eventually, though, even Ernie slowed down, and he was a man who hardly slowed down for anything. I'd see him get up in the morning, do two hundred push-ups, one-handed, screw the boot of his leg into his stump, meticulously shave, shower, get dressed, and look for things to do.

For the first few months, Ernie and I were inseparable. Dolores had her day job and Ernie his disability check, and I had my brown paper bag. I was free to explore the New Orleans that Ernie knew so well. As I said, we both curtailed our use of drugs, but continued to drink. This even served the connections we had for drugs in a positive light. They hardly ever supposed we were over-using our medications and so would write another prescription without asking too many questions. However, when the doctors I saw started to ask questions, I was able to lie without too much difficulty: "My hands pained me because of the weather. I was writing too much, but just couldn't stop now. I fell and braced myself with my bad hand." When those excuses failed, I simply begged and pleaded, promising them that this would be my last time—until the next time. I even went so far with a new doctor as to prick my finger in the bathroom and drip a few drops of blood into the specimen cup, and with the symptoms I described the diagnosis was a kidney stone, painful enough for Demerol or, if I could convince them otherwise, Dilaudid. If all else failed, I simply tried to find another sympathetic soul whose practice or pocket was in need of a cash infusion.

Mostly, though, we kicked back, explored, and talked. In a few weeks, when alcohol loosened my tongue, I told them both one night at McGee's place, Take A Load Off, the entire story of what had brought me down there. "Mudderfuckers," Ernie said. "Shit," Dolores said. "Everywhere we went, each new thing I experienced, not only reminded me of her, but was her. I saw her footprints where we walked, her lips on the forks we ate off, and the glasses we drank from." I said.

One bright Saturday in November, the humidity still as dense as the early morning fog, Dolores and Ernie got into my car and they took me into the Vieux Carre district where most of the Creoles lived. I'd brought with me a few pictures I'd taken of Angela and all the addresses I had for her.

The homes were beautiful, old Greek Revivalist townhouses, with porticos and other, simpler, dwellings that were unique. As I drove, I looked down the spaces between the homes that seemed to always have a path that led to other paths behind them. Ancient oak trees hung over some of them, while others, in the sunlight had their own magnificent lattice work, detailed wrought-iron railings on their second floor facades.

As Ernie directed me to Angela's parents' address, my anxiety increased. My mouth became dry while rivers of sweat poured from underneath my arms and a shakiness that I'd never experienced, turned my insides into mush. As I inched my way into a parking space in front of her home, I looked over Ernie's shoulder to see, wondering which room she'd be in.

Dolores told me it would be better if I stayed in the car, but I couldn't. Ernie said it would be better to let "Da woman do it," but still I had to go.

"Den I better go, too, but first I better have a sip," Ernie said and opened the door. He offered his flask to me, but I declined. I'd purposely not taken any Percocet either, nor brought any with me. Tragedy, I preferred to face straight up. It was the unending repetitiveness of desire and loss in my every day life I'd had a problem dealing with.

Ernie pulled on my arm and motioned for me to stay behind him. Dolores, in front, had Angela's picture in the palm of her hand. We walked up a narrow concrete walkway, old oaks hanging their branches and leaves over the path. Vines clung to the front and the side of the house and the smells of Creole food being prepared brought my saliva back.

What I'd thought about her parents vanished. All I could think about was Angela, and the possibility that she was somewhere close by. As I walked behind Ernie, I tried to look into every window in case she might be looking out. My legs were unsteady and my heart threatened to come out of my chest the closer we came to the front door.

Dolores, politely, knocked on the screen door. A heavy-set woman, a bit dark-skinned, in her middle to late fifties, her hair tied in a bun, wearing a smile and white apron over her plain blue blouse and navy skirt, greeted us. She wore thongs on her feet.

"Mornin'," she said, "what can I do for y'all?"

"Sorry to disturb, ma'am, but we lookin' for someone who might be kin to you."

"All my kin counted an' answered for," she laughed, but her smile had disappeared. "You need all three doin' the askin'? We friendly folk here."

"I'm sure, ma'am, but we been lookin' for our friend for quite some time, and I got this here picture," Dolores said and produced the photo.

I could see the color drain from her face as she looked at Angela. "No, sorry, wish I could help, I don't mean to be unfriendly, but I got a stove need tendin'."

Just then a man came to the door, who I knew from Angela's photographs to be her father. He was still pencil thin, but wiry, wore a slight mustache, and had eyes that were, simply, cruel. He had on a white undershirt, with no sleeves, just thin straps, and khaki, baggy trousers. "What dese folk want?" he said, a scowl across his face.

"Lookin' for someone, t'ink we know her."

He glanced down at Dolores' palm, which hadn't moved. "We knew her once, don't anymore. Know nothin' 'bout her no more, that's the end of it. You lookin' in the wrong place," he said looking over Ernie's shoulder and right at me.

"Don't mean no disrespect," Ernie quickly said. "We your folk, too."

"Sure don't act like our folk, bringin' a stranger that has no business here."

"I'm Max," I blurted out, "I'm just trying..."

"I know dat," he said.

"Just tryin' to help a friend," Ernie interjected.

"Maybe you should be careful who your friends are and who ain't your friends," he said looking at Ernie's claw.

"He good people, no matter where he from," his hand with the claw gripping my shoulder, "I should know, spent time with people not nearly so good."

Shivers went up and down my body.

"Last we heard she up North with you, but ain't seen or heard in a long time. Seems like you shoulda taken better care of her," he said.

My stomach turned over. "Yes, I should have, but maybe you can help me now?"

"Wish we could but can't. Sorry. Tell the truth, figure she's passed, at least to us she has. Don't know what happened up there in the North, but bein' you down here now, can't be no good no how." He put his hand on the woman's shoulder and turned her away from the door.

"I got to get back to my gravy," she said, choking back tears.

With that, they both turned away and left us to stare at the emptiness. Ernie turned around first, grabbed my arm, and led me away. Dolores followed. When we got back in the car I asked if they thought they were telling the truth. Each said that they thought they were, but there was really no way to tell for sure. "People here are very private," Ernie explained to me, but he'd come back alone and ask them again.

"Somebody down here has to know something," I said.

"Maybe yes, maybe no. This world is mostly made up of unanswered questions," Ernie said.

I couldn't accept that and told them so. One thing I knew for sure, I told them, was that Angela's father had passed her around like party favors.

"Best to just leave dat alone," Ernie said. "You bring dat up she lost for sure."

I wanted to go to the next address, but Ernie said that by the time we got there they'd already have been told of our visit and any questions we'd ask would get no answer. Better to wait a few days to see what, if anything, shook out.

It was always dark in Take a Load Off, but just as importantly, it was air conditioned as well. We took a table in the back where it was the darkest.

Dolores said, "Max, what if she dead, den what?"

"What? No, get out of here. No, she's not, I'm telling you."

"Max, Dolores she here only sayin' here what we t'inkin'."

"You both might be, but I ain't 't'inkin'' it," I said and felt my insides explode with grief.

"All right, dat all right, but we just sayin'. You right, maybe, it's only da first time out. We ain't done lookin', not by a long shot, but, you know, shit like this you hope for the best, but you gotta prepare for the worse."

"What are you, a fucking Buddha?"

"We're friends, Max, just friends, no matter how much I wanna fuck you."

We laughed a little and sipped our beers, but something I'd sooner not have admitted had been spoken, given voice, indented the world, bruised it, discolored it, and became all too real.

For the next few weeks Ernie and Dolores tried to find Angela by going to all the addresses I'd had for her. Wherever she was, she wasn't here. I was utterly miserable for a week after that, drinking and using more drugs than necessary. Then Ernie, through a relative, found a job at the Cafe Du Monde. "I'm taking this job for only one reason," he told me, "to cut down on the drugs. I know I want to die, just not now."

Suddenly I had the days all to myself and besides driving past Angela's parents' home and the few other addresses I'd had, I had nothing much to do with my time. I strolled leisurely through the Quarter and found some old bookshops and owners. We'd speak of literature and writing, and I began to feel comfortable in this city, despite being so close to Angela's history.

There were some nights, however, when I was anything but comfortable. Ernie's screams would wake me at all hours. I'd go to his bed to find him covered in sweat so thick it had layers. At first, I was afraid to touch him, but then I believed I needed to do just that. He'd awake, wide-eyed, like a little boy, and after blinking over and over again, he'd find me in front of him. "Bad mudderfucker," was the first thing he'd say. Then, depending upon how bad the nightmare was, he'd say, "Call Dolores, maybe?"

All I'd say when she answered the phone was, "Dolores, it's Max, Ernie's..."

"Be right dere."

When she arrived, she'd place her hand gently on my cheek and thank me, go over to Ernie who, by that time, I'd propped up on pillows after wiping the sweat from his body. She'd take out oils, which she placed by his leg. She'd then go to the bathroom where she'd turn on the light, close the door partially, return to the bedroom, and begin turning off the rest of the lights. The remaining soft glow from the bathroom created a soothing effect. Ernie never took his eyes off her. Standing by his bed, she'd begin to disrobe, slowly, but before she was naked I'd say goodnight to them both.

"Wait, my fren, stay. O.K. wit' me."

Dolores turned and offered me the warmest look and nodded her head, yes, stay. So I stood, slightly awkward, and watched as she removed the rest of her garments and sat on the bed between her oils and his body. Slowly she started rubbing his forehead, cradling his neck, massaging the oil into his shoulders and arms. When she'd got down to his steel claw she'd take special care in caressing it, each part, with a tender lovingness I longed for. I'd find myself getting erect, embarrassed, but unable to turn away.

She'd take the covers off him and lay him flat on the bed. She'd then rub his whole body, except his genitals, and once again, spend considerable time on his scarred over stump. I'd watch her body move, her breasts lightly brushing against the hairs on his body, her buttocks moving gently from side to side as she'd massage the inside of his thighs. From time to time I'd look at Ernie's face which had begun, almost immediately, to lose some of its rigidity. By the time she was making these swirling circles over his belly and chest, his eyes would be closed. Quietly, she removed the oils from the bed and got in beside him. She'd lie there, running her hand through his hair, her mouth close to his neck, breathing on him. She'd look once more at me, smile, and whisper, "Thank you."

I'd go back inside my room, get into bed aroused, but somehow purged as well. Perhaps, they wanted me there to understand that this thing between them was not about sex. Or, if sex had anything to do with it, it wasn't the important thing. Like most things in this life between people, it was maddeningly complex and perhaps it protected them from the world's intrusion.

***

I awoke somewhere in Queens. The first, and last, time I'd been in Queens was when the World's Fair was there in the Sixties. I walked down this endless flight of stairs, crossed the street, up the same flight on the other side, my legs weary and weak, paid another fare, and waited for the train to take me back to Manhattan.

I stopped off at a car rental place on Twelfth Street and reserved a car for six the next morning. The Cedar was just around the corner and I stopped in to see Joey and have one of their wonderful hamburgers. Joey had already left for the day, so I took a seat at the bar and ate. I knew I'd have a problem sleeping that night and walked home, infused with a new sort of energy and determination.

My alarm rang at five. I tested my blood glucose, showered, shaved, and dressed. I suddenly realized that a certain sense of calm had settled over me. I called both JUMPSTART and my school, knowing I'd get their answering machines, and told each I was under the weather and would not be in today. Next, I rummaged through my old duffel bag and dug out the keys to my old home and then sat on the bed trying to figure out how many bullets to put into the gun.

I tried to conjure up all the western and gangster pictures I'd seen, trying to visualize how a gun was loaded. Finally, I saw the blank chamber at the top, where the hammer would strike, and inserted the bullets accordingly. I put the gun, keys, insulin, and syringes into a small leather pouch and left to pick up the car.

There's a Greek diner right on Twelfth, and suddenly I felt more hungry than I'd ever been. After eggs, sausages, and three cups of coffee I was driving through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel.

I parked on the street next to the main entrance to this private community, where a private police guard would allow cars in that didn't belong to the residents, and waited. I was looking for a big black limousine. If I didn't see one by ten, I thought, I'd have to chance it and hope they'd driven themselves to the funeral.

At nine-fifteen a big black Cadillac limo moved through the entrance and I started my car. Without rushing, I drove myself to a dead end street. I took my pouch and made my way along the corroded hurricane fence until I came to a break leading to a small patch of sand with a jetty and the ocean behind it.

The day had been misty. The leaves that had fallen seemed pasted to the ground as I stepped onto the moist sand. Not nearly as nimble as I once was, I stumbled a few times as I made my way across the rocks of the jetty, bracing myself with my hand as I went. With a slight leap I landed on the other side and, after getting off the sand, made my way to the dead end street behind their home. My pulse began to quicken. Luckily, it was a good time—the kids were in school and the breadwinners were off earning their keep. When I came to their house at the end of the block, I casually looked around to make sure there was no one watching, and then I put one foot, then the other, over the hedge.

I stood in front of the door to my old room and caught my breath. I took the keys out of my pouch and, with all the delicacy of a safe cracker, slid one into the lock. I felt a bit of rust and stiffness, but the key turned. I pushed the door and myself into the house.

With one foot I stepped into my past. The room had not changed, except that all my books, papers, keepsakes had been removed and probably burned. It was a lifeless room. It smelled musty, almost sickly. The air hadn't moved in so long you could see it. I looked at the bed I used to sleep in. It had an old white sheet covering it. The couch, once a vibrant tweed, had dissolved into a runny obsolescence. I saw the thick dust that had settled over each piece of wood, including my desk. I wanted to run my hands over it, but didn't. The curtains were drawn shut over the glass doors separating this room from the den in the downstairs portion of the house. I went up to it and pressed my ear against the glass and heard no sound. Slowly, I opened one side and stuck my head through the curtains and still heard nothing.

I poked my head out and then shifted my body through the opening. The liquor cabinets stood before me under a large mirror running twenty feet, covering the width of the entire six cabinet construction. I looked at myself as I crossed to the cabinets, unable to believe it was really me there, ready to do what I was about to do.

I thought that the reflection in the mirror should show me at my prime, a young man full of himself and who thought that, if nothing else, he'd never be what they were. Well, I said, times change, don't they? You're here now. Just get on with it.

I stooped down and opened the first cabinet by pressing against the wooden door. They sprang open, but after I rearranged what bottles there were, I could find no hidden cabinet that my mother spoke of. I went to the second, third, and fourth—did the same maneuvers, but no books. My mom must have imagined this whole thing. The fifth door was loaded with liquor, unlike the others. I removed each bottle, careful to keep them in the order they were placed. And there it was, another cabinet. I pressed against it and the doors clicked open and there they were, two black notebooks. Composition books. They stared out at me. I felt they were defying me to pick them up. Carefully, I removed each one and began to read their contents. Names, amounts, dates of payment—or nonpayment—how much vigorish was charged to each customer and then, at the end of some names that ran on for pages, were Catholic Crosses or Jewish Stars with a date below them. Some names I'd recognized, no longer wondering what became of them. The notations were ridiculously obvious.

Then I smelled her. Or more precisely smelled her perfume. I looked around, not sure at all if the scent was real or imagined, but there it was. I left the books near the liquor bottles, and went around the door leading to where she'd slept. There was her bed, rumpled. My heart started to race. I inched closer and closer, but when I came to the bureaus and small desk all I found were pictures of another women, with another family. I peered into her chest of drawers and closet and didn't recognize anything. I leaned over and smelled the pillow on the bed. It was not her.

I returned to the books, but as I did I passed the mirror again. I knew, in that moment, I couldn't do what I came to do. I tried to will myself, force myself, curse myself, convince myself, but it all ended the same: this is something you cannot do. Forget about them; forget about her. Get on with your life the best you can.

I returned the books and the liquor in exactly the same order as before and went out the way I came in, making sure the door was locked behind me. I stood there for another second, looking up at the old basketball hoop and backboard, its mesh net rusty with age. I stepped over the hedges and left.

By the time I got back to my car I knew I couldn't do one other thing: go to my mom's funeral. I drove down Neptune to Cropsey Avenue, the rain had gotten heavier, and I had to use my windshield wipers. I got on the Belt Parkway going north.

Chapter VIII

Near Thanksgiving it had turned cold, the leaves had turned a dull greenish brown in the trees. I had felt like I'd fallen off some branch, but while I wasn't dead, I'd turned in on myself, protecting myself, like the animal I was, for the winter ahead. At work, I'd made perfunctory gestures when I ran groups, appearing as if I was listening by offering occasional comments, but I was usually just mouthing the words. The only time I felt marginally engaged was when I spoke to students individually. Oddly, each time I did I became more involved in their lives despite myself. Though I'd feel myself resisting, I felt an obligation to speak to them and try—though I knew I was destined to fail—to help them break from some of the bonds that shackled them. Each time I did this, I was getting closer to them though often I wanted to resist this so badly I felt like running out of the room, leaving them and everything else behind. Then the kids drew me back.

One morning, despite my instincts, I called out to Felix as he was about to leave. Reluctantly, he turned and sauntered back to my desk.

"What?" he asked.

"What's with the Ensure? You on a diet?" I'd seen him sneak a can out of his coat pocket, his hand guarding the label, and drink it.

"No, Mistah, I like it."

"Yeah, you and every cancer patient in the world who can't keep down solid foods."

For the first time since I knew him, his face became awfully young.

"Felix sit down, will you? Let me talk with you for a few minutes?"

"I got class, Mistah."

"The hell with class; I'll give you a pass for that."

He sat down, not at all sure what was going to happen, but judging by his expression, he wanted, needed, to be here.

"What's up with the Ensure?"

"Whatchamean?"

"C'mon, Felix, I'm trying to help you, not hurt you. I read what you wrote on that questionnaire a few months ago..."

"You really read that shit?"

"Yeah I really read 'that shit' and I know you've had a tough fucking life. I know that at this point you have to believe that nobody gives a shit about you and your little sister." I saw his eyes lower. "Look at me, Felix." He lifted his face, tears that he must have held back so long, and that felt so strange inside his eyes, threatened to overwhelm him.

"Take it easy, man. I'm not going to hurt you, but I need to know what's going on."

Slowly, in halting sentences, he told me of the death of his parents, two months apart. He told me how good they were to both him and his sister and how they had plans for them to go to school and make something of themselves. His father was a motorman for the MTA and his mother worked as a secretary for some nonprofit in east New York. When he began to tell me of his aunt, his sentences became quicker and angrier. She wouldn't give them their fair share of the monthly check from the MTA, social services checks, or the benefits he left to them upon their deaths. She wouldn't pay for their food, clothes, or, of course, entertainment. Even class trips were beyond the arrangements she'd agreed to when the courts awarded her the custody of these two kids. Felix's anger was only mitigated by his sense of hopelessness.

"I think I can do something, but I need your permission," I said. (I knew I really didn't need for him to agree, but I wanted it from him.)

"Permission for what?" he said, a note of fear in his voice.

"I want to call up your aunt and make sure you and your sister are provided for in the way the courts intended."

"She mean, Mistah."

"I know that, but she won't be mean with me."

"I don't know—but no social services. They come and take my sister to another home and I can't allow that. My little sister will go nuts without me. Promise me no social services. It happened to a few friends of mine. They just come and take. No regard to what's goin' on between us."

I thought for a second. "I can't make that promise to you. All I can say is that today, no social services; I can promise you that. Then if we can't get your aunt to do the right thing, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. We'll figure out, me and you, how to do that. That I promise."

"O.K., Mistah. You better give me that pass."

I was writing a pass for him while I asked, "What time do you get out of school, Felix?"

"Usually anytime I want," he said and laughed.

"Don't kid around. If I help you, you have a part in this, too, a sort of contract with me to honor. You seem like an honorable man."

"I am."

"So, when?"

"When what? Oh, I get out at three."

"You meet me here and we're going to go to Chinatown for some food."

"Mistah, you don't haveta..."

"I know I don't. Remember this: nobody has to do a goddamn thing in this world for anyone. Nobody. But the world would be an even worse place than it already is if nobody did nothin' for no one. I'm just trying to be of use."

Not wanting to cry, he got up and straightened his pants. "I be here at three."

"Do I have your permission?"

"Do whatcha gotta do."

No sooner had he left the room than I went to my files and pulled his folder. I went over to Lourdes' desk and dragged the phone over to my desk where I opened Felix's folder and got his aunt's phone number. Some things demanded professionalism, others dictated quite the opposite.

"Hello," she said, her voice filled with sleep and maybe a few other things as well.

"Ms. Grisham?"

"Yeah, who dis?"

"My name is Max Heller, I'm a counselor in Felix's school."

"What he do now?"

"He didn't do anything, Ms. Grisham, it's you. Are you sure you're up?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm sure. What did I do?" The sleep had left her voice.

"I'm going to say this to you once, and only once. I'm Felix's counselor, but I also sit on the board of my local police precinct. So I know a few people, especially cops. I know you've been stealing the money from those kids you swore to keep and protect..."

"I...

"Shut up, Ms. Grisham."

"I don't know what you're doing with the money, but I can guess. Whatever it is though, you've violated at least three laws that I know of, maybe more. If you don't want your ass to be thrown into Rikers, you'd better do the right thing and give those kids their due..."

"But..."

"But nothing! Just listen. Those kids need that money to eat right, get clothing, go on trips with their schools, and any other goddamn thing they're entitled to. If you can't do that today I'm getting the cops and social services on your case. Is that clear?"

"I don't have the money right now."

"Find it. Here's my number at school, if you need it, and the number where I'll be at tonight. It's the local precinct's number, just ask for me, they'll know where I am. If Felix doesn't come to school tomorrow with cash in his pocket you'd better start thinking of all the shit you'll be dealing with in the next few days."

I hung up the phone, feeling better than I had in months. Now, if I could only do something for Gabriella, who had come to me often during these last few weeks to give me updates on her tale of woe. I'd conferred with a social worker about her, but she told me short of calling the police, there wasn't much to be done. Sometimes, I knew, doing what is right turns out to be terribly wrong. I wasn't ready to take that gamble.

I clocked out at two fifty-eight and Felix and I headed toward Noodletown where I turned him on to his first bowl of their soup with dumplings and roast duck. After he finished that he tackled a plate of Chow Fun. After three attempts of struggling to use chopsticks I had the waiter bring him a fork. I watched him occasionally put down his fork and battle with his chopsticks.

"You'll get it. It took me years, but you'll get it quicker than that—I hope."

"You speak to my aunt?"

"We had some words," was all I said.

"And?"

"And we'll see what happens. Try to take it easy. Life is a marathon, never a sprint. Remember that."

He looked up from his food and said, "Thanks."

"You're welcome. One day, you'll do the same."

I paid the bill and outside the restaurant I knew he wanted more. It was not the time for that. We shook hands and said our good-byes.

There was a bounce in my step as I walked home. Once inside my apartment, I realized that I'd been living in a Sixties crash pad for the last few months. I dropped my bag on the table and I knew I was going to do two things: shop at Balducci's for dinner and clean this place like Ernie had cleaned his once I returned from shopping.

Balducci's was in its autumnal splendor. Wooden crates containing pumpkins of all sizes, shapes, and colors—orange, orange gold, orange yellow—were put near the store's facade. Each window addressed another of their specialties. The windows that served as book ends displayed salmon and giant tuna along with Manila clams, Littlenecks, and oysters in one, and aged prime beef in the other on Ninth Street. In between, there were boxes of Anjou, Bosc, Comice, and red pears in one window display and apple pies, cheesecakes, cannoli, Neapolitans, tarts, cookies, and truffles in the pastry window. The enticements that these windows offered to the passersby were nothing compared to the sensual aromas and colors that engulfed you once through the door. I never tired of shopping there. Each time I walked through the door, I took my time just strolling around the aisles looking at all the delights contained within. I took a basket and walked from counter to counter knowing that I was about to get the best food that New York City—and money—could buy.

First, I put a small amount of mesclun salad in a plastic bag and into my basket. Then I took fresh garlic, parsley, and a lemon, since I knew that some kind of seafood would shortly enter into the picture. At their fish counter I selected four Texas Gulf head- on shrimp which cost twenty one dollars, a pound of fresh Maryland lump crab meat, and made sure to include a jar of red pepper flakes, cocktail sauce, and a can of crushed red tomatoes. I finished my spree by adding a few different kinds of pears and a half-pound of fresh dates.

Raffeto's, a few blocks away, off Sixth Avenue, was one of the city's oldest Italian specialty stores and makers of fresh pasta. The machine they had to cut the pasta was probably as old as the store—at least it looked that way—eighty years or better. I bought a half-pound of linguine. Before I left the neighborhood, I stopped into a liquor store and purchased a bottle of good white wine and another of Martel for after dinner.

After returning to my apartment, I stripped down to my shorts and, methodically, cleaned the place. Bird, Miles, and Monk moved me through what could have been drudgery. The time seemed to fly by. Three hours later, muscles sore and aching, I stood underneath a hot shower, leaving the water run onto my neck, shoulders, and back.

The food seemed even more delicious after the work I'd done. I'd decided to not watch TV, but instead, pulled a collected book of poems by Yeats off my shelf and, with a generous portion of Martel, got into bed and read, until sleep decided otherwise.

No sooner had I sat down the next morning at my desk than Carver, with her lap dog, Williams, showed up with a new person, Herman Lard. Herman looked like a hippo with suspenders.

"Good morning," I said, "you guys are here awfully early."

"Good morning," she returned, "but I'm not one of the guys."

You could have fooled me, I wanted to say, but said instead, "What do I owe for this visit?"

"We're here to look at your records and to find out why you've been clocking out one, two, and three minutes early." Her voice was as cold as ice.

"You're kidding, right?"

"I never 'kid' about that. Following procedures is an important part of this position."

"Max, just show me ten files, that's all," Williams said with a defeated expression on his face.

"Make that fifteen," Carver countered.

"He's new and it's only November," he replied.

"Fifteen," she repeated.

I knew I had at least twenty completed files, so I pulled out the first fifteen and handed them to him. In the meantime, Carver walked around the office, surveying her serfdom.

"Where's Tina?" she asked.

"You keep asking me that, like I'm supposed to know. I don't. I don't know where Jackson is either."

She went over to where Williams was reviewing my folders and, from what I could see from the corner of my eye, not doing a very thorough job. He'd scan the pages, just making sure there was writing on the lines, any writing, and move on to the next. Carver began to read over his shoulder, once in a while putting a pointed finger on an entry and tapping it against the page. I could hear the click of her nails.

"It's my understanding, and correct me if I'm wrong, that you have to give me at least a week's notice before coming over and inspecting my files or sitting in on my groups."

No one said anything.

"Am I wrong?"

"No, you're not wrong. Call your union rep if you want."

"It's a little late for that. It's your responsibility to call me."

"Call your rep." Her look dared me to do that.

I looked around. Lard sat slumped in Lourdes' chair, his hand propped on the arm holding up his head, one side listing so dangerously, I thought it would collapse at any moment. Williams just sat waiting to see how this game would be played out.

She straightened herself up and came over to me. "We like the work you've done so far," she began. "How the Hell would she know what kind of work I'd done?" I said to myself. "However, you must clock out at three, no exceptions, that's the time you're contracted for and that's the time you'll put in, everyday. Is that understood?"

"Wait a second. You've seen my time cards. I'm always here ten to fifteen minutes early in the morning and often times I'm here well beyond four. Sometimes the kids have problems that know no time."

"That's not my concern..."

"I thought we're in the business of concern."

"Don't interrupt me, please. As I was saying, that's not my concern, nor should it be yours. You merely say to them that whatever problem they're having will have to wait until tomorrow."

"That sounds pretty ridiculous."

"What did you say?"

"It's stupid. How can you, who've been in this business for twenty years, not know that?"

Williams, who'd been trying to catch my eye, looked at me with an expression that said I shouldn't pursue this.

"You might call it ridiculous or anything you want, but while you're working for this program you'll do things my way—or look for another position. Herman, show him his time cards."

With great effort the hippo rose and lumbered over to me, cards in hand. When he got close enough I could smell on his breath last night's sautéed onions and whatever else, liver, I think. I looked at the Xerox copies with each occasion of my leaving early circled in red.

"You have to be kidding?"

Herman Lard, obese, disheveled, and old, whispered, "She's not." I turned my face slightly away from his breath.

"I'm not kidding," Carver said.

"You know what I think I'm going to do today? I just thought of it. There's an old German writer-philosopher, Schiller, who said, 'Against stupidity the gods themselves struggle in vain.' I think I'll turn that into a lesson about their responsibility in their own lives in respect to using substances that retard their growth. Sounds good, right?"

"I strongly suggest you teach what's in the manual that we've so carefully constructed through the years."

"Of course. And don't worry, from now on I'll clock out at three."

"One more thing: I want a better, more detailed treatment plan for each student."

"Will do."

Lard handed me a slip of paper detailing the times I'd punched out early and wanted me to sign it.

"Sorry," I said, "I'll have to speak to my union rep first."

"Just sign it," he whispered, "it doesn't mean anything."

"To you maybe." I noticed his undershirt, much too small for his girth, had ridden up his torso, making his belly protrude between his lower buttons.

"Nice outfit," I said to him.

"Don't be funny," he said, a tinge of anger in his voice.

"How can this thing be anything but funny?"

They gathered their things and began to leave. Carver turned to me once more. "Williams will be back in two weeks to see your treatment plans and sit in on a group and don't forget, we have a staff meeting at Stuyvesant next Wednesday at one, sharp."

"Looking forward to it," I said.

After that, they left, without another word.

Having to listen to idiots always set me off, but this time it didn't bother me all that much. After my experience yesterday, I knew what I'd do with these kids: the next right thing. Sometimes that meant working conventionally with them, other times it meant stepping outside the box. Maybe Joey was right? Maybe I could still surprise myself?

A few Saturdays ago, Ms. Lynch had asked me to run a seminar for the families of students who were having difficulty in or out of school. I chose my topic, What To Do If You Suspect Your Child is Using Drugs. Out of over one hundred parents or guardians who came to school that morning, none came into my room. These were not uncaring people, quite the contrary. They gave up a Saturday to be there. They'd worked hard all week long, not only at their jobs, but in trying to raise their kids and cooking and cleaning for their families. Besides, who among us doesn't have our own personal or interpersonal problems to deal with. In this case, however, drugs and alcohol were naturally so much a part of their landscape, they felt they had bigger problems than that, or they'd given up trying to do battle, or they, too, were using something to escape themselves and their world and didn't want that option taken away from them.

