The Vagabond

1. Welcome the Vagabond

Sunday morning Alison Thompson sketched the brown-and-beige plaid couch, shading the rumpled cushions in high relief, including an empty upended vial and a zip-lock baggie on the wooden arm rest. After every two or three strokes of her pencil she swigged the bitter coffee she had made soon after waking up. She had turned on all the lamps and even the TV, but the living room still looked grainy, the light drowning in matte blackness. Space and shadows battled in stagnation; only the TV emitted rays that traveled. Intent and persistent in her efforts, she could not come close to rendering the claustrophobic air.  A few months ago, her boyfriend Nate had covered the windows with black plastic sheeting, fixing the stuff to the wooden sashes with a staple gun because he suspected the entire outside world of spying. Didn’t Alison realize how fast some telescopic video device could capture his image, hers, and their real life interaction on telescopic video? Even a cell-phone digital shot could conceivably nail them going about their private, daily routines while deep inside their apartment.

Last night Nate and two pasty-faced, vacant-eyed guys she had never seen before had arrived through the back door. Nate mumbled stuff, smoking a joint with them in the kitchen. After perhaps half an hour, they had hurried off on their urgent mission. By now,  Alison was prepared for Nate to return any minute or late tonight or possibly tomorrow when she would be tending the Gallery Shop they had opened a few months ago. Six blocks south on Halsted, the shop carried expensive glassware, hand-blown vases and bowls, and finely made household art. She and Nate had put together the merchandise, buying some from the wholesale-only Household Design Show and borrowing the rest from artist-friends to sell on consignment.

On good days, seven or eight people might step inside the storefront and poke around. On especially good days, someone might buy something. But Alison did not, thank goodness, just stand around all day. The back room contained a work table. Here she had drawn and laid out an intricate stained-glass window pattern. The scene recalled an old-fashioned country garden complete with a little girl flying on a swing.

She and Nate had met three and a half years ago at a stained-glass workshop outside Seattle, only to learn that they were both returning to Chicago when the month-long session ended. She was an Art Institute MFA. He was, in his own words, a locally semi-famous raconteur and experienced stained-glass craftsman. A gallery on Ontario Street had shown his abstract standing lamps a month before the workshop, and he had sold two pieces to a guy who lived on Lake Shore Drive for five thousand a piece. Back in Chicago, within a month, Alison and Nate had fallen insanely in love. Their chief interest—being totally absorbed with each other day after day—allowed no time or energy for other pursuits. That euphoric dream had lasted almost two years, and when they awoke, they did so slowly, in intervals that extended so gradually they had reclaimed their selves in a flush of new promises and excitement.

When and why their shared lives had turned dull and fearful, Alison could not say. More than that, she refused to say. She refused to admit such a possibility, no matter what it might cost her to ignore the blackened windows. At first she had gone so far as to wonder if Nate was right to yell at her. Why was she so suspicious and grasping all of the sudden? When had she begun reading a malevolent aspect into everything he did?

When she finished the last of the coffee and her second to last cigarette, a desire to run outside overcame her. Abandoning her effort to animate the suffocating mood of the living room couch, she pulled on jeans and a jacket, pushed her cold bare feet into unlaced sneakers, and grabbed her house keys. Even to step outside now, Nate insisted they lock three front door locks. He had hired a locksmith to fix thick wood panels mounted beneath metal plates on both sides of the porch door so that it, too, could support a deadbolt. The keys were tricky and locking the doors sucked an infuriating lot of time. Finally free, she stumbled—the sun was so high and sharp. Quickly then, she skidded along, around the corner to Nate’s truck. Whatever errand he had been running last night, those two creeps in tow, was best accomplished taking taxis. Or so Nate adamantly believed, another perception she knocked herself out trying not to acknowledge. No matter how Nate chose to conduct his not-entirely-secret business, it obviously involved huge risks. This much she could not shield from her consciousness, which Nate of course knew, despite one another other’s strenuous attempts to pretend otherwise. Thus, whenever a feeling of illegal transactions hovered, they exchanged no hellos or good-byes, no see-you-soons or see-you-laters. If Alison were home, and Nate was anxiously preparing something, she busied herself as far from him as possible within their six-room place.

For all that, probably because of it, any intimation not having to do with Nate now seized her with an extra intense certainty. When she saw his truck parked around the corner, Alison ran to open the side door, certain it would not be locked. (Nothing about the truck worried either of them.) And even though the day was so bright it stung the eyes, there sleeping with an arm thrown over his face was their vagabond friend, James Walsh.

He groaned and slid his back against the opposite side door. “Hey, Alison.”

She reached in, resting her hands on either side of his legs. “Hey, little brother. Get out of there. Why didn’t you let us know you were coming? Did you call?  Ring the bell?”

“No, it was late.”

“Are you crashed there coming all the way from California?”

“Yeah. I got to Stanford, walked around a few days and rather than waste a whole ’nother semester, left before my first class.”

She pulled him along by the sleeve, glad to see him and gladder still to put him up in the spare bedroom. Maybe with James here, James who looked up to Nate like a father, maybe Nate would quit all the stupid, dangerous, criminal shit she constantly denied he was doing.

 2. Comfort

Alison and James hurried to the apartment on Belmont and when Alison pulled the key ring out of her front pocket, she noticed from her peripheral vision how James raised an eyebrow. He had left the apartment and “his” room off the kitchen seven, maybe eight, weeks ago. The locks were new since then. When Alison wiggled the first key, trying to catch the right notch, James said, “Let me.” The key worked smoothly in his hands, no jiggling. When he pushed the turned door knob, Alison said, “Now use the blue key, the lock just above.” That one, too, clicked easily for him; his ease with locks came from using them coming home after school since he was six.

Alison, who’d grown up overseas, escorted always by her older brother, had never acquired the knack. Using so many keys distressed her, and somehow she never managed to insert them so they caught the right groove on the first or even the second try. Still, his expression wondered: Three, Alison? He stepped aside, handing back the heavy ring jangling with ten different keys.

They stepped inside the darkened kitchen and she said, “You must be starving. Want to go to the diner?”

“No, I’m okay for now.”

“We can eat toast then. I was just about to fix some.”

He saw the loaf on the cutting board, the knife out, and the plastic container, lid off, filled with the honey-butter she had mixed together as long as he’d known her. Nodding, sure then, he stepped into his old room, which had its own tiny bathroom. Nate had built the small but private little space, installing a found toilet and a pre-fab shower stall. He had even built a swinging door. All for James, whom Nate had practically adopted a few weeks after James had left his parents’ home.
James, after all, had turned sixteen. His parents could no longer fail to recognize his  rebellion, and although he could not recall a specific discussion, James and his father had reached a tacit agreement that if James cleared out, his father would continue paying the tuition for the private school James had attended since kindergarten. After he left his childhood home, his attendance and performance slackened, but he had nonetheless graduated and even gotten into Stanford, thanks in large part to Nate acting as surrogate father.

The way it happened, or the way Nate used to tell it when introducing women he had picked up in bars to the boy sleeping on his couch, was that James had tried to sell him a nickel bag one evening in Lincoln Park. While the two shared a joint, Nate, who was ten years older, had lectured the kid: What James was doing was not smart. Then, after midnight, the same night, Nate had stopped by Pizza Hut and there was James, who had piled on extra cheese and peppers for him. Waiting for the pie to bake, Nate had learned that James was crashing “wherever,” including the Pizza Hut’s floor for the past several nights. Again, not smart: James was certain to get busted for one petty crime or the other. Nate was a big-hearted guy. Then and there he had offered James a roof over his head; enough to get by.

Now as Alison prepared toast and coffee, James stripped off his filthy, tattered clothes. The shower blasted him with a sweet cleansing that practically stunned him. The soap and hot water lathering his body created such extreme before-and-after sensations that it was all he could do not to laugh and cry.  Wrapped in a rough towel, he stepped into the bedroom, its windows covered like all the others in the apartment.

In the kitchen, Alison had laid two plates bearing four squares each of thick toast lavishly coated with honey-and-butter.  He ate wolfishly; she daintily. They sipped freshly made coffee from small, thick ceramic mugs.

“What’s with the windows?”

“Not what you’d guess. Not in case of air raid, I mean. Just Nate’s latest home improvement.”

“Odd.”

“Very. When he shows up, maybe you can ask him. But he has done something good, James, something really nice for me. Opened a little arts and crafts shop where I’m  designing a series of stained-glass windows. It’s not exactly off the ground yet. He insists on being the glass cutter. I’m not allowed. But so what, I love my drawings, and doing the displays, everything. If you’re up for a walk, we can go there.”

After the shower, fresh clothing, and the sweet toast and hot coffee, James felt up for any- and everything. “Really. Yeah, let’s go then.”

3. Papa Bear

Exhausted, buzzing,  his whole heavy, sweaty body unsteady, Nate stumbled out of the taxi, which was Rico’s brother’s, though some other guy’s cousin, a kid named Steve, was driving. “Watch yourself, man,” Rico hooted, slamming the yellow door as the vehicle squealed away.

“You watch yourself, Mr. Ricky Ricardo.”

Nate possessed so much more control than the deadbeat clowns who worked as his partners, the discrepancy wasn’t funny. But then he could not spend another ten years squinting in alleys and peering behind dumpsters to find a sharper crew. Almost thirty-years-old, Nate Schulaski doubted he would ever meet his match. At least these guys had experience, and none of them, according to his thorough background checks, had landed in jail. Rico owned two bars; both of which Nate had invested in as a silent partner. Both of them used to wield a big presence in the city’s night life, but now they kept low profiles, though Nate’s registered a lot lower than Rico’s.

Reeling by the porch door, he groped for the keys. Damn good thing Alison had locked them properly. Either that or she was still home, fretting in her pajamas. Luckily no, she was out. Nate relocked the doors while barely cracking his eyes open.

In the dark apartment he shouted, “Alison!” just to be sure. She rarely went to the shop on Sundays, but not knowing when he might get home, she had shown the good sense to take off. A definite improvement. Otherwise, she ricocheted all over the place, wondering did he want coffee, food, a shower, etcetera, until he had no choice but to shut her up. Depending on whether or not she had some whiney female blues singer shouting about her no-good mean drunk lecherous man, the bleating, poor-pitiful-me voice blaring from every goddamn speaker in the place, he might find it hard to restrain himself from grabbing her by her thin, skimpy hair and slapping his hand over her mouth.

At least she seemed to be learning. She knew enough to make herself scarce after he had been up working all night. Nate and Rico had finally connected with the huge suppliers they had been seeking for months. These two fierce, mean, twisted up brothers, Robert and Norbert, stinking rich motor-mouths who toyed with Glocks, Robert spinning his around his thick fingers while Norbert tossed his from palm to palm, both shouting and laughing, doling out their killer pure product on top of a big glass coffee table. Before long, all four of them were dickering about big money, huge pay offs, basic everyman dreams and promises without end. Thank god for Nate’s common sense and superior smarts; he needed his lightning-bolt logic to keep the group together before they soared past all reason and lost focus. While the others joked and teased, Nate’s vision anchored the set-up, so that eventually, long after dawn, the brothers slapped their thighs or the couch. He remembered the sound. Smack, smack, and voiced agreement. “Okay. Good enough, guys. We’re all in for a long-term, verbal contract.” Robert punched Nate’s shoulder. “Right?” The brothers stuck their guns deep into the couch, and they all shook hands.

That was the deal; that’s what he wanted, what they all wanted. So then they needed to celebrate, whereupon the separate, overlapping conversations grew even louder and faster, spit spraying while the foursome rocked back and forth, hunkering down  to keep all that energy from hurling them apart.

If Nate could get six or seven hours of peace now, he would treat Alison later on. He was pleased and he’d please her when she could not possibly expect it. Because, crapped out, burnt out, fried to ash as he was, Nate had scored a primo position. So that even though every cell of his stinking hulking carcass popped up and down along his skin, his nerves throbbing from way too much shit, once he rested and revived, it would all be worth it.

Meanwhile he was crashing into furniture because turning on the lights had not occurred to him. Actually, lights irritated him. Nate preferred the TV. He preferred to have it on nonstop. And he would, too, if Alison did not freakin’ complain so much. Why did he want the background sound, the cartoons and screaming commentators on all the time? But right now, he couldn’t be bothered to scrounge up the remote, which she liked to hide, as if that were cute or fun, no matter how often or forcefully he explained it was not. His main concern now was how seriously his nose and throat were burning. His eyes, too, hurt like hell.

As desperately as he needed to lie down, Nate craved something to drink more. The light from the refrigerator assaulted him, and he lurched back a step, cursing. His huge white paw grabbed a half gallon of Pepsi. Alison never touched the stuff, and he had bought a couple of bottles a few days ago. Was this all that was left? Why ask? His over-stimulated mind kept rambling with pathetic questions and even stupider observations. Bottle to his mouth, he poured half the sugary, carbonated stuff down his gullet and burped. Which was better, even if he was still twitching, if anything, more now than before.

