Spring 1969

Whatever Ned had invited Brad over for this afternoon, he was taking forever to get to it. Brad hoped Ned wasn't going to confess some amorous attraction to him (it had happened before with older men — must be Brad's pretty face): Ned seemed awfully nervous for this to be just the long-deferred social occasion he'd said it was when he called.

On the other hand, Brad had grabbed at Ned's invitation — he'd had an all-night argument with his girlfriend Bobbie, and wasn't sure he'd be welcome back at their apartment, if he ever did go back. Well, one tricky sitch at a time, he was thinking...

Brad wasn't sure he liked being friends with Ned, his teacher and choir director for the past three years and some: last summer Ned had moved into the apartment across the hall from where Brad was staying — on a trial separation from his wife Natalie. The two had had a couple neighborly conversations on the stairs and front porch, and once Brad had even gone over for coffee. But Ned was so miserable and needy, it creeped Brad out, and it was a great relief when the summer was over and Brad moved in with Bobbie somewhere else.

On the other hand, Brad felt oddly honored that Ned was confiding in him — it obligated him to take an interest, however wary, and reminded him that people in authority are people first and in authority second, an insight for which he was grateful, when he could remember it.

To show that gratitude, Brad had brought with him the only guest-offerings he could think of: a fat joint. He also lugged along three hard-rock LPs. He loved the idea of turning Ned on for the first time, and the music he'd picked out was perfect for a first high: driving, intricate, loud.

"The trouble with being your age, kid," Ned began, after an awkward silence, "is that you think you've got everything figgered out."

O dear, Brad thought. He took out the joint, lit up, and took two quick carbureted puffs. Ned had said this gazing out over the street, but, when Brad didn't answer, he swivelled in his deck chair. Brad offered Ned a hit, but Ned shook his head, seemed to reconsider, then shook his head again and abruptly got to his feet. This knocked the aluminum chair over, causing it to fold up. Ned looked at it like a dog that had pissed on his leg.

Brad had to laugh, coughing out smoke, then hacked deeply three more times, laughing again.

Ned now turned the same look on Brad. "Very funny," he said. "One of these days you're gonna be knocking things over every time you turn around —"

Brad toked up again, shaking his head, still smiling. As Ned struggled to get the chair unfolded and set up again, Brad wondered what was making Ned so nervous: if he was going to make a declaration, this was a weird gambit, talking like a grampus.

The chair now back in its former position, Ned stood in front of it but didn't sit, only looked across the strip of empty lawn to the trees lining the back alley. It was an early April dusk, the first really nice day of the spring. Even when the wind came up the air stayed mild. Some bird was singing madly out there. It sounded almost desperate.

Brad exhaled again, this time blowing out no smoke. "Good shit," he said, wiping his eyes. He held the joint out to Ned again, eyebrows raised. Ned didn't see the gesture, so Brad bumped his knuckles against Ned's elbow.

Ned looked down at Brad's hand, then a thought seemed to strike him. "What I meant was," he began, apparently trying to be careful with his words, "your life is pretty simple, just now. Fits into the world with room to spare. Every way you look, lots of room."

Brad heard that Ned was talking, recognized the words and their admonitory intent, but what really had his attention was that bird singing out by the street. He'd never heard such virtuosity, the sound was almost boiling...

"You hop around from major to major, you sign on and drop courses like you're picking through produce at the grocery store, you play feelybod and God knows what else with Barbara every other night or so —"

"Aw, Ned," Brad clucked. "You been spying on me."

"— and you still won't take your life seriously."

"There you're wrong, mentor mine," Brad said, hoping to head off the lecture that was now clearly on the agenda, "I take life far too seriously to waste time taking life seriously."

Ned wheeled on him impatiently, causing the chair to totter again. "Your life, I'm talking about your life, the only one you got — not Life with a capital L. You don't know shit about that, nobody does, it's just something you talk about when you got nothing better to do, or when you got plenty better to do but don't want to do it!"

"Down, Big Fella, what —"

"Who died on you recently? Have you knocked Bobbie up yet, or has that stupid weed made you sterile? When was the last time you had to go without a meal?"

Jesus, Brad thought. What brought this on? "It's not my fault I haven't suffered enough to suit you. I'm working on it, OK?"

"You sure are."

Fuck this, Brad thought. He drags me over here to lay some Sunday-school guilt trip on me? I'm outa here, soon as I finish this.... He took another drag, thought about blowing the smoke right in Ned's face. Instead he just glared.

But then Ned looked down. "How come I'm always the one has to say sorry?" he muttered, looking back out over the porch railing.

The rush was really coming on now, holding Brad down in his seat. The bird still trilled insanely. A car rumbled by on the back street, turning on its lights as it passed. When it was gone, so was the bird, leaving a weird empty silence like a sinkhole in the middle of time.