With no parent or guardian to talk with that morning, I sat back in my chair and tried to remember why I had so fallen in love with various taboos, and how I came to be sitting in this empty room with emptiness in, and outside, of me.

***

One of the wonderful things about alcoholism and drug addiction is that it simplifies your life, besides the false sense of wholeness it provides you while you're in its embrace. Each day you get up, if you have drugs, you use them, if you don't, you go get them. Some people have the impression that the life of a drunk or drug addict is dangerous, romantic, or just ugly. Perhaps, in the beginning, it's all of those things. For the most part, however, after you begin to purely need, not want, them, it's pretty dull and boring. The problem is that once they stop working and the pain and misery becomes greater what do you, can you, do? Suicide? Well, that's certainly an option. Sometimes that thought gave me great comfort because I knew the cage was not completely closed, which eased an already inflamed and disordered mind.

Shortly after the incident with Brother Don, I began to hit the sauce and narcotics pretty hard. They all saw it. Ernie, Dolores, Frankie, even Henry McGee. "Lighten up," they said. Hell, I wanted to "heavy it up." If I couldn't stand up for myself, much less for Angela, what the hell was I good for? The word, "man," was not the noun that leapt immediately to mind.

One late afternoon, with Dolores and Ernie working, I sat alone in Ernie's pad and put a match to the liquid in the spoon I was holding. No stranger to syringes, or the rituals of drugs, I found a vein and, once the blood created a thin red rose in the cylinder that I pushed into my arm, a warm liquid ocean engulfed me. Each and every thought, doubt, rolled away with the languid tides until they were swallowed up by indifference and replaced by a dreamy emptiness that just kept washing over me.

Angela no longer mattered. My family no longer mattered. Where I was and what I was doing was beside the point. What mattered to me were those dreams diffusing into other dreams, evaporating and forming other dreams, which would go on endlessly and forever. In the back of my mind, where a little beacon of reality hides, I knew it wouldn't and couldn't possibly become brighter.

It scared the hell out of me that I was one stop from nothingness. The stop I was on had the promise, false though it was, that offered a life of no hurt, no pain, and, most of all, no thinking. If I was to allow myself to keep using this way—I certainly had enough in the way of narcotics and prescriptions and doctors to keep me going for quite some time—I knew I'd soon cross the line between using because of real pain and using because I anticipated the pain, physical and otherwise.

In the subsequent weeks, I tried as many things as I could think of to wean myself away from the drugs. I modified my use by taking less, but at more occasions during the day; I'd take more at one time, but space the hours out longer; I substituted alcohol for pills and hoped that it could take their place; I tried cutting back a little every day, but soon reverted back to my familiar patterns. I simply couldn't do it.

Money, of course, wasn't a problem. I still had most of the money I'd taken with me when I'd left. I'd been living rent free, my drugs, for the most part, were supplied by Charity Hospital. The money I'd spent went for food, booze, and an occasional prostitute, Vixen Girl, whom I met at a French Quarter dive late one evening after she'd gotten off her shift as a stripper at the Mambo Lounge. Her real name was Susie Richardson, who'd come from the wilds of New Jersey to study art. Certain circumstances, which she wouldn't reveal to me, caused her to change her plans. Sometimes, when my need for another's flesh was too great, I dialed her number. For fifty dollars I'd get a moment or two of believing I'd had a body attached to this head of mine. Each time I wanted to start a conversation that would make her (and myself) more human to one another, she withdrew.

"I'm here for what I can do for you," she told me. "Max, let's keep this on that level, purely physical. Besides, I'm only chargin' you fifty, fifty less than what I usually get, so I have to like you. Leave it at that."

Without that element of intimacy it became boring and old very quickly. After we met a few times, it became too predictable for my tastes, and I never called her again.

"I don't understand you, Max," Dolores said to me one evening at Henry McGee's place. I'd just come from making a call to Vixen Girl. "Here I am ready to climb all over your bones, without commitment of any kind, with the kind of relationship you say you want to have, and I can't get no kind of play."

"I like you too much," I lamely said.

"Like!? You sure funny 'bout showin' it."

"You're different for me, that's all, drop it."

"No, I ain't no kinda different. I got me a pussy, tits, a mouth, and a brain and heart made for the other stuff. You just 'fraid."

"Maybe I am."

"You ever think 'bout just makin' someone else happy, 'stead of yourself? Ever think of that?"

"Yes. Didn't work out too well, did it?"

"Sure, but maybe there's other reasons why you ran away. Maybe you couldn't really be there for her, either."

I sat and stared at her.

"Max, I'm sorry, I truly am. I didn't really mean that, I didn't."

"Sure you did. It's O.K. Besides, you might be right. I've got to go." I threw a couple of bills on the table and left.

I didn't go to Vixen Girl that night or to another saloon. I went back to Ernie's place, crushed up two Dilaudid in a spoon, added water, cooked them, put a little ball of cotton into the spoon, and sucked the orange liquid through the needle's eye. An orange pumpkin exploded behind my eyes and the warmth of the world settled into place. My head slunk forward. I took a drag from the cigarette I'd lit and wondered why I couldn't do this forever. What would be so wrong with that? Who needed anyone, let alone me? So much simpler alone, without the voices, my own included. Just die then, another voice coming somewhere from inside me, said. Crush up another twenty pills and it's over. You've been through enough, more than enough, too much. You deserve to rest, sleep. Go on, it can only get worse. Go on, you're such a fucking coward. Go on. Do something right, for a change.

I took out the vial of Dilaudid from my bag and looked at the orange pills inside; there seemed to be about sixty of them left. Fine orange powder clung to the sides of the clear bottle. They stared impassively at me. I struggled to keep focus, my head rolling down to my chest. Finally, I lay back on my bed, the bottle still in my hand, locked in an old debate.

When I awoke the next morning, I knew three things. I knew I needed to see a doctor; I knew I needed to get a job; and I knew I needed to move from where I was living.

Charity Hospital's Emergency Room and clinic, early in the morning, was already filled with New Orleans' poor and suffering. The cries of infants and the moans of old men and women intermingled in this jangly harmonic of need. I'd called my doctor, Dr. Passionne, before coming over and told her I needed just to speak to her for a second. She told me what room her office was in and I took the elevator up past those waiting for relief of any kind. I could have called her from my place and asked her the same question, but decided that the worst place of all for me was my place and so I got up and out early.

"Max, don't tell me that you're out of medication already," she said after I sat down.

"No, of course not. I'm here about my diabetes. It's out of whack and I was hoping you could recommend a good diabetic doctor."

"You could have asked me that over the phone."

"I know. I just felt so antsy, I needed to get out."

"You don't look that great, Max."

"Do you know of a doctor?" I pressed.

"I do. I know of a very good doctor. He's an endocrinologist specializing in diabetes. He has privileges at this hospital, but his practice is a private one. I think he's the type of person you could work something out with, but let me call him now and get an appointment for you, hopefully today."

"Thank you," I said and felt relieved, which she must have seen because she patted my hand.

"You'll be all right. Dr. Goldman is a very good man, and one of the best diagnosticians I've ever met." She looked up his number in her hospital phone book and dialed the number. I felt better, for some reason, knowing he was Jewish. In a matter of seconds she turned to me and said, "All right, you have an appointment for one o'clock. Don't be late, he's cutting into his lunch hour and Dr. Goldman likes to eat." She gave me a piece of paper with his name, address, and phone number.

"Thanks," I said again, and left.

Two hours later, I sat in the waiting area in Goldman's office in the New Orleans Garden District among the wealthy gentry. Some of the women there seemed like they were going to opening night of the opera, wearing hats and white gloves while the men, middle-aged and older, were dressed in tropical wool business suits. They looked at me curiously.

A nurse had given me two sheets to fill out, listing my background information, medical history, and reason for my visit. I studiously filled them out without hiding anything from Goldman's view. When it came to writing in what kind of insurance coverage I had, I wrote, Independently wealthy as the occasion warrants.

"That's interesting," he laughed, 'Independently wealthy as the occasion warrants,' does that mean you'll pay me if you think it's warranted?"

I smiled despite myself. "No, no of course not. You'll get paid. I just didn't know what else to put. I have no insurance, but I do have money. I promise you that."

The nurse had brought me, not into an examination room, but into his office. Goldman was seated behind a large cherry wood desk with windows behind him overlooking a lush and beautiful garden. He was eating what looked to be a plate of shrimp remoulade, the shrimp as big as an extended thumb and forefinger. There was a pitcher of iced tea sitting on a tray behind him. The room, surrounded by dark cherry wood walls, abstract paintings, and tapestries, was hushed by the light that was allowed to enter.

Even sitting behind his desk, I could tell Goldman was tall and well built. His handsomeness, obviously Jewish, reminded me a little of Robert Redford. He wore an immaculate, blue pin-stripped suit, white shirt, and paisley tie. His blond hair was combed straight back and glistened from something he applied to it. His eyes though blue, were warm and welcoming.

"As you can see, this is my lunch hour. I'm seeing you on my time now. We can discuss fees later. I've had a chance to read what you've written, but it doesn't tell me why you're here today. So, tell me. Would you like a glass of iced tea first?"

"I'm in trouble—no thanks, no tea for me—in uncharted waters and, very simply, I'm scared shitless."

"Tell me about that."

And I did. He didn't hurry me, although I knew he had patients to see. There was something deep set, behind his eyes, that allowed me to be as detailed and specific as I could be. Not once, no matter what I told him, did I feel judged or threatened. I began from the time I became diabetic to when I met Angela and fell in love, to having had my bones broken on orders from my father, and moving down here in search of her. Also, I told him how I began taking drugs and what I was taking them for.

"I can help manage your diabetes and other physical matters. I can also, if you want, try to be a friend, as best I can, given the circumstance, but as far as drugs are concerned, and matters of the mind and heart, I have someone to refer you to, Dr. Lipkin. I'd go to Dr. Lipkin today, if I can get you an appointment, if you'd like?"

"Yes, I would."

"While I make the call, go into my examination room, outside and to your left and let my nurse draw some blood. I'll be in to take your vital signs and then you'll call me in a few days, I should have the results. We'll take it from there. Oh, and Max, by the way, I would much rather talk about literature and film than I would about most other things."

I sat there, on the table, a jumble of emotions, and welcomed the nurse when she came in and took my height, weight, and drew my blood. I looked away as she inserted the needle into my arm.

When Goldman came in to take my signs he advised me to try not to do too much today. He suggested I hold off looking for a job until I saw Lipkin and he had spoken to me about the test results. Also, he asked that I limit my drug usage to as little as possible. He knew there was a battle raging inside me about when to use and how much to use. He suggested that should I feel the pressure to use I stick with Percocet and leave the harder narcotics alone.

"What's a Jewish doctor doing down here?" I asked him as I was putting on my shirt.

"The food and a woman, of course. I met this beautiful belle at college who comes from here. First she seduced me and then the food did the rest."

Before leaving I stopped by the nurse's desk to ask how much this visit would be. She told me that Dr. Goldman had not asked for a fee today and handed me a card with the name of Dr. J. Lipkin and a phone number.

When I returned to Ernie's place, I called Lipkin. The service told me that Dr. Lipkin returned calls at six. I had two hours to kill. I took a few Percocet and put a few more in my pocket and went to see Ernie at the Cafe Du Monde. He was, as usual, behind the cash register reading, Catch-22. "Max, my fren, good you here," he said to me as I leaned over the register to see what the book was. "Funny fuckin' book, man. Have a coffee in de back. I slip soon away."

I took a table in the back where the staff usually sat, away from the rest of the customers. Before I could light a cigarette, the waiter, Jesse, whom I knew since Ernie started working there, put down a coffee and a plate of fresh beignets. I asked him for a glass of water and when he brought it I took two more Percocet, the better to mix with the coffee. But as soon as I swallowed the pills, I wanted to get up and leave. I wanted to just split the whole fucking scene. Disappear. I wanted to get into my car and drive. Wyoming, maybe, or the Dakotas, Washington state, perhaps I'd go, somewhere pristine and pure and work the grime and grease off my soul. Fuck everything and everybody. I'd never done anything purely by myself. I'd always had a friend, an accomplice, a women paving the way with, and for, me, greasing the rails, emboldening me, propping me up, giving me courage. Frankie, Angela, Ernie, Dolores, and countless others did that for me through the years. They allowed and encouraged me to be what I was, but at this point, I didn't know what I was. I suspected, I never did.

"We live with each other, but see each other less," Ernie said as he sat down next to me. Almost immediately, Jesse brought another coffee. "How are you, my fren?"

"I'm not good."

"Wha' dat mean?"

"Ernie," I began, and started to cry. "Oh, shit." Tears that I hadn't expected started to flow and threatened to overwhelm me. I looked away, embarrassed.

He took his flask from his pocket and passed it under the table. When it hit my leg I reached down to grab it. He held fast to my hand for a moment before he released them both. I took a sip of what I knew was Wild Turkey and it braced me going down. I nodded to Ernie in appreciation.

"No rush, take your time," he said, "we got plenty of time."

I looked up at him, "I don't think I do. It seems I'm running out of that."

"No, no, time runnin' out is when you see your blood being sucked in by the earth."

My tears had stopped and I looked at him clear and dry-eyed.

He sat back in his chair and took a sip from his flask.

"I've got to try and stop this—the booze, the dope—I'm drowning in the shit. Or maybe I'm disintegrating. I don't know which. After I leave here I'm going back to our place to get a call from a psychiatrist. I hope he can see me quickly. I've got to stop, but I don't know if I can, or want to. I've been waking up every morning with this dark sense of dread and the first thing I do is reach for the dope. Now, I'm fucking shooting it."

"The long-sleeved shirts?"

"Yeah, the long-sleeved shirts." Ernie took his hand and placed it over mine. The gesture, though surprising, was welcomed. In fact, it felt a lot like love. A kind of love I hungered for. I'd never had a sexual desire for another man before—at least not that I allowed to think about for very long, I didn't—but I felt, in that instant, how I could.

"I don't fuck de men," Ernie said, "but dat don't mean I never loved dem neither."

My tears came again, more forceful than before. He squeezed my hand harder.

"In de tunnels, I come face to face with my own stink, my own stains. And I smell the others. They stink is purer. My stink is a stranger's stink. Why de fuck I'm dere I don't know. I wait in de fuckin' bowels of de earth days waiting for another's stink. But they stink is part of the earth. At de beginning, the edge keep me alive, but den I t'ink bout my stain, what I do, who I become. My purpose, I used to know, get lost. I get lost. I t'ink, I want to go home and meet with de mudderfuckers who got me here. De dead ends, de stupids—I don't know if I say dis right—but my life was not meant for de tunnels. I love tings, but I hate, too. Killin' gave me a reason not to kill the me that they kill already."

"And now?"

"Now? Shit. I don't know no now. De tunnels taught me now. Dis here is anything but now. But for you, my fren, this is now for you. You a step into de tunnels. Dolores and me we know dis, we speak 'bout dis, but we can't do nothin' 'bout dis.

"Let me tell you somethin'. One time, I run fast. Even de wind had a hard time catchin' Ernie. I give Dolores two-block lead to race to home. Four blocks to home and beat her. My father say only sissies run, and he never see me, junior high school, high school, never. But I don't care—at least I t'ink I don't care. Dolores and me lovers in high school. She smartest girl I ever know. She taught me t'ings, heavy shit, man. And school become more than just words and numbers. Den de fuckin' war, and de fuckin' scholarship.

"My father, brothers, cousins, uncles, everyfuckinbody, says I gotta fight. Dolores say run. Run like the wind. Ha." He took another sip from his flask and, once again, under the table, passed it to me. "Dat word, 'run,' to an eighteen-year-old means different than today. I picked de wrong time to stay for de wrong reasons. You, my fren, is t'inkin' dat now, run, no run." He paused and looked at me. "I tell you one t'ing: listen to your head and heart and see which one try to lie to you most."

We looked at each other for the briefest of seconds. "I got to get back to work. Later, my fren."

"Can you stop on your own?" asked Dr. Lipkin. The fact that Dr. Lipkin was Dr. Judith Lipkin made me hesitate slightly.

"No, I don't think I can," I said.

"Then I'll arrange to get you a bed."

I was thrown off balance from the moment she appeared and asked me to come into her office. Dr. Lipkin was of medium height and, while not attractive, she wasn't unattractive, either. She was simply but expensively dressed, and exuded the air of professionalism, yet seemed warm at the same time. As I followed her inside I worried how I was going to tell her what was really going on inside me for most of my life. I thought when her secretary called me back with the time of our appointment what I was going to say and how I was going to say it. That plan was thrown out the window as soon as I saw her. I'd thought that when a person went into see a psychiatrist they must lay their soul bare, confessing everything to the doctor, their deepest secrets, subjects for analysis. How could I tell her I just felt like fucking Ernie yesterday? Or I thought my penis was too short—how about that for a subject? Did she really need to know things like that to help me? I hoped not.

"The only thing I can help you with now is getting the garbage out of your system. After that, we'll see."

"See what? Are you saying I'm not 'helpable'?"

"The record of drug addicts and alcoholics are not good in traditional therapy, though I've had some success. They have a hard time dealing with frustration and this process can be very frustrating. But we'll see if we can work together. First, though, let me help you through this stage."

"But you heard what I told you. It wasn't my fault. Those bastards did this to me. The pain was intense. I..."

"You could have stopped much, much sooner if you'd have wanted to, but you didn't. If you see nothing else you need to see that."

Suddenly she became ugly. "O.K., Dr. Lipkin. Let's get this started with, and then we'll see what happens next."

"We can do it in ten or twenty-one days. I prefer twenty-one."

"Why?"

"Because your commitment will be longer and we'll get a better chance to work together and find out if we trust each other enough to continue working together. Either way, the detox won't be painful. It's your decision."

"Twenty-one, and, Dr. Lipkin?"

"Yes?"

"I'm not what you think."

"And I'm not thinking what you think I'm thinking. Try to relax. Go home, Max, and wait for my call. It shouldn't be too long. And please, keep yourself alive a little while longer."

"Why'd you just say that?"

She looked at me for the first time with a kind of warmth reserved for friends and family. "Because if you kill yourself now, you'll be killing the wrong person."

It was long, though. Seven years and three months later, we shook hands and said our good-byes.

***

Felix didn't come to school the next day, nor the day after. I'd thought I'd see his face beaming. I'd thought that I'd be able to help him turn his life around. Instead, he was there by his absence. I had a nagging feeling that something wasn't right. I'd thought to call his home, but decided to wait at least until the end of the day to do that.

Only that day there was no end. First, Katie and Sheila came in on cat's feet. Before I saw them I sensed a presence and looked up from the mail I was trying to sort through.

"You frightened me, ladies. You'd both make great burglars."

They smiled, but I could see they weren't there to say good morning to me.

"Pull up some chairs. What can I do for you?"

Katie looked at Sheila who nodded her head in my direction and told Katie, with a tinge of anxiety, to go ahead and tell me why they'd come in.

"We need a place to get tested, Mr. Heller."

"Tested for what?"

"The virus. I had sex with this guy one time..."

"Me, too," Sheila blurted out.

"The same guy?"

"No, different guys," Katie said and they both smiled to each other. "I didn't know this guy and I'm afraid I caught..." She stopped and her tears came as quickly as her smile left her. When Sheila saw Katie's tears, her own tears came as well.

"Me, too, Mistah. One guy. One time. If my father finds out I slept with someone and now have the virus he'll kill me before the virus does."

"The other day when we were just talkin' about it in group you said that the sooner you find out the better."

"That's true, but let me get back to something first. This is confidential. All of it. Not only here but also in the place I'm going to send you to get tested."

Both of them were so busy grabbing tissues from the box I had on my desk, I wondered if they'd heard what I just said.

"Did you both hear what I just said?" The nodded their heads. "Good. Can I ask you both a few questions?"

"Yes."

"How many times did you have sex with these guys?"

"Once, Mistah, I swear."

"Me, too, Mr. Heller. Just once."

"How long ago?"

"A month, maybe a little longer."

"Two months."

"Chances are better than average that you're both fine, but you're doing the right thing especially since you really didn't know them nor did either of you use a condom. I want you to know that I'm glad you came to me. It takes a certain kind of courage that not too many people have, especially at your age. I know a very good place, Friends in Deed, not far from here that does the tests for free. They take a swab out of the inside of your cheek and get the results back in about a week. I know that's going to be the longest week of your lives, but we'll get through it." I stopped. Their eyes were open wide and full of fear. "It's safe, it's close by, and nobody will have to know." The same fear remained. "Would you feel better if I went with you?"

"Yes, I would."

"Please, Mistah, wouldya?"

"All right. It's not something I'm supposed to do, but. Let me make a phone call and I'll talk with you later. Now, go to class. I'll write you both passes." I opened my desk and got my passes out. "Wait a second. I'll need to know a few things. How old are you both?"

"Fifteen," said Katie.

"Fourteen, I'll be fifteen in February."

"Can you both do this today, after class, if I can arrange it?"

They looked at each other and nodded their heads.

"O.K. Here are your passes, now get out of here and let me do some work."

They smiled and thanked me and, leaning against each other, almost shoulder to shoulder, they left.

Friends in Deed had sent me some literature about their program some weeks before and I rummaged through the papers on my desk to find it. I called the agency, introduced myself, told the person the situation, and made an appointment for four that afternoon.

The education that we brought into the high schools in the Sixties, teaching prevention in regard to drug abuse and sex had given us a crack epidemic and now, AIDS. So much for enlightenment. I'd heard it said, or read somewhere, that those hell-bent Catholic missionaries who went into the jungles bringing the savages salvation through the light of Jesus, brought only plague, pestilence, and darkness instead.

"Mistah, you been busy a long time," Candy said as she came into my room. Her usual bubbly self was remarkably subdued. I'd seen her pass by my office two or three times while I was with Katie and Sheila. I had the feeling that there were planes backed up on the runway.

"Sit down, you don't look so good."

She took one of the chairs vacated by the girls and said, as she was sitting down, "He killed my dog, Mistah."

"Who killed your dog?"

"My brother, man. Motherfucker kicked my dog to death. He didn't do him nothin' neither. Dog was just sick and makin' noises. So my brother gets up and says to the dog to shut up and let him sleep and the dog just keeps whinin' and moanin' and then my brother begins to kick him, over and over, 'til he stop.

"My moms, she do nothin'. Her stupid fuckin' boyfriend don't do nothin', 'cept laugh. I tried to hold him back but he too big for me now so I just watched my dog die." She reached over for the tissues and took one. I opened my drawer and took out another box.

I remembered her file. She'd lived in a shelter with her mother, brother, and younger sister for almost two years. She was sixteen, but still a freshman. When her mother found a subsidized apartment in Brooklyn, on Ocean Avenue, her old boyfriend moved right back in with them.

"Why didn't they do anything, Candy?"

"They pussies, Mistah, 'specially that punk-ass motherfucker, Raul, my mother's boyfriend."

"How old is your brother?"

"Fourteen. He strong, but that punk Raul coulda stopped it if he wanted, instead of laughin'. He just a slimy sleazy fuck. I coulda..." Candy just stopped. She pulled herself up short, and tried to gather herself.

"You could have what?"

"Nothin'."

"You could have what, Candy?"

The way her eyes and body shifted made me believe there was a lot more behind, "nothin."

"Candy," I said softly, "you could have what?"

She reached over and took a few more tissues. All her bravura and all her street smarts were coming unglued. She fidgeted in her seat and didn't want to make eye contact with me.

"Candy, would you feel better speaking with another woman?"

"No, Mistah, it ain't that. No, it ain't that. Sorry, Mistah."

"Listen, Candy. I can see you have a world of pain inside you that I believe you had nothing at all to do with. I also think if you don't talk about whatever that pain is soon, that shit will eat you up. Keeping that stuff inside you will make you feel uglier and uglier. If you don't want to, or can't, talk about it with me, at least let me find you someone who you can talk to."

"No, Mistah." She was crying more now.

"It's the kind of pain that makes you do some bad and crazy things to yourself just so you don't have to feel all that shit inside you. The thing is, I bet you're punishing yourself for something that wasn't even your fault."

"How you know all that, Mistah? Seriously. How?" she said, dabbing at her tears.

"I can see it in your eyes," I said.

"You can see all that in my eyes?"

"Yes."

She looked up at me and took a deep breath. "One day," she began, "I was about eight maybe, wait, wait, wait, I gotta back up, sorry, Mistah but I wanna be right about all this when I tell ya..."

"Take your time. Slow down and take your time."

"O.K., O.K., before he come, before Raul come, it was a mess. My home was a real fuckin' mess. My mom was a crackhead pure and simple. When she knew she was goin' on one of her runs, there was no tellin' when she might be back. She had a cousin a few blocks—wasn't her real cousin—but we always knew her as Aunt Lena, and my mom brings all us kids—me, my brother, my little sister—over to her 'cause she got a girl of her own and my mom thought she was there all the time with her. I don't know how my moms didn't know, but Aunt Lena was a junkie. And Aunt Lena, well, soon as she got a couple of bucks from my mom she went out too, but when she went out she just took all of us kids and locked us in a room for sometimes two or three days with nothin' 'cept buckets to piss and shit in and a few boxes of Pop Tarts and warm sodas. After the first few times we just got used to it. Sometimes we beat the hell out of each other play-fightin' and sometimes I read to them the list of shit in those Pop Tarts.

"It was Raul who change all that shit. He made my moms get off the crack and things were cool. My moms, she gets a job and Raul keeps sayin' he waitin' for his union to find him somethin.

"One day I had this itchy scaly rash on my bottom. My mom usually puts Vaseline on it, but she wasn't there. I ask Raul to do it. He begin, but he do it all slow and shit. It was then somethin' inside me starts feelin' funny, but I can't say nothin'. What the hell was I gonna say anyway? I didn't know what was goin' on. Anyways, I hear him pull down his fly and then I feel him rubbin' his thing on my bottom. I get all nervous and pull up my pajamas and go to my room and wouldn't come out for nothin'. Next day he asked me to bring him a roll of toilet paper into the bathroom. I felt somethin wrong, but I do it anyway. When I go in the only thing I see is his cock, big and hard and red, purple almost. He ax me if I want to see it shoot milk and I say, no, but it wasn't a hard, 'no' maybe it was a kind of stutter 'no.' Shit, I don't know. I didn't know what the fuck ta say. He tells me now to touch it, please touch it he says and then he make me take my hand and put it around it and jerk him off. I felt so sick and slimy inside. Whatever I just did, I never wanted to do it again.

"When my moms came home, I told her what happened with me and Raul. Her face get red and she gets so mad she just slapped me and told me to shut the fuck up. And that was it."

"Where's Raul now?"

"Oh, he out, Mistah."

"Are you sure he's out?"

"Yeah, I'm sure. He out least six months now?"

"Candy, listen. If he's not out—-and I don't think he is—I've got to call a social worker in on this. It's really not safe for you, but especially for your little sister, there."

"No, Mistah, don't call. He out. I swear he out. You see that why I never shoulda spoken with you in the first place."

"You did the right thing, Candy. And you'll be doing something as important if you tell me the truth. At the beginning of your story you told me he laughed when your brother kicked the dog to death. And now you're saying he wasn't there. It's not safe for none of you."

"No, Mistah, no. She gotta new boyfriend. Raul ain't there no more. He ain't. I swear."

"C'mon..."

"Mistah, I'm tellin' the truth and I gotta go to class."

"Candy, since when do you go to class? You haven't been to class all last year and most of this. One of the reasons for that is that your home life is so messed up. Please let me help you. Sometimes it's better to get out of your house and into a different, more supportive, environment."

"Please, Mistah. I can't leave my mom or my little sister. Please."

"Let's just talk about this a little longer. I'll write a pass for you for the second period, come back here then."

"Gotta go, Mistah. Gotta go."

She got up with the speed of light, but before she could lift her black leather jacket slung over the chair I grabbed her hand and got up, too. "Don't go, Candy. I know you're afraid, but that's all right. Let me try and help you deal with some of this." She twisted her hand so hard she freed herself from my grip and took her leather jacket and, as she was leaving, said, "Thanks," to me over her shoulder.

I waited until Candy was well on her way to wherever she was going, English class not really being an option for her. I opened her folder and dialed her home number. When a man answered I asked if Jose was there. No, was his curt reply. I repeated the number I dialed and asked him again if he was sure there was no Jose there. "You got the right number," came his reply, "but there ain't no Jose here. This is Raul."

"Thanks," I told him, "must be some kind of screw-up." I put the phone down, took Candy's folder, and walked downstairs to where the social worker's offices were. I knocked on Frieda Soriano's door.

"Entra," her voice said, and I pushed her door open and entered. "Hola, Mr. Heller. Nice to see you again."

Frieda Soriano was a tall and beautiful Dominican. There was a warmth and a sexiness that surrounded this full-figured woman who, near forty, was our only bilingual counselor in a school that had a mostly Hispanic population.

"Please call me, Max. Every time I hear a 'Mr.' in front of my name I either don't know who they're talking to or they don't know me very well."

"Frieda then," she said with a laugh. "What brings you into my palace?"

"I've got a problem with one of the students that maybe you can help me with."

"I'll try. Sit down and tell me what's up."

I described in detail my encounter with Candy earlier in the day. After I finished, I handed her Candy's file to read.

"We need to call this in," Frieda said after she finished reading the file.

"If we call this in now, we might lose her."

"I realize that, but we still have to call this in. Her home situation is too volatile."

"Wait a second. Let's think about this for a minute. If we lose her, then what?"

"We can't think about, 'Then what?' We can only do the right thing now, then try to deal with whatever happens later. I've been through this many times before. Many more times than not, when I hesitated it was worse. Worse for the student and worse for the family."

"But all that's pretty iffy, wouldn't you say?"

"Sure, it's pretty iffy. But would you rather I not call it in and we find her or her little sister violated next week or next month? Or, knowing what I do about those situations it could be much, much worse. Do you want to live with that? I don't. Besides, if I know of something and don't report it and something does happen, it's my ass, my license."

"What about her ass?"

"What about it? I wish there was another way to do this, but there's not. Besides, sometimes these interventions really work out. You'd be surprised how afraid some people are when social services come calling. Sometimes, it works."

"I hope so."