Sitting on his bed, he stripped off his old regalia, a tight cowboy shirt, pointy-toed Tony Lama black-tipped, silvery gray cowboy boots, a thick tooled belt with a big oval turquoise piece, even a foppish neck scarf—a fancy get-up he needed to throw away, as of yesterday. Next impulse? Nate hopped, one leg free of his jeans, the other still half-way in, to the bathroom across the hall. He vomited Pepsi into the sink, rinsed his mouth and face, peed, clutching the wall until he finally, finally fell naked into bed. He lay there, tossing for half an hour. His manic head refused to quiet down. He jumped up, bounding back into the bathroom, and rummaged through Alison’s make-up drawers until he found an old prescription bottle of Xanax. Empty, though—what a skinny, high-strung pill-popping bitch Alison was. Throwing the empty bottle on the floor, he dug deeper into her things: Nothing. Then he tried the towel closet, tossing all the clean, folded towels behind him. Shelves clear and—Eureka! My, my, my, how very goddamn clever Alison thought she was. There in the corner of the now empty closet stood a nice, new prescription of Xanax. Nate threw four to the back of his throat and washed them down by leaning into the faucet, twisting his neck, and gulping enough tap water until he was sure they had washed clear down to his pit.

4. Thick and Thin

Inside The Gallery Shop, Alison showed her shy, quiet friend the rows of glass bowls, their satiny glazes casting different colors depending on the direction of the light. In a lovely old hand-carved trunk, Alison had stacked small plastic compartments, each blossoming with richly colored, heathery, or untreated twists of yarn. Handmade sweaters for men, women, and children hung from transparent fishing line connected to the ceiling. On a nearby bookshelf were knitting needles and a neat stack of pattern books.

The storefront displayed most of its wares on antique furniture found in Wisconsin or southern Illinois: old chests; bureaus; gate-legged tables; and an extensive, wraparound construct of shelves stained with a pearly pale blue wash,. James ran a finger over a heavily varnished round oak table. “He’s not selling these, is he?”

“I can’t imagine,” Alison said. “But if the money was right, who knows. The shop has not exactly started off with a bang, and he’s getting impatient. Now that you’re here, James, maybe you can help on weekends, maybe even evenings.”

“Will he teach me more about cutting glass?”

Alison, who had crouched down to arrange a large group of ceramic-faced dolls, all wearing their original prairie garb from the early twentieth century, sighed. “That would be nice.” Standing up, brushing invisible dust from her palms, she looked at James squarely, conveying something he could not completely decipher. “He won’t let me do it. But that doesn’t mean anything. And my designs, which I love, are really piling up.” Turning back to the dolls, Alison dipped down again to arrange a flaxen-haired girl’s bonnet strings past the swell of a smooth, fat, extra chin. She stuffed the doll’s chubby ceramic legs deeper inside its paper-thin leather boots.

“Fat doll,” James said.

“They were supposed to indicate robust health, which the real little girls too often didn’t have.”

Alison stood up, pulling a box of cigarettes from her back pocket, and led James into the back room. She wanted to show him the work she loved most. As he followed her, James saw how much thinner his friend’s lover had grown in the past two months. And this was something he never noticed. 

Always hungry and generally stoned, James didn’t register subtle changes in the people around him. He came and went and everyone looked a little bit different, though mostly the same. If someone he remembered from years past as a scarecrow had gotten fat, he simply did not see it, unless the added weight was so considerable the person was almost unrecognizable. His first girlfriend had gained fifty pounds her first year away at college. That James had noticed. But except for extreme changes, James saw only a friend, a person he trusted.

But following Alison, he could see that her slight frame had grown significantly narrower, all over. For half a second, he wasn’t sure if he should comment. Would it be rude? What if she had been sick? But Alison never got sick. If James remembered correctly, skinny as she was, his best friend’s lover strived to keep herself thin. Once or twice she and Nate had gone on vacation and Alison had gained weight. Not that James would have noticed. But he remembered Nate smacking her somewhat rounder bottom and insisting she better start dieting or he’d never take her on vacation again.

After they had visited Canada, Nate, who himself had developed a paunch on the trip, kept pretending Alison had grown shockingly fat from all the Canadian beer and fast food. James remembered shaking his head. He never disagreed with Nate. But when his father-figure and mentor stepped outside the room, James told Alison not to worry. She looked good, sexy. But then Nate had caught him saying, “sexy.” Half-kidding or maybe not, Nate had thrown James’ into a suffocating headlock. “You look at her twice, man—I’m not even talking about touching her—and I’ll kill you. I swear to God, James. I’ll put a bullet through your head.”

Following Alison to the back of the shop, James spoke up. “You look awfully thin all of the sudden. I mean, you always were thin. But now you look super-thin.”

She swiped the hair off her face. “Just working hard, I guess.” She showed him the patterns she had created for Nate’s stained glass windows—the ones that would fill the store front someday. First she showed him the lush country garden and the dark-haired girl flying on the swing. Then she bent down to the flat drawers of an art filing cabinet and carefully held up several more, equally beautiful patterns. “Nate insists no one cuts the glass but him. The problem is that he has no time. The store hasn’t made any money yet, so he’s too busy with the other business. And that means he rarely gets out of bed before dinner time. Now that you’re here, though, maybe things will be different.”

“You know, you’re probably the only person in the world who thinks I can make things better.”

5. Gone and Back

Despite the wedge-soled shoes Alison was wearing, she set a quick pace back to the apartment. James had noticed the new shoes, a single bright red toenail framed in black suede peaking out from her faded jeans when she crossed her legs in the work room. For a moment he thought perhaps the added height was contributing to her attenuated appearance; always before Alison had worn rubber flip-flops or unlaced maroon Pumas with yellow stripes. But at six feet, five inches tall, James’s collar bones paralleled his friends’ noses. He tended to lean forward and dip his chin to catch their gaze.

Ever since Nate had returned from Washington in love with Alison, James had watched their happiness surpass anything he knew. But then what a vast change from the home he had grown up in:  his immovable father, the prosecuting attorney, camouflaged behind a baseball player’s mustache, and his mother’s avid eyes, her forehead furrowed with anxiety, her gentle mouth working hard to maintain an interested, pleased, sweet, or at least nonplussed smile. James’ newfound role-models then, with their great passion and wild lusts, offered him a place inside the family he had always craved.

Alison had called James “little brother,” and worried about him traveling without enough money on buses that took him several states out of his way before wheezing clouds of diesel and soot into the San Francisco station. She worried about him dropping out of college, and encouraged his song writing.

James played the guitar and wrote wrathful rhyming tirades about consumerism and indifference. Last summer Alison had dragged Nate up and down Fullerton, nudging her ebullient boyfriend into talking bar-owners/customers into giving their young friend a chance, even if he did not have a band and had hocked his guitar the year before in Nevada. “Your best songs work a capella,” she had told him. “Just sit up on the stage and run the words around the notes.”

When Nate heard Alison describe James’s performance like that, he propped both elbows on the table and held his head between his hands. He twisted his neck giving Alison a look from beneath his eyebrows. “A joke?”

Later as they strolled toward home sharing a chocolate swirl ice cream cone, he said, “Best not to give him advice, darling. The reason he’s living with us is because he still needs to figure himself out.”

Ever since James had pulled himself up in the red truck’s backseat, he had squinted, as if gauging something. Now a few blocks from the apartment, he said, “I should buy dinner.” He was looking inside a glass-front, brick-oven pizza restaurant. He rose onto the balls of his worn-out leather basketball shoes, a grin bouncing before he curved in on himself, staring at the ground. “No money.”

“Don’t worry. Nate doesn’t expect that. But we’d better hurry. He doesn’t expect me out Sunday evenings. But James, once we get there, he is going to be thrilled you’re back. Whenever you leave, he always says, ‘Hate to see him go.  Except I’m sure he’s already half-way back.’”

6. The Way of the Warrior

Alison and James rounded Broadway, and there was Nate barefoot and wearing what looked like a light-colored bathrobe, under the porch light. Facing him, a delivery man said, “Thanks.” Scooping up two big pizza cartons, Nate said, “You’re welcome, Ralph. So if I call later, my order is your first delivery. First on the list all the time. That’s the deal.”

That was always the deal. Alison heard the exchange perfectly but then she knew the refrain. Nate ate these deep dish pizzas and drank bottles of Riesling most weeknights. And weekends? She rarely saw him until Sunday dinner.

The acoustics on the sleepy, dead-end side street heightened Nate’s “regular guy voice.” Unless it was just them, Alison and Nate, who had learned to convey volumes of information via a small gesture (hers) or drastic crashes (his), words spoken out loud indicated, “Hey! Looks like we’ve got company. Don’t let them get away without seeing how nice we are.”

Nate’s body pressed the door open and kept it open as he balanced the pizzas with one hand centered on the bottom carton. “Good for you, honey, dragging James back all the way from California.” When they had tromped inside, James saw Nate whisk a gun that was laying on a sideboard behind the door into a drawer.

Then, palms spread open, his face a huge, happy smile, Nate grabbed James, squeezed and lifted him so his feet dangled in the air. Then it was James’s turn to squeeze Nate, who was wearing a raw cotton-twill karate suit, which James recalled was not at all a karate suit. It was what Bushido practitioners wore during their physical work-outs, which were interchangeable with spiritual work-outs—Bushido being an especially strict Japanese discipline derived from Zen teachings, Confucianism, and Shintoism. Nate bellowed, “So James! What took so long? Say you weren’t playing me, kid, because honest to God, I missed you like hell.”

Nate’s friend Duke was standing there, too, arms folded. James had met Duke, whose real name was Daisuke Takahashi, the same night he first met Nate. Duke was holing up above a bar in which Nate was a silent partner. One long summer all three of them had lived in the stark, small-windowed attic, towers of liquor cases serving as an attempt to delineate rooms. When Nate ran around the city on his deals, Duke practiced air punches and roundhouse kicks as he waited for a check in the mail, an acceptance as an instructor to a martial art program, something.

“Isn’t anyone going to ask about me?” Duke said now. “I’ve been in Florida six months.”  Now he nodded at James, saying, “Know just how you feel, kid. Can’t live without a taste of Chicago style myself.”

Duke was wearing the same raw-cotton twill uniform as Nate, except Duke’s belt was black. Duke had introduced Nate to Bushido, and had tried to initiate James in the esoteric principles. But he had found James seriously lacking. In short, the nineteen-year-old did not fight well. And more than that, his regard for fighting did not lend itself to training. He did not attune himself to acrobatic force, even if his spirit did run deep with affection, loyalty, and honesty.  Those adhering to the samurai’s word, which was honor itself and thus above spoken agreements, should not spend as much time reading, writing, and fooling around with a guitar as James did.

But, no worries. Duke and Nate had reassured him that not every man was a warrior, let alone a true martial artist. The Esoteric Path of Gentleness manifested itself in Duke and Nate—theirs to share and cultivate.

That had settled that, and yet seeing them in their jujitsu suits struck James as oddly if vaguely embarrassing. Their bare feet planted on the rug, their tense postures, and their facial expressions striving for a serene cast jarred James’s own hit-or-miss composure. He and Alison stepped farther into the room so that the four of them unconsciously squared off. James swallowed and blinked, his apprehension growing among the overlapping, half-hidden moods orbiting the room’s darkened space.

Nate’s forehead was glistening with sweat; his hair curled from the moisture, and his nose was dripping.

Alison said, “You guys look like you’ve been sparring for hours.”

“We have indeed and now we’re discussing the proper, hard-earned sustenance, including equal amounts for you two as dictated by ancient decorum, purity, and love.”

That’s when James remembered. In California he had bought Nate his favorite non-German Riesling, Chateau St. Jean, which was difficult to find but cheap. James had paid a little more than ten dollars for the bottle he had wrapped in his clothes and laid at the bottom of his knapsack. “First, though, can we make a toast? Because, I brought you something, Nate.”

When James entered his bedroom to retrieve it from his dusty North Face pack, two impressions that had eluded him when he was facing two martial artists came back to him:  One, Nate had gained every ounce of weight Alison had lost. So that while she looked hollowed out, enervated, Nate seemed fleshy—his face heavier, his barrel chest wider, and his thick neck sagging with a yellowy puffiness. And two, Nate and Duke’s awkward stance in the living room had not been a martial arts posture—they were hiding what was on the table behind them: a round glass mirror with four fat lines of crystalline white powder.

7. Two Months

When twilight descended that Sunday in October the air temperature was falling to its lowest degree since February. Everyone believed the sweeping chill was another good reason to celebrate. Though after Nate had treated everyone to twin clean lines, what wasn’t a good reason? Opening the bottle James had bought with the last money he had, its label bleached from its front and center perch in the window of a tiny, dusty little shop in South Dakota, Nate pronounced its distinctly cool room temperature perfect for a late harvest Riesling. “Washes the taste buds like a spooky fall night. The refrigerator would have killed the hint of dried apricot lingering in the middle. Do you taste it?”