In his chest Brad felt the familiar swimming sensation, spreading out from his solar plexus like the sun dawning on a steamy day. Like today was, come to think of it. But now the light was diffusing, breaking up — a velvety dark was seeping into the air around them, turning off the light atom by atom. It seemed to be arising from that wound in the evening out there where the bird's song used to be....

The bird started up again in a bush just off the porch.

"Damn," Brad whispered. "That bird's trying to tell us something."

"Aw, Christ, leave me alone," Ned said, though Brad couldn't tell if Ned was talking to him or the bird.

"What?"

Ned turned to him. There were tears in his eyes.

Oh, shit, Brad thought. "Wha — what's the matter?"

"Spring," said a voice from behind them. "Happens every year."

They turned, saw Natalie's face in the window above the sink. She could have been there the whole time.

Brad pinched out the joint, stuck it in his sock. "Yeah? What do you do with him?"

"Lock him in the garage for a couple weeks. That usually works."

Ned peered in the window at Natalie. "You're all gussied up. Did we have a date I forgot about?"

Brad looked inside too, his eyes adjusting to the gloom. She had earrings on, and what looked like a dress. "Hubba hubba."

Natalie smiled. "Girl's Night Out," she said to Brad. "Wanna come?"

"Sure," Brad said, a little spray of panic squirting in his gut. It wasn't that he didn't like Natalie, just that he never could be sure when she was putting him on.

"Your hair's long enough, you could pass for my sister."

"The one with the beard?"

"Yeah, that one."

Brad rolled his eyes. "I think our lord and master here wishes to impart some wisdom to me," he said, glancing at Ned. Ned's mouth was smiling, but his eyes weren't. "I better hang around."

"Your funeral. Ned? Feed this boy." Her face vanished from the window.

Brad got up, had to sit right down again. "Whoa! Dang loco weed's cut off my legs!"

Ned held out his hand. "C'mon." He grabbed Brad's wrist and pulled him up, none too gently.

"Yes, Father Ned," Brad said, almost giggling — what he wanted to say was, "Carry me!"

§

Ned had sat Brad on a stool at the kitchen island where he could keep an eye on him, then went about making them each a sandwich while Brad babbled, totally stoned now. That was unfortunate — maybe. It would be difficult to get him to focus on Ned's message, if Ned ever managed to get to it — but there was something touchingly innocent about Brad's enthusiasm at the moment, in contrast to the defensive smart-ass he'd been just a few minutes before, out on the back porch, before he smoked that joint.

Whatever Brad was jabbering about, Ned paid little attention — it was just a riff, like that damned acid rock he'd no doubt force Ned to listen to later: he'd arrived with a thin stack of LPs under his arm, which looked like he also had a plan, blow his mentor's mind or something. Ned wasn't averse to this music on principle — that endless every-man-for-himself jamming had the same precipitousness, the same joy spilling through it as Brad's blathering did now. So what if it was drug-induced? The world needed all the joy it could get these days. Well, Ned did, anyway.

The separation from Natalie had been hard on him, but in a way getting back together was worse — they both felt they had to be extra careful with each other, which made most of their conversations awkward and stiff. Well, that was to be expected, Ned reasoned. In time they'd get used to each other again, just as he'd sort of got used to living alone, talking to himself all the time. They'd had fights before, made up before — this was just a bigger fight, requiring a bigger making up — and they were both working real hard.

But Ned wasn't hopeful. There was something hard and humorless in the way Natalie talked to him, not like it was before at all, when she could defuse a major engagement with one of her brutal but hysterical wise-cracks, or by crossing her eyes at him in the middle of a tirade. Long time since she'd done that.

He plunked the plate down in front of Brad, then opened the refrigerator and took out two beers. Brad tore a huge bite out of his sandwich, still gabbling and gesturing excitedly. Ned opened the beers and sat down around the corner of the island, nodding and grunting as if he really had any idea what Brad was so enthused about.

That was the word, enthused. If Ned remembered his half-term of Greek from grad school, the word came from en theos, possessed by the god. It's what this boy really wants, thought Ned, to be filled with God — or maybe it's the other way around. Whatever: that's why they fuck all the time, these hippie-freaks, and do all that dope, to get that rush — that headlong, A-over-tin-cup, free-fall plunge into the heart of the Creator.

Brad was hardly the only one bagging classes to trip out with that pack of misfits who called themselves "Machines" (short for "Little Stoned Freak Machines"), it was a fucking epidemic — the whole world seemed to be making a beeline for the edge of a cliff.

Trouble was, Ned knew, it was a tease. This god they were all pursuing was Dionysos, god of drunks and lunatics, who likes his revelers crazy and helpless, dancing in a mad swarm like gnats above an empty field. Ned wanted to save this boy, this enthusiast capering heedlessly along the brink of the abyss.

"Hey Ned, you poison the pickles or something, that why you ain't eating your sandwich?"

Ned looked down at it, then bared his teeth at Brad. "That's right, suckerrrrr."