Here she was trying to do the hardest thing possible, trying to balance what was good for the child against what her professional obligations were. Frieda knew, better than most, the consequences of the action she was about to take. She also knew her own needs and her families needs. She was trying not to jeopardize either. Also, I knew from the kids I had that she was a good, caring person. Whether this was the wrong or right move, I had no way of knowing. All I did know was that these social services agencies designed to protect children and families had a very poor track record.

There was no hesitation on her part. She called ACS, the Administration of Child Services, introduced herself, told a reviewer the nature of the situation, and received, from the person, a complaint and tracking number. I knew, as she did, nothing would end so formulaically.

Candy was not in my third-period class, but Gabriella was, looking worn and tired. The usual bounce in her step was reduced to a slow shuffle as she took her seat. When I looked at her, she forced a smile and then slumped back in her chair. "What else," I thought, "could be going on now?" I tried to fight my impulse to inquire, but after class, a class about how best to get them to look beyond their own zip codes, I called her over to my desk.

"You look beat."

"I am, Mistah. I'm exhausted."

"It can't be because you're up all night studying."

"No, Mistah," she laughed, "nothin' like that. I'm takin' care of Compton's little kid."

"How's that?"

"I don't know, it just is."

"Gabby, you're seventeen years old taking care of a drug-dealer's son. What's next for you? Taking care of his kid and one of your own? I can tell you, you're smart, that scene gets old pretty quick."

"It's old now, Mistah."

"So, get out."

"It ain't that easy."

"Let me think of a few things. We're going to break for the Thanksgiving holidays, but when we get back we should talk right away."

"O.K., Mistah."

She got up from her seat slow, pushing herself up by the arms of the chair. I watched her walk out of my office and couldn't, for the life of me, think of anything I could do to help her.

At two-fifty Katie and Sheila entered my office. I told them to wait out the back entrance of the school and follow me to the six train at the Brooklyn Bridge station. When I got off the train they should do the same. The facility was not too far from the Prince Street station on Broadway.

It was a gray November afternoon, with the first flakes of winter snow drifting down to the ground, but not sticking. It seemed to make people hunker further down into their jackets, even though the humidity provided a kind of warmth not seen in days.

This section of New York City, SoHo, always held a throng of people going in what seemed to be four directions at once. Into and out of the stores and boutiques that lined Broadway, the main artery, and the side streets connecting to it. All I was able to see were woolen hats and scarves, beautiful Irish tweed coats and cashmere jackets, jostling among those who wore the ghetto garb of the age, who were going in or coming out of the big sporting goods or urban wear stores in that neighborhood. Each person was bumping up against or out-maneuvering others at their side or a little in front of them. When they found a sliver of space to navigate through, they made their move.

I knew that Katie and Sheila were behind me as I looked for the address on Broadway. Finding it, I went through the doors and to the elevator. They were on my heels. Katie must have pushed Sheila in front of her because she nearly fell on top of me as I entered the door.

"Easy, ladies," I laughed. "We're going to get through this, believe me."

The door opened to the seventh floor, the girls lagged behind me. It was a warm, soothing looking room done in earth tones and beige. Reproductions of famous paintings and prior exhibits at various museums hung on the walls and magazines of every variety were scattered about the tables and chairs.

The girls took seats together at the furthest end of the room when I went to approach the receptionist. I introduced myself and told him I'd called earlier. He was well aware of the appointments and seemed warm and friendly. He was a man in his late twenties, with skin as smooth and clear as any I'd ever seen. I knew though he had AIDS; I could see that, too. He asked me to have the girls come up to his desk to fill out some forms and that I should relax and take a seat. This won't be too long a process, he added.

I went to where they were sitting and told them to go to his desk to fill out some papers. They looked at each other, terrified. It's only ordinary forms they need you both to fill out, I told them. Uneasily, they got up and shuffled over to him. After they did, they came back and the three of us sat side by side without saying much of anything to each other. No more than five minutes went by before two women came out and called their names. I felt the surge of fear run through their bodies; it ran through mine as well. I held them by their arms as they rose and went over to the women, who led them into the inner offices.

In their absence, I busied myself picking up all the new literature I could find on HIV/AIDS and other sexually communicable diseases and began reading them. My classes needed to know whatever had just come out about them.

Katie came out first and sat beside me. I looked at her face, which was a study in worry.

"How did it go?"

"Fine, Mr. Heller. It was so easy, like you said, she asked me some questions than she took a Q-tip and rubbed it on the inside of my cheek. Scraped off whatever and that was it. She told me she'll have the results back in a week and I could either come up or call."

"I'm sure it's going to be a long week, but it'll pass. Just know you did the smart thing, the brave thing." She was just barely able to get out the word, "Thanks."

"Katie, listen. I know you won't be able to think about anything else for the next week, and that's all right. But there's something I want you to try and do for me, for yourself."

"What's that?"

"We've spoken about this a little before in our first interview together and I've never been able to follow-up about it and I apologize for that. During that talk we had you told me that you drank and that at times, times at home, you also cut yourself a little bit. You told me that the cutting really used to be a problem, but you all but stopped now. But when you spoke about your drinking your whole face lit up."

"I like to drink, Mr. Heller."

"I'm sure you do. It relieves a lot of the tension and stress you have in your life, but now it's not doing you a bit of good. You told me that your grades had gone down from last year and that you find yourself looking forward to having that drink at the first opportunity, and that's not good. I'm asking you not to drink this week and aside from Thanksgiving coming up I want you to come into my office each morning and tell me how you did. Even if you had a drink don't be embarrassed that I'm not going to like you or any of that other crazy stuff that might be floating around in that nutty mind of yours. Let's just concentrate on that and see how you feel. Is it a deal?"

Her face registered the kind of disappointment reserved when close and trusted friends were about to say good-bye. "It's a deal, Mr. Heller."

I placed my hand on her forearm and lightly squeezed. "Thanks, Katie."

Sheila came out a few moments later and when the two saw each other they started to cry again. Katie stood up and they hugged each other.

"How did it go, Sheila?"

"O.K., Mistah. I'll find out in a week."

"Same as me," Katie said.

"Listen, ladies, there's nothing to be done now except go home and be there for one another. You both did good."

The three of us went downstairs in the elevator and out into the street. The snow was falling a little harder now.

"I'm going to go shopping for dinner. I feel better when I cook. Takes my mind off things, usually." And I laughed at my own wishful thinking. "You best do the same. Go home, I mean." I could see they didn't want me to go, but there was nothing more I could do for them now. "It'll be all right. Have I lied to you yet? No, I haven't and I won't. Go on, get going." I turned away from them and started walking in the direction of my home, wishing I could make everything all right for them.

I walked west, to Faiccio's Pork Store on Bleecker, and started there by picking up two thick center-cut chops and a jar of red vinegar peppers. I hadn't cooked for myself in a long time, but this day caused for a mini-celebration. I even bought a nice bottle of Italian red wine before going upstairs, ready to feast and then relax.

By the time I got out of my clothes and was ready to take a shower, it was after six. I turned on the TV to the Channel Seven News and waited for the picture to come on. Why I needed to see it light up with sight and sound I could never figure out. The screen came alive with his face, young and handsome. His deep-set brown eyes showed the light of youth, promise, and a touch of recklessness. Next to his picture was a young girl, five or six, in a pink party dress, her black ringlets covering her forehead and ears. Her smile was the smile of a sweet child posing for the camera. I couldn't move. I stood naked and cold, my arms crossing themselves across my chest, gripping each shoulder. They cut from the photos to the two gurneys that were being wheeled out of some Flatbush Avenue hellhole. The apartment building sat sad and crumbling in the background, framing their corpses. The story concluded with this disheveled, crazy looking woman, in handcuffs, her hair as wild as her eyes, being escorted from the building by two detectives and led to an unmarked police car. There were two interviews that the reporter did with the building's tenants who said what a quiet, lovely person she was and each were amazed that she could do a thing like that, killing her two foster children.

Felix's mystery was over.

I moved heavily into the kitchen where I put the food away into the refrigerator. I went into the bathroom and took a long, hot shower.

Once showered, I slipped into sweat pants and shirt, grabbed my insulin and my jacket and walked. I kept on walking, making what turned out to be a circular route from my apartment, through the East and West Village until I arrived downtown, across the street from my high school and stared into the formidable concrete fortress and the darkness of the building. I pushed myself to the South Street Market and stood on a platform overlooking the East River. The wind had picked up and, except for a few lamps lighted behind me, the river was pitch black. Barely was I able to make out any rhythm. I was dressed too lightly for the night, and began to shiver. The hour had grown late, and I knew that if I didn't get some food inside me soon, I couldn't even think about continuing to walk.

The Mei Lai Wah Tea and Coffee Shop was about half full of customers when I got there. Still, there were three men up front cleaning the floor and counter and six or seven Chinamen slurping their evening meal at the far back table, near the kitchen. Anna was at a smaller table near them, involved in doing what looked to be the day's receipts.

"Can I bother you?" I asked her.

"Max," she said without looking up. "You can bother me anytime."

I slid into a chair opposite her at the table, watching her add and subtract figures on an abacus. She ran her fingers up and down the two columns of beads, adding and subtracting as she went. In the time it took me to light a cigarette she was finished. The only reason I took the liberty of smoking was because I was in the back table with her. Besides, she wasn't shy. If she had any notion of me crossing a boundary she'd be as quick as she was with math to point that out. Without looking at me, she pulled an ashtray from where she sat and slid it over to me.

"Your face moldy," was the first thing she said. "What are you smoking?"

"Lucky Strike, but maybe I should be smoking formaldehyde?"

"Light me one, too."

"You almost finished?"

"By the time you have soup, I be done." She turned around and motioned for a waiter to come over. She didn't ask what I wanted. Instead, she said something in Chinese and he went back to the kitchen to deliver her request. I sat, smoking the cigarette and, as unobtrusively as I could, took an insulin shot in my abdomen.

The soup arrived in a thick rice broth with mushrooms, green roots of some kind, carrots, and different pieces of fish. In the middle of the bowl was a fish head. I saw Anna peer at me over the top of her reading glasses and smile.

"A little soy sauce, maybe?"

I did as I was told. My first spoonful tasted wonderful, the thickness of the rice broth forced me to chew slowly. It gave the soup time to warm my chest then stomach. After my first few tentative bites, I devoured the bowl. I finished by picking at the meaty and sweet flesh underneath the fish's gills.

"Some people just jump in and eat, but not you. You test, even though you know me and my food."

"Never used to be that way when I was younger."

"But your life not working now." Anna turned back to her staff and said something that again, I couldn't understand. In a few seconds a beautifully cut decanter filled with a deep honey-colored liquid was placed on the table with two plain tea glasses.

"You don't have to do this."

"Nobody has to do anything." She pulled the glass stopper from the decanter and poured each of us drinks. "Older than us," she said.

I sipped at my drink. "It tastes better than I feel."

"It supposed to."

"You still busy, Anna?"

"No more busy."

Her staff was cleaning away their dinner dishes, mopping the front floor, emptying the steam cabinets, getting ready to close down for the day. I took another swallow and Anna laughed. "You drink like cheap bar scotch."

"I'll take that if you have it?"

"Sorry, I don't serve that to friends."

The front windows became frosted when they opened the steam cabinets. The second swallow braced me for what I had to say.

"Anna, I helped kill a young student of mine and his younger sister today."

"You don't look very much like a killer to me—maybe yourself, but others, I don't think so."

"I made a phone call to the wrong person. I should have called an agency the deals with children's services. He and his sister were in a terrible situation and I thought that I alone could solve the problem for them."

"What happened?" She filled my glass and put her hand over the top of it. "Easy, or I never understand."

I told her the story up until I saw their pictures on the television news. She thought about it for a few seconds, but made no comment.

"Max," she finally said, "tell me why you back; why you really back."

I looked down at the table, lit another cigarette, handing her one, took another sip of cognac and began from the beginning, leaving out nothing. She knew Angela, of course, because of all the times we'd come into her shop. The pregnancy, the beatings, the separation ended the first part of my story. I took another sip and began in New Orleans. I told her of my search for her, the dead ends, the dope, the addiction, and cleaning up with the help of a therapist and some good people around me. Finally, I told her that I wanted to come back here to see if I could live here again.

"But why you back?" she repeated.

"I just told you."

"Not really."

"I wanted to be back in the last place that Angela and I were with each other and happy."

"Don't think so either."

"Christ, Anna, what is this, Twenty Questions?"

"No, Max, there really only one reason you back, but until you realize it, every decision you make is on what you think you wanted to do and didn't or, now, what you think you can't do. There a big knot in the pit of your stomach. You already tried to cut it—or you thought you did—and in New Orleans when you knew you didn't cut it you tried with that therapist to untie it and you thought you did. But from what I see the knot keeps getting tighter, more complicated, and more poison in your system."

Anna had gotten into my insides and the holes in my body felt big enough to drive a truck through. As much as I tried to force them to close they refused to, in fact, they got wider.

"Instead of spending all that time down south, I should have come back and spoken with you. It would have been cheaper, certainly less painful."

"Sometime Western medicine too soft, take too long, patient die slower. Sometime patient only one able to cure himself. Sometime he only one know what's wrong."

"What's wrong is that they're still living and Angela's life and mine stopped thirty years ago. That's what's wrong."

"You held their lives in your hands when you held their books, but you no take."

"It's not the same. Besides, that makes me like them."

"You don't even believe that. If you did, you no come back. What you do now? Try to save those little lives that come in and out of your office just to show how not like them you are. But you call up that woman and try to threaten her into giving her nephew money and then can't understand how it went so wrong."

"Yeah."

"Strange way to get balls back. Your body a man, but your mind still a child. You start by saying you should call social services. They have a worst record than you do. You think they wander around in the night talking to an old Chinese broad about manhood?"

Three of her employees said goodnight to Anna and locked us safely inside the coffee shop. I watched them go out and wondered where they were going. Certainly a simpler life than I had. Maybe not. The snow was falling harder and I saw them put up the collars of their coats as they turned away from the restaurant.

"I make us something to nibble on," Anna said and got up from the table and went into the kitchen.

***

Angela would say that and come out of the kitchen naked, with a bowl of pretzels and a bottle of wine. She'd plop herself down in the bed and place the pretzels and wine next to us, on the floor.

"I definitely don't want no salt down there. You better know which to nibble first."

She'd ask me why I watched her doing the most natural things she could do in the mornings, evenings and, occasionally when we were both home, in the afternoons. "I just like watching you," I'd reply.

"Profound as a motherfucker, as always," she'd say with a laugh.

***

Anna placed a platter of small dumplings and shumai in front of us. "Use hands, taste better." She poured a little soy sauce in the middle of the platter and refilled our glasses.

"I think in the kitchen: there are many ways to kill someone. The Chinese made an art out of it. If you really want to kill someone. But maybe I begin to think you agree with them. Don't let anger cloud how you think. Think. Maybe you believe in your heart that what they did was right?

"Are you crazy? Do you really think that?"

"You see, not for me to say. But maybe. Thirty years long time to stay lost."

Old feelings began to rise in my chest; feelings of revenge and retribution, but with those feelings came fear so deep it numbed my arms and legs. I sipped my drink and turned my head towards the windows. Nobody walked by. I was looking for a savior to knock on the glass and walk in the door.

"I'd probably die going up against them."

"You call what you're doing now living? Besides, if one is smart—and you're smart, if nothing else—there are other ways of getting even. You did it a few weeks ago when you had their books." She looked at me waiting for something, but I was frozen.

"All your life you replaced action with words, but one is not the other. And now it's worse, it just adds to the dying. You think you need protection, but at your age what you need protection for? What difference it make if you get sick? At our age people prepare to die.

"I don't believe in free advice, because it never is free. It always costs the person who hears it. They alone have to live with it. Never easy. But I say this to you, Max: You keep her alive by living in your death, here."

"Thanks, Anna—for everything. I'm going to go." I didn't think I could hear any more, much less absorb it.

"Stop saying 'thanks,' that's for doormen and strangers. We can now enjoy the food and drink. Stay a little longer, I give you permission, and I want the company for a little while."

The first blast of cold air sobered me up. It was still snowing, a little harder than before, but you could still see the darkness of the sky behind the flakes. There was so much on my mind that I decided to meander a while longer before going back to my apartment, where I still felt like a transient.

It was well after midnight by the time I left Anna. I turned left at Bayard and walked to Mott Street where there were bodies huddled under the scaffolding of what appeared to be some kind of church. Some were sleeping back to back, trying to get any kind of human warmth to ward off the cold and loneliness as well. I crossed Canal and began walking through Little Italy. Waiters and bus boys were busy rolling up the table linens and cleaning tables. Men sat huddled on bar stools or in window seats, wearing sport jackets and open-throated shirts, sipping espresso or drinking liquor from rocks glasses. Their frames sat easy in their chairs surrounded by friends or associates. They were probably discussing the day's events, a new waitress' ass, or the more recent indictments of the day. Perhaps, after another stressful day they were in a heated argument over Freud's, Totem and Taboo. "Eat my fuckin' father? What is he, fuckin' crazy?" "That's how a male grows?" "I'm fuckin' growin' O.K. without eatin' anyone." "Maybe he means just kill 'em, you gotta kill 'em, then you move on." "Where, to the fuckin' loony bin? Get the fuck outta here." They stared back at me, almost daring me to come into their domain. I looked at them straight-faced, but slowly moved on, a slight smile on my face, hearing the wonderful sound of snow crunching beneath my feet.

The snow, light as it was, brought a calm and comfort to a city raised on noise and thriving on it. It was a welcome respite, for it allowed me to concentrate on Anna's words, both the meanings and consequences of them.

Christmas decorations already had gone up in stores, their mini-trees dressed with ornaments and lights twinkling from their windows. The local Chamber of Commerce had strung, across the streets, from the tops of lamppost to lamppost the large red and green ribbons with the one huge snowflake in the middle of it all, though we'd not gotten through Thanksgiving yet.

I stopped at an outdoor phone booth and fished a quarter from my pocket and dialed information for Brooklyn. "Don Heller, residence," I said into a recording. An operator came on the line and said there's a Donald and Marie Heller on Poseidon. There's also a Don, Jr. and Marianne at the same address, but different numbers. Damn, I said to myself, he's living a few blocks from my father. "That's the one," I said, "is it 4513?"

"No," came the reply, "it's 4715."

"Must be the one."

She gave me the number, which I committed to memory along with the address, and kept walking. He's married with kids, I thought, and the anger just rose up into my throat. I wrote the number down on a discarded newspaper before I forgot it. Age is upon me, I snickered. I thought of Prufrock and his coachman holding his coat and snickering. That was not going to be the way my fate was going to unfold, I swore, wearing the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

I crossed through Piss Alley, between Mott and Lafayette, and made my way to Broadway where I walked north. In a few blocks I found myself on Bond Street, the home of what used to be the Broadway Central Hotel and St. Adrian's, the bar adjacent to it where artists and writers had gathered in the late Fifties and Sixties.

The Broadway Central had collapsed in the early Seventies and St. Adrian's with it. Now, there was a version of a Mexican bar and restaurant much on the order of a Senor Swanky's and the space the hotel had occupied had become a conglomerate of office buildings, Foot Lockers, and discounted apparel stores.

I leaned against a building across the street and lit a cigarette, the plume of smoke acting as a white compliment to the flakes that continued to fall. The bar looked dark enough. I hoped to find a quiet seat somewhere near a window, and I did. The bartender, Sharon, a cute-looking young woman, wore jeans and an interesting cowboy hat, and came to take my order. Her smile, while ingratiating, had the look of wanting to get the night behind her. I ordered a double Martel and swiveled on my stool towards the window. The streets had fewer people and even fewer cars. She came with my drink, scooped up the twenty-dollar bill I'd put on the bar, and came back with my change.

***

By the time Angela and I had discovered the Broadway Central it was a flophouse, a cheap place for those of meager means, or desperate, to hole up for a night and get out of the elements, or get high, laid, or both. At an earlier time it had been quite another story. The hotel had opened during the, "Gay 1890s," and was the place for the "swells" of society to rub elbows with the gangsters of the day, such as Legs Diamond. The Harry James and Tommy Dorsey big bands played in an enormous ballroom there in the Forties. There were four sub-basements that had held the horses and carriages of the wealthy gentry. Then, in the early Fifties, the place fell into disrepair. The sub-basements were closed and filled, instead, with rats.

St. Adrian's Bar was another story. The bar itself, dark and gritty, was eighty feet in length, with a mural done by John Clark of the Dutch Masters—only the faces of these mighty Dutch had become the faces of the downtown painters and artists. It was a focal point in the downtown art scene of the Sixties and early Seventies. Unlike the hotel, the feeling there was vibrant. The space was huge, with a sea of tables and chairs in the body of the place. Since it was on ground level, windows ran the length of the building. It was home to artists and writers, mostly young, some old guard, who all looked so brilliant. They mixed freely, seemingly without posturing—though some would pontificate from time to time—sharing ideas about what they were doing and wanting to do it better. And some kept to themselves, no matter how famous they happened to be. They were just there.

Angela and I had taken a room there one night. Our lovemaking, while still feverish, could now afford to wait while we investigated the scene in St. Adrian's. Our fingertips touching held all the promise we needed. Angela, weeks ago, had begun to ask me to move with her to our own apartment. I kept delaying the decision. I told her that as long as nobody was the wiser, it made more sense to stay where we were. We had no rent, food bills, utilities, or unforeseen expenses. I'd begin looking for a job, starting with Joey at the Cedar Tavern. I'd ask him to teach me how to bartend and once I learned we'd be well on our way toward independence. "We'd get the hell out in a New York minute," I said. There were reasons to get out now she told me. When I pressed her for those reasons, she wouldn't say.

St. Adrian's was pretty crowded even for a Friday. The closer we came to the bar the more faces I could make out, either from poetry readings Angela and I had gone to or from the various magazines we read. Shepherd and Smith were sitting at a corner table, Rauschenberg sat next to Rivers at the bar who sat next to Brown who was talking with one of the owners, Bruce, who was standing next to him.

We'd met Brown, the author of, "The Brig," during our first time there. I'd happened to be sitting next to him at the bar and we'd exchanged a few words, which led into a conversation. We bought drinks for each other and continued to talk. He told us of having his play done by The Living Theater, which had created quite a sensation in its day. He loved to talk about most anything and though one might say he was opinionated to a fault, it didn't seem to bother him. He stood behind what he said, and seemed to be a pretty straight shooter. We both came from Brooklyn, which seemed to put us on some kind of footing, but it was the literature we talked about that solidified the relationship. Nowadays he'd much rather talk about horse racing, but I couldn't help him out there.

I said hello to him as Angela and I took the two seats next to him. He introduced us to Bruce, who shook our hands and moved off to another part of the room.

"How're you doing?" he asked in an accent that couldn't be from anyplace other than Brooklyn.

"O.K. You?"

"Not bad. Have a drink." He motioned to the bartender to serve us a round, on him.

Brown drank a Manhattan, while Angela and I had Chivas on the rocks.

"So, how are you two love-birds doing?"

I looked at Angela and she back at me.

"It's not a hard fuckin' question," he said. "If you're happy and fucking, it's really quite simple."

"You think so?"

"You're both young, in a manner of speaking. If you want to buy into this pseudo- hip metaphysical, existential questioning of the universe, God bless you. But if you're together, reasonably happy and fucking quite well, you're doing O.K. Better than most of the deep thinkers around here anyway."

"Including you?" Angela asked.

"Sweetie, you know I love talking, and that shit interests me, but if I had what I think you two do—right now—there'd be sparks coming from the springs underneath the mattress."

"Are you working on anything?" I said, trying to change the subject.

"Yeah. I'm working on trying to figure out the first fuckin' race at Aqueduct tomorrow," he said with a laugh.

"Shouldn't you be trying to capitalize on what you've done?"

"Maybe. But I'd rather be handicapping the exacta and triple for tomorrow. Right now that holds more interest for me. The world will go on very nicely whether I add a few words to it or not. I think I'll bartend for awhile, sleep with as many chicks as I can, get shit-faced when I like, and see what new mirrors I can shave into."

"Sounds like a plan to me," Angela said.

"I like this girl," Brown replied. "Most of these people are trying to figure out how they can become more famous and make more money than they'll know what to do with. With most of them their words or paint stand in service to their egos. Not that I don't have one. I'm not against making money, shit, I'm all for it, but not when everything you write or paint stands in service to that desire. Fame is a fickle whore. I write the words that need to be written for what I'm writing. To try and do anything more is bullshit."

Angela put a ten-dollar bill on the bar and bought drinks for the three of us.

"Hmm, a woman with class," Brown said.

Suddenly, we heard a sound like rocks coming through the window. Then we heard the shots and knew that those were no stones, but bullets. The three of us dived from our stools onto the floor. Brown motioned for us to follow him as he crawled to the base of the windows, which, because of the bricks that were underneath outside, protected our bodies from any other bullets that might fly into the room.

We heard the sound of a car screeching away and very cautiously we raised our heads eye level with the bottoms of the windows. There on the sidewalk, two bodies lay sprawled. Near one of them, I could see blood beginning to pool. I looked over at Brown who was looking at the same thing, but Angela had yet to raise her head. I crouched down and put my arm across her shoulders and hugged her tight. "It's over," I said.

"That kinda stuff is never over," she replied, spitting out her words.

I could hear a lot of "Wows" and "Holy shits" as the people started to pick themselves up from the floor and began milling about. We did the same, all of us trying to get our bearings. Rivers passed Brown and said hello to him. "I want to see the stiffs before they come to take them away," he said. "Ken, by the way, I'm having a little party at my pad this Saturday. Why don't you tool on by. Be plenty of food, booze, broads, and tea. You should make it."

"I'll try," Brown replied.

"Let's go," Angela said to me and I didn't resist. We said goodnight to Brown and went to our room upstairs.

"I don't want to get hurt anymore, Max," Angela said as soon as we were safely inside the room. "I've been and seen too much hurt and I'm sick of it. We stay with your family that's all we gonna see, I'm tellin' ya right now. That's all we gonna see."

I was busy studying the key that let us into the room. It was one of those large beaten and chipped yellow keys that had a silver disc attached to it with the room number imprinted on it.

"Are you listening to me," she nearly screamed.

"I heard what you said. Just calm down, will you? You're just reacting to what just happened. You and I are in no danger with my family. If I thought we were we'd be gone."

"Fuck you thinking if we thought we were. I'm thinkin' it. Not only am I thinkin' it, I damn well know it in my bones."

"How do you know it? Tell me how?"

"You don't haveta know, just trust me—you do trust me, Max?"

"Of course I trust you. But if something's going on, then let me know about it. I love you, Angela. We're in this together."

She went and sat on the edge of the bed. We could hear pipes creaking and even toilets being flushed from other rooms. "Your brother's been lookin' at me all weird and shit. He knows somethin's up between us and he wants some of it; he wants some of me."

"How do you know?"

"Max, goddamnit! I just fuckin' know!"

I sat down next to her on the bed. "He's not going to hurt you, I promise you that. I'd kill him before I'd let him do anything to you."

With a weariness I didn't know she had, she put her head against my shoulder and took in a deep breath. "I don't wanna be hurt again." And then she started to cry. We stayed that way for quite some time until a knock on the door brought us out of ourselves. We looked at each other wondering who it could be, when another knock, this time sounding a little more strident echoed through the room. I got up from the bed and cautiously walked toward the door.

"Who is it?"

"It's Windy, man."

"I don't know you."

"That's O.K., man," he said, his voice low and desperate. "I'm just lookin' for a spike, man, that's it. Mine's clogged."

I looked over at Angela who nodded her head.

"Wait a second," I said.

I went over to where my medications were, took out a new syringe and walked back to the door and opened it. There he stood, all five feet of him, white and greasy. "Here," I said, and handed him the viaduct for the deliverance of calm.

"Thanks, man. I'd give you a taste, but I ain't got that much."

"It's O.K.," I said. And just like that he was gone.

I turned back to Angela. She looked so sad sitting on the bed. I didn't know what to do.

"It's ugly here, Max," she finally said. "Let's just drive to a place that's prettier."

I went over and bent down to where I could look at her directly. I put my hands on her cheeks and lightly kissed her. "Let's go," I said. In a little over two hours we were in an all-night diner in Montauk having a cup of coffee. We'd not said much all during the drive, but I felt our bodies loosen the farther we drove from the city. I lit cigarettes for both of us.

The diner, this time of night, was pretty empty. Even the Long Island youth in these parts were long gone. There were another few hours of darkness.

"Cities are so desperate," Angela suddenly said. "I'd like us to find a place where we could just work and have us somethin' nice, be around somethin' pretty, nothin' fancy, and then whatever happens, happens."

"This was just a real bad night. Could happen anywhere. Besides cities, especially this one, lets us move around freely, especially the Village. Nobody pays us any mind. Maybe it's the freedom of anonymity."

"You're just sayin' that 'cause you don't want to leave. But I left my history; maybe it's time for you to leave yours. That don't mean that we can't come back one day, if we want, but for right now this is the wrong place for us to be."

"Angela, I want to make a life for us here; I want to write here, work here, love you here. I hope at least you'll give us the chance to do that."

"You really think they gonna leave us alone?"

"I hope they will, but even if they don't, what can they do to us once we're out and gone?"

"Plenty. I know your father and brother."

"I hope you're wrong."

"Hope in one hand and shit in the other. See which one fills up first."

"Angela..."

"Max, I love you. Ain't never loved no one the way I love you. Love the way you walk and those silly gestures that no one sees but me; love how you love me; love how you touch me; love how you need me; love your dreams and ambitions; love that you took me for what I am; loved me for what I am. I love everything about us. And goddamn I don't wanna lose that, ever. But we on very treacherous ground if we stay here. I feel it and know it."

I got up and moved around to sit next to her in the booth. "I'm not going to lose you, Angela, I'm not. I'll do whatever I have to do to make sure that doesn't happen." She turned and faced me. Her eyes trusted what I said. I kissed her on her forehead and then lightly on her lips. "Let's find a motel on the beach and watch the sun push itself up out of the water."

"I'd like that."

We drove around the beach section of Montauk until we saw a dim yellow light from inside a motel office. The motel itself looked as thin as a ribbon, stretching from the sidewalk to the beach, the Sandy Shore. A bleary-eyed desk clerk took the numbers from my driver's license and my car's plate and gave us a key to the first room overlooking the beach and ocean.