They toasted each other, the success of the Gallery Shop, James’s return, Duke’s unexpected arrival. Four glasses clinked, everyone saluting the wine and the lines, cheering each other, and calling for more cheers, more wine, and more lines. Duke said, “Here’s to perfection.” James added, “Good will.” Alison: “Love.” And Nate said, “Let’s not forget money.”

“Here, here!” “More, more!” “Money, money!”

Alison asked if anyone wanted pizza? She would heat up the leftovers, in case. No one was exactly hungry. Not with the party already underway and Duke around. Much as she assured herself that Duke was Nate’s problem, it naturally worked out that Nate’s problems were her problems. And Duke was more so—more her problem. Nate and Duke may have known each other since kindergarten but Alison knew Duke a lot more than Nate ever would. Or so she hoped. Waiting for the oven to heat, Alison slipped back into the dining room and put her jacket on. It really was cold.

She heard “The Simpsons” come on in the living room. James’s wine bottle stood empty on the dining room table; Nate must have pulled a couple more from the bedroom, where he had built shelving to store each bottle on its side. His “collection,” as if his sweet-as-honey Rieslings were rare books, equaled nearly a hundred bottles, and he replenished it with a few more cases each week.

These last two months, since they had opened the store, which was costing money, not making it, their evening routine was this: Coke, coke, more coke, a bottle of wine, “The Simpsons” and pizza, more coke, wine, wine, coke, wine, coke, and a lot more coke as Nate giggled through his DVD collection, which, unlike his consumable possessions, lay scattered all over the living room. These last two months, she had certainly inhaled her share of cocaine and watched enough TV with him. But Alison had her limits. She went to bed by midnight and opened the Gallery Shop before nine.

Alison could pace herself, settle into a shallow sleep come bedtime that gradually grew deep enough to dream until six-thirty. But leaving Nate to himself half the night frightened her. Careful as they both were to shield her from just how extensive his drug binges were, how many bottles of wine he drank, and how much pizza he ate (not because he was hungry, lord knows, but the heaviness of it in his belly comforted him, and he craved the taste and texture the same as he craved drugs and alcohol), Alison’s presence did temper him—a little. Not enough, obviously, but if she snuggled with him, he might keep himself together enough so that sex remained possible, if only theoretically. That was Alison’s take on what was happening when she forgot not to notice, just what exactly was happening? Stop fooling, use specifics. Don’t insinuate.

She never insinuated or implied anything. She never insinuated Nate was eating and drinking enough to kill himself, not counting how many grams he snorted minus the secret bathroom inhalations from his personal stash, which was a hundred percent pure or at least stepped on so gently that for all intents and purposes it might as well be pure. No way would she imply anything like that. What was she getting all obsessed about?

Because from the beginning, hadn’t she and Nate always sniffed a bit of nice, clean shit to perk themselves up? After all, hadn’t they made love all night, every night? Who was Alison to disapprove? Didn’t she draw her wild illustrations with one hand, a tiny pipe in the other?

So what had changed? What was so scary about these past two months? So what if Nate crawled into bed, his eyes bugged out, his body soft and distended, just minutes before Alison hopped out? What was two months? Two months was Alison overreacting, Alison assuming two months equals a lifelong routine or a hardcore habit. When really two months are nothing. And tonight they have company.

So tonight no pacing in circles, no miserable astonishment at how many vials, how many bottles, how many pizzas.  Tonight prissy Alison, who will happily snort half a gram and then demure, “Oh, no thank you,” to a glass of wine, no thank you, “Pizza is not my favorite thing to eat.” Tonight she’ll prove how nice she is, how nice and happy, nice and sweetly in love as if the past two months were not clawing her skin.

She’s even warmed the plates. While the deep dish pizza reheats, she carries them, with four forks and knives and napkins into the living room where Nate’s lying on the couch, sprawled over Duke who sits upright, his legs folded in lotus position. James sits on the floor, his butt on his heels. Alison spies a bundle of stuff on the far side of the TV, Duke’s luggage. Apparently he has acquired a big, conventional canvas clothes-carrier fitted with four wheels and a pull-out handle. The three men agree on another “Simpsons” episode; they aren’t ready for any of the other shows yet.

Alison sets the kitchen stuff on the coffee table, which is sturdy and oversized. “Anyone want a glass of water? Anything?”

Nate and Duke are drinking wine. James rises to his knees, saying, “Yeah, I want water.” He follows Alison into the kitchen and helps himself to a faintly blue glass distinguished by half a dozen tiny air bubbles. “Want me to carry in the pizza?”

“Sure.” Alison hands him the potholders.

8. Up and Out

Every day Nate lost more time. He saw it coming and going; his whole life backsliding so totally out-of-control that the ground rippled beneath his feet. When he did fall asleep, he fell into impenetrable darkness. Waking up from these depths required slogging through so much mire, the hours vanishing one after another as he showered, shaved, brushed his teeth, dressed, found his keys… It astonished him that people did not revolt against the incessant procedures. Every little task took longer and longer all the time without relief. Why hadn’t he, or someone, devised a system for doing business and getting ahead that did not waste such a large part of the day on meaningless, elaborate preparations?

Okay, so he was still not out of bed. But getting up, out of the house and into play should not take half his lifespan. Putting together the requisite façade for walking around without arousing anyone’s suspicion was turning him into an old man; that’s how long it took.

But then, what was the choice? You could rot where you were or you could get up and run the course, all day, every day. Of course Nate realized it would be easier if he stopped drinking and especially stopped all the drugs. Quit that shit and nothing’s impossible. Everything you want to own or accomplish one, two, three—it’s guaranteed. Just stop frying your wiring, that’s all.

Stop or risk the likelihood that instead of making him rich—which was the instigating goal of dealing—he would end up destitute no matter how careful or smart he was. He had played “live for the moment” with such determination for so long that he might as well die.

But Nate was up now, ready to sell all day, all night, until he really was done with it. Going for his morning pick-me-up hidden on the shelves behind a rack of winter coats in the bedroom closet, beside Alison’s sewing box with its mirrored lid, he noticed his two-pound amber jar was slightly out of place. The top was on too loose. No matter how far out of his mind he got, he kept his personal stash just so—just so he could tell if anyone was stealing any. Alison knew where it was, but she would never dare go near it. She even kept her clothes and shoes in a smaller, second bedroom closet so as not ever to get anywhere near it. James wouldn’t dare touch Nate’s stuff, even if he knew where it was, which he didn’t. Nate did his two wake-up lines, more angry than puzzled. He just wasn’t sure yet whom he should punish.

When he stepped into the bathroom connected to the bedroom, the air was all steam. Duke was showering, though Nate had not heard him enter the room. Duke the Japanese warrior was all stealth.

“Hey, you’re awake,” he slide the glass door open a crack. “Two more seconds.”

Nate told him, “No hurry.” He would shower in James’s bathroom. James had probably left, going who knew where, about the same time as Alison. Both of them lightweights, both of them fading after last night’s first “Futurama” Hunkered down in James’s cramped little tub with its attached hose and showerhead, Nate cursed: no water pressure, hardly enough to rinse the soap off. No mirror, no shaving cream—James only needed to shave once a month, that’s how young he was. For Nate to sell what he wanted today, to the people he wanted for customers, he needed to shave.

Padding back to his own bathroom, he left wide, damp footprints. Was it possible Duke had availed himself of Nate’s stash? Did the warrior’s honor allow him to dig around in another man’s closet? Did the Way of the Warrior indicate that whatever belonged to Nate belonged in turn to his teacher, Duke? He and Duke had never agreed to that in so many words. But then the “samurai’s word” dictated that referring out loud to a warrior’s pledge diminished the both the warrior and his otherwise noble but tacit pledge. Absolute honor and trust, if never delineated, might allow (it struck Nate as out-there but not inconceivable) the warrior-teacher to float, free of care even as he robbed the other samurai. Bushido ethics adhered to absolutes. Nate grasped that such teachings might result in extraordinary individual discrepancies. It worked both ways. He knew that much for sure.

The code was: if you needed to ask, you were necessarily unworthy. Yet the true martial artist had already attained purity and self-sacrifice; loyalty, justice, frugality, and even a sense of shame.  He needed proof before confronting Duke, who was out of the shower, standing naked at the sink. “Mind if I shave?”

“No, I was going to use James’s shower, except I need to shave, too.” Nate closed the shower’s glass door. The hot water had returned and fell onto his back and shoulders. Now, finally, he was awake and ready, strong and clean. On top of the toilet tank, he had noticed a leather travel kit. The fact that Duke was using his own shaving stuff and not Nate’s reassured him.

When the two warriors stood in the kitchen, preparing to leave, Nate noticed that Duke had shaved all the glossy dark hair off his head. The man’s skin, crown to chin, gleamed.

Duke said, “Rub your hand over the top. It will unite us.”

What the hell. Smooth, flawless skin. Then Duke turned around so Nate could see the elaborate dragon tattooed on the back of his friend’s head. “Someone in Florida do that for you? Another very cool perfectionist.”

Outside they walked in sync. Nate took in Duke’s sleek powerful presence, his stride as fierce and fluid as a caged lion’s. “I need to see several important people today. What are your plans?”

“I’m going with you. My attendance should increase your leverage, Nate. And, important men are not always trustworthy. If you need to do business with them, they act cruelly, in which case a demonstration of the warrior’s superior capabilities may reverse the tide.”

Nate laughed. “You were good before, Duke. But now…” Nate threw up his hands and laughed.

9. Off Limits

On Monday Alison and James shared coffee and toast at six-thirty a.m., neither able to lie in bed longer than six hours.  “How did you sleep?” Alison asked.

“In a bed, indoors? I slept better than I have for months.” After dropping out of college again, James had worked odd jobs, buying a bus ticket from one town to the next, eating only as necessary from staples he bought in grocery stores. He slept in bus stations and if the cost of his next ticket took more than a day to earn, he roamed around until he had earned the money for the next bus heading east.

He avoided cities for towns, because even though the work was scarcer, he slept better: less call for vagrancy laws, generally less crime. At nineteen, James looked closer to sixteen, despite his height. Skinny and baby-faced, his appearance threatened no one. He carried himself with a raggedy charm, and small-town housewives often paid him to wash their windows, clean out gutters, reorganize a garage filled floor-to-ceiling with boxes of garage-sale stuff that had never sold.

When he completed one job, he asked for another: gardening, housecleaning, ironing even. At ironing, he was slow, because of so little practice, but to compensate, very careful and precise. If he still had not made enough cash, which almost never happened, he would ask one housewife to refer him to another.

When Nate had first rescued him from a life sleeping and washing up at the Pizza Hut, where James might have lasted a week before getting caught, Nate had employed him after school and then for the summer in a four-man construction business he was trying to establish. So James did know how to fix minor plumbing problems, and more or less, how to set in dry wall, lay floors, replace window casings, and hang doors. Those tasks required references, though, and took longer than James needed. When really strapped, he could always convince people he could paint a house, inside and out. But bus-stop to bus-stop rarely demanded more than one solid day’s work.

“It’s the coke,” Alison was saying; James had not listened at first, because she knew better than to talk about Nate with him. For first thing in the morning, though, she was recklessly chatting away. “I love doing a couple lines but always end up doing one or two too many. So to calm myself enough to sleep, I meditate or count my breaths. And one weekend a month, I detox, a few days cleansing and sleeping in. Nate’s got incredible stamina. No one can keep up with him.”

Quiet and loyal to Nate, James had never succeeded in pretending. His talent for acting froze at noncommittal silence. Alison must be feeling awfully anxious, because she and James never discussed Nate. He’d rather she did not talk about sleeping or cleansing; even that much felt as if “Mom” were divulging something about her private life with “Dad.” James was shy, and could easily spend entire evenings with Nate and Alison, saying no more to them than he was saying to his real mother and father, who lived several blocks away, oblivious.

He repeated himself now, hoping Alison heard the subtext. “I slept better than I can remember.” No need, therefore, for either of us to discuss how we slept or did not sleep ever again.

Alison nodded, offering a closed-lip smile. “Good, James. That’s good.”

10. Leeches and Thieves

For two weeks Alison and James both worked at The Gallery from nine a.m. until nine p.m. They did not actually produce artworks or sell anything during any of the twelve hour stints. Neither of them possessed the slightest talent nor any experience selling anything. Or no, James had one bad experience. He had worked at a camping goods store. Even though he was an adept camper, spending entire months in the mountains, he grew vague and self-conscious if a customer wanted to discuss batteries, as in which were best for the environment, or which did he recommend for recharging? Midway through day three at “The Wilderness Outfitter,” the manger had overheard James tell a man that he personally never used head-lamps. They irritated his ears. The manager stepped in then, sold the man four headlamps, one for each family member. And the first minute the store contained no customers, James was fired. He had never told Nate about that, but telling him now was too late.

When someone entered the front of the store, James stepped behind the cash register, nodded a silent hello, and forced himself to say, “Look around.”

Alison’s approach was, “Let me know if I can help. All the displays are arranged so you can pick things up. You can hold them up to the light and look at them from different angles.”