Brad gasped theatrically, hands at his throat, then slid to the floor, writhing in incredible agony.

Ned sighed. This was not getting the job done. Well, what'd I expect? he asked himself. What did I actually hope to accomplish — the kid's having the time of his life, let him have it, for chrissakes! That's what he'd say, what he will say if I ever get my tongue untied!

Brad had stopped thrashing, and was trying to lie perfectly still, like a real corpse. "Ned, I'm dead."

"Good."

Brad sat up with a jerk, mock-offended. "Whaddya mean, good?"

Ned swallowed some beer. "Now that you're dead, you won't be interrupting me all the time when I'm trying to tell you something important."

Brad fell back down. "Now that I'm dead, I won't be able to hear you."

"Now that you're dead, you won't be able to hear anything else."

§

Natalie stood for a moment in the front hall, hand on the doorknob, looking at the floor. She was waiting for — what? Some momentous feeling to bubble up from within, propel her out the door? For certainly everything would change the moment she stepped over the threshold.

Or was she faltering, losing her nerve? Maybe, but it wasn't fear that spread beneath her sternum like crystallizing ice. Or not only that.

She was not going out with the girls.

Earlier, she'd made sure the kids were packed off to different friends' houses for the night, so Ned — and now Brad — could get plotzed early and in peace, and not worry about what she was up to this evening.

Still, she couldn't help imagining that Ned would find some reason for needing her tonight and call each of her friends in turn, only to discover that she was with none of them — she'd come back and there he'd be waiting at the door, arms crossed, maybe a rolling pin in his hand. He'd demand to know where she'd been. She'd hang her head and say, "I'm sorry, Ned. I lied to you. I wasn't out with the girls. I —" and here she would choke back a sob: "— I — I went to the dentist!"

She started to laugh, but then heard the boys barge in through the back door and start banging around in the kitchen. One of them might come out and see her standing there, chortling to herself. Might get suspicious, interrogate her, maybe torture her, force her to reveal her true mission. She frowned. Enough, she whispered, and stepped out, letting the screen door slam behind her.

She hadn't been outside all day, and the smell of the world was round and heavy, like warm bread. She crossed over to the opposite sidewalk, turned back to look at her house. Ragged hedges towering over the short front yard littered with years-old detritus of kids and half-done projects. The solemn roof peak, a dingy oval eye inside the gable point, rising above. An old house, a delightful challenge at first, now sinking into white-trash squalor.

Her ceaseless nagging at Ned to either fix things or pay somebody else to fix things had been a contributing factor in their separation last year. She hadn't been able to concede the justice of Ned's complaint on that score — he said it humiliated him and made him not want to do it, if she was going to be that way; her point was that this wasn't about him, it was about the house, which was falling apart. But once he was gone, she didn't feel like doing anything about it either, and since he was back she was reluctant to rock the boat.

My life, my life, sang sadly in her head. She'd done everything by the book, and it didn't work; had given Ned every chance to redeem himself and her, but that didn't seem to be on his to-do list.

But no, she wouldn't think uncharitably of Ned. His failure to make anything of himself, his weird moods, his drinking, his by now long-standing sexual indifference to her — none of these had anything to do with her now betraying him. She had made a mistake, expecting Ned to fix her dissatisfactions with herself, the way she expected him to clean out the gutters or mend the back steps. It wasn't his fault she was unhappy, she realized this now. Now, when it was too late.

She started toward the main drag that led down into town. The grit of her heels on the sidewalk echoed dully between the houses. As far as she could tell, she was the only one out on her little street, though she could smell charcoal smoke now and a faint haze hung amid the tree branches overhead. For one second, a stab of real fear shot through her, making her stop completely still, as she had inside the front door. But this time she just leaned forward, which made her take a step to regain her balance, then another and another, and when she turned the corner the feeling was gone.

The broad avenue had no trees on the other side, which opened up half the evening sky above her head. She wanted to cross over to get out of the shadows, but had to wait for a car to go by first. It was big and sleek and black, and as it whispered past she thought of a crow gliding smoothly down the side of a hill, scanning the ground for a carcass to pick.

Now what made her think of that? She lingered for a moment on the curb, then decided not to cross. There wasn't any sidewalk over there, under the open sky — the lawn behind the science hall, which faced the other way, came right down to the street. She walked slowly, paying attention to the building for the first time. It was one of those new boxy affairs, three stories high, mostly glass, with plain concrete pilasters gashing the façade at regular intervals. No, the front was the façade, she reminded herself. This must be the back-çade, ha ha.

Silly woman, she said softly. Last resort, won't save you. You can't go back, there's nothing there for you. You must go on. She picked up her pace a little.

Another car whooshed by, another bird sailing home for the night.

The downward slope was gentle, perfect for the easy strides she was now taking. She began to hum a little tune in time to her steps, and before long was swinging her arms at her sides. She felt as if she, too, were sailing toward some haven, only it was more like swimming, descending gradually deeper and deeper into rich, teeming waters.