The room was dark and frigid, smelling of the ocean and the mustiness that inhabits spaces that have been closed for a long time. I located the thermostat and pushed it up to almost as high as it would go. The water rushed into the pipes. We threw our stuff next to the bed and made our way out and onto the path leading down to the beach. The sky had turned a dark slate-colored blue. It wouldn't be long before slivers of colors would break the day.

We walked along the shoreline, arm in arm, first hearing the gulls squawking, and then seeing them swooping and diving, looking for their morning's breakfast. With each moment we found ourselves more and more part of the world. The sky, a portent of light, and the loss of our invisibility, had us turn around and head back to our room. By the time we reached our pathway, colors had appeared underneath, what was now, only a thin ribbon of darkness.

***

The snow had continued to fall, heavier now, enough that you could see a trail of footprints made by the rare pedestrian at this hour of night. It had gotten to a point, nearly 2 a.m., that took precedence over whatever else she could make in tips. I saw her discourage a few people from ordering drinks while she began to break down the bar. I added a dollar to what was already on the bar and left.

Lourdes was there before I got there. I wasn't that surprised. She always tried to be there on payday, especially before a holiday. We said good morning to each other, but that was it. I went over to my desk and put my stuff away, struggling with what I knew was a morning hangover. I'd drunk four glasses of water before going to bed, and four more when I got up with an aspirin, but still the headache remained just where it was before going to bed last night, behind my eyes.

Katie and Sheila came into my office and went directly to my desk.

"Don't you say good morning to me?" Lourdes asked.

Embarrassed they turned to her. "We never see you anymore, so I never really look over to your desk," Katie responded. "Sorry, Ms. Lourdes, good morning."

Lourdes didn't say anything else, but watched from the corner of her eye in an attempt to see what, if anything, was going on in my part of the world.

"How're you ladies feeling this morning?" I asked.

They both inched as far as they could towards me. "We're still scared, but happy we went. We were up most of the night talking on the phone."

"That's good. Just get through these holidays and the day after we get back we'll get the results. I've got a real good feeling about what they'll say. So, try to relax and I'll see you both in group. And then, don't forget, the first thing Monday morning."

As they got up to leave the school phone began ringing and I got up to answer it. "JUMPSTART. This is Max Heller."

"Mr. Heller, this is Ms. Lynch. Could you come down to my office now, something's happened and maybe you could help."

"Sure, I'm on my way." It has to be connected to Felix and what happened to him and his sister, I thought. I felt a mixture of anxiety and dread as I made my way to Lynch's office, feeling Lourdes' eyes on my back as I left.

The people inside her office did nothing to dissipate my concerns. They were not from the school, with the exception of Horowitz, the head of security. He was dressed as if starch and exact creases in his jacket and pants were fused into him. His tie was knotted to the chin. Two of the others looked like detectives and the other two were from another kind of city agency, of that I was sure. The detectives dressed routinely, while the other two wore cheap business suits.

"Mr. Heller, sit down, please," Ms. Lynch said.

I took an empty chair at her conference table among the strangers, while Horowitz remained standing, and waited for introductions to be made. Just as I thought, two of the men were detectives who were assigned to the case, while the other man and woman were from ACS, the Administration of Children Services.

"Mr. Heller, do you know what happened to Felix Rodriquez?"

"I was just reading about it this morning when two students interrupted me."

"Did you know his situation at home?" Horowitz said in an accusatory tone that demanded an answer, if not a confession.

"Could we ask him some questions first?" one of the detectives said to Horowitz, which did not seem to faze him. He kept his piercing blue eyes on me without turning his head.

"Did I do something wrong here?" I asked.

"No, Mr. Heller, no, not at all. We're trying to ask all the staff who'd come into contact with him if they knew what his home situation was like. Since you're one of his counselors, we need to hear what you have to say, or add to what has already been said."

"Tell us about your relationship with him, what kind of a person he was, how you were trying to help him, if you were trying to help him at this point. Things like that," one of the detectives said.

I told him of my impressions of Felix and the incident with the can of Ensure. I told him of our conversation after class, without going into details, and about when I'd asked Felix if there was something I could do to help, I said. He'd replied in the negative and left. I told them of my phone call to his aunt, but not the nature of the conversation. I said only that I was trying to find out more information about Felix to see if there was anything I could do on my end to understand and help him better. I stopped after that.

"You didn't tell her that you'd get ACS on her ass or that she'd committed felonies or that she'd be sent to Rikers if she didn't start giving those kids their money? You didn't say any of those things?" Horowitz spit out.

"Mr. Horowitz, if you can't control yourself I'm going to have to ask you to leave, head of security or not," one detective said while the other just glared at him.

"No, I most certainly did not say any of those things. I told you what I said. I might have said that she's in charge of those kids and it's her responsibility to treat them right after I told her that Felix was drinking Ensure for his lunch. But that's it. Period. It's not my right to divulge information that a kid tells me under most circumstances or writes on his or her admittance form. So I don't."

"If you thought that student was in any way, shape, or form in danger it is your responsibility, obligation, to get in touch with your superiors here at school and call our office, immediately. You know that, don't you?" one of the social workers said.

"Yes, I do. However, I did not feel that he was in any immediate danger."

"I guess you were wrong," Horowitz said and left the room.

"All right, Mr. Heller, I guess that's about it. In the future, if you have any doubts whatsoever the best thing to do is get in touch with Ms. Lynch and let her hear about it before making a decision," one of the detectives said.

"Yes, Mr. Heller, you need to do that," concurred Ms. Lynch.

"Sure, Ms. Lynch. And," I said to all at the table, "I'm real sorry this happened." I pushed back on my chair, which seemed anchored to the floor, stood up, and left the room.

By the time I got back upstairs I was drained and shaken. I sat at my desk and tried to figure out what was the best thing for me to do now. Lourdes, even though she was on the phone, kept looking my way.

"I'm going to need to use the phone," I called over to Lourdes.

"Sure, Heller, I'll bring it right over."

As soon as she put the phone on my desk and walked away, I called Williams at the central JUMPSTART office. When he got on the line, I told him I wasn't feeling very well and was going home after finishing the groups I had coming in that day. He told me not to forget to punch out and he'd see me at the meeting we were going to have at Stuyvesant the next week.

My first group came in, minus Candy and a few others who had started their holiday early. I could only imagine what had happened to her after ACS paid a visit to her home. None of the scenarios that came to mind was good. I said a few words about having a nice, but safe, Thanksgiving recess and had them talk among themselves for the rest of the period. Gabriella came over to my desk and when I looked at her I knew she was hoping for an answer to get her and her family out from the mess they were in. The only thing I could come up with was to call in the police.

"Oh no, Mistah, can't be doin' that," she said.

"I think it's the best course of action."

"No, it ain't. They always fuck up everything. And he'd find a way to get me and my family. That's for sure."

"That's the best I could think of for you and your family. Try and stop it here and now, before it does get worse, especially for you."

"No, Mistah, can't do that. And please don't you call."

"I won't do anything, Gabby. It's you who has to do something. I'll give it some more thought over the recess, but I gotta tell you something. If someone as smart as you are decides to give your life up for some low-life drug dealer that's one thing, but to put the rest of your family in jeopardy, that's another. Think about your mother's fear and your little sisters being exposed to those goings on. That will, I promise you, have an effect on their young lives forever. You want to live with that on your conscience go ahead, but there's one thing you can't ever, ever say."

"What's that?"

"That you weren't told."

Tears started to well in her eyes.

"You think about it over Thanksgiving when those guys are in your house carving up turkey and dope. Drinking and snorting to their hearts' content while your sisters are wondering what the hell is going on and your mother sits unable to do anything. You better do some hard thinking. When we get back you tell me what you want to do. If it's nothing, then we don't have to mention it again. If it's something, I'll try to help. Think, Gabriella, think."

"O.K., Mistah."

When the period was over, I had five minutes to try to sort out what I'd say to my next period's group about Felix. Once they were seated, they all wanted to talk about what they'd either seen on television or read in the paper that morning. There was an exhilaration about their talk as if they'd just come from a film like The Matrix, but underneath there was an anxiety that comes from living lives close to, but thankfully not yet like Felix's. We spoke about it for a little while, but then when the conversation started to get repetitive I told them to talk among themselves and to have a happy and safe Thanksgiving.

When the group was over, and they were through the doors on their way, presumably, to another class, I packed up my things, put on my jacket, and left without saying a word to Lourdes.

Before leaving the building I stopped at Ms. Lynch's office to see if I could see her, preferably alone, to try and explain myself to her. She was on the phone, but when she saw me she motioned me inside and told whomever she was talking to that she had to go into a meeting. "Max," she said, "I'm glad you came back. I was going to call you, but I got bogged down in a million things after you left."

"I wanted to explain a few things to you..."

"No, you don't have to. These things happen and that Horowitz asshole is always looking to scapegoat someone. I've been having problems with him for years. Sorry it happened to you this time."

"Maybe I should have been sooner to speak to you about the matter. Maybe..."

"Maybe this, maybe that. This here is not an exact science and anyone who tells you so is dumber than they thought. You should, though, just to cover your ass, tell me or someone else. Don't be exposed. Back yourself up, always. Those are my words of wisdom after being in this system for over twenty years. No one wants to stand alone; no one wants to take responsibility—for anything—and usually no one does. And you shouldn't either."

"All right. I hear you."

"I like you, Max. I like the job you're doing around here. The one thing I do know: if you didn't make mistakes, you're not trying hard enough with the kids. That's all I care about."

"I'm taking the rest of the day off. I'm exhausted."

"Go ahead. Don't worry about anything and I'll see you when we get back from our four days at the beach."

"Thanks again."

She waved me out with her hand and as I was shutting the door I began thinking that the beach sounded just fine to me. I'd rent a car, I thought, and drive to Atlantic City and get my mind off some of this and onto some of that.

"Fuck me," Maggie said as soon as she heard my voice.

"Could you meet me at the Trop, or is that not good?"

"Not good for me. I take it that you couldn't find your way to my house. I don't know how you knew it, but I'm off tonight and tomorrow—seniority."

"I couldn't find your house with a map. How's this? I'll start at the Trop, but I'll meet you at Caesar's around eight? I'll be around the crap tables."

"Sounds like a plan."

"Good. I'll see ya later."

After I got off the phone with Maggie, I felt like canceling out, but I didn't. I threw the clothes I'd need, sunglasses and hat, medications, and five thousand in cash into my duffel, and locked the door behind me.

The first four car rental places I went to I'd gotten the same response: "Thanksgiving, man, no cars available." The fifth place, around the corner from the Cedar had no cars, except exotic ones. The clerk behind the desk said I could have a Mercedes for five hundred a day, a classic T-Bird for three-fifty, and a Porsche for four hundred. I was sorely tempted to rent the Porsche. For a very long time I wanted to experience what it felt like to drive the car I hadn't driven for over thirty years, but I declined. Any kind of attention was the last thing I wanted to attract down there. I pulled the handles of my duffel, walked outside and hailed a cab. "Port Authority, please," I said.

The Port Authority was jammed with people going home for the holidays. Singles and couples, those with families and those going to see families, were standing on long lines waiting to buy tickets. I went to the Academy Bus Line downstairs where there was hardly a soul going where I was. What souls there were, were mostly black or from Jamaica, Trinidad, Haiti, or another tropical island, carrying shopping bags or beaten satchels or suitcases. Luckily, I was first on line and took the first two seats looking out the windshield.

By the time we hit a turnoff on the New Jersey Turnpike, I'd wished I had rented the Porsche. This way I could just turn around and go home. Even the first rush of sexual promise in Maggie's words quickly evaporated and what remained was simply a numbed confusion. I was going somewhere I didn't want to go and, even though I knew I could just turn around and take the first bus back, I knew I couldn't do that either.

They had to know I was here, someplace living in New York City. Esther had to have told them. Either they thought I presented no threat to them, or they had something in store for me. In either case they must feel pretty safe and secure. Besides, this time of the year they concentrated mainly on two things: food and gifts. I was sure that my brother had to marry someone who could cook. It was not only that he liked his food, but the way my father enjoyed to eat as well. She'd be in the kitchen from early morning until dinner was served, preparing all their favorite foods. My father and brother would put more money out on the street this time of year, giving out more than they'd collect—until the New Year's celebrations were past. Then the time for partying and presents were over and the time for payment at hand. And this year, the year of The Millennium, promised to be a major worldwide blowout.

The bus, moving at a clip of sixty-five miles per hour, presented to me the recognition of how quickly the future becomes the past. As far down the two-lane highway a tree was, with leaves still hanging on for dear life, it snapped past my window in short order and, as I turned my head to watch, it quickly receded out of my sight. What was left of the sun, coming through the tint-free front window, warmed my hands to the point where I found myself looking down at them, studying them. The flesh between my thumb and forefinger had developed tiny and barely discernible creases, crossing and criss-crossing each other. I couldn't remember whether or not they were there yesterday, but they were there now, all over my hand, connecting themselves at certain points, shadowing gnarled knuckles and protruding joints, settling themselves around each finger, touching scars, and the deeply rooted etchings of middle joints. If I held my hand out straight and stiff, it looked like the hand of a middle-aged man—

which I was—or the hide of a baby elephant. This hand, my right hand, I thought, had not written one line that was associated with what my hand had recorded. I'd subverted those instincts, that need, in service of dependencies and fear. I'd succumbed to the miasma of ambivalence.

The trees, on the far side of their autumnal splendor, though still throwing off dark colors, ticked by the windows. The cycles of humans appeared, by contrast, insignificant, except for their struggles, the only real interesting aspect of why we're here.

The bus slowed to take the turn-off at Exit 39 and bring us to the last leg of the trip into Atlantic City. I took a deep breath and folded my arms across my stomach. We were dropped at the Taj and after exchanging my ticket for the twelve dollars the casino doled out in money, hoping you'd stay right where you were and lose it and more, took a cab to the Trop. I checked my duffel, minus the cash I had inside it, and coat and decided to check my sunglasses and hat as well. Then I made my way towards the casino's coffee shop where I had a sandwich and coffee. I lingered over the second cup, not at all sure what I wanted, or was going to do, once I got into the casino and at a crap table.

It was a light night, as it figured to be, Thanksgiving being a holiday usually spent at home with family. I circled the tables, as I usually did, but couldn't find one to land on, the action was so thin. There was so little energy in the room that I had the feeling that it might close at any moment. I saw a few crew bosses looking my way, trying to figure out if the man without the sunglasses and hat or cap was the same man who'd won quite a bit of their money in the last few months.

The Trop had only one twenty-five dollar minimum crap table, which was usually empty. Tonight was no exception. The stickman and the other three dealers looked pretty bored as they stood around the table. There was no reason for a pit boss to be there because of the lack of players at this table. The stickman was pushing three sets of dice from one end of the table to the other, as if he were sweeping up lint. I looked at each of their faces and their eyes, as I did that, briefly engaged mine, registered nothing, and went back to their colleagues.

I walked up to the table, took the bills from my pocket, counted out a thousand dollars, and put it on the table. "Change only," I said. The dealer to my right put my money in front of the dealer who sat over the stacks of chips in front of his. He fanned out my hundred dollar bills and once satisfied that it added up to a thousand, pushed green and black chips to the dealer next to him, who pushed them to me. Nothing ever left the table. My money was deposited in a slot in front of the middle dealer.

"Good luck," he said to me.

The dealer must have gotten the pit boss' attention because he came over to me and asked if I wanted to be rated.

"I hope I'm not here all that long." He seemed to be studying me, sure he'd seen me somewhere before. He had. He must have asked me the same question ten times these last three months, only then I had on my hat and sunglasses.

I had no feel for what I was about to do. Winning or losing, I knew, did not enter the equation. I felt a kind of weightlessness that I'd never experienced before I gambled. I placed three black one hundred-dollar chips on the Pass Line. The stickman pushed the dice to me and I picked the first two without looking at what numbers they showed. I held them in my fist, hit the table with them once, and threw them. A four came up, one of the hardest numbers to make. I placed fifteen hundred dollars behind the line, nothing on any place numbers. I then threw a six, nine, nine, six, and eight before the double deuces came up.

"Winner four, the hard way," the stickman said. Thirty three hundred dollars were counted out and were passed over to me in five hundred dollar lavender chips and three blacks. It was as quiet as a morgue, except for one old man, dressed in an old jacket and who wore a cap with an insignia from a World War II aircraft carrier. I looked at him, but neither of us smiled nor said anything when my number appeared.

I added two hundred to my three on the pass line and threw a seven. I left the thousand there and threw another seven. The old man stood there, didn't yell, shout, or do anything to call attention to my roll. I left the thousand and rolled another four. Four was my favorite number. It was Duke Snider's number when he played for the Brooklyn Dodgers. I put three thousand behind the line and, as if the dice had nothing but fours, four came up again.

"Four, winner four," the stickman said.

Seven thousand dollars was pushed next to me. The old man looked at me and I looked at the table. I started to put two thousand on the line, then stopped. I looked and looked but couldn't see anything. I didn't feel like I did anything, didn't win anything, yet I knew I was finished. Not only finished with the game I was rolling, but finished betting money on anything I couldn't control. The weightlessness had turned to emptiness. I began stacking almost fourteen thousand dollars in chips into stacks of two thousand each. "Color me out," I said. Everyone working the table looked at me in amazement that I'd stop a run like that, except the old man. He touched the brim of his cap and nodded. I held the crook of his arm. "Wait a minute," I said. I took one stack of two thousand dollars and put it in his hand. "Good luck," I said to him. I also threw a lavender chip to the stickman, whose eyes lit up like it was Christmas come early.

If I never see a crap table again, it would be too soon for me, I said to myself as I walked to the cash redemption window.

"Hold it, slow down," the pit boss said as he caught up to me. "You crippled us these last few months."

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about," I said and kept walking.

"I think you do."

"You think wrong."

"What's your name? We'd like to comp you into a suite, food, whatever. Slow down, will ya?"

"Not interested."

"That's what you always say."

I was near the window. I hoped he'd disappeared, but he hadn't.

"You're Jackie Heller's son, aren't you?"

I kept walking.

"You look just like him and his other kid, I should have figured that out."

I kept walking and once I reached the window, counted out nine thousand in chips and pocketed the rest.

"And you ain't supposed to be here," he said with that kind of greasy innuendo that comes out of the mouths of second raters.

"I collected my money and turned to face him. "I'm not Jackie Heller's son, whoever the hell Jackie Heller is, never heard of him, but if I was I doubt he'd look kindly on some dumb second-rate asshole who knew that, but let him gamble for months now without him knowing about it. A man like the one you're talking about is liable to do some pretty nasty things to people who let him down. You know what I mean?"

"But I just figured it out," he said, a hint of fear in his voice.

"Aren't you unlucky. Best to keep it to yourself, I think."

"Isn't there some kind of incentive to do that?"

"Yeah, life. That should be enough, but if it isn't let's go upstairs now and make a phone call to him." I said and watched his reactions. His face was frozen. "Listen, I'm really not the person you think I am, but if I was, I know there's an allegiance you owe the casino, but (I looked at his wedding band), there's also an obligation you have to your family. You think about it, hard. The good graces of your bosses who really couldn't give a shit about you and those of your family who love and depend on you despite your obvious flaws." I never took my eyes off him. His mind was in flux. "Here's five hundred, if it makes your decision any easier?" I shook his hand and put a lavender chip in it.

"That should do it," I said, "but if it doesn't, you not only have that other person to worry about (I looked at his name tag), Victor, but me, too."

"That closes it," he said. "Case closed."

"Have a good night, Victor," I said, and walked out of the casino and downstairs to claim my jacket and duffel bag.

Outside, there were three or four boardwalk taxis, little two-seaters with a hood over the passenger section, pulled by men who made their living ferrying people to and from the casinos. Not wanting to walk with all the money I had, I walked up to the first taxi I saw and asked how much it would cost to take me down to Caesar's. Twenty bucks, came his reply. That's a lot of money, I said to him, especially on a slow night. His price came down to ten and I got aboard. It was cold outside and there was sleet in the air. I had no intention of gambling anymore and needed, once I got to Caesar's, to find a spot where I could have a cup of coffee, read a paper, and kill a few hours.

He was a middle-aged, wiry built man, who went around the front, where a kind of harness was, put it against his stomach and began to pull me down the boardwalk. In less than ten minutes we were there. I got out and put a hundred dollars in his hand and thanked him.

Inside Caesar's, first I found a place to check my things. Next I went to a gift shop that sold papers, picked up two of them, and headed for a coffee shop I noticed shortly after I came in. There were two people working there, but I was the only customer. I ordered a large coffee and took a table by the window, looking into the casino. Caesar's was empty, too. I sipped my coffee and read the papers. The big story was the world gearing up for The Millennium. Each part of our planet was planning something different for the dawning of a new era, all to be covered by a major network from sun-up from some remote corner of the planet, to the Times Square crescendo. Most of what I read centered on the astronomical prices that hotels were getting for the choicest rooms and the parties, planed around the globe, by those with the millions to have them. The ferocity of consumerism and one-upmanship was in full bloom. This was one event that sold itself.

At seven-thirty I wandered over to the crap tables. I passed two women in their seventies, tethered to their oxygen tubes that snaked their way into their noses, absent-mindedly dropping dollar coins into their slot machines. The room itself sounded like a sick and wounded arcade. There were an assortment of older men and women who either had made the day trip down to the casino or who couldn't bear to be in their empty homes for the holidays. In any event, they were trying to have some kind of fun and distraction. Only they knew if they were succeeding or not.

There were five tables open. Four had a five-dollar minimum, the other ten. The five-dollar tables were crowded, not full, but had far more players than the more expensive table. I walked around trying to discern any attention I might be getting from the pit bosses. I didn't notice any, but that didn't mean much. They had those eyes in the sky, and if Victor had told his bosses, phone calls already would have been made. Hell, that's gambling, I said to myself, and laughed.

Even when players knew what they were doing, there was only a certain amount they could afford to bet on each roll. On rolls where they could have made hundreds, if not thousands, they were lucky to win a hundred dollars before they eventually sevened out. These people were the gas in the service station that paid the bulk of the rent. It wasn't pretty, but no grind is.

I came around to the ten dollar table where a woman, bleached-blond, and showing plenty of cleavage, said, "Ride me, boys, hold on tight!" Fifty years ago she was the Marilyn of everyone's dreams; tonight she was an illusion for sad eyes filled with cataracts. She threw a seven and whooped it up along with the five or six men at the table. She followed that by throwing an eleven, her yells louder, her talk, brasher. "I told you bastards. Everyone goes home a winner tonight. Ride me, boys." Another eleven confirmed her conviction. Then she threw an eight, an easy eight. Money was thrown onto the hard eight and most of the place numbers. She threw craps twice before she sevened out. Some of the old timers just picked up their chips and moved on. She followed them with her eyes, the light having been quickly extinguished.

I felt a light tug on my elbow and turned to see Maggie, looking even more sexy and beautiful than I remembered, smiling up at me. There was a part of me hoping she wouldn't show up, but now that she had I felt a curtain drop. It took a second for her to see in my eyes what I was feeling and thinking.

"Did you win today?"

"Yes."

"Good for you." She let go of my arm and I watched as she walked from the tables, past the slots, and out of the casino. I waited a few minutes then went downstairs to claim my things. I found out from the bell captain when the next bus for New York City was leaving and from which hotel. In twenty minutes, I was on it.

Chapter IX

It was colder and more blustery the next day. All the leaves on the tree outside my window had blown off, and now served as a carpet pattern on the ground outside. I heard none of the street sounds I usually did. There were no garbage trucks—public or private—hauling trash, no metal shutters being lifted, horns, and the incessant chatter of people who, while they didn't live on the streets, seemed to use them for any kind of escape. Thanksgiving Day in New York City, like Mother's Day, Christmas, and New Year's Day, was eerily quiet.

After a blood test, insulin shot, three cups of coffee, and an English Muffin, I got dressed and braced myself against the cold. Nathan's was my destination, but more than that it was to find a safer, more accessible way into the community that my father and brother lived in.

Nearly noon and I was almost the only person on the street. I walked west to take the D train and the wait was interminable. The D lumbered into the station and I got aboard. An hour later we pulled into Stillwell Avenue, Norton's Point, the last stop. I felt the first twinge of anxiety as I got off. However cold it was in New York City, it was at least ten degrees colder here with the wind whipping in off the ocean. The sky, a light gray, was filled with what looked like snow clouds.

Surf Avenue was emptier than the streets I'd walked in the city. The wind whipped up the litter, sending it flying up and off the ground. Nathan's, across the street, seemed like the only place open in the world. The outside of Nathan's was shuttered. In order to get something to eat you had to go into their small room on the corner of Stillwell and order what you wanted from there. A few people sat at tables eating, and there was only one woman waiting at the counter for her order. I walked up behind her. She was wearing a long black woolen coat and a blue woolen cap with the border pulled over her ears. I smelled her perfume. When her food came, two frankfurters and a bag of fries, she reached inside her bag for her money and I saw her hand that had lost its youth, but still delicate, with her long and tapered fingers, now having even more character, and she said, "Thank you," in a voice that had made, every time I heard it, the world stop for me, but this time was barely audible. "Angela," I whispered.

Her body froze. Her hand, holding her money, stayed where it was. I saw the young counter girl look quizzically at her. I put my hands on her arms and I felt her grow even more tense. "I know we don't have much time now, just pick up your food and meet me around the fish counter."

She moved, without turning around, and walked, stiffly, away. I was no longer hungry. I paid for her food, and quickly turned to go over to where she stood, her back still to me.

I passed a mother telling her son to put some tartar sauce on his French fries, "Makem taste just like shrimps."

When I tried to go around her shoulder in order to see her face, she kept turning her body away from me, until she faced out into the room and I still had her back to look at.

Her franks and fries lay on the metal counter beside her, looked as if they'd been there for days. She hadn't put on her customary condiments, ketchup and mustard, on each frank and salt, lots of it, for her fries. Not knowing what else to do, I took them to another counter, dressed each frank, took a handful of packaged salt and brought them back to her.

"You were never much for health foods," I said. She didn't reply. Her back seemed to rotate with my every motion. When I placed the food in front of her she placed her hand over my right one and touched it, as one would handle an artifact. She gently ran her fingers over each one of mine, lingered over the swollen knuckles and slightly crooked fingers, and the lines and ridges of its creases.

"Do they still hurt?"

"Sometimes."

"In weather like this?"

"In weather like this."

She picked up one of the franks and bit into it, chewed quickly, and took another bite.

I tried to watch her eat, but she kept dipping her head from side to side. I went and bought two coffees and brought them back. A light snow had begun to fall. A police car sat, with its motor idling, next to the Army Recruitment Booth that had been there since before I was born, a thick plume of smoke coming from its exhaust pipe. The two cops in there, with their windows down, were smoking cigarettes.

"I got to get back," she suddenly said, and began picking up her empty paper plates.

"Wait a little bit. I want to look at you, talk to you."

"But Max," she said, "the stuffin's out of me now. I'm empty as a human being and worse, empty as a woman." There was no inflection in her voice.

"No, baby, no." I reached out and grabbed her hand and just held it while we stood against the counter saying nothing. "C'mon," I said, "let's get some air, go outside." I pulled her by the hand, which offered no resistance, out the door and into the snow. It was falling a bit heavier now. The police, still in the car, took no notice of the two figures, huddled against each other, walking towards the boardwalk.

Past Nathan's, and across the street, there was a small midway and I led her into it. All the arcades had corrugated metal shutters that were pulled down for the winter months. I stood her against one and lifted her face with my hand. The snow, falling harder, landed on our eyelashes. We blinked them away. Reluctantly, she allowed me, with one hand cupped under her chin, to raise her face. Her eyes though, when not blinking, remained closed.

"I'm here, I'm really here," I said.

"Yeah, you here."

"Do you believe I'm here?"

"Maybe, maybe not. Mind plays all kinds of tricks on a person."

I braced her against the metal with my two hands, and held her up. Then, I looked at her, really for the first time. Still beautiful, her face still thin and angular, her skin had begun to fall away from her facial bones, giving it a softness that wasn't there before. The puffs underneath her eyes had been there for I didn't know how long.

"Look at me, Angela."

Slowly, she opened her eyes and I saw nothing but pain. It wasn't a new pain, it had been there for quite some time. Besides that I could get nothing more from eyes which at one time had light, joy, mischief, and curiosity in them. They'd given way to a dull and accepted manner of living. She no longer wanted to know what was going to happen, she only wanted to know if she'd have to be part of it.

"I been here, they treat me pretty good. Can't complain."

"Angela, if I'd known I'd have been here as soon as I found out."

She didn't say anything, but only looked down at the ground.

"Angela, you believe that don't you?"

She raised her face, but not to look at me. She looked in the direction of where her car was probably parked.

"Angela!?"

"Looks like we gonna get some snow. I better be getting back now."

My mind was racing, trying to think of something to say that would jolt her back to a time where I remembered her, but more importantly, she remembered who she was. "O.K., Angela, but before you go, tell me when was the last time you saw me?"

"You was getting your bones broke. I heard all the cracks. Sounded like thunder, sounded bad. Then they kicked in your eye and blood was poolin' all around your face. Thought you might be dead, but I found out you wasn't. And then your brother took me in, first your father, then your brother. He married you know? Helped raise those kids. Nice kids."

Watching her mouth move, trying to listen to her words, I couldn't take my eyes off the teeth that were missing from her mouth, two on her lower ridge and one near her two front teeth on her upper ridge. Her cheeks, when she talked, were sucked into the holes created by their absence.

"I'm ugly."

"No, you're not ugly. Don't say that."

"O.K., but I'm just sayin' the truth." Then in a voice that was almost a whisper she said, "I told you we needed to be out of there, but you wouldn't listen. I told you we was in danger. Told you I was scared somethin' was gonna happen, knew somethin' was gonna happen. I knew you thought that I was the one protectin' you. But I was just pretendin', it was really me that needed protectin'. I was lookin' to you to protect me. To lead me out of what I grew up with. I thought I found it in you. Now your brother gives me what I need." Her words flew into my face, not as accusations, but as a lament; a lament for both of us.

"How much time do you have before you have to get back?"

"I guess a little while. It's snowin' and I want to look at the snow and the ocean. They won't give it a second thought."

"Then let's go to the boardwalk."

It was colder there, the wind whipping the snow across us as we walked to the railing overlooking the beach and the ocean beyond. The ocean was dark, nearly black, with whitecaps sitting on top of the waves.