The jewelry, of course, was not arranged so any one could pick it up. Hand-hammered silver or gold-plated necklaces lay locked inside glass cases with careful, discreet lighting. A necklace, matching bracelet and earrings shone against a satin background.  Since The Gallery had opened, only one woman had asked to try on a necklace.

But now Nate had started hanging out in back sometimes. James and Alison watched as he emerged to engage a customer in discussions about how to brighten a dim hallway. He asked some about color schemes and proceeded to sell her throw pillows, a side rug, and three matching mirrors. He suggested stained glass sun-catchers, each with a floating letter of the alphabet, to spell a little girl’s name, “personalizing” her new bedroom now that her parents were getting divorced. In fact, if a customer confessed to a recent divorce, Nate usually sold quite a few pieces of jewelry.  House-warming gifts, birthdays, a surprise—he suggested the occasion first, and then the gift.  He asked a friendly question and offered an anecdote about what he gave people who were getting married after years of living together. He also asked if a particular vase wasn’t stunning? Imagine it showing off one calla lily. He sold a set of antique dominoes and an elaborate wire-ribbon ceiling ornament. His presence in the store seemed to draw people in off the street. James made the mistake of mentioning that.

Thereafter, Alison and James should not both be making stained-glass sun-catchers in the back. One or the other should fill the salesroom with enough curiosity, enough vibrant interest in plates and teapots, whatever, so that anyone racing past would stop in his tracks.

Fortunately, Nate never saw them in action. Alison would idly move one item a bit; hold up a fringed shawl and fold it neatly back where it was; tip a miniature rocking chair, and sigh. James wandered around once or twice during his salesroom shift and then, leaning on his elbows behind the counter, read a newspaper or a book. A computer in the backroom selected quiet, happy, familiar songs from an enormous library but Nate made sure it contained no games and stayed disconnected from the Web.

Didn’t they want the store to take off? Once the shop was a thriving business, Alison and James could make whatever kind of art they wanted.  Then Nate could make the beautiful windows Alison had already designed. Did they think he was going to sell drugs his whole life? Did they have the merest clue how tentative every deal was, how dangerous? That was Nate sober, Nate during the day.

The store stayed open until nine, but if Nate had bought and/or sold his full score sooner, the backroom party started as early as seven or eight. Random friends were discouraged from dropping by until after nine, but they knew if Nate was there after dark, he was coked up and playing the generous, ebullient host. With the front doors locked, the workshop was full of people smoking marijuana and drinking wine and, surreptitiously, one after another, joining Nate for visits to the bathroom.

Halloween fell on a Tuesday and Alison dressed up like a funny but frail little witch. James had picked up handfuls of straw from the farmers’ market the night before. He even made up his face like a scarecrow and put on a hat. No one suggested it to Nate, or at least James doubted anyone had, or would, but he, too, found a costume that called to mind a cartoon version of his regular self: Suspenders, baggy-legged pants that fastened deep beneath his belly, and a neckerchief, which until very recently he had worn in all seriousness, a stogie—and Nate was a carnival barker, handing out Snickers bars. Halsted Street was busier than usual and Nate was doling out candy and actually pulling in customers. James worked the cash register and Alison nicely asked friends who were there for the usual fun to come back tomorrow.

Nate kept up a carny-like patter for hours, which worked much like his usual smooth talking, even if he was noticeably sweating. When the store grew crowded, he signaled Alison to watch for shoplifters, which she did. But again, Nate was the one with 360º eyesight. James watched him shake his head at a guy trying to exit, a bald man wearing a blue blazer over a striped shirt. Nate reached for the man’s arm, which the man indignantly wrested free. But then he did drift back, staring at Nate, to the counter nearest James and emptied his pockets of sun-catchers and a piece of bowl-shaped coral.

Afterwards, Nate turned to Alison and James, “See? That’s how it should be all the time.”

But nothing was like that all the time—including Nate. He was not like himself all the time. Often he and Duke would burst in, pasty-faced and wild-eyed, coked up and full of their warped version of warrior code. One night at home Nate muttered to himself for minutes in the foyer, unlocking and locking the front door. Then he snorted who knows how much more coke in a long angry inhalation. Alison, James, and Duke stared at him. Nate was almost comical, except laughing might be a fatal mistake. Drinking straight from the wine bottle, he ranted and screamed, calling Alison and James goddamn leeches, while Duke, who had sidled next to him, assumed a martial stance and silently concurred: leeches.

Nate paced and grumbled. He was on to what leeches and thieves they were. Every morning he noticed something off-kilter. He had put away a reserve ounce, actually hid it from the thieves living in his home, and it vanished. James started to slip away, off to his bedroom next to the kitchen. And then Nate had him in a choke hold, pressing him up against the refrigerator.

“If you ever touch her, I’ll kill you. I swear. You so much as look at her wrong and I’ll beat your brains out.”

“I know that, Nate. I could never think of Alison like that.”

“Just don’t forget who’s your mommy and daddy, James.”

Too disgusted to answer, James waited until Nate did let go of him. He entered his bed-room and closed the door without glancing at Nate, and noticed that Nate did not glance at him either.

11. The Importance of Being Implicit

After Duke Takahashi disappeared with all the drug money he could find rather than the small cut Nate had implicitly granted him according to the unspoken Bushido code, and a full supply of product, Nate decided James needed to get a real job, preferably Monday through Friday and nine to five. A man now, James required an independent income, enough to pay his share of rent and food, and to cover at least some recreation costs.

Following nights of Nate’s deranged accusations and violent threats, James was only too happy to take a step toward independence.

Perhaps Nate noticed this, since he next insisted that James should in no way view an outside income as lessening his personal stake in the shop. Nate considered The Gallery a three-way partnership, and once it went into the black, he and Alison and James would all be able to work there, and only there.

For now, though, Alison alone could keep the shop open during the day, while Nate and James earned the funds to keep them afloat until it began to flourish.

They discussed this at a diner that had recently opened around the corner. The diner’s fixtures and seating arrangements were geometrical, and what James thought was disco music was playing.  James had noticed the same thing at Walgreen’s, and twice now where workmen were repairing an indoor lobby. Maybe it was coincidence but if it were, in fact, a phenomenon, what could the resurgence of “Saturday Night Fever” possibly signify?

Finishing iced tea and a toasted cheese sandwich, James told Nate he would call his father at work and ask to retrieve his bicycle tonight. Tomorrow morning, he would ride his bicycle all over Chicago until he found work. Nate paid the bill and he and James shook hands.

In The Gallery’s back room, James cleared his throat several times before opening his cell. His father’s office, same as his parents’ co-op, were not on his Contacts list. But the numbers had not changed since he was a child.

Last time he had called his father’s office, whenever that was, a receptionist had answered. He was not prepared to hear his father’s, “Hello, Walsh here.”

“Hello. This is James.”

“Hello, James.”

He asked his father if he could stop by that night and get his bicycle out of storage. His father said, yes, but James should plan for seven or seven-thirty. His parents ate at a restaurant every weeknight, reservations at eight.

At seven-fifteen, James ignored any concerns about burglar sensors and leaped two steps at a time up the back stairwell, a longtime, long-ago habit. At the top, he stepped into the kitchen, which had not changed during his lifetime: same cracked, yellowed linoleum floor, same roll-out dishwasher, and same porcelain-chipped sink.

His mother appeared from the dining room. “Oh James! what a lovely surprise!” She looked just as she had always looked to him, pretty, slender, and strong-boned, wearing well-made black jersey slacks and a matching tunic. His face, which resembled hers, mirrored her smile. He felt her warmth from across the room, and he dipped forward, giving her a quick hug.

His mother rarely acted as if life was less than perfect. She seemed happy all the time. Which James knew was nowhere close to reality. He felt a sympathy and love for his mother that he did not have for his father. When he was little, James and his mother would talk for hours. She was interested in anything he was, so long as it related to the outside universe and never approached their specific selves as a family.

“Follow me.” She led him through the “butler’s pantry,” a short passageway  where the family kept its silverware and fine china, which, on the rare occasions they ate at home, they used. The family’s everyday place-settings for the table were the real thing, and valuable. James followed her through the dining room with its large mahogany table and chandelier, and through the dusty, cluttered living-room, into his father’s at-home space, containing his big-screen computer and impressive sound equipment.

Edmund Walsh rose from an executive’s swivel chair to shake his only child’s hand. Overweight, wealthy, and competent no matter how much alcohol he drank, he said, “I was not pleased to learn you had dropped out of school after three days. What do you plan to do?”

“I’m going to get my bicycle.”

“Well, yes. Are you living with the same friends, same place?”

“Yes.”

“When you are ready for college, consider transferring to the University of Chicago.”

“Okay, I will.”

He nodded and they shook hands good-bye.  His mother, who worked at the University, reappeared and she and James retraced their steps. He kissed her farewell and ran down the stairs to unlock the metal grid covering the storage space. After wheeling out the bicycle, he could not resist sitting on it, rolling it back and forth between his legs. Hurrying out, he reconsidered the helmet he had never used. Perhaps living with Nate was the most he should risk right now. He reopened the grid-panel and dug around until he found the helmet his grandmother had asked him to buy. He filled the tires with a hand pump and fastened the helmet over the handlebars. Riding his bicycle gave James a kind of freedom he had almost forgotten—the night streaking past, ruffling his hair, cooling his skin. The self-propelled speed was impossible to resist.

12. The Joy of Cycling

James loved riding his bicycle so much, he wondered: Why he did not always ride it?  Both times he had ventured to college, he had left his beloved Cannondale ten-speed locked in his parents’ storage room.  Both times he had sworn to arrange to have his bicycle shipped to him—first thing. Riding it at Stanford, all around Palo Alto and beyond would have set him free. But he had never had the money, or more precisely, the concentration to earn the money and make the necessary arrangements.

Both last year and this, after riding the bus, he had arrived on campus, reeling from its scent of eucalyptus, and floundered before a life promising brilliant friends and wonderful new skills folded into a semester where his name was listed. If only he were intensely curious and confident enough to grasp the wisdom radiating from everyone traversing the landscape, their hands and voices demonstrating theories swirling into theories, until the professors asked whatever the real question was.

Both years he had started his Greyhound travels a week before he needed to enroll, and both years he had found himself arriving a day late. Smoking pot every time the bus came to a rest stop did not sharpen his awareness. But that still did not account for an enchanted spell during which he mysteriously wasted those hours he needed to enroll on time. Sleeping in the worn-out seats, eating irregularly, and staring numbly out the window, James did search for an inkling of what he wanted to study. Both years he could not determine a preference. And so he had not stayed at Stanford long enough to have his bicycle shipped there.

When he had first moved out of his parents’ home, he had wheeled his prized Cannondale to the locked storage area before moving in with Nate, who was then living above a burned-out restaurant. Nate had scavenged tenements marked for demolition for plumbing and electrical fixtures. He was teaching James how to do the same, but the arrangement was not secure, and James would not leave his bicycle, for which he had worked all summer at a furniture warehouse, prey to thieves.

From third grade through ninth, James had watched older, stronger kids gleefully appropriate his set of wheels. Sometimes they would surround him in Lincoln Park, the strongest, meanest looking guy flashing his mother’s biggest cooking knife in James’s face, until James relinquished another year’s birthday and Christmas present combined.

Spinning with joy along Clark Street, which was surrendering traffic to the night, James soon reached Wrigley Field, where the year he was eleven he and his friend Felipe had watched the Cubs play twenty-two innings. Before the game ended, the stadium was  empty but for the two boys, the Cubs and the Cardinals.

James and his family had lived on Oakdale then. They had moved to Belden the next year, which was far enough so that James and Felipe saw each other less often. James remembered he had felt more grown-up than his friend, even though Felipe was two years older. Racing south along Sheffield, only half-aware he was avoiding Halsted so as not to fly past The Gallery, James felt an invisible finger pointing from the sky. How would he have survived his sixteenth year except for Nate?

On a beige sofa, Nate had been zapping the channels, when James’s voice broke urgently. “Stop.” On the news was a school photo of Felipe, and a report of an attempted bank robbery in Old Town. Three days earlier, James had heard Felipe’s friend Scott, who was twenty and worked as a bank teller, proclaim the bank’s policy for stick-ups. The teller was to hand over the money calmly, and wait. Scott and Felipe had laughed that it could be so easy. James had insisted: No way. The bank, policy or not, did not in the end give up a penny. “You’re just being stupid.”

The news anchor was saying the police had killed the robber on the spot.

Felipe had brandished an unloaded .38 at the branch where Scott worked alone behind the counter. Some managers worked at desks behind glass. Scott had handed Felipe $10,000, and their friend was dead before he reached the door. Now James was speeding back and forth along Oakdale. Until James’s parents moved, he and Felipe from the ages of nine to eleven had spent their summers jumping from one of the rooftops on this block to the next. By law, of course, the doors to the roofs were locked; in reality they were not. So James and Felipe spent every afternoon playing Batman. The scariest jump was between an eleven-storey and a twelve-storey; clearing the six-foot gap was all adrenaline rush and then luscious relief.