As if to confirm this image in her mind, the street life began to pick up, the noise to increase. She was well beyond the campus now, and the stately homes and spacious lawns of the snooty hill dwellers had given way to more closely placed duplexes and the occasional apartment building.

Here, everyone was outside, it seemed: rocking on porches, hunkering on stoops, leaning against cars. As she came to a side street, a tennis ball bounded across her path, pursued by a crewcut kid with a filthy face. The ball bounced again, out into the main street, but the kid got no further than the curb — a massive hand hooked the kid's arm and swung him up onto the flat hood of a parked car. The kid yelped, but the hand pinned him down, while a finger the size of a sausage was leveled at his face.

The ball, meanwhile, had ricocheted off a car on the far side of the street, and was working its way back across traffic. It had almost made it when another sleek hissing birdmobile caught it on the front bumper and popped it straight up into the air. Several shouts, heads turned. A gorgeous young man with no shirt on streaked into the street and snagged it with a leaping one-hander. He came down like a gazelle, did a roll over the back of another parked car, and landed on his feet on the sidewalk.

Applause and cheers erupted from all around. The kid squirmed free and snatched the ball from the young man's hand, shouting "Thanks, asshole!" as he shot back into the side street. His victim called after him, "You're welcome, young sir!" and everyone laughed.

Natalie was thrilled. Applause! Laughter! Danger! A dazzling catch! With an audience! — everyone talking, listening, watching, performing — this was life!

The young man sauntered past with an amused look, giving her a raised eyebrow. She started to look away, but then smiled back. "Nice catch," she said.

"I did it for you, sweetheart." He returned her smile, but kept walking.

The man with the big hands put one out and stopped him. "Kid's dumb enough to get hisself killed, but he's right about you. You are an asshole." The young man grinned and lowered his head, saying something Natalie couldn't hear. The older man spread his huge palms and said, "All right. OK. I'm just saying —" then turned, and the two of them walked away up the sidewalk.

Natalie looked down the side street, where the ball game had started up again. It was too dark now for her to identify the smartass kid who'd almost got hisself killed. She turned and looked at all the people out on the street this balmy night. Most had returned to their stories or games or whatever commentary they had been giving on the weather or the world.

A house or two down, she noticed an older couple on their porch swing looking at her. She started to walk in their direction, and as she drew even with them she smiled up and said, "Evening."

The woman's face dilated into a mesh of wrinkles. "First nice day we've had this spring. Lord, I thought it would never come." The man's expression did not change, but he nodded gravely in assent.

Something dropped inside Natalie's chest. "Yes," she said. "It's a fine night." She waved and walked on, blinking back sudden tears. The singsong tune resurfaced in her mind: My life, my life. This is my life. "That's right, god dammit," she said aloud. "This is mine. I live here too."

Streetlamps flickered on, lighting up the avenue like a midway. Most of the day-shops were closed, but their windows gleamed in the neon flash and streaming sparks of the bar signs, and from the pizza parlor there spilled the din of teenage chatter pitched just above the thunder and squeal of heavy rock from the jukebox. As she passed she walked through a wave of pungent heat flowing out the open door.

Thoroughly drunk — with the spring, with the life pouring all around her, and yes, finally, with the fright of the illicit thing she was about to do — Natalie went around a corner, through an arch, up a flight of stairs. On the frosted window of the left-hand door at the top, a painted name: Daniel D. Smith, D.D.S.

D.D.S., D.D.S: her — what? Lover? Not yet, though tonight was likely to change that. What until then? Special friend, boyfriend, just friend? Well, until she got past the front desk inside his waiting room, he'd have to remain, wholly and exclusively, her dentist.

The room behind the glass looked dark, but further back she thought she saw a glow. She put her hand on the knob, closed her eyes for a second, then opened the door and walked in, shutting it gently behind her. She turned and looked around. A dim creamy glow fell into the unlit waiting room from the overhead lamp out on the landing. Natalie's shadow lay flat on the floor in the middle of the rectangle of light. Like the shadow of a body, she thought.

"Oh, for Christ's sake," she muttered, sidestepping into the darkness. Beyond the receptionist's desk, with its black telephone and hooded typewriter, another patch of light lay across the floor, this one with its corners skewed, a parallelogram with one edge turned up against the back wall. A pale shadow waved briefly on the floor, then stopped moving.

The waiting room had no windows, and the air was so still that Natalie began to sweat. The shadow waved again, and someone coughed. She opened her coat and slipped it off her shoulders, letting it lie where it fell on the floor. She dropped her purse and stepped out of her shoes, undid the top button of her dress.

What are you doing, you shameless hussy, she thought as she unbuttoned her sleeves, are you stripping? But she couldn't seem to help it, the air was so still, smelling of — well, disinfectant, and rubbing alcohol, and now her own stocking feet, but there was something else — sick? Sort of, but more like — of course: fear. Real fear, not the naughty thrill she had felt coming up the creaking stairs, but pure, dumb, animal terror. The anteroom of the torture chamber, the dentist's waiting room! What place of more exquisite torment could there be?