"Angela, I'd be here now, whether you were here or not, alive or not. But I'm glad you're alive. We can try and have a life..."

"Don't...."

"No, I know. I said try. Can I hold you for a second before you have to go?" I started to unbutton my coat, but she just stood there, not moving. I went to her and unbuttoned her coat and, with my arms around her waist pulled her into my chest. I buried by face into her neck and by so doing forced her face onto my chest. We stood like that for a few seconds and then slowly, I began kissing her forehead, eyes, and then lightly on her lips. She didn't return the affection, but awkwardly stood there allowing me to kiss her. When I could take it no longer I stopped. "Whatareyagonnado now?" she asked.

"Better if you don't know, but I need to ask you a question."

I walked her back to where her car was parked and asked what the family did on Christmas Eve. I also asked, as casually as I could, if there were any other people in the house who helped my father or brother. She said that my father, with the other maid, went over my brother's home and had an elaborate shrimp and lobster dinner that night. I told her that I couldn't tell her anything else, but we'd see each other soon. I watched as she got into her car and drove away. I caught my breath and turned around, not wanting to watch her leave.

Back on the boardwalk, I buttoned my coat and in so doing wrapped Angela inside it as well. Her smell, her perfume were on the fibers that surrounded me. It made me almost light-headed, but not quite. As I turned right, walking in the direction of my father's private enclosed community, I wondered how much I could actually trust her. The thought came like a stab to my heart, but my head would not let me dismiss it. Despite all that had happened to us, and her in particular, no matter how brutally enforced our separation was, she had to feel safe at this point with me out of her life. What would really motivate her and her actions? Safety could not be discounted. In fact, it might be at the top of her list. I tried to erase those thoughts, but couldn't. Why would, how could, she trust me to provide even the most rudimentary measures that would make her feel safe when I failed so miserably before? What would she do with this new knowledge of me planning to do something against my brother and father, and do it quickly? I tried to concentrate on why I'd come here today in the first place, but some of those thoughts, intermittently, came back to me again and again.

The wet snow had now moistened the wooden planks, some vertical, others angled on the boardwalk, making them dark and spongy. The concrete between those planks coming up every block or two, had a thin coating of snow on it. I passed the basketball court in the back of the housing projects where two young kids were slipping and sliding as they tried to put moves on each other, and put the ball in the basket. Their laughs were the only sounds not coming from the ocean that broke the silence.

At the end of the boardwalk there was a concrete ramp that led down to the sidewalk. If you walked straight, it took you to Surf Avenue, but if you made a sharp left you were faced with a hurricane fence that separated the private community from Coney Island proper. Behind that fence were the cabanas for those in the community who wanted to pay for them, and underneath the fence were the rocks that led to the jetty that served as the dividing marker between the public and private beaches.

I walked on the sand going towards the beach, looking at the fence above for a break in it. Usually, some kids from Coney Island would try to sneak into the cabanas and vandalize whatever they could, especially during the winter months when security was more lax, and this winter was no exception. As I got past the boardwalk, there on top of the rocks where the fence met them, was a section that had been opened by someone who couldn't obey rules. Instinctively, I patted my pocket, knowing I'd put my house keys in there, for what reason I didn't know at the time, but I'd taken them anyway. I didn't take the gun, thinking I'd have no occasion to need it. However, the house keys gave me all I hoped I'd need.

If Angela went back and told them I was here and planning something for Christmas Eve, they'd move the books; they'd have to. To think she wouldn't, would be bucking the odds. The best I could hope for now was that she was caught in the middle of whether or not to say anything. It would have to be now, gun or no gun.

I climbed up on the rocks, struggling with my age and the stones, slick with freshly fallen snow, and finally squeezed myself between the cut fence. Inside the section of cabanas, I carefully worked myself down and onto the beach. I walked next to the shoreline slowly and casually hoping that if someone saw me they'd think I was out for a walk to work off Thanksgiving dinner or just another character who liked to stroll by himself in the twilight in the falling snow. I walked as far as I needed to go and left the beach and continued walking around the periphery of the community until I arrived at the back entrance to the room I used to live in. The key slid easier into the lock this time.

Once inside, I walked over to the glass sliding doors and put my ear against them. Hearing nothing, I quietly slid open one of them and made my way into the den. I took a deep breath and thought about dying and for a moment almost turned around and went back out, but I didn't. I went to the liquor cabinet containing the ledgers, opened it, took out the bottles, and then popped open the inner cabinet containing the books. I was surprised to find them still there, just the way I remembered them.

As soon as I had the books in my hand, there was no hesitation. I placed them beside me, closed the inner cabinet, put back the liquor, closed the cabinet door, and, placing the books under my arm, went through the glass door, closing that, and finally out the way I'd come in.

Quickly, I made my way over the hedges and began walking back the way I'd come until I was at the entrance at Surf Avenue, and walked the boardwalk back to Stillwell Avenue and the train station. I boarded the first train going back to Manhattan I saw, which again was the D. I'd get off at West Fourth Street in about an hour and then decide what to do. I couldn't believe it had gone that well. I couldn't believe it had been that quick and easy. Maybe Angela said nothing? Maybe.

Out of the train station, I headed for the Cedar Tavern. Nearly there, I remembered that Thanksgiving Day was only one of two days—the other being Christmas Day—that the Cedar was closed. I thought about calling Joey and asking him to open, thinking I'd be able to use his Xerox machine, but then thought better of it. I knew of a twenty-four hour a day operation that never closed that wasn't too far from where I was. Predictably, it was just about empty. The employee there seemed grateful to have something to do. I asked him to print out ten copies of each book, and within thirty minutes, he had them all collated and sorted and put into mailing envelopes. He put everything in a shopping bag. I paid him and left.

The snow had not stopped falling until two or three inches covered the ground. Suddenly I felt very hungry, like my whole body was one big cavity with nothing inside it. The one place where I knew I could find a restaurant open was Chinatown. I found a cab and went there.

Before going in, I looked through the frosted window to see if I could see Anna. She was there, behind the cash register, sipping on a tea. When she saw me her eyes registered surprise, but there was also a smile on her face. As I approached her, she looked down at the shopping bag I was carrying.

"That not a doggy bag, is it?"

"I didn't think you'd be here."

"Charlie in China. Mom sick. Better be here than alone. I don't mind. You like something to eat?"

"I never thought you'd ask."

I took my jacket off and the insulin out of my pocket and gave myself a shot. In ten minutes, the same thick rice soup filled with fish and vegetables was placed in front of me, but this time I didn't hesitate.

"You have little adventure," she said as she sat herself across from me, eyeing the shopping bag.

"You might say that."

"Are those the books?"

"Yes."

"Have a little more food, then we talk. There's not too many people here today, most go to fancier places for holiday."

I watched as she went into the kitchen and said something to her staff. She then walked back up to the front, said something to her counter staff and went back to the register and her tea. There were a few customers sitting up front, crouching over their tea or coffee and sweet buns. Most of them wore blue woolen pea coats and woolen watch caps pulled tightly over their heads. They seemed to have no where else to go on this night and slowly took sips of whatever was in their cups, wrapping their hands around the containers, even though some still wore gloves, with the fingers cut out.

A plate of dumplings and shumai appeared with a pot of tea and I greedily ate whatever was in front of me. I fished around for an ashtray and found one on the seat across from mine, lit a cigarette, and exhaled. When the waiter came to clear the dishes, I fished a ten-dollar bill from my pocket and handed it to him. Afterward, I leisurely pulled one of the composition books from the shopping bag and started to read, this time taking all the time I needed to familiarize myself with the notations, abbreviations, symbols, and dates on the page. Reading it in the light, sitting at a table with nothing to distract me, I was able to sense the amount of pain and suffering they'd caused. When I first found the books, the excitement of seeing them and almost making sense of them carried me away. This time I felt sadness, shame, and humiliation of being part of their blood. Coming to the names—letters of their first and last name or their nicknames—I involuntarily cringed, not knowing if, by the end of their payment history, they'd be alive or not. People who were in my home, who I laughed with, who my parents played cards with, went out with, went to their homes, and sent their kids presents for graduations and weddings, had their names there with the rest of those who needed money that they couldn't possibly repay and would meet the same fate, beatings and death. It was chilling.

If they knew I had the books, what might they be doing now? Why would they think I took them in the first place? What was Christmas Eve all about? Could they afford to feel safe until then, or would they immediately move them to a different location? Could they trust what Angela told them, if she told them?

Anna probably saw my thoughts more clearly than I did.

"I saw Angela today."

Anna said nothing.

"Did you hear what I said?"

"I heard. But you didn't say anything."

"I was hoping you'd have something to say," I said and laughed self-consciously.

"Me? Why me?"

"Well, you seem to have the answers."

"Answers, Max, have always been over-rated." She continued to look at me, waiting to hear what I had to say, if anything. If I said nothing at all after that, it would be all right with her, too, I thought.

"She's not the same, Anna." And then I proceeded to tell her what had happened in the afternoon and all my impressions and suspicions.

"A long time past, maybe she not the same, but who knows?"

"I almost wish I never saw her today."

"You love her—still?"

"Yes."

"Don't answer too quick. You love her?"

"Yes, but what I do or will do with that, I don't know. What I do know is that I have things to do that don't include her right now."

"Good. What things?"

"First, I need to find out if my place has been broken into—that will answer a lot of my questions—not my feelings, questions—then I need to get some of my things and find a safe place to stay, a motel or something, for awhile. I need to find a lawyer, a lawyer I can trust."

"Hard to come by."

"Also, I'd like to send you one of these envelopes. I'll put a letter with instructions inside."

"Let me think about that, Max. The lawyer I can help with."

"All right."

We raised glasses of tea and toasted each other, for what I didn't know.

"Let's talk about meaningless things."

I looked curiously at her. "O.K., let's," and we did.

"What now?" I asked, after we seemed to exhaust all the small talk we had.

"You sound as if small talk is no talk, but it's not. It's the glue that keeps even the most separate people together. Very important. When it comes right down to it, we're really all just small talk. Even you and your problems." She laughed.

Eventually, Anna turned around and said something in Chinese to the waiter who sat at the back table nearest us. He got up and went into the kitchen. A few moments later two young Chinese men appeared at our table.

"Give them your address, Max."

She produced a cell phone from her pocket and gave it to one of them. She spoke at length to both of them and they left, stopping by the register to collect some money before walking out the door. I looked at her inquisitively.

"I thought it was time enough. I tell them go to your apartment, if nothing wrong call and then wait there for you. If someone comes before you get there then to meet you on the street. I don't want to know where you go after that. I give you name of lawyer. I call him tomorrow and tell him to expect your call. Send me package, but I can't tell you what Charlie says. Maybe he don't want to get involved. I don't know, but he has to know. You understand?"

"Yes, I do."

"Now, we wait."

By this time her restaurant had emptied, leaving us and her help to close.

"I seem to be doing this a lot lately, closing up with you."

"You almost family, certainly not staff."

We both laughed and had another drink. Then she lowered her eyes. "Maybe Angela not yours anymore. Long time, Max, you not there. Can't really tell what happened and what she had to do to stay alive, and maybe keep you alive, if even alive can be a word used. Not that she against you, no, but maybe she don't know anymore what side is what; maybe she don't know anything except her next thought."

The phone rang and Anna was called up front. When she returned she told me that it was safe, for now, and that if the situation changed the two men would meet me on the northeast corner of my block.

"Sounds like a good time to go."

"I think so, too. See me in a week and I see what Charlie say. And call lawyer. Good person."

"Anna, I'll be in touch."

When I arrived at my apartment building the two men were outside, one on each corner. When they saw me step from the cab, they walked over to me.

"We stay," one of them said. "If someone comes we ring bell."

I walked upstairs and into my place, went to my closet and pulled down an old valise and threw it on the bed. I did the same with my duffel bag. I packed what I needed in a hurry.

I went downstairs to find the two guys holding a cab for me. I directed the driver to a motel near Times Square.

At the front desk, I paid in cash for a two-week stay. I carried my own bags to the elevator and up to my room. Once inside, I turned on all the lights. I put away my clothes and then my toiletries. I found a small desk that would make it easier to take my glucose tests when I needed to, and put my equipment on top, spreading out my machine, testing strips, and assorted insulin and syringes. I knew this wasn't the Broadway Central, but it was still Times Square and I needed to be careful about my medications and all the cash I was carrying. I put the syringes in the drawer next to the Bible. Then I turned my attention to the money. I knew I still had a lot of it, especially with my winning streak at craps these past months. I took the old, brown, beaten up paper bag from my duffel and dumped the contents on the bed. Hundred dollar bills, loose and in packets, came falling and fluttering out, landing in my lap. I had a shade over seventy thousand dollars, and I counted it twice.

I went over to the desk and took out all the available envelopes. I stuffed them with as much money as they could hold and after filling four of them, I put them underneath my pillow. I left myself nearly three thousand dollars. Satisfied that the door was locked and chained, I took off my clothes and took a long, hot shower, after which I put on a sweatshirt and pants, took a notebook from my briefcase and went over to the desk.

First I wrote six letters to accompany the envelopes, which would be mailed separately, but also certified and registered, so the recipient would read that first. The letters would be addressed to Anna, Joey, Ernie, Dolores, Frankie, and Anna's lawyer, Mr. Yan. The letters explained what was in the envelopes, but not in detail. It was just enough for them to know that the evidence contained inside would incriminate my brother and father, and as such would be dangerous for them. If they felt they couldn't be involved they should return the material to me where I was staying. However, I made a point of telling them that those chances were quite unlikely, and that I'd be calling them on a weekly basis. Both my father and brother would know that should anything happen to me, Angela, or any of the recipients the others would forward those envelopes to the proper authorities. Also, I told them that a package was in the hands of a lawyer who knew what to do in the event that any of us were harmed.

Next I addressed six letters "To Whom It May Concern." I put them inside the envelopes deciphering what was in those composition books. Then, in great detail, I broke down all the signs, letters, and shorthand for them, explaining what they meant. Loan sharking, assault, and murder were very seductive for certain arms of the government and I couldn't imagine them not taking what was in their hands to the next level, investigations that would result in indictments.

It was nearly five in the morning before I finished. It was the Friday after Thanksgiving and I was off. I was thankful for that, but knew I had plenty of work to do after getting what sleep I could. I shut off the lights and looked out the window; it was still snowing. I climbed into bed and got under the covers and closed my eyes. The last thing I remember seeing was Angela, covering her mouth with her hand, embarrassed about her teeth.

I awoke with a start, shaking my hand vigorously, from side to side. There was a ferret, his tobacco-stained, razor sharp teeth were embedded in my right thumb. I looked at my hand and saw nothing. I remembered looking at the ferret's owner and telling him I'd strangle the little bastard if he didn't get him off me. He just stared at me, impassively. I'd just gotten paid from my job and seemed to have dropped the three thousand dollar check made out on a deep blue, broader than usual, Board of Education check in the park across the street from the school. I felt panic, and was on my hands and knees looking for it, when the ferret attacked me.

My thumb even felt as if it had been bitten. I rubbed the tip with my forefinger and swung my legs over the side of the bed. It was eight o'clock. I pushed myself to the window and eased a part of the curtain open. A blizzard was raging up Tenth Avenue and, judging from the cars parked along the curb, a good ten inches to a foot had already fallen.

I called room service and ordered up a large pot of coffee and a bagel with butter and cream cheese. They told me it would take forty to forty-five minutes.

I tested my blood, took an insulin shot, and then I quickly showered and got dressed. In a few minutes there was a knock on the door and a voice said, "Room service." With the slightest bit of hesitation, I opened the door, but kept the chain on. I let him in and told him to put the tray on the bed. I went and opened the curtains and was greeted with a wall of white outside the window. If anything, the storm had gotten heavier. I ate the bagel and drank my coffee, lost for a moment in the swirls outside my window.

After I finished I put a heavier shirt over the one I wore, a sweatshirt over that and my parka. I put on a woolen cap which I pushed down to over my forehead, stuffed a pair of gloves in my parka pocket and then got my briefcase. I put six letters and envelopes in it and the letters stuffed with money. Also, I took the two thousand dollars in chips and Maggie's address. I almost closed the door before I realized I might be needing my insulin and equipment at a certain point. I went back into the room, put them in the briefcase. Then I left.

I walked into the blizzard, down Tenth Avenue to 34th. Street, turned left, and made my way to the main post office on Eighth Avenue, across the street from Madison Square Garden.

It was nearly deserted inside the huge post office. It was always pretty dark in there, but the snow made the light even more diffused than it normally was. I went up to one of the clerks behind a window and asked him to send both letters and envelopes certified registered, return receipt requested. I also asked him for a mailing manila envelope. I went back to a table, put the chips inside, and mailed them to Maggie.

Nothing was moving outside; to wait for a cab was senseless. I made my way to the subway and took it to Union Square.

When I got off the train and walked up the stairs, the first thing I heard was the blast of salsa music; the first thing I saw was a crowd forming a pretty wide circle around what appeared to be performers in the middle. But there was really only one performer. He was a short Hispanic man in his late twenties, maybe early thirties, holding in his arms a replica doll, his height, of a Spanish dancer. She was beautiful and sexy, long black hair, red lipstick, eye shadow, earrings, wearing a thin blouse, her nipples pressed against the fabric, a short skirt with fishnet, black hose, stiletto heels on patent leather shoes. They were doing the mambo to the crowds amazement and delight. He held her lightly around the waist and maneuvered her head to go backwards at the dip or forward as he mamboed her around the space. Sometimes, he put his hand underneath her dress and held her around her buttocks, and when the music suggested it, he dipped her forward or backward, revealing the intimacies of a woman. The crowd howled with laughter and yelled catcalls each time he did that move.

The Cedar was open, but not for customers. I peered in through the frosted windows and got the attention of the bartender who pointed to his watch, indicating it wasn't time yet to begin serving. I mouthed the word, "Joey," but he couldn't understand me. I rapped on the pane of glass again and motioned him over. Reluctantly, he came.

"Joey," I said again, loud enough for him to make it out. He turned without saying anything and called to someone in the back of the saloon. Joey's big frame appeared a moment later and let me in.

"Up early or out late?" Joey said to me as I ducked in from the blizzard. "Pretty bad out there, yeah," he continued, "pour yourself a coffee, I got some food I'm eatin' in the back—you want a plate?"

"No thanks. Coffee sounds fine." I fixed a coffee and joined him in the back booth, next to the kitchen.

"What's up, brother?"

"Plenty. What time did you have to start out to get here today?"

"Early, man. At four I was on the road—if you can call it that—got here by seven."

"Shit, three hours and it usually takes you what?"

"Forty minutes."

I smelled the bacon being grilled. "You know, I could go for a few strips of that."

"Hey, Mike, bring Max out an order of heart attack."

"Max here?" Mike said and poked his head out of the kitchen's serving window. "Told you about my Jets. Super Bowl Jets. Told you."

"Wait. They fall apart in December. Talk to me in January."

"Super Bowl, man, no doubt. No doubt!" He moved his head back inside the kitchen.

"Is he always this up in the morning?"

"Always. Comes in, goes downstairs, smokes one of his joints, comes back pie-eyed, but pumped."

Mike shoveled six or seven strips of bacon still sizzling on a plate through the serving window. I went up to get them and some napkins. I picked up a strip and so did Joey. He looked at me looking at him. "Hey, smells too good."

We ate and drank our coffees and I told him everything that had happened the day before and about the letter and envelopes and money I had in my briefcase and what I'd like him to do with them. I asked him, after thinking it over, if he'd take a package and then if he'd put the money, nearly sixty-nine thousand dollars in his safe upstairs in his office.

"Give them to me," he said immediately. "I don't have to think about this one."

"It could be dangerous. Think about it."

"I said I didn't have to. Stop bustin' my balls and give 'em to me."

"I'll give you the cash now, but I have to mail the others to you. It's better if they come through the mail, and if you don't open the envelope, which you won't, of course, then it can be used in a court of law." Then I told him what kind of instructions I included in the separate letter.

He nodded his head. "Understood," he said.

"Joey, listen, I took out a couple of grand, three maybe, so I think, when you're ready, I should go upstairs with you so you can count it."

"Makes sense."

"Turns out this is a good day to do what I've got to do. Somebody I trust told me about a lawyer I'm going to try and see today. I'll see if he'll do the same thing you're doing, but for a price, of course."

"If he don't work out, I got one for you, too."

"Maybe two is better than one, but I don't want to get you more involved than what you are already."

"You know, sometimes you talk like a real fuckin' asshole. I am involved. Let's go upstairs."

He had a cubbyhole for an office. There were two desks, back to back, where he and a bookkeeper, Camille, worked. He took the envelopes to his desk and I sat at the other one.

He started his count and I just sat there watching. "Sixty-nine seven," Joey said, "that's the number. You want to count it?"

"No, sixty-nine seven is the number."

He bent down to his right where the safe was and began turning the dial. I stared at the old black and white photographs of de Kooning, Kline, Dawson, Pollock, Dutch, and Camille. They were haphazardly placed on the walls.

"Those were some good days," I said.

Joey looked over his shoulder to see what I meant. "Most were before our time."

"That's what I mean."

"You and your sentimentality. Just don't let it affect your judgment."

"It won't. Kline looks so crazy in that shot."

"One day, my Uncle John was tellin' me, Kline was at the bar and he ran up a tab that he couldn't pay. He asked John for the biggest piece of plain paper that he had. After John gave it to him, he looked outside and saw a Buick. In thirty seconds he drew an abstract of a Buick, signed it, and gave it to John and said, 'That should cover it.' John held onto it for I don't know how long, but when he sold it he got ten grand for it."

"That's what I mean. Does that happen anymore, I doubt it. Carrying artists, feeding them, keeping them going, taking what they can, but not killing them with dollars and cents."

"I don't know, but not here it doesn't." After that, he wrote on two pieces of paper his lawyer's number on one and 697 on the other. He closed the office and we went back downstairs and sat by the table near the window, the best seat in the house.

"It wasn't your fault," he said, "no matter what kind of shit you feel, you haveta know that. They were trash. They still are trash. They're cocksuckers, pure and simple."

"They are trash," I said, barely audible. I had to get up from the table and go to the bathroom where I leaned against a stall and let a wave of nausea pass.

When I got back to the table, Joey had gone upstairs. I sat, watching the snow continue to fall, sipping my drink and coffee. The bartender came over to me and dropped off two local papers. I thanked him.

"You know Joe for a long time, huh?"

"What?"

"You and Joe go back aways?"

"Yes, we go back aways." Perhaps he wanted more conversation, but I couldn't help him there. I walked to the back booth where my stuff was. Because it was so close to the kitchen, it was warmer there, too. I grabbed my parka and briefcase and put them under my head and, in a matter of minutes, was fast asleep.

I felt myself being gently rocked, but it was really Joey's hand on my shoulder shaking me awake. "You have things to do today and it's after twelve," he said. I tried to turn further into the wooden backing, but the hand wouldn't let me. "Max, get the fuck up."

"Yeah, yeah, O.K. Christ do you have to talk so loud?"

"No," he whispered. "Get the fuck up!" he screamed. "How's that?"

I struggled to raise my body into a sitting position and stared, bleary-eyed, around the room. Joey called out to a waitress, Marlene, to bring over two cups of black coffee. "Eat somethin'," he said, and left.

Marlene brought over two mugs of coffee. "Joseph said ya should eat sumpin'."

"What the hell does he know?"

"More than you at this point," she said and laughed. "You do look like you need to eat. What do you want?"

"Ask Mike to make me something, anything."

"You and Joseph must go back a long ways?"

"How come everybody's saying that to me today? Yeah, we go back almost thirty-five years."

"I'm twenty-four."

"Chronology has nothing to do with it."

"You mind if I think about that for awhile?"

"Take your time."

"I will." She stood guard by the kitchen. In a matter of moments the food was in front of me. By the time I finished and put three mugs of coffee in me, I was ready to face the day which, when I looked outside, was still filled with falling snow. I went to the phone booth and dialed Mr. Yan's number. He answered on the first ring. I introduced myself and, after he apologized for his secretary not being there, he invited me to come up to his office inside Confucius Plaza. He told me anytime would be fine.

Joey was upstairs I was told, doing some paperwork. I asked the bartender to get him on the intercom for me. "Joey, I'm going. I'll be in touch."

"Take care of yourself. Let me know what happens with the lawyer."

I hung up, put on my outdoor gear, and swung the briefcase over my shoulder. I walked toward the Post Office, Cooper Square Station, on Fourth Avenue, where I mailed Joey the letter and envelope. From there it was a short distance to the train station on Astor Place where I caught the number six train down to Canal Street and found Mr. Yan's office.

Mr. Yan was a small man who wore thick glasses with a black frame, a gray suit, white shirt, and plain blue tie. He greeted me warmly and ushered me into an office that belied his appearance. He had an impressive, well-appointed office with leather bound books of law that lined his shelves.

"Sit down, Mr. Heller, please."

I sat facing him in a rich, tufted leather chair.

"What can I do to help? Anna told me very little. Perhaps you can fill in the spaces?" He held his hands as far apart as he could and laughed.

I told him what he needed to know, and what was in the letter and envelope. He did not react to anything I said. After I finished, he took his time and thought for awhile.

"What would be a fair fee for what you're asking me to do?" he finally said.

"You're asking me? I laughed. "I don't know. If you were my lawyer, and we'd had some history between us, I'd expect one thing, but in this case I really don't know."

"I agree, but you're Anna's friend. We—Anna and Charlie—go back a long time and since she has never asked me to do anything like this before, especially for a white person (if you'll pardon the expression), I take it you're someone special to her."

"I suppose I am. But listen, Mr. Yan, I don't think I have to say this—because every time one does, immediate doubts flood one's mind—but there's nothing going on here, except friendship."

"Oh, no, sorry, Mr. Heller. I did not mean to imply in the least. You're right though, I did sound somewhat skeptical. However, I know Anna and Charlie, I have no doubts, whatsoever."

"Does Charlie know I'm here?"

"I don't know."

"Get Anna on the phone, if you don't mind."

"Mr. Heller..."

"If we're going to do any business today, I need to speak with her. And put her on the office speaker, please."

When he reached her at the restaurant, I explained the situation to her. She told Yan that she'd spoken with Charlie in China and he said it was fine. Satisfied that nothing was left to misinterpret, we said good-bye to her. It left Yan and I in almost the same position we started in, facing each other.

"I'm embarrassed and sorry, very sorry. But..."

"You need to be careful, too. I realize that."

"How does five hundred dollars sound? If something should happen to me during the course of your life, I will leave the appropriate instructions with my partners, though they need know nothing at this stage of the game."

"Makes sense." I pulled out my money and counted off the five hundred. Yan went into the other room and returned with a contract, which he filled out and we both signed.

"There's a post office around the corner," he said.

"Thanks, I'll mail them to you now."

With that, we both got up and shook hands. I left on cat's feet.

Chinatown was all a-bustle and so was the post office. The snow, while still falling heavily, but had lost some of its force. Even though this kind of weather stopped most things, it did not stop this Asian population from mailing letters and packages to friends and relatives overseas. I decided not to wait, but instead walked to Peck Slip, where I knew that post office would be much less crowded. My route took me past the school where I worked, and I watched Tony, and some of his maintenance crew, combating the snow that had already fallen. The scraping sounds of shovels greeted me as I approached, and I saw, from across the street, paths being made in preparation for school opening Monday.

After mailing the letters, I considered walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, but thought better of it. Instead, I walked around the South Street Seaport. There was nothing there to attract my interest and then I thought of the ferry, The Staten Island Ferry. I hadn't been aboard it in a very long time and thought this might be a good time to take a ride. The wind and snow had picked up a little bit, but I made my way to the terminal.

I had a half-hour to wait before the next boat was due to cross over to Staten Island. I sat down in a seat and tried to relax. I remembered those steamy hot nights in July and August when Angela and I would take the ferry to catch what breezes were coming off the water. "Let's go on an ocean cruise," she'd say. The later the hour we went, the more transvestites and transsexuals we'd see, among the other passengers, going home to Staten Island after a night of cavorting or performing in the city. No longer concerned with looking like the perfectly beautiful women they were, or thought they were, the facades had fallen from their faces. Their cosmetically perfect visages had been through another evening. Yet Angela and I would still marvel on how gorgeous some of them still looked, whether engaged in an animated conversation about something that happened during the night or, sitting alone, in silent repose, tired from the evening's toil.

It took a lot to shut down this city, but it wouldn't be long before the mayor would call for a closing of everything except essential services. It gave me a certain amount of comfort knowing that decisions like those were not subject specifically to acts of men, but in adherence to forces they had no control over.

Even in this storm, the ferry was on time. The steel doors were pulled back and three hardy passengers crossed onto Manhattan soil, briefcases in their hands, while I and a few others walked down the ramp leading to the boat. It was one of the older ferries, the JFK, which had wooden benches and steam heat. I took a place on the upper deck.

As the ferry pulled out, the movement of the boat made the storm seem even more furious and, as we got further out into the harbor, a white cloud flew by my window. The more I watched it, the quieter it became. I could no longer hear the engines of the ferry, nor did I hear the thoughts that had been so prominent inside me for weeks, take shape. I put on my parka and pulled the hood over my head and went out on the deck. I stood next to the railing and looked up at the sky. The harder I looked the more I could make out single flakes that floated down and were absorbed by the water. Other flakes landed on my parka and gloves and disappeared as well. There was no one on the deck with me and, as far as I could see, not another human being in the world. Even the motion of the boat had a stillness about it. I knew we were moving, but it didn't feel like it. The snow, though it didn't fall here all that often, had a naturalness about it that didn't contradict anything that stood in its way. It simply belonged.

Each moment I stood out there, I became part of its harmony. It was a different kind of harmony that I'd felt with Angela. It was a harmony born of singularity. A wholeness that, up until this very moment, I'd never enjoyed with myself, by myself. In the distance I could see the torch from the Statue of Liberty, casting a yellow light through the whiteness. Every flake seemed to bring an individual horror, pain, or joy into view, of not only the past, but the future, too. And with their passing, the fears that were so much a part of me for so long seemed to leave me. Even though I knew that this might be only a temporary peace, it was peace pure and simple. Maybe, I thought, just maybe the dark days and nights, where my soul was trampled by memories and terror, were, if not over, beginning to fade.

We were nearly ready to dock and I went back inside the cabin to warm myself a little bit before disembarking. The steam heat, usually so annoying, was welcomed into my system. I sat with my parka and gloves on, not thinking of anything, while the ferry pulled into the slip.