Felipe’s father had been a janitor in the building next to James’s; that roof, at least, was always locked. His mother, James remembered, was blind, obese, and always sitting at the kitchen table. When James stopped by, looking for Felipe, she had asked him to describe a collection of Gary Larson cartoons. Another time, she wanted to hear a few pages from the Bible.

Whirling south along Lincoln Avenue, James noticed a bicycle shop. A sign, the letters edged in neon, announced an opening for an experienced bicycle mechanic. He stopped, checking out the hours, the bikes in the window. The store opened at ten. James had already decided the job was his.

Obviously he could not avoid Nate forever. But he refused to return tonight. After he could project a moving day based on his outside wages, he would feel safer, despite a constant premonition that the next time Nate got coked up out of his mind, he would press that now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t gun of his to James’s head.

13. Journeyman

Just as James had avoided Halsted Street, where Nate and Alison probably had expected him to turn up hours ago, he skirted his parents’ street on his way to the park. The early, moonless November night had chilled to forty degrees; that was his guess. But he wore a heavy sweater and jacket, gloves, a watch cap and a scarf his high-school girlfriend had knitted.

Chana had attended the other north side private school, the artier one, as people said. After her first year at Carleton College, when James was again ensconced with Nate, James had hated hearing everyone at a summer party wonder, their voices rising in snide giggles, how much weight she had gained. But he did not cringe for her except that one time. She had liked her big, voluptuous body a good deal more than she did James’s sorry stumble-bum life.

Cycling into the park, he rode by the zoo’s back entrance and noticed that the huge wrought-iron gate was cracked open. Hopping off his bicycle, he entered the slumbering zoo as if it were a storybook, and when he tried the door to the bird house, it too swung open. Wheeling his bicycle along like a companion, he stared as small birds flitted and hopped about in warm, eerie bluish light. They did not congregate but lighted upon the benches and clawed the sand. Humid and reeking of chemically fortified fruit, the unlocked bird house, inside the unlocked zoo, filled him with mythical pleasure.  A pair of large green parrots hopped closer to him, their eyes blinking. He stared at a hornbill, or that’s what he thought it was, and the hornbill cocked its beautiful strange head. A long thin beaked bird stood on one incredibly thin leg, keeping some kind of sentinel.

James perched himself on a bench in the middle and watched until the sharp, startled edges of his amazement wore off. Beads of sweat trickling along his ribs, he rose and left. But he could not resist reopening the doors for a second peek. With him gone, the birds chirped and shrieked and squawked.

After that, James rode along Lake Michigan, which splashed against the man-made shore, until he could see the outline of the Museum of Science and Industry ahead of him. The sun was breaking up the night. Riding back toward Lincoln Park, he noticed the horizon fading, making it almost seven a.m., three hours before Trevor’s Cycles opened.

On impulse he pressed Chana’s old number on his cell phone, and surprise—her younger sister, Abby answered. Yes, she remembered James Walsh; yes, she was in high school. Chana had given her cell to Abby almost two years ago after buying a better one.

Of course, Abby’s parents were gone to work; they never left their house on Eugenie Street later than six-thirty. They still sold real estate and were richer than ever. No, Abby did not mind if James came by and took a shower. Yes, it was okay, too, if he wanted to lie down for an hour or so.
When he arrived, Abby was leaving for school. They smiled at each other. She had grown in two years; of course she was beautiful. He did not mention either fact. He wheeled his bicycle into the living room, and Abby said he should help himself to whatever he wanted for breakfast. She was surprised he had phoned—surprised but not that surprised. Of course she promised not to tell anyone.

The shower felt great. Being in the house now made James an interloper, Abby’s permission or not. One drawer held unopened toothbrushes, so he used one. Arranging the damp towel on a hook, he dressed quickly. His face, luckily, was smooth since he had shaved recently. Self-conscious about lying on one of the beds or even a couch, he stretched himself out in the upstairs hallway and dozed until almost ten.

Clean and slightly refreshed, he arrived at Trevor’s Cycles, his Cannondale by his side. He named “Brownie’s Cycle Shop” in Palo Alto as his previous place of employment. He told Trevor Palmer, the shop’s owner, that he had fixed hundreds of  Cannondales and, Treks. He had worked with Campies, Shimanos, all kinds. He liked a Mix Tiagra setup the best. He had worked on entry-level cycles through to pro-racers. Double or triple drivetrains? Right, nine cogs, He had returned to Chicago, because his father was sick. Kevlar beads? They were the best, weren’t they? Folding wheels. Trevor nodded and nodded; James could see he was ready to offer him the job. One more thing, if they preferred he true wheels by sight, he would. But James was a musician. He could true faster by pitch.

As he filled out an employment sheet on the glass counter, his gaze darted toward the backroom, catching the expression of the chief mechanic. So James knew: the man he would soon know as Wardell had not believed James’s lies, not one.

14. Okay, Jim

When Wardell Jackson saw how young James was—sixteen, he guessed, and a drop-out, since he wanted full-time work in November—he decided to see if James learned quickly. First, though, Wardell expected his terrified student to admit how ignorant he was.

Standing beside his bicycle in the brightly lit repair-room, staring at his size thirteen sneakers, James bit his lip, dizzy with the sight of countless chrome-glinting bicycle parts. Exhausted by the previous twenty-four hours, James had flipped into a weird hyper-awareness, pushed there by fear and desire. Of course he was terrified. He knew nothing about bicycle repair. Feeling Wardell sizing him up, the man’s ropy-muscled arms crossed, James desired the impossible:  Proving himself to this dark, stern-faced man mattered to him insanely. Why had he not taken Abby up on her offer and at least drunk a glass of milk?

Wardell stepped closer to the tall skinny kid and snapped his fingers a few inches from James’s face.

James lifted his eyes, his heart pounding loud and embarrassing, and forced himself to look directly at Wardell, ready for the inevitable. But Wardell did not laugh him out of there. He said, “You are the worst liar. The worst, ever.”

James tried to grin.

“Not even funny. No aw shucks. Nothing.”

James’s grin had not formed well enough to suggest sheepishness. He was way too fearful and desirous for that. He did not dare look away and yet he also twitched in panic that his fraught attention might equal staring. Staring at Wardell would probably be worse than crumpling in defeat and sitting himself on the floor. But James held on long enough for Wardell to know he had captured James’s anxious mind. And seeing that, James relaxed just enough to hurdle over  his lifelong shyness, and speak. “That guy Trevor seemed to believe me.”

“Surprised me, too, kid. Dumb as Trevor is, I still would have put my money on him setting you straight.”

“Maybe he hired me as a joke.”

“To antagonize me, like?” Wardell shook his head, releasing the hint of a grin himself. “Trevor wishes. But you’ll see. He’s not that quick. You have no idea how to true wheels or how to adjust any set of brakes. So what can you do?”

“I can replace a chain. Fix tires and brake pads.”

“And tape handlebars.”

At this, James did grin. “And I have perfect pitch.”

“You don’t know how to use it to true bikes, though.”

Wardell indicated a slot for James’s Cannondale, and pointed at the cycles hanging from the ceiling’s last row. “For today, polish those up.” He handed James a set of blue waffle-textured little cloths. “Perfect pitch means you can hear if a sound is a little off.”

“Not every sound,” James said. “Notes in music. They tested me in school.”

“Before you dropped out.”

“Twice.”

Wardell was arranging small tools on a counter. After a while, he turned from the counter and, seeing James from a different angle, said, “you’re older than I thought.”

“Twenty in three months.”

“Then you dropped out twice, but not from high school.” Wardell turned to his work, finished with a bicycle wheel, and glanced back at James. “So why do you want a job repairing cycles when you don’t even know how?”

James fought the impulse to squirm but one shoulder dipped as the other rose.

Wardell slipped into the front of the shop. Trevor had left some time ago and Wardell called up a playlist from the store’s computer. He and James worked past noon. Wardell was about to take off, visit his girlfriend for lunch, when James noticed a deep crack running through a pedal’s crank arm. “Hey, Ward,” he called as the wiry black man hit the front door.

In no time, Wardell Jackson, not quite six feet tall, not quite thirty-years-old, just under one hundred and seventy pounds, pinned James Walsh, almost half a foot taller but about the same weight, against a cinderblock wall high enough so his feet did not touch the ground. “What did you call me?”

“Wardell.” The older man let him down, but kept an elbow pressed into James’s chest.

“My name is not ‘Ward.’ And it’s not ‘’Dell.’ ”

“No. Sorry, Wardell.”

“Okay, Jim.”

James pointed toward the long crack in the steel crank, the reason he had called out.

“Don’t suppose you know how to replace those, do you, Jim?” Wardell did not glance at his new apprentice. The one thing he liked about him was how he wasted no words, the opposite of the store’s owner, Trevor Palmer. A rich man’s son, whose daddy had given him the shop like a present tied with a bow, Trevor Palmer chattered like a drunken parrot.

“So we’ll fix it after lunch. I’m going to lunch now, Jim, and you can go when I get back. Or if Trevor pries himself off the barstool next door to stick his face here, tell him it’s your turn to eat.”

Wardell walked to the front and pivoted back again. “Okay, Jim? I get lunch at my girlfriend’s, and like to take my time. If anyone wants to buy something, the paperwork’s in a drawer under the cash register.”

15. Wherewithal

Close to five-thirty p.m., Trevor Palmer tiptoed into the open threshold separating the front of the store with the back. He was blonde, flushed, and smirking. “Hey Wardell. I see your assistant’s still here. So, you won’t abandon me for City Cycles?”

Wardell extended his hand, palm down, as if demonstrating how steady he was. James was crouching by a truing stand, where Wardell had been showing him a few basics.

Trevor, in his checked shirt and tight chinos, emitted an odd, abrupt laugh. Wardell’s hand still floated, still steady, but he had turned it, palm up.

Trevor said, “It doesn’t work that way. To be my partner you need to invest in the business.”

“I do invest, every day. Make me co-owner and we’ll both make money. Which I can do here or anyplace else.”

Trevor sighed and slumped. He had hired several different mechanics known and well liked in the local touring clubs. Wardell had shown them how useless they were within hours. Afterward, he would reiterate his terms slowly and carefully, as if Trevor were too stupid to grasp the fundamentals. Wardell required half ownership, which was ridiculous until recently as Travis’s slip-ups had mounted up.

Wardell dropped his arm. “Jim, it’s going on six o’clock. We stay open until seven during the week. But since it’s your first day and you didn’t eat lunch, go ahead and leave. Be back ten a.m.”

Tired, hungry, but closer to feeling happy than he had for months, James raced home, certain he could overtake any rider in any race. Rounding the corner to the apartment, though, that tiny lift inside James fell flat. He could all but see the wary gloom engulfing the apartment building.

Nate’s red truck was not parked in its usual spot, which meant something was up. Nate did not drive his truck for business or to The Gallery. He drove it when he felt like driving around.  Ordinarily, Nate would be turning up the volume at the Gallery, starting his nonstop party.

James carried his bicycle up the back stairs and opened the two doors. From the dining room he heard a repressed sob. After propping the bike in his room, he took a seat across from Alison, who stiffened, straightening her spine. Before sitting, he had seen her with her face cupped in her hands. Now she was swiping at her face, flicking away tears. She sniffed and coughed and lit a cigarette. Standing, she found two glasses on the dresser next to the flat hand mirror and took a bottle of red wine from a bookshelf. She and James never drank Nate’s Riesling. “Where have you been?”

“I got a job, Monday through Fridays, Saturdays until two. After Nate brought it up, I had  to pay my own way. Paycheck in two weeks.”

Alison held her forehead and rose to find a box of tissues. James went to the kitchen found two empty pizza cartons, and in the refrigeration, a full one. He set three pieces heating in the oven. Alison stood in the other room, dabbing her eyes and lightly her reddened nostrils. “He’s going to notice the missing pizza slices.”

“I haven’t eaten in days.”

“Oh. Well, we wondered where you went.”

“I told Nate. I went to my parent’s, retrieved my bicycle, and got a job repairing bicycles.”

Alison, he noticed, wore her pink striped pajamas beneath a big white bathrobe. “Nate and me. We took a sick day. Didn’t get out of bed until four.”

James ate the deep-dish pizza slowly, consciously savoring every mouthful. The temptation was to wolf it down but then it might make him sick, all that hot cheese on an empty stomach.

A mite avid, Alison was leaning back dresser now, smoking and sipping wine. No point hiding her face now. James had seen the tears and heard her hic-coughs.

“Guess you can’t tell me what’s wrong.”

Alison laughed, without finding anything funny. “Nothing’s wrong. I’ll be fine.”

“Have you eaten?” He pointed to the untouched third slice.

“No. I mean, yes. Thanks. I’m not hungry.”

“If I could help you, Alison…Or forget the ‘could.’ Tell me what I can do.”

“Just being here is enough. But, really, congratulations—finding honest work.” She sipped. She sucked on her cigarette. James carried his plate and wine glass to the kitchen sink.

“Now I just need to sleep.”

She laughed that same rueful gulp. “Good lord, James, don’t we all. Don’t we all need to sleep.”

“I mean, I can’t stay awake. You know. Just can’t.”