She smiled, then started padding toward the dreaded portal of the inner sanctum, undoing the next two buttons on her dress. At the door she stopped and listened. She could hear Danny humming under his breath in that peculiar way he had when he worked, grunting rhythmically to no tune at all — "uh, uh, uh, uh, uh."

Natalie could see through the puckered glass a vague white shape hovering like a ghost in the room. Danny in his cute little smock. No other features were discernible except for what looked like the overhead light. Then it, too, moved. This puzzled her, and she put her face up close to see if she could make out any more.

The humming broke off abruptly — "Who's there?" — and the ghost straightened. Then there was a choking sound, and a dark shape rose up beside the white one, coughing. There was someone else in there! Natalie jerked back from the door, clutching the dress across her bosom. Then she ran, grabbing up her things from the floor, and bolted into the hall. She tripped down the steps two at a time and shot across the sidewalk, stopping herself with a straight-arm against a lamp post. She looked around desperately. Next door was Wolf's sporting goods, its front door deep in a recess of dark display windows. She scurried into the shadows and huddled in the entryway, gasping like a sprinter.

As her breath returned, so did her giddiness. Unbelievable! What was she so scared of? Why shouldn't Danny have a patient in there? An extraction with complications, an emergency perhaps, and he was so wrapped up in his work he'd lost track of the time, maybe forgotten their tryst altogether — that was a chilling thought. Come to think of it, she was shivering. And half-undressed. What had she planned to do, run in there, bare naked, and just jump him? Oh, it was so ludicrous she wanted to sink into the concrete.

She shook her coat and pulled it on, buttoned her dress and smoothed its front. Looking in one of the dark windows, she fluffed her hair. Then she peered closer at her face. God, she thought, I probably smeared lipstick all over his door.

She had to get control of herself. Sooner or later Danny'd be finished, and then... she had to find a place to wait. She buttoned up the raincoat, cinched the belt, then bent down to pick up her purse and put on her — one shoe. Oh, shit! Now what was she going to do? She held the shoe out in front of her, squeezing it so hard her hand shook. "You jerk. How could you leave your sister behind like that?" Then she smacked it across the sole with her other hand. "Bad pump. Bad pump."

She decided that nothing would look more ridiculous than a woman with one shoe on, so she tried to slip it into her coat pocket, but it wouldn't stay. There was nothing else to do, so she hitched her shoulders and marched out of her hiding place.

And there, not ten feet away, stood a handsome dentist, blood dotting his smock and highish forehead, holding her other shoe in his hand.

§

Ned sat in the wing chair by the bar, testing his will. He'd managed so far on only one beer, and was now delaying his reward still further.

Brad seemed determined to put Ned through the whole heavy range of this hard rock shit.

"Now listen to this."

"Could you turn it down a little?"

"Has to be loud. You have to feel it." Brad dropped the needle, and Ned winced. He felt it all right. It hurt. Brad shouted, giving no doubt enlightening commentary. To Ned it was just another goddam riff.

"You hear that? God, that is so far out."

Ned shrugged. He really wanted that drink.

Brad shook his head, disgusted. "You know what your trouble is? You don't know how to just listen, just be with the music. You have to analyze it, compare and contrast, write a fucking dissertation on it."

"I do not." The kid was tired, Ned could tell, he was having trouble keeping his eyes open. That could explain his getting so cranky all of a sudden.

"This stuff doesn't work that way. You're not supposed to understand it, you're supposed to experience it."

"I'd rather experiece music that doesn't knock me down and scream in my face." Ned tried to make it sound like a joke, but his own impatience was rising fast.

"I would think, you being my mentor and all, that you'd be interested in what I'm into these days," Brad said, sulking openly now. "And for a man who supposedly loves music, you could stand to be a little open-minded about new forms. You just might learn something."

Jesus, Ned thought. Can't he hear himself? "New forms my ass," he snarled, then shut up. That was over the line and he knew it — and sure enough, Brad turned without another word, lifted the record off the spindle and started packing up to go home.

It was now or never. "Want a real drink?" Ned asked, as affably as he could.

Brad stayed turned away, squaring the stack of albums on the floor. "No thanks. I like to stimulate my brain cells, not kill them off."

"I read the same article," Ned said, a bit sharply. "It also says we only use a tenth of our brain cells as it is, so I figure I've got plenty to spare. Far as I can see, you're not even using a tenth of yours."

Brad stayed perfectly still for a long moment. Then he said, his back still turned, "You're mad at me. You're gonna chew me out. You're gonna tell me I'm fucking up my life."

Ned hesitated for only a second. "And you're gonna tell me it's none of my business, that I couldn't possibly understand, and that everything will work out fine in the end. Right?"