The terminal was dank, cold, and empty, except for the few derelicts and homeless sleeping on the floor curled into balls. I saw no one waiting for the next boat. I found a newspaper stand, still with plenty of copies of all the dailies and I bought a paper. I then went in search of a coffee stand and found a Dunkin' Donuts, bought myself a coffee and took that and the paper back into the terminal, sat on a wooden bench, and waited for the next ferry that would take me back to Manhattan.

My bed was made and fresh towels were hung in the bathroom by the time I'd returned to the motel. The snow had continued to fall in thick, wet, flakes, though the wind had died down considerably. I had no desire to stay in my room, so instead dropped off my briefcase, took a blood test—fully clothed—and with my insulin and syringe in my pocket, walked back outside and up to Central Park.

I carried the quiet inside of me and felt lubricated, all my parts working in sync with one another. There were enough people walking in the middle of the street, some I saw were even moving along on skis, since there were hardly any vehicles moving at this point. I walked up Broadway and, once at Columbus Circle, made my way into the park.

The footpaths, which must have been shoveled earlier, had at least another six inches of snow covering them. In some places, if I'd decided to venture into them, the snow would be up to my hip, two feet or better. The park was wondrous on days like this. I walked past Tavern on the Green and their Giraffe and Elephant tree sculptures, now weighted down in sections by the snow that fell, making them all the more exotic and beautiful. Across the way, on the large lawn, kids had, or were in the process of building snowmen and, in one or two cases, igloos. Some with sleds had found hills capable of thrilling them, branches weighed down by the ridges of white, threatened to collapse any second, sending down a mini-avalanche on unsuspecting revelers. There were groups of people having snowball fights, while couples or those who walked singularly, casually strolled while avoiding the fray. A football game had started and I could see guys diving into the snow to catch passes, coming up with a face full of snow and laughing. Dogs, of all shapes, sizes, and breeds, buried their snouts in the snow and frolicked just as joyously as their masters. A few hansom cabs, their hoods closed, drove customers slowly through the park, their faces peering out of vinyl windows, as the clop-clop-clop of the horses' hooves left their imprints on the ground. The horses' nostrils added their own white steam to the air.

After strolling by Bethesda Fountain and the path next to the lake behind it, I left the park and headed for Cafe La Fortuna, hoping it would be open. Not only was it open, it was jammed with people. Jackets, hats, caps, gloves, mittens, and scarves were draped over chairs—some had found the floor—the melting snow pooling beneath them. A tenor sung arias through the speakers, and I sat at the only table available and felt fortunate being able to do so, even though it was the table next to the door.

A waitress, Gina, whom I knew from my days spent here long ago, was surprised to see me, and greeted me warmly. I ordered a double espresso and a piece of Italian cheesecake, fuel for my walk back to my room. When Gina brought my order to the table she also had a bottle of anisette with her, which was hidden in her apron. I poured in a generous amount. If things went any smoother, I thought, I'd be dead and maybe in heaven. Even the lemon peel held a special fragrance for me as I rubbed the rim of the cup with it before dropping it into the thick brew. I asked her if she had a paper, and lingered for well over an hour absorbed, really, in nothing at all.

I purposely took a route that took me past the Carnegie Deli. I bought a corned beef sandwich, potato salad, and cole slaw, but before I entered the motel I found a small bodega and purchased a few bottles of Heinekin which, once upstairs in my room, I put on the shelf next to the window, which I opened an inch. After a shave and hot shower, I sat down to eat and after, thoroughly exhausted, crawled into bed. By the time I found something to watch on TV, and turned my attention to it, the remote control slipped from my hand and I slept the sleep of the dead.

The weekend passed uneventfully. I took in a few movies, ate, and even took a walk up Fifth Avenue and looked in the store windows, already seductively bedecked in their Christmas myths. The only thing that tugged at me occasionally was my apartment. I was more than curious to see if it had been broken into and, in a strange juxtaposition, I wanted a few of my books to read, mostly poetry. Instead of taking the chance and going there, I bought a few books of verse I knew I already owned, and contented myself with reading some of the poems over and over again. They were like old friends, offering comfort and insight, never dull no matter how many times I'd read them.

Monday, rested and refreshed, I went back to work. The students, with whom I'd become involved, had been on my mind over the weekend and I was anxious to see them. I said hello to Linda and Ritchie, inquired about their Thanksgivings, but was happy to get upstairs where I was alone and in my element. Lourdes, of course, was not there, nor was Jackson, for which I was grateful.

At seven-forty five, Katie and Sheila showed themselves at the door and I waved them in. I asked how their holidays had gone and they said all right, but I could see that they were afraid. The results of their tests were due the next day. I tried to reassure them that whatever the outcome we'd get through it. They both shook their heads and tried to believe me. After they left, I felt I had misled them, not believing I'd be around too much longer. I knew, of course, that I'd be present for the results, and depending on the outcome, transfer their cases to whomever I thought most appropriate.

As soon as they left, the school phone rang. I thought it strange that someone would be calling this early in the morning, especially after a long holiday recess.

"Hello, JUMPSTART," I said, "Max Heller speaking."

"This is Lizzie Carver, how are you?"

Her voice sounded all atwitter and she'd never before inquired how I felt about anything. It put me immediately on guard.

"What can I do for you?" I asked.

"There might be two detectives coming to talk with you this morning about Tina Lourdes."

"Really? About what?" I tried to keep my voice neutral even though my emotions and curiosity were peaking.

"Something to do with selling stolen merchandise. But you don't have to speak with them."

"You mean the kind of merchandise I told you and Williams about earlier this year, in fact, from the first few weeks I was here? And why don't I have to speak with them?"

"Because they haven't gone through Board of Education channels, that's why," she said, her voice growing more strident with every word. "And I don't remember any such conversation ever taking place with you."

"What if I want to talk to them?"

"Why would you?"

"That's my business, isn't it?"

"You work for me," she nearly shouted and I could imagine her face contorting, maybe even getting red.

"This sounds like it goes beyond the purview of JUMPSTART, but let me hear what they have to say, then I'll make up my mind."

"I'll see you on Wednesday," she said and hung up.

The phone had hardly touched the cradle when it rang with Ms. Lynch's voice on the other end. She told me that there were two detectives who'd like to have a word with me.

"I'll come down to your office, but I'd like you to be there."

I closed my office and headed downstairs, more curious than ever to find out what they thought my colleague had done.

They'd caught her boyfriend stealing merchandise from the store he'd worked in. Being an alcoholic and cocaine addict, it didn't take much pressure before he told them who'd he'd been siphoning the merchandise to and what she'd done with it. She sold it to her friends and students in this school.

"I told them that I'd had two separate conversations about this with my superiors, Mr. Williams and Ms. Carver, when I first started the job. In fact, I'd asked to be transferred, but they didn't approve that. After that, I thought I'd done what I could do. In fact, I said, in the last few months, she'd come to work so infrequently I thought the matter was finally being dealt with. Obviously, this was not the case." They asked me if I knew her whereabouts now, since she and her kids no longer lived in the apartment they were living in. I knew of her common-law husband who she might be with now, but I said nothing to them about that. I didn't believe it was my responsibility to go any further. They thanked me for the information and left, leaving me alone with Ms. Lynch.

"We like you here. I've already told you that," she began, "if there are any issues of any kind, please come to me first, even before you speak to you supervisors."

"I will," I said and went back to my office.

The phone was ringing as I entered. It was Carver. She wanted to know if I'd seen the detectives and what I said. I told her I had seen them, in the presence of Ms. Lynch, and that what I said to them was confidential.

"You work for me!" she nearly screamed.

"Be that as it may, what I said to them I was told to keep private," I lied, "and that's what I'm going to do."

She hesitated briefly then said, "You're to take over Lourdes' program until I see you Wednesday."

"I'll do the best I can."

And with that she hung up on me again. Wednesday should be interesting, I thought. I was then alone in the office. The only thing I regretted not asking her was the status of Jackson, who hadn't been around for weeks.

A few students came in asking if Ms. Lourdes was around. As soon as I told them she wasn't in and was not expected, they turned around and left before I could question them further. I brought Lourdes' phone from her desk to mine. Every time it rang, someone, usually female, asked for her. I told them all the same thing: I didn't know where she was or when she was coming back. They all hung up immediately.

The kids bounced into my third and fourth period groups either happy to see me, happy to be away from their families, or happy to see friends whom they hadn't seen in four days. The one exception was Candy. She came in looking morose and angry, probably with me.

Most of the group were so animated there was no way to control them. I actually enjoyed their hugging and kissing each other, the way young girls do, and their shared stories, some told in whispers, about what had happened during the four day hiatus. I played the proverbial fly on the wall, except when I looked at Candy, whose arms rested on her legs with her hands clenched over her knees. Her face, when not sneaking hateful glances in my direction, was screwed on tight, looking straight ahead. She kept looking at her watch, which made me do the same, and seeing the period was almost over, she stood up stiffly, turned, and approached my desk.

"Mistah," she began, "you fucked-up my whole fuckin' family, you know dat?" Her face reddened and she fought to hold back her tears. All the eyes in the room were upon us. "You know dat?" she continued. "My little sister's in some fuckin' foster home and we can't even see her. Raul is angry as a motherfucker all the time now, those fools threatenin' to bring him and my moms up on some kinda negligence bullshit charges. Why did you do that, Mistah?"

"We were concerned that your little sister and you were not living in a safe environment. We were concerned both of you would get harmed." I tried to sound as professional as I could, but it even sounded false to me.

"Harmed? Harmed!? Who the fuck would harm her? I be lookin' out for her all the time. It was me be protectin' her. Now who's gonna do that? Now I can't protect shit. You think foster care is any kind of heaven? You ever been in foster care, Mistah? Shit, I didn't think so. Thanks, Mistah, thanks a lot." She turned and left, having said what she'd come to say to me. I doubted if I'd ever see her again.

I felt as though I'd betrayed her. Worse, I felt like I'd betrayed everyone in the group and I'm sure my face showed it. My blood rippled with the humiliation of being uncovered, of being a fraud. If I could have disappeared at that moment, I'd have done so.

The minutes that remained before the bell were endless. Each of them turned to me and said, "Good-bye, Mistah," "See ya, Mistah," "Later, Mistah. See ya tomorrow." I said good-bye to them, too, all except Gabriella, who waited for them to leave. She walked over to my desk, almost shyly, and sat down in the chair facing me.

"Her shit's whack. That shit ain't your fault, Mistah. You just tryin' to do the right thing, like you tryin' to do for me, for all of us."

"Thanks for saying that, Gabriella. I'm not so sure anymore what the hell I'm doing. Whether what I do or say helps anyone. How the hell do I really know that that's the best thing for Candy or you, for that matter?"

"I don't think no one can know that shit, but I mean it, Mistah. I thought about all that shit over Thanksgiving. You care, can't say that 'bout most people."

"Well, thanks again."

"You know what I learned, Mistah?"

"What? Tell me." I looked into her beautiful soft brown eyes.

"That nobody can help nobody, unless they willin' to be helped. I'm selfish Mistah. I am. I love Compton; I love the danger, the excitement, the not knowin' from minute to minute what's gonna go down. Maybe all them reasons are fucked up, and they are fucked up, but I love him. But I'd been thinkin' what this has been doin' to my family, my moms, my little sisters, people who love me, and I decided that I love them more. I know that doesn't say anything like you been talkin' about, about self-esteem and future and shit like that, but that's what I come to. I love them more. Don't tell me what I should do, tell me what you think I should do."

"Your reasons right now matter less than the decision. But I won't tell you anything yet. Let me run this by someone I trust, not using your name, and hear what they have to say. Meet me here early tomorrow morning. Seven-thirty."

"Ah, Mistah, that early?"

"Get here, Gabby. It will tell you something about yourself."

She rose, just as my next class was filing in. I knew, she knew, that whatever I was going to tell her would not be good news for her and Compton. She looked resigned to that.

Ms. Lynch was surprised to see me so soon after our last meeting. "The hits just keep right on coming," she said, and we both laughed over what that said about our ages.

I told her everything about Gabriella but withheld her name. She considered what she'd been told and said she was friendly with a detective with whom she'd like to share the information. She wanted to avoid informing the head of security, Horowitz, with which I thoroughly agreed. I liked the fact that even an assistant principal was willing to go outside the system when it was necessary.

An hour later we were sitting with a detective from narcotics in a room at One Police Plaza. Ms. Patterson was an African-American and I could tell right away that they might be related somehow, I felt better about the whole thing.

"Will she and her mom testify? Ms. Patterson asked.

"Not only don't I think they will, but I'm not going to even bring up the subject. That's the most dangerous thing they could do for a lot of reasons. I think you know that. It might be the easiest, but the most dangerous, too. Besides, if I do that, she'll bolt. Of that much I'm pretty sure."

"All right, we can do this another way, that will keep her out of it, but if we do, she should know nothing about it."

"Does that mean I can't tell her some of what we discussed? Because if it does, she's too smart to not know that something's wrong. I won't tell her everything, but I have to tell her something, something that she can believe, something that won't stop her worrying, but will ease some of the tension she feels right now. Remember, she came to me and wants to put a stop to what's going on in her and her family's life. I'm not going to lie to her."

I looked from Patterson to Lynch. Both nodded their heads in agreement in that she deserved to hear something, but that something should not compromise what needed to be done.

"It's best if you say nothing," Patterson said, "but if you must, just tell her that some wheels have been put in motion that will resolve her situation. It could take six months or more, but she'll just have to tolerate that and not, I repeat not, do anything different, anything out of the ordinary, no matter what she might think is happening. And if she's as smart as you say she is, she will, at a certain point, know something's up. But I can tell you this and you can tell her, too, that while she has cause to worry, no one, not her, not her family will be involved or suspected of being involved."

"Can you promise me that?" I looked from Patterson to Lynch. "Can you?"

"Listen, Max, I can't promise you shit. Anything can happen between now and then. She could run off with him; he could get killed on the natural, in the streets, her mom could die, anything could happen, but me and my team are very good at what we do. It should be all right, but you never know. As long as we have the players' names, addresses, phone numbers, and where they hang out, it goes by the numbers, and, if we have to, we're good at improvising, too. Meaning, if we think the operations been compromised, we're going to get them out of there, quick. I can promise you that."

"I have an appointment with her early tomorrow morning. I'll try and have the information to you by the late morning."

"Here's my card, with my home phone number."

"Thanks."

"No, thank you," Patterson said.

Both Ms. Lynch and I got up to leave. Ms. Lynch gave her a kiss on the cheek, and we walked out of her office into the cold and the brilliant sunshine, with Ms. Lynch at my shoulder. The sun coming off the mounds of snow was almost blinding.

"Are you married, Ms. Lynch?"

"Yes, I am," she said somewhat surprised by my question, but amused at the same time.

"Happily?"

"Yes, very."

"That's good. In a hard job, that's another form of compensation I guess, but not everyone has it."

"It leads me to suspect you're not married, or happy."

"Yes and no. I know that sounds vague, but it's the best I can do right now.

"And if I wasn't married and wasn't happy?"

"Then I might play my cards much closer to the vest."

She broke out into a throaty, beautiful laugh and as we crossed the street, stepping over and through snow banks and slushy curbs, she slipped her arm through mine. It felt good.

That afternoon, after work, I walked to my apartment. I climbed the flights of stairs with a certain amount of trepidation, but a newfound resolve was with me as well. I checked my door to see if it had been jimmied, which it wasn't. I went inside and found everything as I had left it. Nothing was disturbed. I knew nobody could be that good, especially the people my father and brother knew. Still, I didn't want to stay there. I pulled some underwear and socks from my drawers, took a few clean shirts, and some books of poetry, and left.

On the cross-town bus on 42nd Street, I began thinking of recent developments. The complications struck me with a force that made me shake my head involuntarily. I suppose one could go on and on just addressing their own primary laws of survival, and that might be good enough, but I was drawn into these situations by a force equally strong. In fact, I decided by the time the bus reached Tenth Avenue, that that force was intimately connected to my survival.

Once inside my room, after putting away what I'd brought, I sat down at the desk facing the window and tried to understand just what that force was. The more I thought about it, the more convoluted it became, until, finally, it whittled itself down to the need to control. Then, I was reminded by a line Frankie had once said to me: "The idea is not about controlling others, but about self-control."

There was one situation outside of me over which I had a semblance of control and that was with my father and Brother Don. I turned my attention to that, removing the notebooks from an envelope and having another look at them.

On this, my third or fourth reading, initials became names, which I wrote down on a separate piece of paper. I also noticed that notations had been made on a Friday, unless Thanksgiving or Christmas Day preceded it. This meant that these people were given a week's grace and would be expected to pay the following Friday. That meant, for me, they'd not be going to the books until next Friday. For a moment, I was tempted to act at once, before they discovered them missing, but I couldn't know for sure. Besides Angela being the wild card in this, they could make further notations during the week, if someone came to them to borrow money. I was also thinking of my obligations to the students I'd been trying to help.

Tuesday morning, as I was opening the door to my office, Katie and Sheila came bouncing into the cafeteria like bunnies. Grinning from ear to ear they kept repeating the word, "negative" and laughing each time they said it. I started laughing, too.

I walked into my room and they hopped in behind me. "I thought today was the day you'd find out," I said over my shoulder.

"We took a chance and called late yesterday. Negative. Neg-a-tive. NegaNegaNegative," Sheila sang.

"We wanted to get here first thing and tell you. We watched you walk in and then we came up. Thank you, Mr. Heller, thank you," Katie said.

"Mistah, we love you," Sheila said, almost singing the words.

"You're both very welcome, ladies. I'm very happy, very happy. I could only imagine what you both have been through for the last week. Now, before I let you go I have condoms, if you want them?"

"Oh, no," Sheila said, "if my father ever found them, he'd kill me quicker than the virus."

"I'll take some, Mr. Heller," Katie said.

I got up and went over to the box and gave her a strip of seven.

"My God," they both said.

"I'm not that active, Mr. Heller," Katie said.

"I'm not saying you are. This is just the way they come and get distributed. Besides, one of your friends may need one one day." I looked over to Sheila who laughed. "Use them. Don't keep them in your knapsack, and if he doesn't want to, and tries to give you all kinds of male bullshit why he doesn't wear one and why you shouldn't be afraid, you'll know that he's not the right guy for you."

"Mr. Heller, thanks again."

"Stop thanking me. Now get the hell out of here. I've got an appointment in a little while."

"Look, he's throwing us out," Sheila said, a mock frown on her face. Katie grabbed her arm, spun her around, and whispered the word, "negative" to her and they laughed and hopped out of my room the way they'd come in.

By eight, I thought she wasn't coming. She had every reason not to, and all the reasons to put a stop to the madness in her life. But love and fear, in her case, as I knew, were two primary reasons not to do anything. You just hope that some divine intervention would sort everything out. Do nothing. Hold on tight. Pray. I wouldn't like to take odds on how many times that course of action—or inaction—worked. I didn't believe there were too many, especially people her age, who could fight the fear she felt in every atom of her body and act with what we would call courage. In fact, not many are ever confronted with so intense a situation that requires a decision that concerns, when you come right down to it, life or death.

Yet here she was, a few minutes later, walking slowly into my office.

"I almost didn't make it, Mistah."

"I'm glad you did."

"You don't know, Mistah, I was up all night and still I couldn't get my legs to move me outta my bed."

"Believe me, I know something about that."

"You think I'm doin' right?"

"Yes."

"No way this can work itself out?"

"No way, not for your family and not for you."

She looked at me and sighed. "O.K., Mistah, tell me what I should do."

I told her who I'd spoken to and with whom, from the school, I'd gone with to One Police Plaza. I said to her I'd not given her name, but wanted to talk with her first. Then I explained almost exactly what had been explained to me. I said nothing about having to relocate her and her family should things go awry.

"I'd be betrayin' Compton, Mistah," was the first thing she plaintively said.

"Yes, that's true, but not as much as you've betrayed your mom and little sisters, and not as much as Compton has betrayed you. There's no telling what it's done to them already. I like you, Gabriella, but you've done a terrible thing to both of them. You know, it's one thing to be alone, out on your own and making decisions that might be dangerous, but dangerous for you and you alone. That's your call, your life, but when you put people who've done nothing except support you, people who love you, in harm's way, that's completely different. They have no business in this and now it's up to you to get them the hell out before something terrible happens. Your little sisters could get violated by one or more of those lunatics who're up there cutting the dope; your mom could get involved; anything could happen—and something will happen, as sure as we're talking now, something will happen. Think about living with that the rest of your life."

"O.K., Mistah, who do I have to speak to? Let's do it now before I chicken out."

I pulled Patterson's card from my pocket and dialed her number. Luckily, she was there. I told her it needed to be done now.

"Bring her over," she told me.

Next, I called Ms. Lynch and told her what was about to happen and that I might not be back for my groups.

"I'll come up," she said, which surprised and gratified me.

"Tell them something about yourself. It would be good for them to hear that your life isn't perfect either."

"Far from it," she said and laughed.

We spent the next few hours with Patterson giving her the information she required. I listened closely to anything Gabriella might be asked to do that I thought might be harmful or dangerous for her, but I didn't hear anything like that. Patterson, in fact, was very warm and somewhat maternal toward her, which, I could see, eased her greatly. She was just asked about the nuts and bolts of Compton's operation as she knew them. After we were finished, I told Gabriella that I thought it would be better if we left separately and met in Ms. Lynch's office. Patterson agreed.

As soon as we walked in, Ms. Lynch got up and while walking toward Gabriella asked her secretary and two teachers to leave the office while she took this meeting. As soon as they were gone she shut the door and, turning toward Gabriella, embraced her. When she did that, the tears started to flow from her eyes. They just stood there, Ms. Lynch stroking Gabriella's head, back, and shoulders.

"I'm going back to my office," I whispered and quietly shut the door behind me.

Later in the day I spoke with Ms. Lynch and asked how Gabriella was and to tell her that I wouldn't be in the next day because of a meeting I had at Stuyvesant with my supervisor and other members of JUMPSTART. I asked her to keep an eye on Gabriella, especially since this was all too new for her to be left alone. She said she would. Before I left for the day, I put a sign on my door saying that there'd be no groups tomorrow and that I'd see them all Thursday.

Stuyvesant was a new, state-of-the-art high school that was located adjacent to Battery Park City, situated on the promenade, facing the Hudson River in Lower Manhattan.

The building itself was magnificent. The labs were said to be the finest in the country, computer terminals at each desk and enough grade advisors and college advisors to make sure, from the very first day a student came there, that they'd have a program commensurate with their interests, abilities, areas of strength, and talent. The hallway floors were buffed and polished, the noise from the students was muted, even between periods. It was a far cry from the din of my school.

I found my way to the JUMPSTART office where Carver was already holding court. She glared at me when I entered. I sat down next to a Muslim, Mohammed, whom I liked and who worked uptown in one of the more difficult schools. We had found each other during other meetings of this kind and shared an affinity for jazz, the Sixties, and the utter bullshit of meetings such as the one we were attending. This would be his last year, and he was just trying to get through it without too much work. I knew he knew Jackson because they lived in the same neighborhood and I asked if he'd seen him recently. He wrote on a piece of paper that Jackson had an Order of Protection filed against him by one of the women he saw and that, "the man" was looking for him for questioning. "The brother just up and split," he said and laughed.

"Could you both pay attention to me, if you don't mind," Carver said caustically.

"Sorry," Mohammed mumbled.

I said nothing, but instead just looked at her blankly.

Today, instead of discussing the drugs and drug gangs that plague most of our schools, or how to better involve the parents who are usually substance abusers themselves, or facilitate better groups, or involve the school better in awareness campaigns, not only about drug abuse but the other health problems the hover around it, or how and when to refer out those who can't be helped to an out-patient or residential program, Carver decided to talk about pie charts. She stressed that it was most important to create these pie charts to put on our front doors so that at every moment of the day she, when she paid a visit to our schools, could know exactly where we were and how we could be reached. The group listening to her exchanged glances of disbelief as to what we'd just heard. She wanted us to do something that was last done in the elementary grades. Carver made sure, in excruciating detail, to explain every nuance of each slice of pie that needed to be created. For instance, if one had to go to the bathroom and the needle was on a symbol of bathroom, then one would know that in a short period of time that the person was coming back. If on the other hand it was pointed toward lunch, they'd have a better idea of whether to wait or not. It seemed that the schedules we'd already posted on our door were not enough for her. To help with our projects she'd brought oak tag, colored crayons and pencils, and those little arrows that spin on a wheel which was to be inserted after we'd finished drawing our charts. Carver assigned Williams the job of handing those out. The amount of confusion in the room was intense. People wanted to know how many slices in a pie? Should a recess be included? Should there be a space for emergencies, telephone calls, sickness, vomiting, diarrhea, constipation, principal conferences, auditorium sessions, trips, or just plain paper work? To these questions Carver seemed befuddled. People she implored, this is just a simple pie chart that apparently, to those present, wasn't that simple.

"Let's take a twenty-minute break and think about those things," she finally said. "I'll expect everyone in their seats in twenty minutes."

I turned to Mohammed to find out any more information I could when I heard Carver's voice. "Mr. Heller, can I see you now?" It wasn't a question. I got up from my seat and crossed the room to where she was standing, her back arched, her eyes aglow with something other than love.

"Can you tell me anymore than what you told me about your meeting with those detectives? And why in the world would you want your vice principal to be there?"

"Let me answer your second question first. I didn't want any chance of miscommunication. Now, for your first question. As I told you before what I had to say was between me and those detectives and since Ms. Lynch is our immediate school supervisor, I thought she needed to hear what I had to say as well. The detectives cautioned me not to say anything to anybody else, which I'm following. Is that it?"

"No, that's not it. Your first allegiance is to me."

"It seems like it should be to those kids at school, but if that's your opinion, it's your opinion."

"Don't get funny with me."

"I wasn't trying to do that."

"Mr. Heller I'm going to transfer you out of your school right after the term is over. I think you can work better at another school."

"Is that what happened to Jackson? Did you transfer him?"

"Not exactly."

"No, exactly, he's a fugitive from justice as we speak. Two people you put me with are people that the cops are looking for and you're looking to transfer me. If it wasn't for me, you'd have no program at all at that school and instead of saying a mere thank you you're saying screw you, but that's O.K. Now, is that all, I've got work to do, like seeing which slice of pie should go next to the other, trying to be as aesthetically minded as I can be. Oh, and speaking of that, do you think I could mix a blueberry and apple pie, maybe coconut or cherry, or should it be all of one kind?" I turned around and went back to my seat before she could answer me.

The rest of the afternoon was spent in trying to create these pie charts. With each attempt somebody laughed, threw up their hands in exasperation, or just laid their heads on their folded arms on the desk and gave up. Oak tag, crayons, and pencils lay strewn around the room in cut, ripped, or broken bits. What pie charts there were were an embarrassment to those of us who took their jobs a little more seriously than her paranoid mind could ever grasp.

Nearing the time when we could finally escape, Carver said, "Well, I think you all did pretty well. What you should do is make this a class project, get your students involved, they'll love to do this. You might even take up a few periods doing this project. I'll expect those charts up before the Christmas recess. Thank you, you can all go now."

Each of us got up, stretched, and left the room as quickly as our bones would allow us. Outside, we breathed some cold fresh air into our lungs. It looked like it might snow again.

In my room that night I began to think about Angela in ways that frightened me. Every obvious, and in some ways traditional questions, that a man has about a woman he loves, could not be answered now. The more complicated questions, the ones concerning her mental state, were out of my depth, which made them all the more frightening.

I dialed Ernie's number, the only person and place I could think of to call. On the third ring he answered. "Wha'?"

"Ernie, it's me, Max."

"Max, brudder, I got your package. What's up, man?"

I filled him in and asked him if Angela and I could have my old front room back if we needed it. The question made him angry. "Don't ask me nuttin' like dat no more. The room is always yours. Period."

"I might need you to pick me up at the airport. If I do I'll call and give you a few days."

"I hope you do."

"I'll speak to you soon. Take care of yourself."

"You do the same."

Nearly a month before the Christmas recess, the students and the school were gearing up for it. I couldn't tell who looked forward to it more. Teachers were more than willing to let their classes out to rehearse auditorium shows and the kids, of course, their fever building, could hardly contain themselves. Decorations were going up, Christmas parties were being planned, and it seemed the festivities would carry us up to the break.

My groups were no different. Thursday, when I returned, I explained to all the possibility of my not being there next term. I told them that my supervisor might see fit to put me in another school that she thought might need me to serve in a different capacity. Most of them reacted typically with sighs and groans, and then went back to their conversations and plans. The few students with whom I'd gotten close were far more muted. It was them that I took time to explain, in private, what was going on, and what, if anything it would mean to them. Gabriella was a different situation. We spent the next few weeks talking about what was going on in her life and what she wanted to accomplish in the coming years. When the time came for us to separate, I would ask her for her address and number and, I promised her, that wherever I was, she'd have a way of getting in touch with me as well.

The Friday before the break we said our good-byes for the holidays and parted, all except Gabriella who came towards me. We looked at each other for a few minutes before I spread my arms welcoming her in a hug and then a kiss on the cheek.

"All you have to remember is to do the next right thing and I'll try to remember the same."

She nodded her head and kissed me again. "Take care, Mistah. I love you."

I nearly got choked up, but was able to say, "I love you, too."

With that she smiled and left my office.

After she'd gone, I waited a few minutes before going downstairs to say good-bye to Ms. Lynch. A party was going on in her room for all the social workers, grade advisors, and counselors. I didn't want to stay long. I went over to her and told her to have a nice vacation and that I'd see her after we got back.

"Aren't you going to stay and have some of the goodies here?"

"No, I need the afternoon to do a few things, so I'm going to get. Thanks for everything."

"It's me that should be thanking you." She kissed me on the cheek and I returned the gesture. Her skin was so soft and her fragrance so intoxicating that for a moment I was tempted to stay, but I left as inconspicuously as possible.

Once outside, I turned around and looked at the school for a moment before continuing to walk through the Chatham Square complex and into Chinatown.

Anna was behind the counter making change when I entered. I took a seat near her, opposite the register.

"How are you? How's Charlie?"

"Max, hi. We fine. How you?"

"I'm all right, maybe better than all right." I smiled at her and she returned it.

"Good. Good to hear that."