“Good night, James. Sleep tight.”

16. The Hot Button

If Nate had known about this piddling issue from the beginning, maybe years ago he wouldn’t have told his connection, “Count me in.” Maybe.

Now he can’t believe how naïve he was. He had, after all, been around the block a few times. But somehow he had missed a crucial detail. Or more likely, he had dismissed it. Because he and Alison had gone at it like supernaturals from the beginning. To look at her, you’d never guess how wild, intuitive, and hyper-orgasmic she was. Initially she had actually scared him. He used to worry about sending her into a seizure or something.

The possibility of a temporarily Sisyphean love life may have lurked somewhere in his lizard brain. But he had always seen heroin as the limbo drug. Cocaine, or so he was once naïve enough to believe, promised the opposite. That was its billing, after all. Cocaine—the ultimate aphrodisiac. That’s why people loved the stuff so much. It turned a regular guy into a perpetual love machine. And no matter how pathetic he happened to feel now, for a long time there, Nate would have totally agreed. “No dispute.”

Before they had started using cocaine, his refined little Alison Thompson was almost too much for him. Nate had actually needed to remind himself: money, food, and every once in a while, some small accomplishment. He remembered thinking it was up to him to take care of Alison’s artistic talent. Because even now, she truly was the best artist he knew.

Her illustrations were beautiful—when she drew them. More often though she filled her sketchbook with arrows, triangles, spiraling circles, or else she penciled over the page until it was solid charcoal.

People who hadn’t seen them in a while had to swallow and step back, being careful not to mention how bad they both looked. Alison was skinny as hell, not to mention crying half the time—she burst into tears with no warning. Which, he knew, was its own warning. But it had altered Nate in ways he had not expected.

Never exactly thin, he had swelled up so that he looked pregnant. That’s what Duke had said, slapping Nate’s belly and promising a rigorous Bushido practice that would transform him into the sinewy Japanese warrior they both knew him to be, spiritually. But then the Japanese warrior’s appetite for the drug had more than equaled Nate’s own, without altering the man’s BMI.

If he made the mistake of wondering out-loud, “How did I get so bloated?” Alison or one of their blood-sucking friends would blame the Riesling. That super-sweet wine, which he drank dusk to dawn, tasted like an entire four-layer cake.

When Alison had referred to his depleted libido as a vicious little cycle, she blamed the wine. “Abusing alcohol same as abusing cocaine does that.” She had Googled it, which for some reason had galled him so much, he practically hit her. If James, who never said anything except that he had grown “sick and tired” of cocaine—why waste it on him?—had not been sitting there, reading “A Scanner Darkly,” who knows? Nate probably would have smacked Alison. Which really would be a sin. The woman, who still enjoyed her coke just fine, thanks very much, had proved absolute loyal to him. He knew that, even if he did, during bouts of ear-ringing craziness, accuse her of disloyalty.

No more, though. Today was the day. From now on, he would cut back gradually. Limit himself to a few lines a day. Two glasses of wine. No more drinking straight from the bottle. No more getting so high he lost count. No more murderous frustration in bed with Alison to the point where he took off in his truck and cruised Division Street until Angelica appeared in her wig and fake fur, tapping on the driver’s window, and sometimes even the windshield. She had named her price, he had opened the passenger door, and, after carefully fastening her seat-belt she directed him to narrow alley between two warehouses.

Weird how she knew just what to do—and when. Nate had not said a word, the first time or any other. Angelica just as silently did what she did. Which worked!

She wore surgical gloves, making it risk-free.

If he were to ask Alison to try it, she would. But he would hate asking her. And the fear, which loomed as a certainty, was that when Alison tried it, no matter how patiently and repeatedly, it would all be to no avail. Ever again. No matter who was doing it.

Anjelica’s failsafe remedy, which strayed from anything he had ever considered letting anyone do to him until she had already done it, freaked him out, at least in retrospect.

17. Say What

James and Wardell, student and teacher, worked as if with one mind. Neither enjoyed go-nowhere conversation. James learned truing and brake adjustment for the various wheels and bindings quickly. Weeks passed and James developed an impression of knowledge imparted through a silent conduit. Wardell showed him what he needed to know and assigned the day’s work. Whenever James’s repairs earned Wardell’s approval it felt to him like a perfect, evanescent achievement. Best of all, James could always find that ghost note again, since it needed only concentration and persistence, not luck or inspiration. Before long James could true most bicycles by pitch, which did impress Wardell. It saved a few minutes because James did not need to mark which spokes needed tightening. He spun the wheel and they either all sang the same note or not.

After he had proven himself, Wardell let him know perfection was unnecessary. If every spoke extended from the rim with approximately equal tension, the bicycle would function well enough for most competitions, let alone provide easy, comfortable transportation. Since perfectly equal tension could resound almost as easily as almost-equal, however, Trevor’s Cycles trued the wheels to a standard only James and Wardell appreciated.

From that first day, James liked Wardell calling him “Jim,” and wondered why no one else ever had. Of course, he had always introduced himself as “James Walsh,” but most kids, at least when he was in school, effortlessly and instantly developed associations through spontaneous nicknames, which were either a variation on their formal name or wholly unrelated. Certain kids’ surnames signified who they really were. Friendly kids, mean kids, cool, nerdy, James had grown up right beside them but separate, out of range. They made fun of him when he talked so he stopped talking. Not until he started smoking sensi had he managed to speak without embarrassment. Empowered when high, James discovered that now people usually understood him.

The second or third time James had bragged about his “absolute pitch,” Wardell had asked him if he could sing any song after he had heard it once. James admitted that while some people could, he could not reproduce the notes, only name them.

“So besides truing bicycle wheels,” Wardell had asked, “what’s the advantage?”

“Not much, unless you have musical training.”

“So are you a musician?”

James said no, even though he had taught himself to play guitar, more or less. His high-school girlfriend, who had played the flute, had shown him how to read music. Her minimal instruction and a few how-to books were enough to give him a basic fluency. But beyond that, he would need regular lessons. If a musician were there to teach him, James believed he could spend his life learning more. The language of music came easily to him. It was ordinary language, the “hey, how ya doin’,”that required more exertion from him than from other people.

Middle of the week in mid-January, James had adjusted, cleaned and polished all the cycles or cycle parts Wardell had assigned him by mid-afternoon. “So, what should I do now?”

Wardell caught James’s shy but eager expression and paused. “Have you always had that lisp, Jim?” James’s face, no longer eager, remained shy but his eyes grew vague, and Wardell continued in a gentle, even reassuring, tone. “It’s not really a lisp, more like kind of muffled.”

James deliberately held his arms straight down but loose, his hands stationary. “People ask me to speak up a lot. When I already am speaking up.”

“My kid does the same thing.”

“My speech used to be much worse. Until I was fourteen, most people could not understand me. Except maybe my mother.”

“Andrew’s teacher has him going to speech therapy. After lunch he meets with a specialist. This lady spends an hour with him.” Wardell stepped sideways, closer to James. “Did they give you speech therapy?”

“No. My speech problem was the big thing no one mentioned. Adults, I mean. Kids teased me.”

“You did fine in the end.”

“I don’t know about fine. Does your son mind it, being singled out?”

“He likes the videos. The lady makes videos of him talking.”

“That’s the difference. When I was little, a video camera did not come with every key chain.”

“Still, you turned out fine, Jim. Kind of sweet-voiced—that must get you pussy.”

18. The Ingrate

If Nate could limit how much product he and Alison ingested, he might figure things out. If, no matter how bad his finances were, he could figure out what were his debts and expenses; pin down the elusive profits in a cold clear light and a more or less sober body and mind, then maybe he would discover that his worst fears were grossly exaggerated. He might quit dealing coke and go back to marijuana. Possibly he could manage both. Otherwise, he might need to fold The Gallery, even if Alison suffered. And she was already suffering in so many ways.

Either way, they both seriously needed to taper off. The dream had been that of course The Gallery would take time, but if they stayed afloat, it would eventually establish them as innovative local artists. True, they were a good thirty years late with their stained glass business. But stained glass windows had always gone in and out of popularity. Prismatic gardens and light-streaming rippling waterfalls were too beautiful to go ignored. The problem, as ever, was all the terrible kitschy stuff. That’s what he told James, when he had insisted James continue working nights at The Gallery after his shift at the bike shop.

Nate hated that damn bicycle shop and if he had not needed James’s share of rent and food, Nate would have vetoed any work outside The Gallery. Instead, ragamuffin James, who had no experience repairing bicycles had talked—talked!—himself into a job, fifty hours a week, fifteen dollars an hour, at Trevor’s Cycles. That ingrate kid he had saved and rescued was nowhere around when Nate needed him anymore. Even more obnoxious –albeit cost saving—James had sworn off cocaine. Finger-snap decision.

Last week Nate had overheard James on the phone, talking to this girl Jordan who sold him the dingy shirts he wore, thin and soft as tissue. “Cocaine turns the heart to ice.” This odd girl, made up like a Kabuki dancer, has hung around waiting for James to take some initiative for years, and Nate had overheard him say, “…heart to ice and kills the soul.”

How profound—so James has it all figured out at nineteen. Probably he would not have even lived this long if Nate had not scooped him off the Pizza Hut floor. But then someone else comes along and knocks hero number one to the ground.

James did not mention Wardell. But Nate knew who the guy was, because Trevor of Trevor’s Cycles was a frequent and prodigious customer of Nate’s. Nate would stop by Chumley’s, where Trevor drank single malt scotch and regaled the bartender with his cycling stories and romantic conquests. Nate never sold weak shit but for Trevor he stepped on it extra heavy. Trevor exhibited a scary determination to push his limits, and this was compared to other druggies. After a trip to the men’s room, Trevor would stride out, bouncing off his toes, silly and giggling and acting like a big black rapper, bad-mouthing his partner, who was at the shop now, fixing cycles with James. Wardell, Trevor dropped the act and sighed, had saved Trevor’s worthless ass too many times.
So one Saturday, when James was due at The Gallery at three—he finished at Trevor’s Cycles at two—but did not show up until six, Nate rolled into him. Time James learned a few background details.

James should know his new friend had done time. Wardell Jackson was a thief. When he was a teenager growing up on Woodlawn Avenue, he had stolen entire racks of bicycles from University of Chicago. From fifteen until he got busted at eighteen, Wardell stole super-expensive bicycles, took them apart, and put the pieces together so that no one could identify one machine from another. He had stolen and rebuilt bicycles for so many years that, of course he worked faster than anyone else. That, Nate shouted at James, was how Wardell had learned everything he knew.

James did not say, “at least he was never a drug pusher.” Or, “look who’s talking, Nate.”  He said, “So what?”

Nate had his finger in the air, ready to sound off about thieves, convicted criminals, but the stabbing pain in his gut flared, causing him to double over and wait for it to abate. He batted his hands in the air, as if to make his idiotic pose disappear.

James knew Wardell’s story: how he had grown up on along a vast expanse of vacant lots and boarded-up crack houses across the street from the wealthy, towering institution. Woodlawn Avenue back then erupted with fusillades of gun fire. But that was then. Now that community action groups had spent decades on renovation, the neighborhood was coming back. Wardell still lived there with a few family members, in a nice apartment that had gone co-op.

Mumbling, Nate grabbed Alison from The Gallery’s work area. Friends never dropped by in the evenings because Nate was not bankrolling parties every evening. Money was tight and he had always known their friends were of the classic fair-weather breed.

Taking Alison home, he said, “Keep it open till nine, James. And lock up carefully.”

19. Partial Dislocation

Apparently, Trevor and Jim’s-idiot-friend-Nate had agreed that Wardell was usurping Jim’s allegiance to idiot-Nate. How did these bums survive all this time without bothering to crawl out of the sandbox? Naturally, Jim looked up to Wardell, who had taught him bicycle repair among a few other things. Wardell had long ago filled in the blanks, which Jim was just noticing. Maybe he would have noticed sooner if he had not done drugs with his idiot-friend-Nate. But Jim had enough class to listen to Wardell and learn, while still respecting Wardell’s separate life. Unlike Trevor, Jim had no weird delusions about being “chums,” as if they did not all spend an awful big chunk of their time together already.

Real freaks these guys: Jim’s-idiot-friend-Nate was apparently demanding that Jim play some make-believe game in which idiot Nate was the hero and Jim was the young sidekick.

Jim foresaw the end of it. Wardell did not need to prophesy. They were busy sorting through a morning’s delivery. If James seemed ignorant it was due to limited experience, not lack of intelligence. Jim had grown-up with no one around to explain this or that, or show him how to get along. He was like a poor city kid–except his father was rich.

Wardell’s opinion was that Jim should go to the University of Chicago even if he did not know what he wanted to do with his life. Since this was the main thing his rich father had offered him—Jim was not even required to ask—why not attend the program and learn everything he could?

Of course, Wardell was right. Move out, go to college, make friends—that was James’s plan. If he could have managed it overnight, he would.  This woman Jordan had said he could take over for her roommate who was leaving for Thailand in April. Moving out on Nate and Alison would not happen without bad feelings.