Brad swiveled around, but kept his gaze on the floor. "Right."

There was no backing down now. "So look me in the eye and say it."

The look Brad gave him made Ned's hackles rise: it said, You are my enemy now. Ned almost flinched. Instead he said, "Tell me I'm wrong with a straight face, and you can smoke all the dope you want and fuck Bobbie till your thang falls off for all I'll say about it."

Brad appeared to be considering it, then exploded with laughter. "My what?"

Ned tried to look stern, but couldn't keep it up. "'Thang,'" he said. It wasn't even funny, but Brad had keeled over on his back on the rug, and Ned was starting to get embarrassed, stupid as that was. "You've heard of a figure of speech?"

Brad gasped, "Not that one," and rolled from side to side, hooting.

It was hopeless now, Ned knew. Well, he'd tried. Nothing was changed, but he'd made his position clear — sort of — and maybe Brad would think about it, later. And maybe that was the best that could be hoped for. "Want that drink now?" He got up and went to the bar.

Brad caught his breath. "May as well, unless your little girl has some grass in her room."

Ned's smile faded. "Don't tell me."

Brad was suddenly solemn. He said, very slowly, "It was a joke, Ned," then started cackling again.

But there was a note in that laugh that Ned didn't like. Gotta zing me back, he thought, carefully angling out a dusty bottle from the back of the top shelf. Well, OK — maybe he's entitled.

Brad sat back on the floor. "Where is she, anyway? Hot date?"

"Slumber party with her girlfriends."

"Out with the girls, just like Natalie."

"In with the girls, I think, but yeah."

"You sure?"

Ned looked at him. "I used to be. Are you trying to tell me something?"

Brad rolled his eyes. "I'm kidding, Ned, can't you tell when I'm kidding?"

"Thought I could," Ned said before he could stop himself.

Brad's grin wobbled a little. "And her brother the Bruiser?"

"I was told Brendan had a Little League game and then was sleeping over with his best friend the shortstop," Ned said, pinching two glasses together, and lifting them onto the bar. "But I guess they both must be down at the waterfront, picking up sailors."

"They make 'em younger every year, it's true," Brad said, and Ned finally got the message: And you can't protect them — or anyone, Brad included — from anything. "So it's just you and me, the evening is ours?"

It took Ned a moment to speak. "Unless you got other plans."

"Can't remember if I did."

Ned began to pour. "Overstimulated your brain cells, I guess."

"And now to kill them off. What're you gonna poison me with now, Nuncle Edward?"

"A single malt Scotch that's older than you are."

"But younger than you."

"Just barely." He handed Brad a squat glass with three fingers of whisky in it. "Go easy."

Brad stuck his nose into the glass and sniffed, then drew his head back sharply. "Jesus. No ice?"

"Eskimos pee on it. No, Brad. Real men don't put ice in their drinks."

"And we're real men, right?"

Ned rested his hand over the top of his glass, looking Brad straight in the eye. "Right," he said. "Real as they come. These days."

Brad returned his gaze. "Right."

Ned raised the glass. "Here's to everything working out fine in the end."

"Shut up and drink. You've been dying to all evening."

"True enough." Ned lifted the glass to his nose, inhaled deeply, then sipped, closing his eyes. He loved the way the first swallow of whisky went down slow-motion, like a pearl sinking through motor oil, to burst softly into his stomach, blossoming in a little flower of fire. Almost immediately he felt the release of anxiety, the welling of feeling, the opening of something like wonder — which could of course leave him defenseless eventually, easy prey to terror or despair — but this would be a good one, he was sure. Then again, he always felt this way after the first sip. But they'd settled something, a minute ago — he wasn't sure what, any more, but no matter — yes, this would be a good one.

"What are you doing, praying?"

Ned opened his eyes. Brad was grinning at him, with only the slightest twist of irony. "In a way."

Brad looked down into the glass, swirled the amber liquid. "Maybe I should pray, too."

"Wet your whistle first," Ned said, his voice already husky. "Don't take too much, hold it in your mouth a while, then just let it slide down."

Brad tipped the glass to his lips.

"A little more. You want to have something to swallow."

Brad sipped again, closed his eyes. Ned watched with a little smile of approval. An odd sentence floated across his mind: when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.

§

It was after one o'clock when Natalie returned, and Ned hadn't left any lights on for her. But at least the front door was unlocked, so she could sneak in without jangling her keys.

Natalie shut the door silently and let the stillness of the dark house close around her. She felt extremely reluctant to move. She wanted to stand there all night, soaking in the afterglow of the last four hours.

Danny hadn't known what he was doing any more than she did. It was part of what made being with him so much fun — they were hilarious together, couldn't stop laughing, from the moment he appeared on the street and she screamed with fright and delight, through their early fumblings on the lumpy sofa in his consulting room — even long after they got the feel and taste of each other and their passion ignited, one or the other would start to laugh and within seconds they'd both be whooping and howling, their joy uncontainable, their eyes springing tears of gratitude and disbelief.