"Anna, I stopped in because I'm going to be going soon. I don't know the next time we'll meet."

"No good-byes Max. Come with me, I got something."

I followed her towards the back and into the kitchen where, from her purse, she took out a small sack. Inside was a gold coin on a gold chain.

"It brings good luck. Wear it."

"Put it on me."

She slipped the chain over my head. The gold coin floated on my chest above my sweater. I took the coin in my hand, looked at the deep golden hue it had, and felt the soft, heavy metal. I put it inside my shirt. "I'll be seeing you," I said. I turned and walked out.

Joey, too, was behind the bar at the cash register making change when I came in. I propped myself on a stool. When he was finished, he turned and saw me, but proceeded to the service area where a waitress was waiting for him.

As soon as he came back and looked at me, I knew that he knew exactly what I'd be doing from here on out. He put those big arms and hands of his on the bar and leaned toward me. "What are ya drinkin'?" he asked.

"Chivas neat, beer back."

He placed the drinks in front of me.

"You working Christmas Eve?"

"Should be."

"Maybe I'll see you late."

"I'll be here 'til one or two, depending."

"Hopefully, I shouldn't be that late. Be nice to be around friends."

"Always is."

"Your family?"

"They're used to it. Comes with the territory. They know my working lets them be irresponsible. They don't mind. Seems like a good trade off—for them."

"Sounds like they've got you by the balls."

"What family doesn't?"

"Joey, it's been a pleasure," I said getting up to leave.

"The pleasure's been all mine."

He leaned across the bar and we kissed each other on the cheek. I turned toward the door and walked out. I didn't look back this time either.

Nuts and bolts, Conrad's rivets, I kept reminding myself over the next few days. Civilization's mortar.

Besides renting a car for a week, I went back to my apartment late at night and took things that were important to me. I put them in boxes and brought them back to the motel where I paid in cash for another week. I thought about writing a letter to Ms. Lynch, but the idea of explaining everything surrounding my absence was so unappealing to me, I thought better of it. I did see Joey's lawyer on Monday and did the same thing I'd done with Mr. Yan. Only this time it cost me a thousand. Afterwards, I stopped into a gift shop and just bought an assortment of boxes with different colored ribbons and wrapping paper.

It was Christmas Eve and a quiet had settled over the city. I carefully packed my duffel. Inside, I put a copy of the notebooks, my house keys, my diabetic gear, a change of clothes, and the gun, fully loaded, and all the extra bullets I had.

I began going to Brooklyn early to make sure that I got into their private community, one way or the other. If the cop at the gate stopped me and gave me a hard time, I'd park the car outside and go through the fence that I'd gone through Thanksgiving. If he waved me through, I'd go to Brother Don's house, find a place to park and look for a spot to hide myself while waiting for my father to show up.

Driving through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, I tried to imagine what their faces looked like now, but couldn't. All I could remember was how they looked all those many years ago, which kept my hate alive. Every time Angela entered my thoughts, I shooed her away. There'd be plenty of time, I hoped, to turn my attention to her, later on.

Instead of going directly to Brother Don's place, I stopped at Nathan's, gobbled a frank, and took a black coffee with me. The cop at the gate took one look at me and the mound of Christmas gifts I had in the car, smiled, wished me a Merry Christmas, and waved me through. I found a place to park that was directly opposite Brother Don's home. I took the gun out of the duffel and put it in my jacket pocket and slung the duffel into the back seat. I waited until I was sure there was no movement coming from the house or the street, got out, and got in the back seat. I lowered myself and could just see out the window, took out the gun, placed it on the seat next to me, and opened the coffee. It was so quiet it seemed otherworldly. There were a few street lamps that cast a dim yellow light.

While I slumped down on the seat next to the window and sipped the coffee, the side door to the home flew open and Brother Don raced out, followed, I assumed, by his wife. She had thrown a coat over her housedress and slippers, and nearly stumbled going down the stairs trying to catch up with him.

"You bastard, stop runnin'!" she yelled, and he slowed down. "You coward bastard fuck!" she screamed again.

I cautiously lowered my window.

He stopped at the lip of the driveway and waited for her.

"Whatdayawant? Whatdayawant already? Stop bustin' my balls, will ya?"

"I'm breakin' your balls because I want you to stay home Christmas Eve?"

"I'll be back. You know that. I'm just goin to see Baby Lou."

She looked incredulously at him. "Baby Lou? Baby Lou? Whatdayathink I'm stupid? You're goin' to fuck that whore. That's where you're goin'."

"You're outta your fuckin' mind. Just make the food. Pop will be over soon expectin' ta eat. And you might spend some time with my fuckin' kids so maybe they'll know that you had somethin' to do with bringin' 'em up and not the nigger. You are their mother, or have you forgotten?"

"You sonofabitch bastard. I've done more with those kids in a day than you've done in ten fuckin' years. Besides, they ain't your kids, your sperm never worked, some other man impregnated me. You couldn't produce."

He reached out and grabbed her around the throat. "Marie," he hissed, "accidents happen all the time."

"You threatenin' me?"

"Me? No, not me. Of course, not." He gradually released his grip on her throat. "You're the mother of my kids. I love you. Listen, I'm just goin to see Baby Lou, I promise. We got business, nothin' else."

"Nothin' else?"

"Nah, nothin' else. I swear." He bent down and gave her a light kiss, but she remained incredulous. He turned at the driveway and walked away as she watched him going to a place that had nothing, and everything, to do with her.

I watched her walk back into the house. I sipped the coffee and felt bad for the kids that waited inside for her.

Brother Don had gotten as big as a grizzly bear, I thought. He appeared to weigh three hundred pounds, or better. It seemed he'd grown into the part he'd been playing since I knew him. I took another sip of coffee, but it was down to the grinds, cold and bitter. I capped it, put it on the floor, and waited. I wanted to light a cigarette, but didn't.

A Cadillac slowly turned into Brother Don's driveway and came to a stop. A heavyset black woman got out of the driver's side and went around to the passenger's door. She opened the door and placed her arm inside, helping the passenger to get out. Obviously, it was a chore. I watched as first my father's head, and then his massive frame, was helped from the car to a standing position. He shook off her arm and slowly, with her beside him, walked to the stairs leading up to the side entrance. I watched him lumber, like an old bull elephant, taking painfully small steps as he approached the concrete stairs. Again, she gripped him by the arm lending him support as they made their climb. He took one step at a time, placing both feet on it until he was ready to navigate the next one. When they got to the door, he didn't knock. He merely pulled open the sliding door and entered.

I gave them enough time to get settled in the house, put the gun in my jacket pocket, and got out of the car. I took notice of how my legs felt. They felt fine. My heart was beating a little stronger than usual, but from what I could tell, it did nothing to affect my thinking. Clear headed, with an adrenaline boost informing my step, I walked to the steps leading up to the side door. I took a deep breath and slid the door open.

The smell of cooking shrimp greeted me when I entered. Marie, her back to me, was looking into the oven, but Angela, also in the kitchen, saw me enter. I saw the back of my father's head and his large frame sitting at the table being catered to by his nurse. She was putting a plate of cold antipasto in front of him.

"Baby," my father said to his nurse, "get me a diet Coke. And, baby, don't forget to bring me my pills."

I walked over to him, leaned over, and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

"Don," my father said, "you finish what you had to?"

"Oh, yeah," I said, "it's finished."

His head jerked around and I saw fear in his eyes. He looked from me to the nurse in the room, frantically searching for his other son. I moved in front of him so he could have a complete view of his first born.

"Hiya, Dad," I said.

Angela and Marie, hearing my voice came in from the kitchen.

"You got the books, we know that, and you're here to bargain."

"Not to bargain, to make a deal."

"A deal to claim your nigger bitch?" He started to laugh.

Without thinking I backhanded him across his face and watched his upper dentures fly from his mouth and land on the floor. Spittle, mixed with his blood ran down his lips and chin.

I gathered myself and said, "I'm not claiming anyone." I looked over at Angela, who hadn't moved in all this time.

He wiped the saliva mixed with his own blood from his mouth as his nurse scurried to retrieve the denture, wash it, and return it to him. He slipped it in, clacked his teeth a few times and was satisfied it still fit.

"Where are your kids?"

"They're downstairs playing Nintendo."

"Take her and get the hell out," my father said, flexing his jaw.

"Not just yet." I sat down, making sure I was where I couldn't be seen by Brother Don when he came home. I pulled the gun out of my jacket pocket.

"You ain't gonna use that, who you kiddin'?"

"I don't give a shit at this point what I do. Angela, go into the kitchen with Marie, if she tries to make a phone call holler, I'll kill the old man. See if I won't."

They moved off into the kitchen, Angela following a bit cautiously, and I could hear them fussing with pots and pans. I got the feeling that Marie couldn't care if I killed the old man and, hopefully, her husband with him.

"What have you done with those books?"

"You'll find out. I'm waiting for the whole family to be around the table."

"I got the feeling that you ain't done shit with them, else you wouldn't be here now."

"Nice house Brother Don has here; a house built on other people's blood, but of course you know that. I was outside when he and his wife had a little spat. Heard that he couldn't produce kids, no sperm. So those grand kids you have really have no blood ties to you, thank God. It seems this is where you end."

We sat just looking at each other. The nurse seemed to be frozen in place. "All this time, after all that happened, and I've really got nothing to say to you," I said. He didn't answer. He just sat there, occasionally wiping his mouth, although the blood had longed since stopped.

"I'm starved," I heard my brother yell before he slid open the door. "Let's eat!" He came into the dining room and kissed his father on the cheek. He raised his head and saw me sitting there with the gun pointed toward both of them. "Sonofabitch," he whispered.

"Ladies, come into the dining room, dinner's going to be a little late tonight, but it seems they have enough meat on them to make it through."

Angela and Marie walked in and I got up and stepped to the front of the table, laid out with plates and silverware with a big antipasto and green salad in the middle.

"Angela why don't you go and stand in the middle over there opposite my father, and him," I pointed the gun at Brother Don, "why don't you come around here and stand in the middle of us."

He did as he was told and I took a step back and grabbed my duffel off the chair and opened it. I removed an envelope with a copy of their notebooks inside and handed them to my father. "Take a look, see if you recognize them."

"They're copies of what you stole."

"Stole!? That's rich. O.K., I don't want to waste your time or mine. Here's the deal. I've made ten copies of the original. I've mailed those copies, registered, certified, to seven different people, and given two lawyers a copy each, with instructions on what to do in case I or Angela are harmed in any way. Each of them will get a phone call from me or someone they know on different days of the week. Should they not hear from me, or that other person, they're to get those envelopes into the hands of City, State, and Federal officials who do nothing for a living except look for pricks like you. And if that isn't enough, some of those packages will go to the editors of certain newspapers and magazines who dig into stories like this. If you're smart, you'll let us go on our way and we'll let you continue to live the pathetic lives you've always lived. What's it going to be?"

"He's fulla shit. We're going to let her go and then he's gonna turn over those books."

"Don't be an idiot," my father said to him, "he could have already done it, but he didn't he's here now, ain't he?"

"It's a good thing he was born before you," I said to Brother Don.

"Take her. There's nothin' left ta fuck. I fucked it all outta her anyways," Brother Don said.

I knew I positioned him just the right distance for a moment like this. I turned with a speed I no longer thought I had, and kicked him in the balls so hard that he doubled over and vomited at the same time. He dropped to the floor writhing and moaning. In an instant, Angela grabbed a two-pronged stainless steel salad fork from the table and began stabbing him all over his body, starting with his head, face, and neck. Her eyes were wild with madness and tears. When she got past his neck she purposely slowed down her thrusts, her eyes widened, and her level of concentration increased. She placed the two tines directly on his skin and pushed in slowly. We heard the soft pops that the tines made as they punctured his flesh. Round droplets of blood began oozing from them. With each puncture, Angela threw her head back like some wild horse. She continued to do this until I tried to grab her by the waist and straighten her up, but her strength was greater than I imagined. She threw me off, a few times, before I finally dragged her off him. She was shaking like a leaf and nearly hysterical, her eyes going around the room, not focusing on anything. Finally, I felt her body give way. "Enough, enough, that's enough."

"Nothin's enough. Nothin'," she rasped.

"Go and pack what you need to take, just what you need. Anything else we can get. All right?"

She didn't say anything, but went to her room. I just stood there between Brother Don on the floor and my father, sitting motionless in the chair. Marie had taken a seat. We all listened to my brother's moans.

Angela came back quickly with two suitcases in her hands. I stood up. "It's been a pleasure spending Christmas Eve with my family again. Maybe next year, what do you think?" As I walked past my father I spit in his face. He stared straight ahead. Angela and I walked out the door and into my car across the street. We didn't say anything to one another all the way into the city.

When we were on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway underneath the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, her eyes turned to the picture postcard view of Manhattan across the river, and I felt that maybe she was coming around. I took the Brooklyn Bridge entrance ramp and I noticed she was looking up and down at the transoms and cables. The ride down Lafayette took a few minutes. Then I took a left on Ninth Street, a right on University Place and parked across from Tte Cedar on Eleventh. I shut off the motor.

I wanted to do so many things. I wanted to touch her, hold her hand, kiss and hug her all at once, but I couldn't get myself to do anything. I'd been waiting all through the ride for some kind of sign by her that it would all right, the years melting into a pool that had slowly evaporated, but it was not to be. Instead, I opened my door, went around to her side, and opened her door as well.

"C'mon, let's go," I said.

I offered my hand, which she took. It felt dry, but soft. I helped her out of the car and we walked across the street, this time my hand in the crook of her elbow.

Inside, the Cedar was fairly empty. Joey sat at the end of the bar and when we walked up to him his eyes widened. I looked at Angela and her eyes were wide as well.

"Angela," Joey said, and got up and embraced her.

"Joey," she whispered.

"How are you?"

"That's a complicated question. I got older, I know that for sure," she said.

"Haven't we all?" Joey replied.

"You look the same. You look good."

"Plus forty pounds."

"I lost some teeth," she said with a hint of embarrassment.

"That can be fixed," I quickly said.

"You guys hungry?"

"Starved, we left before dinner was served."

"Sit down, I'll send over a waitress."

We settled in a booth in the back and sat facing each other. The waitress came over and Angela said, "I want one of those great Cedar hamburgers, fries, and a beer."

"Make that two."

She brought over the beers, and we sipped on them not saying anything. I was encouraged by any sign that indicated she still remembered the things we shared.

"Why didn't you let me kill him?"

"There was no need to."

"Who says?"

"I would have had to kill everybody in the house."

"So? They deserved killin'."

"Even the kids?"

"Well, maybe not the kids. But they be better off without those three, can tell ya that."

"You're probably right."

"Definitely right."

I couldn't wait for the food to come so we could concentrate on something else.

The hamburgers and Joey arrived at the same time. Angela just looked at her plate of food, while Joey handed me an envelope that I knew contained the 697. I dropped it into my duffel.

"Trusting soul," Joey said.

I watched as Angela doused her hamburger with ketchup and mustard, salted her fries, and began to eat. If I didn't know better, it might have been twenty years ago and she'd just met me after work. I smiled to myself, but I was well aware that everything had changed. Her mannerisms indicated a person who was hungry and just her hunger dictated her actions, nothing else.

Angela didn't say or ask me anything. She just concentrated on her food, and when she finished asked if she could have another beer. I got up and went over to the bar where Joey sat. I asked our waitress to bring another beer to our table and looked at Joey with, what must have appeared to him, an expression that bordered on lost.

"Well?" he asked.

"I don't know. It's like being with a person who you know so well, but some vital parts have either gone away or are buried so deeply they can't be reached."

"Hey, man, take your time. This is all new to her. No matter what, you've been out in the world all these years, and she's been a prisoner. Give it some time. No quick moves, if you can help it."

"That's what I'm afraid of. We might have to make a quick move. And I don't know how the hell she'll react. I'll go as slow as I can, and hope it won't be too fast for her. I could use a Chivas and another beer."

Joey went and poured them for me. I drank down the shot and brought the beer back to the table and sat down. Angela was drinking her beer.

"Could I have a cigarette?" she asked as soon as I sat down. When she saw me take a pack of Luckys from my pocket she smiled, then quickly put her hand over her mouth. I gave her the cigarette and lit it for her.

"How do you feel?"

"Good, I guess," she said and paused. "Max, don't be expectin' too much in the way of conversation. Haven't spoken to another human being, 'cept kids, in quite some time. And don't be afraid of me. I ain't nuts, no matter what went on back there tonight."

"You're doing fine. And you did fine back there, too. I wanted him and my father dead a million times, but each time I thought about it I became frightened that any chance I had of seeing you again would be lost." I looked down at her hand around her beer and noticed some of Brother Don's blood on her knuckles and hand. I dipped a napkin in the glass of water and wiped it away. After I cleaned it off, I continued to hold her hand. She didn't pull it away.

"I could use a Wild Turkey," she said.

"You sure?"

"As sure as I can be 'bout anything in this world."

I ordered a double Wild Turkey and a double Chivas, both neat. We waited until the waitress brought them over before we started to talk again. I put the pack of Luckys on the table and for the first time that night leaned back against the wooden bench.

Angela took a sip of her drink and leaned back as well. "Man, that's so good."

I smiled and sipped at my drink. "They gave me two choices, Angela," I began, "my father and brother sent over the same two goons who busted me up, Ralph and Ralphie, to see me in the hospital."

"Yeah, I know them..."

"You can imagine, I was in terrible shape. They said I could leave New York—all of New York—and never come back, never write anything again, and you'd live. That's all. It was simple. My decision was made for me then and there. The thought of you dying was something so horrible to me at that point that, when I was able to, I left and went to New Orleans thinking that maybe, just maybe, you might be there, or somebody there would know where you were. But it was one dead end after another. Then I ran into Brother Don down there, and when me and a few friends confronted him he made it sound like he knew you were alive and that little bit of hope kept me from killing him."

"Maybe it be better off if we died then and there."

"Maybe we still have a chance. Maybe it's a slim chance, but it's a chance," I said.

Joey came back with a drink for himself and sat beside me. "You all want to come back to my home tonight? We got plenty of room, no problem."

"No, thanks," I said, "I'm taking Angela to one of the garden spots of the world."

She started to laugh. "Must be one of those wonderful flea bag hotels that Max was so famous in finding for us."

"You got it," I said. I saw that the drinks had started to affect her in a good way.

"O.K., but the offer stands. Even if you want me to come in tomorrow and pick you up."

"Thanks, but no thanks, Joey. We got plenty to talk—or not talk—about. Should be nice and quiet tomorrow. Just the kind of day we like. In fact, Angela would you like to finish your drink and I'll show you our domicile for the evening?"

She nodded her head, but there was a certain amount of trepidation in her eyes.

"O.K., Joey, what's the tab?"

"You kiddin'? Merry Christmas, both of you guys."

"You and your family have a safe and healthy holiday. I'll see you when I see you."

Joey bent down into the booth toward Angela and kissed her on the cheek. "It's so good seein' ya. One of the best presents I could have gotten. Take care of yourself."

Angela kissed him back, but not on the cheek, on his lips. "You always tasted good."

We finished our drinks and I left a healthy tip on the table for our waitress. We put on our jackets, embraced Joey one more time, and left.

We didn't feel the cold; the liquor had warmed us up. There wasn't a car on the street, nor were any people. The Cedar Tavern's lights were the only proof that other people existed in this entire town. The car's engine turned over easily. I put it in drive and we made our way uptown. This time Angela was a little more attentive to the sights as they went by, but every now and then I could see her begin to hunker down inside herself, not at all sure if she wanted, or was able, to come out any further.

When I found a parking space in the motel's lot, she just looked at me with a bemused expression on her face. "I needed to get out of my apartment after I took the books, and this was all I could think of," I said. I left out my questions, fears, and doubts about whether or not I could trust her.

A fake white Christmas tree, which had seen better days, sat in the corner of the motel lobby. A few green and red tinsel strands were oddly criss-crossed around it, and a lopsided star sat on top of the tree. All the decorations really did (the colored lights, the Merry Christmases, the Happy Holidays and New Years signs, and the beaten, run- down aura of the place) was invoke a greater sense of melancholy and alienation. It was a desperation location, a fuck-and-suicide spot.

I carried Angela's valises and she my duffel up to my room.

"This simply won't do," I said, when we put down our stuff.

I looked over at her, but she was inside herself.

"Angela, throw some of your nicest stuff in my duffel, dress, outfit, underwear, whatever. We're getting out of here for the night." I looked at her again for some recognition, but there was none. I repeated what I'd said this time a little louder. She heard me and got up and went to her valise and got out what she thought she would need and I did the same. We took the elevator down to the lobby.

Inside the cab, I took two thousand dollars from the envelope and put it in my pocket.

The doorman at the Plaza graciously opened the way for us to enter. Once inside I went up to the desk clerk, leaving Angela to sit in the lobby with our possessions. At first a room was out of the question, completely unavailable. When one hundred became three hundred a suite for seven hundred and fifty dollars magically opened up. We could have it for this night and Christmas Day as well.

If the motel was hell, this was heaven. Real Christmas trees nearly reaching the sky were bedecked in the holiday's finery. The reds, greens, and golds seemed to match perfectly with the burnished woods and golden railings, over-stuffed English chairs, couches, and thick Persian carpets for which the hotel was noted.

A bellboy, Sean, carried our things up to the ninth floor, inserted a card into a slot and the door opened by itself. He took great pride and pleasure in showing me how where everything was and how they worked. Angela was taking a tour by herself and stopped by the window. She looked out into the darkness of the park and 59th Street below.

"That's great, thanks. We'll find our way," I told him.

"One more thing, sir. Let me show you the bathroom before I leave."

"All right," I said. My curiosity was aroused.

The entire bathroom was done in marble with a shower/bath in one corner, a toilet and bidet, a phone and television, two acoustic speakers hung from the walls, but there, sitting in another corner was really the centerpiece, a huge Jacuzzi. I walked out and into the bedroom. I sat on this gigantic bed with down pillows and blanket. I picked up the phone and pressed a button for the concierge. I made reservations for Christmas brunch in the Palm Court for Mr. & Mrs. Heller.

I went and stood next to Angela at the window.

"Sure ain't no flea bag hotel."

"No, sure isn't."

"Cost a pretty penny, I bet."

"Not as much as it would have cost if I'd never found you again."

She turned and faced me. Slowly, she lifted her hand and placed it on my cheek. "You was always so sweet. So unbearably sweet."

"Angela, I've made some terrible mistakes. The worst was not listening to you all those years ago. We should have left, gotten out, got gone, but I was too afraid, too selfish, too young, and too stupid. My mistakes cost us plenty, but please try to trust me now. I'm going to take care of you in ways I was never able to take care of you before. Protect you, in ways that you need, but you're going to have to trust that I'm able to do that now." Her hair was still cut short, but now had flecks of gray in it. I put my hand on the back of her head and drew her closer to me. Close enough so I could bend towards her and kiss her forehead.

"I'll try, Max. I will. But there's a sadness deep inside me that just won't move. It's like a hard sadness, like sad stones in my body that calls me into itself. Can't predict the where or the when or the why, they just do."

"We'll try to do something about that. Just trust me. I love you. I won't hurt you, even if it feels like hurt sometimes, it's not. It's love, maybe the madness of love."

"I love you, too," she said. She rested her head on my shoulder and we stood that way for awhile. "Can we live here?" she asked. "Seems like nothin' bad can ever happen in this place."

"Have we ever taken a Jacuzzi together?

"Don't think so," she said.

"Now's our chance."

A million thoughts must have raced through her mind in the seconds between my question and her acceptance.

"Let me go in first, you was never one to figure out how those kinds of things work."

I laughed and told her to go right ahead. She stopped by her valise and took out a nightgown, but I told her there were beautiful terry cloth robes in the bathroom. I went over to the entertainment center and selected a tape by Bach, the solo cello suites, inserted the CD and hit play. By the time I heard the jets of the Jacuzzi filling the tub, and smelled the rich scent of some kind of bath oil filling the rooms, I was sitting on the corner of the bed listening to the first majestic cello suite.

"Ready," she said, "c'mon in."

When I got into the bathroom, Angela was already in the tub, swirling hot water all around her. I undressed and got in myself, but sat at the other end, looking at her and letting the force of the water relieve some of stress and aches in my body.

"Come here. Sit next to me," she said.

I did and put my hand on the inside of her thigh. I glided my hand up and down her thigh, her belly, and finally rested my hand on the inside of her thigh again. Just when I thought we captured our old and comfortable rhythm, she fell away from me. Her eyes were open, but nothing registered, at least nothing I could see.

Once out of the bath we put on the Plaza's two luxurious bathrobes and went into the bedroom, the strains of Bach still playing.

"This is so beautiful," she said.

I got in bed next to her. She was naked and I immediately got hard and she knew it.

"It would be nice if we could, but I can't."

"Holding you is enough," I said, and meant it.

From the bed I was able to shut off all the lights and dim the ones I wanted to. We fell asleep holding hands, listening to Bach's sixth suite.

A chamber ensemble, champagne, caviar and sturgeon, salmon, cold brook trout, roast beef, salads, and wines greeted us as we entered the Plaza's Palm Court. I thought it would be more crowded, but it wasn't. Each time we passed another serving table more exotic foods stood waiting for us to choose them.

Unembarrassed, we filled our plates again and again. We finished by drinking thick delicious coffee with some delicate, but marvelous, pastries and fully satiated we left and took a walk down Fifth Avenue to look at the store windows and see the tree at Rockefeller Center.

It seemed everything was closed except St. Patrick's Cathedral. We gazed at the tree in Rockefeller Center and watched some skaters in the rink below, but those things—the store windows, Christmas finery, skating—never really mattered to us before and they still held no special meaning. We turned around and walked back to Central Park and strolled around for an hour before, nearly frozen, we went back to the Plaza.

Once inside our room we spoke of not where we'd been, but where I thought we should go, New Orleans. At first she balked. She was adamantly disinclined to go back to her hometown. I explained I would never take her back to her family or leave her with relatives or friends. That was not at all my intention. I explained that Frankie was still living down there, but the people who would be more important to her were Ernie and Dolores. However, the most important thing at this point was to try to deal with those "stones" inside her and to that end I told her who Dr. Lipkin was and how she helped me in my time of great need.

"I asked you last night to trust me. I wasn't just saying that. Let me help you."

She pressed me for more information, information that I couldn't provide. All I kept repeating was, "Just trust me."

"Listen," I said, "I had to come back here to deal with my past in order to have a future. Maybe you have to do the same thing. And I promise if you don't want, if it doesn't work out after you give it a fair amount of time, then we're gone, gone together to someplace new. Anywhere you want. Angela, you have to listen to, and believe me on this."

It was unfair of me, of course, knowing that if she refused and I left her what could she do? I didn't tell her I'd do whatever she wanted, right then and there, if she'd ask me to. I believe there was something somewhere in her mind that told her that this was the right thing to do for her.

"O.K.," she said. A slight look of defeat, but also a look of relief came over her face.

"It will be all right."

She didn't look convinced, but she nodded her head in agreement.

I went to the phone and first called an airline and made reservations for two days later. The only seats I could get were first class and I took them. Then I called Ernie and asked if he could pick us up at the airport.

The next day we were back in Times Square. I called a small moving company and asked them to meet me at my apartment in the afternoon. By two we were in my place putting the same things in boxes as I had more than twenty years before.

Two young guys showed up at three thirty. I showed them the boxes, the clothes, some in garment bags and some in suitcases, and, in some cases, in hefty garbage bags. I gave them Ernie's address and phone number, a deposit and, once they gave me a receipt, a tip large enough so they'd remember me.

After we returned to the motel, I called a car service and arranged a pickup time and gave them the destination, Kennedy Airport.

Angela had pulled down the covers and was asleep. I was surprised at how fast she was able to accomplish that. I sat on the desk chair and watched her breathe. If these past few days were a whirlwind for me, I could imagine what they must have been like for her. While I watched and thought, I saw different parts of her body spasm. Her legs, hands, and arms would involuntarily twitch and pull, but when her head began to thrash around, I got into bed next to her. At first, she bolted upright. I held and whispered in her ear, "It's all right, baby, relax, it's all right." She looked at me and at first there was no recognition at all and she struggled to get free. I held her tighter and made her look at my face.

"Max," she said.

"It's all right. Lay back down, I'll rub your neck and back."

I slipped her sweater off and once she was on her stomach, I rubbed and kneaded her until my hands lost whatever strength they had.

When they announced First Class boarding, I didn't realize they were talking about us. With a tinge of self-consciousness (but a very small tinge), we rose and boarded the airplane. The other passengers filed in, gave us various looks, none of which could be called endearing, and went into the hinterlands. Even before we took off, we received fresh orange juice and hot croissants, butter, jellies, and marmalade.

Angela questioned nothing, but from time to time I saw her grin. I didn't know what to make of that.

Once in the air, they served us a real breakfast. After we finished, we reclined our seats and drifted off for a little while.

Angela awoke somewhat in a panic.

"What, what's wrong."

"Don't wanna go home. Why you makin' me do this? Nothin' there for me. Why I left. Don't wanna go." Her voice grew louder with each word.

"You're not going home, at least not to your old home. I promise. You're going with me, to my friends'. Don't worry. Like I said, if it proves to be too much, we're out of there."

"You promise me that?"

"Yes."

She calmed down and rested her head on me. A flight attendant came by and asked if everything was all right. I assured her it was. She told me we'd be landing shortly, if that would help. Hard to say, I responded and smiled.

"I've got a Valium," she whispered, "would that help?"

"Maybe."

She came back a minute later and surreptitiously handed me two yellow tablets. I thanked her and put them in my breast pocket.

Twenty minutes later we were standing at the carousel waiting for our suitcases when a hand tapped me on the shoulder.

"My brudder, welcome home," Ernie said. "And you, my sweet, must be de lovely Angela. He talk 'bout you nonstop forever long I know him. I'm Ernie." He could probably see in her face that his accent, his claw for a hand, and this place were doing vicious things inside her head. "De accent come wit' me, but I don't come wit' the accent."

Her face lost some of its rigidity and she smiled tightly.

"You need help wit' your stuff?"

"No, we can handle it."

"I be right outside in my van." He turned and walked out through the sliding glass doors.

Angela reached for my hand and held it tightly. "What happened to his hand?" she asked.

"Vietnam happened."

"Oh," was all she said.