A few seismic shifts had already disrupted the household. When James arrived at The Gallery now after a day’s work at Trevor’s Cycles, Nate and Alison left soon afterward. At first, they had offered excuses: they needed to buy stuff; they had decided to eat dinner at a new restaurant; their friend Ethan (Nate’s marijuana supplier) had invited them to a party.

So perhaps moving would not require the fortitude James had supposed. They never spent time together anymore. Nate had not sent James out to buy Riesling for months. James and Alison did not drink red wine together anymore. She no longer borrowed his shampoo or offered him coffee and toast.

But the first week in February, James had cycled home late, enjoying an icy white snow shower. Nate was leaning on the table, resting his entire big body on it in such an exaggerated posture, James almost blurted, “oh no!”

Nate’s uncharacteristic stillness pulsed with a painful remorse. Alison poked her face from their bedroom, her expression a shade stronger than impish. Before James could ask, “What is it? What’s wrong?” she stepped into the dining room, her arm in a sling. James turned to Nate, who was smoking a spliff.

“She’ll be okay,” he said. “It’s a partial dislocation.”

Furious but cautious, James did not ask about the emergency room. He did not ask what happened. He stood there as small bubbles developed in his blood like pockets of gas within magma.

Nate pounded the table. “Goddamn it, James! I pulled her inside. That’s all. We were fumbling with the keys and she was laughing at me. I finally got the doors open, grabbed her arm, and yanked her inside.”

Alison was nodding. “That’s true. That’s all that happened. My arm wasn’t hanging right, though, so we called Brad, the chiropractor.”

Brad Fishman really was a chiropractor; James had visited his office. But he was also a long-term customer.

“Partial dislocation,” Alison said. “Brad pushed the humerus bone totally back into the socket. Then he fitted me with this elastic thing. It’s like a bandeau top that goes outside my arm on one side and against my chest on the other.”

“You should go to the emergency room, Alison.”

“No, she should not. Brad pops shoulders back into their sockets all the time.”

Mumbling, “I bet,” James stepped carefully around Nate, who was slumped in a chair, sucking on his torch. In his bedroom James considered calling 911. That meant an ambulance, which meant a brawl.

In the morning he would ask her. They both woke so early and Nate never did. If tomorrow she admitted that it did not feel right, he would call to let Wardell know he would come in late, and then James would escort Alison to the ER.

20. Lisping Tallow-Faced Punk

The next morning Alison was trying to pull off a bud from a coiled loop as big as a Hawaiian lei. The flat of her fingers rolled the thick golden rope of dried weed but she couldn't manage  to pinch any free. The orthopedic shoulder wrap kept her left arm strapped tight to her body so the whole limb was useless. James caught sight of the bright blue elastic where her oversized sweatshirt had slid off her injured shoulder.

“Want help?”

“Will you smoke with me?”

James paused as if gauging headlights. “Sure.” She handed him a pipe carved from a nutshell.

“Want me to roll you a few joints, for the day?”

“Yeah but first let’s just load the bowl.”

After they had passed the pipe to each other and James had refilled it a few times, he asked if he could fix her breakfast.

No, but would he get her notebook from the dresser, and a pencil or pen?

“Good thing it’s your left shoulder. Do you think he subconsciously chose that arm?”

“James,” she tossed her head, hair flying away from her face, “Nate didn’t hurt me on purpose. Ever since you returned from California you’ve acted like he was pure evil. “You don’t give him credit, James. And it really hurts him.”

“What about you? Are you positive you don’t want to see a doctor?”

“A few weeks walking around like the one-armed woman won’t kill me.”

“Won’t be easy, either.  Does he expect you to get yourself dressed and organized to go The Gallery like that? Because I need to leave in twenty minutes.”

She handed the pipe to James, ready for more. “At least, you haven’t quit smoking. Since Nate went back to dealing ganja you haven’t said two words to us.”

James filled the pipe and lit it for her but when she extended it, his turn, he said, no thanks. He should not have smoked at all. Wardell would notice.

“Everything’s good, James. Nate’s making money now.”

“Dealing just pot or is he still doing coke, too?”

“He’s making money. So in a few months we can get married. For real this time, James. We called my parents last week and he talked to my father. Or, maybe I should say, my father talked to him.

“We’re planning for April. That gives us a couple months to get straight. You know, last time my parents met Nate, they didn’t even try to hide their disapproval. Which is so unlike them. Mother and Daddy are like your parents. Remember when they took us to that restaurant on your eighteenth birthday? Nate was totally fried and—Edmund and Becky?” She stopped to make sure she had recalled their first names correctly. She had. “Yeah, well, Edmund and Becky acted like Nate was Prince Charles.” Alison covered her mouth, giggling. “Of course, Diana was dead—not that they acted like I was Camilla or anything.”

Gold bud made Alison really stupid, though for all James knew, it made him stupid, too. He felt okay, though. He felt normal. His eighteenth birthday had embarrassed him so much that he still squirmed, thinking of it.

His parents had taken them to an expensive Japanese restaurant with valet parking. Nate had refused to give up the Riesling he was drinking straight from the bottle. So coked up that spit was flying, he had somehow made it to the table, still swigging away. The waiter had suggested Nate let him dispense with it and Nate let loose with a loud invective, including a string of racial slurs. Then the restaurant’s manager had spoken quietly to James’s father. Edmund and Becky, James knew, ate at the place weekly. Edmund had half risen from his seat, quietly stating that they were all expected to leave the premises unless Nate put away the wine. The waiter had brought him a bag.

“Nate appalled my parents.”

“He’ll be good when we visit Mother and Daddy in Arlington. He promised. Mother is keen for a big old-fashioned wedding.”

“Alison, I’ve got to get going. I mean, congratulations. I hope it all works out for you.”

She asked him to fill and light another pipe for her. James shouldn’t worry. She was planning to get Nate up and going in another hour. That’s what he said last night. She should wake him up around nine-thirty.

Before James had even wheeled his cycle into its slot, Wardell tossed a greasy rag in his face. Like that first day, he grabbed James’s shirt at the neck and held him against the cinderblock, feet off the ground, yelling at him: “Mumbling ape! Lisping tallow-faced punk!”

Wardell’s odd vocabulary made James think he wasn’t serious. “You learn those words in jail, Wardell?”

In jail, Wardell had learned not just bits of Shakespeare but also what weapons were appropriate for weedy pipsqueaks. And mere words were not going to do it here. Damn shithead Jim coming in reeking of dope! Rising as tall as possible, which still left him almost six inches shorter than the tattered lisping nitwit, Wardell hawked up what phlegm he could and spat on Jim’s shirt.

His anger still blazing, Wardell stalked into the front of the shop. You learn those words in jail, Wardell? Jim was smarter than that.

So apologetic it sickened him, James smeared the man’s mucus over his chest, with a quick swipe of his hand. He called as loud as his muffled voice could manage, “Sorry, Wardell.”

Wardell shouted back at him without looking, “Go home!”  James grabbed his bicycle and began crisscrossing the city, his only hope that tomorrow would offer him a second chance.

21. Today Starts New

To James’s great relief, Wardell did not keep his anger stoked longer than necessary. Turning him away once was enough; more would have been repeating himself.  James showed up half an hour early knowing Wardell would be there, building custom bicycles. He had a two-inch stack of orders for his personally designed custom bicycles, matching different parts, mixing brands and set-ups to suit a particular cyclist. After James had learned to repair all but the most specialized bikes, Wardell had begun working on an extensive file of requests. James knew Wardell’s waiting list had recently run as far as five years ahead. But now that Wardell could devote most of his time doing the work he loved, the list was close to becoming manageable.

Fairly hopeful his big mistake would not automatically push Wardell into firing him, James had still spent most of the past day and night construing no bullshit, swear-to-God-it-will-never-happen-again apologies. And still—best case? James had steeled himself for a dicey probation before Wardell could trust him the same as before.

Wardell, however, wasn’t like that. When he was really angry, he made sure the person got singed. He conveyed: Move away until his fury burned to ash. After that, it was over. Don’t do it again. Jim was sorry and Wardell accepted his apology without making him struggled through every tortuous syllable of a prepared speech.

“Sorry.”

“Good.”

Wardell would never stoop so low as to forge yesterday’s indignation into a manipulative tool. He had been born a forgiving man and thanked God for that.

Living within a system that rewarded hard hearts and rigid semantics, Wardell could understand how a lot of guys acted proud of their meanness and arrogant in their cruelty. The system might reward their ruthlessness, but they could never shake the cruel demon that was their own nasty, intolerant selves.

He never hid his youthful larcenies. By keeping them in mind, Wardell forgave himself and it was easy to forgive others. Someone like Jim, oddly enough, had probably realized fundamentals that the comfortable class might never grasp. If a person gets hungry enough, he’ll steal. Wardell was guessing here, but one look at Jim gave him the impression that rag-tag Jim, rich father or not, was well acquainted with hunger. Hunger for food, for understanding, companionship, tolerance, safety—all the fundamentals.

He did not need to tell Jim how dangerous his idiot-friend-Nate was. Or how dangerous it was to drift around, high on drugs. How stupid and worthless. Jim knew that.

Now that Wardell owned half the business, he needed to limit Trevor’s involvement, because at this point, Trevor could only wreck it. Wardell’s long-term plan would leave Trevor with twenty-five percent. The shop might sell and repair Wardell’s custom cycles exclusively but it would still be, “Trevor’s Cycles.” Trevor Palmer had set it up and that much, with help or not, was to his credit.
The location could not be better: Lincoln Park was nearly a hundred percent rich, young couples who, gay or straight, were athletic, politically averse to oil-dependency, and natural hard-core bicycle enthusiasts. Another big chunk, those who were parents like Wardell himself, were eager to get their kids the best and safest bicycles, helmets and locks. Wardell had worked and worked and worked for this arrangement. To his glad surprise, that his clientele was mostly white had not mattered a bit.

James repaired and readied the bicycles more quickly and quietly than he would have imagined possible. His anxiety to out-do himself was so intense that somehow, he deeply punctured the back of his forearm while replacing a few spokes and didn’t notice it. Wardell looked up from his custom jobs every two hours or so and saw it before James had fully comprehended he was even hurt. Wardell disinfected the wound and patched it with gauze. One of their countless silent exchanges confirmed the accident had occurred because Jim was trying too hard, not because he was “feeling no pain.” Wardell cautioned him to look for redness and if it seriously hurt worse and worse, to call Wardell’s cell. Wardell was going to visit Lexi and Andrew, and since he had missed seeing them yesterday, he intended to stay longer than usual. Meanwhile, Jim should relax in the front. Maybe check the computer for the University of Chicago’s forms and requirements.

“Wardell, I already missed this year’s deadline. In eight months, I can think about applying to go there a year and a half from now.”

“Check out the website, Jim. You’ll have three full hours, minimum.”

“You know my mom works there.”

“So what? You still have to get recommendations, turn in your scores, and explain how you were accepted to Stanford two years ago but could not attend that first year or this one. Personal reasons.”

“Wardell, do you want to go there?”

“The sooner you get them your recommendations and high-school reports, the better.”

“Oh yeah?  I’m not doubting you, Wardell, just surprised.”

“You can’t keep living like you are now, Jim. Get free from that idiot Nate. Get your application in.”

“Even if I do go there a year from September, it’ll four years after that.”

“You’re nineteen and you look sixteen. Go. And if after four years you want to work here, Jim? Fine by me.”

22. Two Grams an Hour

Alison Thompson was the opposite of what everybody seemed to think. She’d grown up lonely in the Philippines, her father working for the Pentagon, her mother an alcoholic. Were those who never knew loneliness, who traveled in packs, necessarily better human beings? Maybe their easy popularity reassured the world: no worries, we’re all in this together. Not Alison, she was on her own. And she was sorry if her first goal was finding someone who could love her. Not exactly the third-wave feminist, was she?  Her other noticeable qualities; or at least to her thinking, were: she never gave up; she was generous; she was willing to spend her entire life looking for happiness and gathering up every glimmer of hope before it darted beyond out of reach. So what if she never made an enormous difference? Not everyone was so phenomenal. It was not her fault she just was not this huge deal.

Alison worried she would ever fit anywhere, really. She had never fit in with her family. She had not fit in with the other students at the Art Institute, due to insecurity. Conner, the artist she had followed to Chicago, had told her that his “other girlfriend Petra” (which had been sort of a joke, until the end) had called Alison’s manner, the whole impression she made, “Alison’s hauteur.” How sad was it that her extreme shyness looked like a superiority complex?

When Brad the chiropractor asked Nate to wait outside while he examined her, she was prepared to tell Brad that everyone lashed out on occasion. She had been in the way, unfortunately. But after Brad popped her arm into its shoulder socket, and gently pressed the skin along her lower back and upper thighs, he asked only if she had slipped on the ice.

“Yes, I did. Our porch steps are treacherous.”

Brad had pressed his thumbs along the notches of her spine, and asking her to sit up, had helped her get the elastic brace on just right.  He felt the glands under her ears and along her neck and had held her inside free wrist tightly. “Hold still so I can get your pulse.”