The only thing that troubled her, and that only slightly, was how easily Danny could make her come, which he did over and over — well, she thought with a snort, as a dentist he has to be good with his hands in tight spaces — and she knew that most of her friends would kill to have to deal with this kind of "problem." And it wasn't as if she minded, exactly, having orgasm after orgasm, though after a while she was very tired, it was just that — well, he seemed more preoccupied with bringing her off than he was with her, somehow.

But they laughed about that, too, and he explained — plausibly, at the time — that Claudia, his wife, had been frigid for years, and it excited him so to feel a woman climax like that. Whereupon he showed her just how excited even talking about it made him, and this set off another burst of merriment that eventually led them both to climax like that. Again.

With Ned, lovemaking had been many things, but hilarious wasn't one of them. There was something greedy, almost desperate, about the way Ned took her when the need was upon him, and she could respond to his occasional brutality with a ferocity of her own, though sometimes it was like they were doing this to rather than with each other. Often after such a bout with Ned she would be worse than spent, she felt cored, as if doing this had sucked out the marrow of her life, that part of her that made her want to go on living.

No, that was melodramatic, it overstated the truth so much it wasn't true any more. Besides, Natalie was tired of worrying about Ned, it was part of what drove her out of the house and into Danny's arms in the first place.

Now, as she stood just inside the door, she was — for the first time since her first time, she realized — wholly in her body. She could feel her pupils dilate in the darkness. Her nostrils flared, picking up the faint tang from the joint Brad had smoked, hours ago, out in the back yard. Her left ear pulled back at the tick of the house contracting in the cooling night. And then an icy needle shot up her spine. She looked down. Between her feet was a man's head.

The eyes in the face were aimed straight up her dress, but they did not shine, and Natalie knew they saw nothing. Either the man was dead, or he was sleeping with his eyes open. By this time her own eyes were completely dark-adapted, and she was beginning to recognize things about the face: the shadow of a beard, the dark hair splayed out like a ragged halo, the tiny loop of gold notching the left ear lobe, the slightly bucked teeth between the parted lips: Brad. What was he doing lying on his back by the door?

Ned must've passed out first, then Brad lay down here because it's cool. Unless Brad was dead, which opened up a line of thought she was not going to pursue unless she had to.

She scanned the room, and saw two things that reassured her: a pair of legs sticking out from the wing chair by the bar, and, against the opposite wall, the orange glow of the power light on the record player. Adjusting her hearing, she isolated the low hum of the amplifier and the distant rhythmic crackle of the needle in the end grooves. She was annoyed that she hadn't noticed these sounds when she came in. But then, she reminded herself, she'd almost stomped on Brad's face, too.

The body at her feet rumbled to life. She looked down just in time to see the abdomen collapse and the mouth open and fill up with liquid. Brad's eyes did not move, nor did his expression change at all. His gut snarled and clenched again, and the little pool in his mouth erupted, spilling over in all directions — down his chin, across his cheeks, into his ears.

Natalie jumped straight back. The edge of the boot bench caught her behind the knees and she sat down hard on some thing, breaking it and sending a pile of other things cascading to the floor. Her elbow cracked against a hard edge and something sharp slipped across her palm. She heard a sound like a lamp teetering on a jostled table, but no crash followed.

It took another moment for her to realize Brad was about to drown in his own vomit. She lurched off the bench and wrestled him onto his stomach. She straddled his bottom and began hitting his back as hard as she could with both hands. He coughed, then heaved again, spewing chunky liquid across the floor. She sat back and watched. He still didn't breathe. She reached forward and pinched his nose, clearing away whatever stuff she could from his nostrils, then pounded as hard as she could between his shoulder blades.

Just then the pain blossomed from her hand and elbow, and she cried out. The rocking sound persisted, however, and as she was lifting her hand to her mouth she saw that Brad's entire body was jerking rhythmically, as if he were having a grand mal seizure.

"God dammit you little twerp, get the fuck with it! Get up! Wake up! Breathe!" she shouted, throwing her full weight against her hands on his back with every word. She felt him gathering for another heave again, and smacked the back of his head. "No you don't, asshole, not until you breathe!" She pinched his nose again, hard this time, and pulled his face around towards her as far as it would go, causing his neck to crackle like popcorn. "Did you hear me, jerk?" she yelled right into his ear, then dropped his head and started pounding again.

Brad's head came back up by itself and he sneezed, his face bouncing off the floor. Natalie froze. He looked around slowly for a moment, then, mumbling something, lay his cheek down gently in the shallow puddle of puke. For one long sickening moment he was perfectly still, then he sighed prodigiously and started to snore.

Natalie sat back. The upper right quadrant of his shirt-back showed a dark stain. She looked at her hands. The right one was slick with blood and all of a sudden hurt like hell. She staggered up to her feet, then stumbled through the living room into the kitchen.