From the airport to Ernie's place, Angela shut down. It seemed that nothing moved inside her. Ernie kept glancing at her through the rear view mirror. He put his hand over mine and patted it. "It's O.K., brudder," he said, "we gonna take care a her."

Ernie's place was the same and so was the front room that I'd stayed in and that Angela and I would now have for however long we needed it. The only thing that I could tell was different was the sign, "If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much room'' had been removed from above his bed.

While Angela and I were unpacking, Ernie came in and asked if everything was all right. We said it was, and thanked him.

"Angela can I take Max for a minute. I wanna show him sumptin' I have in my garage?"

"Sure, I'll put our stuff away."

I followed Ernie out back where there was a beat up wooden garage. He lifted up the wooden slatted door and a car stood with a tarp on it. I stared in disbelief.

"No," I said.

"Yes, my fren'." He pulled the tarp off the car and there my '67 Porsche stood. The car was still Forest Green, even though it had faded. The body had splotches and squares of grayish white and orange compound.

"The body fine. I took care of all the rust and pitting, but look at de engine." He went to the driver's side and released the hood lock on the back. I lifted up the latch and opened it wide. The engine looked so pristine you could eat off it.

"Everything new or rebuilt. All Porsche parts. It runs like a demon."

"Ernie, I don't know what to say?"

"Nuttin'. Don't say nuttin'. I had it for three years now, that fine enough for me. It's yours, brudder." And with that he came and handed me the keys. I pushed down easily and it clicked into place. I went and sat in the driver's seat, and the leather was still molded to the curvatures of my back. I inserted the ignition key and turned. The engine caught effortlessly and that deep throated and rich sound filled my ears. I revved it once or twice and then turned it off. I got out of the car beaming.

When we returned to the house, Angela was in bed asleep.

"Let her," Ernie said, "she need rest, plenty of it."

"I think she needs more than that."

"I t'ink so, too."

We went into his room and sat on some club chairs facing each other.

"Where's Dolores, what is she doing?"

"She's with Henry."

"Henry of, 'Take a Load Off,' that Henry?"

"She like it. She knows you comin', but she get off at one."

"Maybe we'll eat there."

"Always good for me. She love dat." He paused and looked at me. "What happen up there, brudder?"

"Before I get into it, do you have something to drink around here?

"Sorry my fren', I stop two year now."

"How?"

"Just stop. Had enough. Need no more, so I stop."

"Hard?"

"No, easy. Once I make the mind up. I don't question it, don't know why, but I do got a few beers in the icebox for Dolores. Help yourself."

"Not if it messes with you."

"Nuttin' messes with me."

I came back with a beer and I began to tell him the whole story. I even told him about the school I taught in and my boss I loathed. By the time I finished, dusk had settled and the evening was ready to begin.

"You did good," Ernie said. "No matter what happen from here on out, you did good."

When I looked at him, tears came to my eyes. "Christ, it's been so goddamn long. Such a goddamn long fight, and it's not over."

"Yes, it is brudder, the rest not in your hands."

"You're not going to tell me that you found God, are you?" I said, the anger rising in my throat.

"God? No, I stop lookin' long time ago."

I got up and went into the bedroom and gently shook Angela awake.

"We goin? We leavin'?" she anxiously asked.

"No, baby. Just going out to dinner in a little while. Take your time, shower if you want to. We're going to an old friend's joint and eat some good food."

"Can I just stay here?"

"C'mon baby, aren't you hungry? Be good for you to get out, too. You don't have to worry about these people. They're all right, believe me."

"Could you just bring somethin' back for me? I don't know if I'm ready to meet any more new people."

"You'll be with me; it will be all right. C'mon Angela, get dressed."

Angela, begrudgingly and with much effort, rose from the bed and went into the bathroom, with some of her clothes, to take a shower. When I heard the water running, I went back to Ernie.

"You think she might hurt herself? Is there anything in your bathroom to allow her to do that?"

"No, nuttin' in dere. She could break the glass on the mirror, but I don't t'ink so. She remind me a little of me when I came out of dem tunnels. She's scared, tryin' to adjust to the light. If de problems come—and they will—be the time she sees the light and herself clearly."

"I'm going to try not to let that happen to her by herself. And it isn't me going to be the one to help her. Maybe I'm the last one should be helping her. I'm afraid of that, too. But if that's what it is, that's what it is."

Angela sat between Ernie and me as we drove to "Take a Load Off." She looked good and smelled wonderful, wearing the perfume I remembered so well. I could tell she was trying to bring herself out of whatever depths she felt herself in. She was asking Ernie questions about whether this place or that place was still there and if not what was there instead. When he'd tell her that a certain piece of her history was no longer there she'd say, "That makes no kinda sense," or just, "Huh?"

Once we got inside Henry's place both he and Dolores came over and embraced me in turn then looked at Angela.

"You must be Angela, gimmee a hug, sweet," this big bear of a man said. "I see why he crazy for you."

"What do you see?" Angela asked, more playfully than anything else.

"All I haveta see is those deep eyes of yours and I know more than I need to know."

Angela smiled, but immediately put her hand up to cover her mouth.

"No need for that," Henry said, "you have a beautiful smile." He gently took her hand away from her mouth and he and Dolores took us to the table that the three of us used to sit at what seemed like a lifetime ago. The place hadn't changed at all. It still was wonderfully dark and comfortable. Even the same, or most of the same, people who used to frequent the place were still there.

"I go back in the kitchen and fix y'all somethin. Dee can take care of what you want to drink," Henry said, and turned and went into the back.

Dolores got our drinks after asking what we wanted. She didn't ask Ernie, but brought him a club soda with three limes.

"The three of us used to hang out here almost every night, and sometimes during the day, too." I said to Angela. "As a matter of fact, when I needed a job, Henry put me on and I stayed here for a few years, more than a few years."

"Were you fucking Dolores?" Angela suddenly asked. "It's O.K. if you were. Damn, you had to be fuckin' somebody, might as well be her, she seems nice enough."

"I was fucking her," Ernie said, "but that was long time ago. If Max was fucking her, I would have killed him. We all love each other, different ways maybe, but it was love, no doubt."

Henry brought over warm biscuits and red gravy for starters. "Gumbo cookin' up," he said.

It seemed like we inhaled the food in front of us. Dolores came over and brought me another drink and asked Angela if she wanted that beer or another Wild Turkey. She wanted both.

"Maybe you should take it a little easy. The night is young," I said.

"But I'm not," she answered.

Dolores looked from me to Ernie, who just shrugged his shoulders and said, "The lady want ta see what she can see. We all want to do dat."

I said nothing but could imagine nothing good coming out of Angela getting drunk. It was hard, however, awkward for me to try to control her or the situation. I just hoped that the food and the conversation would balance out and neutralize the booze.

I could smell the gumbo before Henry got to the table. He placed three steaming pots before us, with fresh biscuits. Angela just stared at it, incredulous.

"Enjoy, my friends," Henry said and went back behind the bar. Dolores took a seat beside Ernie and draped her arm around his shoulder.

Nobody spoke for quite awhile. We ate, slurped, dipped our biscuits, and drank with such concentration that when we occasionally looked up, we exchanged glances and laughed. Finally, we rimmed the bottom of our pots with our last biscuit, we wiped our mouths, and grinned at one another.

Dolores got up and started to clear the table and Henry came from behind the bar to help her. When they finished Henry sent over another round of drinks.

"How does it feel bein' back?" Ernie asked me, and then to Angela "To you I know must be strange, stranger than strange."

"It feels good to be with you guys again," I quickly said, and looked at Angela who was obviously trying to think, maybe too hard, about his question.

"The food, the smells, the colors tell me I'm back, but..." and here she faltered. "I'm tryin', I'm really tryin'," she said when she was able to put her words together, "but I ain't back, haven't been back in myself so long I don't know where to look no more. Sometimes I catch flashes, you know, like the flash from a camera flash, then it's dark, darker than dark again."

"You're trying too hard," I said as gently as I could.

"No I ain't! No I ain't. Ain't been tryin' at all 'til you came back in the picture. And if I tried, tried at all, least I was tryin' on my own terms. Now I'm tryin' and it hurts, it fuckin' hurts." Her expression froze until Ernie leaned over and must have said something funny because she laughed.

Ernie got up and went to Henry at the bar. I saw him nod his head and the next thing I knew Zydeco music filled the room.

Ernie came back, offered Angela his hand, and she took it and got up from the table. They walked to the middle of the floor, away from the surrounding tables and chairs, and began to dance. It was beautiful to watch. Angela, in a matter of moments, began to shed the baggage she'd been carrying. She threw her head back and moved from side to side, making her body, still so lithe and so beautiful, sexy. As Ernie put some moves on her she began to laugh. Her laugh was infectious, because I started to laugh as well. And then another couple and another, got up to dance, turning the place into a party.

Henry came from behind the bar and took Dolores for a spin. I sat and, for the first time in I don't know how long, felt a sense of joy radiating through my body.

One song bled into another. They all must have danced a good twenty minutes nonstop and came back to the table sweating and exhausted.

"Oh, that was so good," Angela said.

"You done good, good dancer," Ernie said.

Dolores, also sweating, set down another round of drinks. "Oh, Lordy," was the only thing she said, which made Angela laugh.

"Haven't heard that since my grandmother cut a rug with her eldest grandchild." She sipped her beer and patted her face with a napkin.

"Angela, you breathed some fresh life into this dead ol' place," Dolores said

"It was Ernie. He made me do it."

"Don't blame me. All I saw was a girl that needed a twirl."

"I did. I sure did."

By the time any of us looked at a watch, it was well after midnight.

"I t'ink time to go," Ernie said.

"One more drink," Angela said.

"I think we should go, too," I said.

"C'mon, Max, one more."

Dolores got up and brought us a round.

"What's the tab?" I asked her.

"It's on Henry."

I turned to Henry and thanked him. He nodded his head in acknowledgment.

When we left, the New Orleans fog had begun to engulf the Quarter. Angela asked Ernie to drive around for a little while before we headed for home and he obliged. The mist and fog gave the colored lights in front of bars and lounges, striptease joints, and fancy restaurants an exotic glow, and Angela was beginning to once again get lost somewhere inside herself.

An hour later, we were in bed and sleeping, but not for long. Angela woke up screaming. A thick sweat coated her body and as much as I tried, I couldn't comfort her.

Ernie came in and took one look at this frightened and vulnerable figure in the bed and called Dolores.

In less than fifteen minutes, Dolores was there, sitting beside Angela, wiping her body with a towel, talking softly to her, and then holding her close. Ernie and I stood by the door and watched until Dolores calmed her down enough to allow Angela to lie back down on her stomach, the way I'd seen her do with Ernie many times before.

Dolores took out from her bag of oils and told Ernie to warm them, all the while stroking Angela's head and rubbing her back in a small circular motion. When Ernie returned with the oils, Dolores began to gently massage them into her neck, shoulders, and back. All the time Dolores took care to whisper words into Angela's ear.

Dolores turned to us and said, "You two leave us now. We see you in the morning."

We turned and left, but I knew what would happen next. After she was finished massaging her, she'd undress and get into bed with her, nestling and holding her close until sleep overtook Angela and then maybe, she could sleep, too.

I didn't wait. Even though it was Saturday, the first thing I did the next morning was put in a call to Dr. Lipkin. I got her service. I left my name and number and told them it was an emergency. An hour later, she called me back. I quickly explained the situation. She told me she was calling from out of town and would be back Monday. I should have Angela in her office by eight. She also advised me not to drink and not let her drink, if possible, until she had a chance to see and evaluate her. I thanked Lipkin and cradled the receiver. Ernie, who would usually grt up if he heard the slightest sound, was fast asleep. I guess some things do change, I said to myself.

I showered and got dressed and looked at my watch. It was only seven thirty. Quietly, I tested my blood, took an insulin injection, and went to the garage out back. I took the tarp off the Porsche, started it up, and backed it out to the street. I knew where there was a diner and hoped it was still there. It was.

Ernie and Dolores were awake by the time I got back and, after giving them the coffee and food, told them of my phone call and plan for Monday.

"That's a good idea," Dolores said and Ernie concurred.

How to get from now to then was the problem. While we were talking about that and other things—they were curious to hear about the encounter between me and my father and Brother Don—Angela got up and stuck her head out of the doorframe. She came out with her clothes trailing behind her and others cradled in her arms. She walked, on wobbly legs into the bathroom. Next we heard the shower running.

"Do what she wants to do," both Ernie and Dolores advised.

"Good morning," she said.

"Have some coffee," I said.

"I was thinking that I'd love to go to Cafe Du Monde for coffee, if you'd like?"

"You guys can," Ernie said, "but me and Dolores promised my folks we see them today. We be back later this afternoon. We could do somethin' then."

"Sure we can go."

When Angela saw the car, she just stood there and looked. I explained that I'd given it to Ernie, never expecting to see it again. She didn't respond, but got in and we sped away.

"This must be very crazy for you," I said as we sat sipping coffee. "The whole thing, leaving Brooklyn, seeing me, now your home, eating foods that you haven't tasted for over thirty years, and being around people you never wanted to see again for the rest of your life."

"It is. Actually scares the shit outta me. I keep sayin' to myself over and over, 'He's doin' this to protect me, he's doin' this to protect me,... so how come I don't feel safe?'"

"Angela, I have to tell you, I'm flying a little bit by the seat of my pants, too. And I'm trying the best I can to not only protect you, but to help you find the ways to protect yourself. And I'll tell you another thing. Last night I saw you drink, and eat, and enjoy yourself—no, no, even more than enjoy yourself—lose yourself in all those good ways while you were dancing with Ernie."

"I did feel good. Felt the best I felt since, since we was together." Her eyes welled up with tears. "No, I ain't gonna cry. I ain't!"

"Angela, maybe I did the wrong thing by taking you with me. I don't know. But I couldn't leave you in that house, especially after you nearly pitchforked Brother Don to death. You have to know this: I was going to do what I did whether you were alive or dead. And I did think you were dead." I then proceeded to tell her everything that happened in the intervening years, from that devastating day so long ago, to coming down here, meeting Ernie and Dolores, eventually meeting her folks, relations, and friends, my addiction, Goldman and Lipkin, finding a way back out for myself, working for Henry and then, once I knew that I had to face my past, deciding to go back, not to look for her anymore, but to look for my balls.

I motioned for the waiter to bring us some more coffee and we sat in silence until he did.

"What you think of my folks?"

"Your mom seemed like a nice person, but your father was a cold bastard. Then, later that night, over a couple of drinks, I thought of them some more and saw how they uncannily reminded me of my family. A mother who just cooked and cleaned, but essentially had nothing much to say and a father... I don't know what to say about him," I said and paused. "To travel so far away only to find your old situation repeated itself in a Jewish household, in liberal ol' New York. And this time, as luck would have it, you loved someone in that house who didn't have a fucking clue (or the fucking courage) necessary to see what truly was going on and do something about it." I paused to light a cigarette and gave her one, too.

"Do you want to talk about those years?" I cautiously asked.

"I don't know. I want to, but I don't think I can, yet. I hear the screams, your screams—even when I wake up screaming, I hear your screams inside mine—and it's hard to get much further than that. Except when you kicked your brother. I snapped. Came to me quicker than a lightnin' storm. All the ugliness, all the sickenin', nauseatin' humiliation got shook out my insides. And I just went crazy with pictures and words in my head. If that'd been a carving knife, motherfucker be dead. And whatever happened to me next I couldn't care less. But now I can't think of that, neither. I go back and forth, in and out, and there ain't nothin' I can do about it." She sat back in her chair and took another cigarette out of my pack and lit it. "Even with you," she continued, "in or out of bed, can't get myself to touch you. Feels like there's a cold piece of thick metal separatin' my flesh from yours. How do I melt that? I wanna melt it, but how do I do it?

"I don't know. Slowly, I guess." I stopped talking and begin thinking of how to say what I wanted to say next. "Angela," I began, "I made an appointment for you on Monday to see the same doctor who helped me come out of the hole I was in, but I can't force you to go."

"I never saw no kinda doctor like that before."

"All you have to do is go, talk to her if you can. We'll take it from there."

"Ain't too big on talkin' these days."

"She's good at understanding silences, too."

"She really help you?"

"Yeah, she really did."

"You wasn't fucking her or anything?... Only kiddin with you. Shit, you still as serious as ever. I'll go. I want to go. I need to go, but it scares me."

"That's O.K. We're all scared. All of us. I didn't know who the hell I was—so even when I was lying, I thought I was telling the truth. Just give it a fair chance. Let's try to get through this weekend best we can and see her first thing Monday. She advised us not to drink, at least until Monday, it fucks up the circuitry."

Angela laughed at that. "I didn't have a drink in over twenty years 'til you come back. No, no, don't feel bad bout that. I was so numb alcohol never entered my mind. I'm grateful to you, Max. Probably angry as hell at you, too, but grateful."

"Thanks for saying that; I needed to hear that from you," I said. Tears began to well up in my eyes. Angela put her hand over mine and gently rubbed my pained knuckles.

Angela asked me to cruise around for most of the afternoon. She directed me to take her past certain points in her history, but she never asked me to drive past her family's home.

We got back to Ernie's place around six, and they were there watching something on television. As soon as we shut the front door, they shouted that they were starved and were waiting for us to get home.

"For food or company?" I playfully asked.

"What you t'ink?" Ernie responded. "Company don't matter to a starving man, but after we glad it you to break bread with."

"Your mama don't cook?" Angela asked.

"She does," Dolores said, "but we avoid it like the plague."

We went to the same oyster bar that Dolores took me to on my first night in New Orleans. The oysters were still fresh and cheap—though not as cheap—and the bouillabaisse as delicious as ever. Angela and I limited ourselves to one beer apiece.

In the bedroom that night, after Angela had slipped into her nightgown and I stood getting out of my clothes, I had my pants around my ankles, and Angela came up behind me and gave me a hug. It didn't feel like a sensual hug. It felt more like the kind of hug that assured her that I was still there.

Sunday was a simple and lazy day. Dolores had slept over. I thought she'd purposely done that in case Angela had a night like the one she'd had before. Ernie and I hung around the house watching football games while Dolores and Angela went out to shop. When they returned they began to prepare lunch and after that, dinner. Nobody drank that night.

After dinner, four fifty-something-year-olds curled around each other in Ernie's bed watching Midnight Cowboy on cable TV and, at first laughing at their attempts to get rich, then crying at their futility and the slow, embarrassing, and painful death of Ratso. "Sunshine and coconuts," we all muttered in various ways and tones, "that's all a person needs."

Angela tried to sleep, but couldn't. I stayed up with her telling her about Ernie and Dolores and how they met and how we met. I told her about his father and the tunnels of Vietnam. I told her about the drug haze we were in for a time, the confrontation with Brother Don, but mostly about them becoming such good friends to me. I could tell she was getting sleepy. Once in awhile her eyes involuntarily closed. Finally, around four she fell asleep. I checked to see if the alarm was on and set for six-thirty. Then I found a few hours of sleep as well.

Dr. Lipkin's office was the same as I remembered it. Angela and I sat side by side on one of her couches, lost in our own thoughts. We arrived at seven forty-five and at eight Dr. Lipkin came out to greet us. Both of us stood up.

"Hello, I'm Dr. Lipkin, you must be Angela. Welcome." She shook Angela's hand and turned to me. "Hello, Max, good to see you." She shook my hand warmly, but kept a professional distance. "I'd like to talk with Angela first, and after we're done, call you in. Come with me, Angela, let's get to know a little about each other."

Angela looked over at me with hesitation in her eyes. I smiled and said I'd see her in a little while.

"He hasn't been telling you horror stories about me, has he?" Lipkin asked.

"Oh, no," Angela said, "just the opposite."

We laughed, which broke some of the tension and I sat back down, as Angela followed Dr. Lipkin into her office.

I waited and waited, trying to distract myself by picking up magazine after magazine. My mind would not allow itself to be diverted from Angela sitting with Lipkin, telling her I didn't know what. I kept checking my watch. It had now been over an hour and a half. For about the hundredth time I wanted to barge into her office, palms extended, and ask, "What's up? How's she doing? Is she going to be all right? Tell me. Tell me something."

"Come in, Max," Dr. Lipkin said.

Stiffly, I got off the couch and walked into her office. I saw Angela sitting in a chair closest to her, with a wad of tissues in her hand. I took a seat.

"Max, how have you been?" Lipkin asked me.

"Me?" I said a little surprised at her question. "I've been all right, it's Angela..."

"Yes, I know. We're all concerned about Angela, especially Angela. Of course Angela and I have spoken about this while you were waiting and she doesn't mind if I speak with you about certain things.

"What's immediately obvious to me is that she's depressed, just how much I don't know right now. I'd like to start her off with Zoloft today and I have enough samples to provide her with a thirty-day supply. I've also given her Klonopin. I believe, she's also suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and that's a bit more involved. I'd like, if we're able, to put her in a private facility where I have attending privileges and also serve on the Board of Directors. The care given to patients is excellent. And Angela is willing to go."

Angela turned to me with shame in her face. I moved my chair closer to hers and I placed my hand on Angela's arm and gently squeezed it. "What now?" I asked Lipkin.

"Angela, now I need to talk to Max alone."

Slowly she got up, gathered herself, and left.

"How bad is she?" I asked as soon as she left.

"It's hard to know at this point. Just imagine seeing all the things she saw since she was a youngster, being made to do all the things she was made to do, and then, when she thought she'd escaped that horror, watched as the one she loved was nearly beaten to death before her eyes, and then living as a virtual captive under a brutal and terrifying order of father and brother."

Tears began to well up in my eyes and Lipkin handed me a few tissues.

"I certainly believe there's hope for a variety of reasons, but let's not go into that right now. I can say that she's still strong in places, even feisty, and that's good. But I also believe she needs to go away, in-patient, away from every thing and everybody, including you, Max."

"Forever?"

"Forever is going to be up to her and I have no way of knowing that."

A sickening feeling started in the pit of my stomach and gradually worked its way up to my throat.

"She loves you, Max. Of that I have no doubt, but will she ever love you the way you need and want, I don't know.

"What I'd like to do is get the process started right away. As soon as a bed is available I'd like her admitted. But we must talk about money first. Unfortunately, she has no insurance of any kind and this is not free. I can, once she's there, begin the process of getting some government money to stem some of the costs."

"What are we talking about, Dr. Lipkin? Tell me how much."

"Between fifteen hundred and two thousand dollars a month. Probably closer to fifteen hundred. I'll try to do what I can with the Board to make a special exception, but I don't know if they'll go along with that."

"I can afford that, at least four months' worth. After that I'll do what I have to do to make sure she gets the care she needs."

"How should we work this?"

"Give me who the money order should be made out to and I'll get one today and mail it to your office for fifteen hundred. I'll call you once a month and see how she's doing. I'll be leaving New Orleans once I take her there whenever you get her a room. I'll rely on you to tell me to send money for another month or not, and whether I should come back to New Orleans at all." Involuntarily, I choked up after speaking those words.

"You're a good man, Max."

"Thanks, but I didn't need to hear that."

"Maybe not, but I needed to say it."

She called Angela back in and when she was seated told her of the arrangements. She looked further shamed.

"Don't be feeling guilty or embarrassed. I'm happy to be able to do this for you. Besides, if the shoe was on the other foot, you'd do the same for me. Just try to take a breath and relax for a minute. I'll be in touch with Dr. Lipkin. Things have a funny way of working out, you'll see." And then I lost it. I just blurted out, "You're so goddamn precious to me, I love you so much I'd do anything for you, anything, even not seeing you again, as long as I knew you were in a better, safer place. Anything." The hurt and pain went so deep, I had to get up and leave the office. I went into the bathroom to allow myself the privacy to just sob.

"I'm sorry," I said when I returned to her office.

"Max, the last thing you should be is sorry."

I sat back down not much calmer than when I left.

"I've gotten Angela a room for tomorrow. Could you get her there by noon?"

"Of course, yes."

"Angela, I want you to begin the Zoloft and Klonopin tonight and no drinking alcohol of any kind. I'll be there tomorrow when you arrive."

We both thanked her and left, leaving parts of ourselves behind.

Angela's spirits had lifted. A huge burden was off her back, no matter how temporary it might be. And I tried the best I could to allow her these moments and so hid my own fears and reservations.

"I know a great little place, a shack really, for some fine fried chicken," she said once we were in the car.

"Lead on."

It was the same place that Ernie and Dolores had taken me to so many years ago. It was the day I saw Angela's folks and couldn't accept the possibility that she was dead.

"I told you that this be wonderful, best fried chicken in all of New Orleans,"

"Just delicious," I said.

"You think we gotta tell Ernie and Dolores?"

"Nothing to be ashamed of. We've all been inside one time or another."

"Yeah?"

"Absolutely."

When we returned to Ernie's it was a little after three. Dolores was still there. Both she and Ernie were reading. We sat down with them and told them the results of our visit with Dr. Lipkin.

Ernie drove Dolores to work and we followed in my car. Henry greeted us warmly and once again showed us to the same table. I don't remember what we ate that night, but I do remember all of us drinking club sodas. Ernie said he was staying for a little while and then would take in a movie. Dolores came over to Angela and I, kissed us, and said that anything she could do for us she would. I hugged her tightly and whispered in her ear, "Thanks, be seeing you soon, I hope."

We went back to Ernie's and immediately started to pack, putting our clothes in the suitcases and duffel bags we had brought with us. I'd decided to leave all the rest of my things, the books, records, and assorted keepsakes at Ernie's place. We left out just enough clothes to get dressed the next morning.

Angela went into the kitchen to take her medications while I just stood with my arms leaning on the bureau looking into the mirror. When she returned, she stood behind me looking into the same mirror. I wondered what she saw. I smiled into the glass at her and she rested her head on my shoulder and held me around the waist. She lifted her head to my neck and whispered, "I would make love with you, if you wanted?"

I turned around to face her. "I couldn't do that, baby, just wouldn't seem right. Not now. Not tonight. I hope someday we'll be able to do that and more. We'll just have to wait and see what happens."

She leaned closer into my chest and put her arms around my back. "O.K.," she said, "but it's not like I haven't thought about it, too. I hate the fact that you're going away from me again."

"Hey, I'm not going away, just going. When the time's right I'll come back." I lifted her head off my chest and kissed her warmly on her lips. "You'll see, things have a funny way of working out. Trust me." We both laughed at the last line.

"I'm tired," she said.

"You should be. Go, get some sleep. I'm tired, too. I'll be in bed in a second."

She got into bed and was fast asleep in an instant. I wasn't that lucky. I got up and found some paper and envelopes. I wrote a letter to Ms. Lynch, explaining in part, why I couldn't return to work after the vacation. I wrote another letter to Carver telling her I had personal issues to attend to and resigned. I would mail them tomorrow.

The next morning I got up and left Angela asleep. Ernie was up reading the morning paper.

"How you, my fren'?"

"A little sad, but all right."

"This been some trip for you, brudder. And not over yet. But I t'ink all in all been good, no?"

"It's been very good. Ernie, I'd like to ask you to keep my stuff, if you don't mind?"

"No, I don' mind."

"Thanks." I went over and hugged him then kissed him on the cheek. "For everything."

Angela came out of the bedroom still full of sleep. She had her clothes with her and went directly into the bathroom to take a shower.

"I like her," Ernie said.

"Yeah, me too."

We sat around having eggs and bacon and coffee. We were all a little nervous. At ten, I said it was time to go. I needed to stop at a post office and then drive outside of the city to this facility. I asked Ernie the best way to get there, and he wrote directions for me. Angela kissed him and I kissed him again. He walked us out to the car and stood watching until we were no longer in sight.

After the post office had given me a money order and I'd mailed it to Lipkin and the two letters, we took the drive to the facility. We didn't speak much on the way, but I did have my hand on the inside of her thigh.

It was a big, white, and spacious place. Probably it was an old house of the aristocracy before they could no longer afford the upkeep. White wooden steps led up to the front door, and there was a wrap around verandah.

"O.K.," I said, "this is as far as I go."

"You're not coming in with me?" she said almost in a panic.

"No, baby, you can do this; you need to do this on your own. Don't worry, you just go through those doors and up to the front desk and tell them who you are. They'll take it from there."

She threw herself around my shoulders and neck and started to cry.

"No, no, don't do that. No need for that. This is the best thing we could have done. I'm convinced of that." I gently pushed her back, took her face in my hands, and kissed her tenderly. "Go ahead, baby, go get what you need."

She pushed the door open and got her suitcases from the back. I watched her walk up the flight of stairs. I started the car and put it in gear. At the top of the stairs she turned to me once more. "I love you," I said through the window. She nodded her head in the kind of way that said she loved me, too; don't worry, I'll be all right, maybe, I hope. Then she opened the door with one hand, grabbed the other suitcase, and began to step inside. I gradually released the clutch and the car slowly began to move forward. I waited until the door was completely closed to let the clutch out fully and drove off.

I drove and I drove. The only thing I knew was that I was going West. When I got tired, I stopped to eat or, if it was late enough, look for a motel to rest for the night. Once out of Texas, the landscape was, at times, beautiful. After a day or two, I'd shaken off some of Angela and was able to enjoy the feel of the car on the road. Ernie had done some job in taking care of it.

At a gas station I asked the attendant how far and which way was Las Vegas. He gave me directions and a map. I thanked him paid for the gas and while doing so noticed that the date was December 31st, New Years Eve. I got back in the car and headed toward Vegas.

I reached Las Vegas later that evening, around nine o'clock. Even though it was night, the strip looked like mid-afternoon. Neon lit up the entire town; but I didn't stop. I drove past the hotels, strip clubs, motels, and tinsel straight onto a highway that led into the desert. The dark stretch of highway, the sound of the motor, and the feel of the road provided me with what I needed, soft motion. It allowed my thoughts to float above me. I thought about everything that had happened over the course of a lifetime. One memory folded upon and into another.

Then, as if my body was somehow attuned to it, I looked at the dashboard and saw that it was three minutes after twelve. A new millennium had dawned. I didn't really care one way or another. I didn't think we'd done such a good job in the last one and didn't expect much more in the new. I wanted to be with Angela again one day. I knew that much. I knew also that I could never hope to understand the people on this planet and what made them work. The other thing I knew was that despite whatever had happened to me, I'd made it through, and that one day I'd write about that, too.

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Also by Norman Savage published by Smashwords: Junk Sick: Confessions of an Uncontrollable Diabetic. Sample or purchase it at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/715

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