The boys had left the refrigerator door open. She kicked it closed furiously, then immediately regretted it, because it had been the only light in the room. She was holding her palms clasped together as if in prayer, and would have to get at the light switch over the sink with her elbow. But her elbow hurt too, so she gave up on the direct pressure technique and flipped the switch with her good hand. Then she turned on the cold water full force and thrust her throbbing palm under the faucet.

Once the blood was washed away she inspected the wound. "A pretty good gash," she said aloud through gritted teeth, "hah! right along the life line. Going to need stitches. Might not be too deep — bleeding seems to be slowing, but that could be the cold water — no, a band-aid ain't going to keep this closed. Stitches mean the doctor's — could Danny...? No. He's home by now — what if his wife was up, waiting for him, with a — with a — a rolling pin!"

"What are you doing?"

Natalie sprang away from the sink and crashed against the counter. Ned was standing in the doorway, rubbing one eye like a little boy just up from his nap.

Natalie screamed and slid to the floor, shaking, so convulsed with laughter that she couldn't get her breath.

§

In the end — if such a story can have an ending, Brad thought years later — they all got away with it, after a fashion peculiar to each.

As it turned out, stitches weren't needed to close the gash in Natalie's right palm, though she did have to immobilize her hand with a splint for nearly a month afterwards. Luckily, she was left-handed, so the inconvenience was minimized; however, her adventure with Danny Day Smith eventually deepened into a real affair, snapping the already attenuated bonds of her marriage to Ned.

Ned moved out again, this time into more or less permanent exile from his family, where he was free to drink himself into a stupor every night if he wanted to — and most nights he did. And eventually drink, depression, and the mere passing of the years eroded his singing voice into a parody of what gave him what he had — what had saved him, until that moment, from what he had already become: just another drunk.

For his part, though he heard all about it in the days following, Brad remembered nothing of that night after Natalie left, and so (he allowed himself a bitter chuckle at this point) was spared the lesson that his brush with death might have imposed. The result was that he flunked out of school, got Barbara pregnant and married her, and soon found that he had neither the time nor the means to sustain the pursuit of whatever it was he was so intent on capturing in those heady days — and that still called to him, deep in the night, like a Siren song. Lashed to the mast of a so-called real life he'd hated almost from the start, he could only weep with longing and rage, as the clock in the square chimed hour after hour, while he drank and drank, engrossed in tracing out the details of a real real life in the far future, long after he got out of this mess and found the right woman, someone who, among her other virtues, would understand his need to be alone.

Or, better, he'd become a monk, give everything away, renounce and purge the terrible itch to have things, to belong to and own others, and go seek full-time the God whose face he'd glimpsed so often through the haze of various intoxications, whose ecstacy he'd tasted but lost again and again, yet which he knew he could find, if only he could be free of all these distractions and really concentrate.

In order to bear those ills he had, because he was too timid to fly to others that he knew not of, he tried meditation, he tried prayer, he tried yoga and jogging, he tried reading poetry and writing in a journal. Along with many others, he tried drugs of all kinds, but the only anodyne that reliably worked came out of the whisky bottle, which, by incapacitating him to do anything about his problems, let him quit worrying about them for a few hours at the end of the day, and eventually a blessed blankness would envelop him, sealing every chink against the sharp cold wind of the outside world and its incessant demands.

At one such time, an odd sentence floated across his mind: stare into the abyss long enough, it'll stare right back at you. He wrote it down in his journal, grinning sardonically as if for someone watching him in a movie.

Someone was watching, he realized. In the far future he was making up in this nightly watch, he was trying to decribe to his now grown-up daughter what a torment his life had been with her mother — he was explaining, justifying, helping this intelligent but as-yet unreceptive young woman to appreciate his side of the story. It was understood in this scenario, of course, that he had abandoned her while she was still a child, disappearing from her life when she most needed a real man to help her know what a real man really is. Just now, for example, he was trying to convey to her that he knew how much she needed him, and that, as a good man despite his lapses and mistakes, he had given his all to trying to make things work, but he'd been overpowered — that was the word — by a situation so toxic he was afraid she would be poisoned by it if he stayed.

At that moment, the real little girl — whose future avatar he'd just been addressing so earnestly — appeared around the corner of the doorway, her big eyes bright with tears. He nearly yelled with fright himself as he jumped up, overturning the heavy swivel-chair and pitching his newly filled glass onto the floor. She held out her arms to him, and he quickly picked her up, embracing her tightly around the back and under her pillowed bottom. She buried her face in the hollow between his jaw and shoulder, one little hand clutching the cloth of his collar while the other gripped his arm.

He rocked her as he always did when she needed him like this, twisting slowly from side to side, stroking her back and cooing "Yeah, yeah, yeah" softly into her ear. In a moment she began to do the same back to him, paddling the back of his neck with her sticky little fingers and murmuring against his throat, "Yeah, yeah, yeah."