He told her to stick out her tongue and had tapped on her front teeth. “How do you feel about acupuncture, Alison?”

“Needles scare me.” He had helped her back into her clothes and asked Nate to join them.

“So, what’s the prognosis?” He looked first at Alison, then at Brad, who said, “Nate, you’re going to have to dress and undress her, make all the meals, and give her sponge baths for a while. I want to see her in a week but she’s going to need the brace longer than that.”

Nate had nodded seriously. “Of course. And, um, are we still meeting tomorrow?”

Brad had wanted to meet before his office hours, not at lunch, which Nate preferred. When he said he wanted to talk about “a few things,” Nate had that panicky sensation he got with bad hangovers. Steady, steady, though, Nate had matter-of-factly agreed. “Nine, nine-thirty?”

*

Nate had not woken before noon in years but he arrived at nine with Brad’s order for an ounce of both. He had allowed himself a few lines to get going, and then he could not sell the stuff without sharing a few lines with each customer. Still, he had cut down a lot after hours. That was the weird thing about Alison’s arm.

Nate had been sober and in control, irritable maybe, pissed because she teasing him, but not mad like he sometimes got. The back door locks were frozen. He was about to send her running to his truck for the de-icing shit in the glove compartment. Maybe he had already mentioned it. That’s why she was farther from him than had expected when he had yanked her through the first door. Without stopping, he thought he heard a pop but she wasn’t complaining. Just hopping around, slapping his butt, saying, “Come on, big man. Come on, can’t make the key work, can you? Same-ol, same-ol.”

By the time he had finally gotten the kitchen door open, he had told her twice to stop. He had grabbed her wrist, “Get in here, bitch.” No shoving or slapping. But in the kitchen she could not take her coat off. He could see her arm wasn’t right. He did not for one second think she was faking.

And then James shooting him that what-a-fucking-monster! look. Acting like Brad Fisher was a pathetic quack. Now, he and Brad were standing on either side of the padded examining table, doing lines off a mirror. Brad always took him at his word on the gold bud. But the customary few lines? No one turned that down, not if they were buying.

“Alison doesn’t look good, Nate. You’re not giving her meth or anything?”

Nate merely told him no; he took the insult without flinching.

“Hard to believe she’s that skinny just from coke. I mean, look at you! Or, um, at me.” Brad squeezed a handful of his own belly, which Nate had never noticed before. “She doesn’t want to try acupuncture. Do you think she’d see a psychologist?”

Nate flinched at that. Way too weird for Nate or Alison.

“Derrick Mason, two offices down, specializes in eating disorders.”

But then Brad said, “I’m sure he would be into bartering.”

“You’d set that up? Broach it with him. So I could negotiate the amounts per hour?”

“I’ll call him now.”

To his astonishment, Nate never got around to talking about Alison’s hypothetical issues. Derrick Mason asked him one question and then another and before Nate knew it, he had told the guy more about himself than he had ever told anyone. Not out loud anyway. Two hours later, almost as an afterthought, they had worked out a trade, two grams an hour.

23. Miles Away

James knew why Wardell hated drugs, even if he had never explicitly explained it. Drugs had killed his parents, and killed or ruined his friends. All his friends, if, like Wardell, you counted alcohol as a drug.

James had once asked him if he had any vices.

“You mean besides stealing racks of bicycles when I was a teenager? Hundreds of them just across the street, thousand-dollar cycles not even locked sometimes.”

“Vices besides that. Easy gratification vices.”

“Pussy, non-stop. But now I have too many responsibilities to play outside. Got to get what I can at home.”

Besides his girlfriend Lexi and their son Andrew, Wardell had wife Keisha and a daughter Naomi, who was in high school. But Keisha had agreed to a divorce anytime Wardell got it together. They needed that financially before Naomi was ready for college. Problem was Wardell had never met a lawyer who wasn’t a crook and a fool.

“And damn if I’m hiring one I don’t know.”

James had offered to ask his father if he had a friend willing to take on a small deal as a favor.

Wardell had smiled his closed-lipped grin. “Different league, Jim.”

Now Wardell was insisting he go back to his high school and get his old teachers to write new recommendations to the University of Chicago. Which did make sense.

James spontaneously started saying what he liked about the university. On the website were details about the application that was not available until July. A sample essay topic was so cool, James had started fooling around on the guitar again.

“It’s a quote from Miles Davis. ‘Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.’ I wouldn’t have a clue what to write. But it made me pull out my crappy acoustic.”

“You like Miles?”

James admitted he had never listened to him, just heard of him. “A trumpet player.”

“Perfect pitch. Shit, Jim.”

Wardell called up “Kind of Blue” on the music-server and introduced James to beauty so extreme he was astonished he had never heard it before. And after that, he heard wild, severe, heartbreaking music every day he worked at Trevor’s Cycles.

He always made a CD of that day’s playlist to listen to while he sat around The Gallery in the evening. And the more he listened to certain sets, the further they took him.

One Wednesday evening, Alison was hanging around The Gallery late while Nate was with the shrink.

“Nate’s dealing to a shrink?”

“Yeah, but he’s also in therapy with him.”

“Two cokeheads in an office and one of them is Nate jabbering about his childhood?”

“He talks to Derrick about marrying me. He’s working on his commitment issues.”

“Alison.” James was about to say, “Don’t marry Nate,” but her determined, happy but sad face told him not to say anything yet. She had quit smoking because her left arm, from the shoulder to her fingertips, was immobile. So Nate was bathing her, dressing her, and stopping by with lunch everyday. He was washing her hair because after two days without washing it, her long thin light brown hair had bothered her so much she had threatened to cut it off.

Well and good. Nate was tending to her. James held up a hand, afraid if he did not go ever slower than normal, and speak softer than normal, his urgent words would come out all mushed together.”

“Don’t marry him, Alison. Call your parents and see if they’ll help you get an MFA. Move away. To someplace like Madison, Wisconsin or Ann Arbor, Michigan.”

“Don’t you think I’ve thought of that, James? Thing is, I just don’t have it in me. I’d be too lonely.”

“You’d meet people there. A Midwestern college town? Everyone’s friendly. A lot of them are smart.”

“We’re ready to get married, James. Even Nate says so. We’ve finally figured out the  boundaries, all the places between us that are better off left unexplored.”

“Move away, Alison. Then if Nate straightens up, if he gets a straight job, tell him to find you.”

“Getting married can be a way of starting fresh, James. If Nate was my husband, more would be at stake. We’d be less reckless with each other.”

“You don’t know that, Alison.”

“You don’t know what I do or don’t. You’re not even twenty years old. I’m twenty-eight and Nate’s almost thirty. He’s ready to give up that whole angry-young-man-thing.”

“I’ll help you escape. If you do get married and it doesn’t work out the way you’re hoping, get out.”

“Okay, James. But you’re being silly. Always going for the worst-case scenario.”

24. The Talking Cure

Nate surprised himself. He was accomplishing more in one day than he had thought possible. Going into therapy was like the first time he put on glasses, and then contact lenses, which in his case had given him peripheral vision. The outside world was that much clearer. He was selling more than before, every client leading to another, taking at least three sessions a week with Derrick, and tending to Alison like a baby, with a sweet intimacy that was only possible because Brad had assured them one more week and her arm should be totally mended.

Using a slow, light touch was not entirely new to him, of course, but he hadn’t thought to sustain it. Coddle and cradle a babe for an hour? The pace was wildly out of sync with the rest of his life—that’s what made it so erotic.

After telling Derrick his secrets, Nate had to trust him. Either that or kill him. But Derrick understood a lot about trust: how risky it felt and how it had to flow equally both directions. Nate talked and talked and talked. Derrick listened. He heard Nate’s surface-self and listened carefully for Nate’s source, which resounded from a great depth.

James called Nate’s insights “psychobabble fueled by cocaine,” just as Derrick had predicted. If Nate had always played James’ father figure, James was now playing the sullen adolescent. His aloof disapproval was classic, Derrick said.

“Just so he knows you’re there; you’re right behind him even if he is sneering at you.”

In keeping with Derrick’s belief that “a sense of family” grounded the personality, he strongly advised Nate to marry Alison. “Unless,” he said, “you’ve never really felt connected to her as man and wife.”

Nate had second-guessed himself for the last time regarding Alison. Of course he wanted to marry her. He loved and trusted her more than anyone. And she had said for at least a year she wanted him to marry her. And he would not really know if he wanted to spend his life with her until he tried it.

As for the perennial concern over never having sex with another woman, Derrick who was about to celebrate his seventh anniversary, snorted one on one, tossed his head, and after catching his breath, winked. “Just because you’re married, you are not joined at the hip.”

Derrick had already analyzed Nate as being especially adept at keeping a compartment or two separate. The larger, more immediate issue was that marriage was one thing, a wedding another. And Nate had not begun to grapple with that one.

Small, low-key, at City Hall—only way Nate could go through a wedding.

“Does Alison envision the same kind of ceremony?”

Nate lay out two more lines apiece for them. Contemplating any kind of wedding demanded incredible energy. He could actually feel the idea sucking blood from his brain.

“Buy her the most expensive engagement ring you can afford. A great big dazzling diamond outweighs hundreds of guests, a live band, flower girl, bridesmaids, all that.”

“It does?”

“Not always but often. And, like it or not, Nate, you’ll need to visit your parents. Give them the news in person.”

“They’re not going to care.”

“That,” Derrick said, “will make it easier for you. Do you know what Alison’s parents are like?”
Alison’s parents were bigwigs. Her father worked as a strategist of some kind at the Pentagon. Her mother hailed from Virginia’s gentry and occupied herself at the country club. His parents, in sharp contrast, had lived in Berwyn, Illinois since birth. His father began working in Vaska’s Tool & Die before finishing high-school. Endlessly making metal pressing machines, he had managed to send Nate and his brother to the U. of I. in Champaign. Nate had worked on the campus newspaper. These days his mother suffered from arthritis and rarely left the house. His father still worked at the factory, which a bigger company had acquired twenty years ago, forcing him to commute from Berwyn to Lombard.

Derrick’s advice was to take James when he visited his parents. And if Alison’s parents saw her marriage as calling for a major social event, they could do that after Alison and Nate were already married.

After he bought Alison a bento box for lunch and teased her into eating, Nate made a few deliveries, and took a taxi downtown. The options at Zales staggered him and twice he almost left without buying a ring. But the salesman (he would do better with a woman; they should hire a woman for this job) quietly persisted. Nate deliberated over several choices, and anxious to get this over with, had settled on a full carat, princess-cut diamond set in white gold. It cost five thousand dollars and he genuinely hoped it was exactly what she wanted.

25. Reserved Judgment

Now that Alison was free from the brace, she danced in a chain of turns she’d learned as a child taking five ballet classes a week. Usually her arms closed gracefully as she faced one direction and opened into an arc when she turned the other way. Now she held her them straight, hands bent at the wrists.

She danced around The Gallery and Nate swung his legs from the work table. James was still missing the point. How long before he smacked his forehead gleefully. “Oh, that!

Alison glided over to him. “Look,” she said, showing him the ring. “Isn’t it dazzling?”

“God, it’s big. And beautiful, really beautiful.” Looking at how proud Nate was, James blurted out, “Is it real?”

Nate hopped off the work table, moving practically on top of James, who waved his hand in the air—mistake. And Nate smiled. Okay. James was just surprised, that’s all.

Alison stood between them, extending her hand so James could take a closer look. “That’s a serious engagement ring, all right.” He tapped Nate’s elbow. “You did good, big man.”

And Nate, even if certain snooty types might consider announcing the price rude, decided what the hell. “Five K, plus tax.”

After James congratulated both of them, he offered to buy a split of champagne at the wine shop. But they wanted to go home and celebrate, just the two of them. Alison was going to telephone her family. And Nate mentioned driving out to Berwyn to tell his parents in person. He asked James to accompany him and James stalled. “I’ve gone there with you before. Your parents don’t need to meet me again.”

Nate pulled James close, his voice oddly choked, “I need you there, James. Moral support.”

Okay, James said, sure. And after Nate and Alison said goodnight, they’d be in bed when he got home, he decided that lately Nate was more like his old self, the good Nate.

Saturday Nate arranged eight o’clock reservations at Café Bernard so the three of them could celebrate. When James arrived home from the bike shop, Alison was wearing a new beige silk dress that cast glimmers of pink whenever she moved. She wore pink ballet-type shoes and had pulled her hair up in a loose twist. After three weeks of Nate feeding her, she looked pretty again, soft and sleek. Nate marched out of the bedroom, wearing new slacks that fit at the waist and a black shirt with a silver middle panel. James changed into brown corduroys and a white shirt, the nicest clothes he owned.

Nate did not like the table the maitre d’ first showed them. He wanted one by the windows. When the waiter asked about drinks, Nate requested the wine list. “A white and a red, okay?” James and Alison nodded and he ordered a bottle of Riesling described as honey-toned. Nate kissed his fingertips and nodding to the waiter, “Trockenbeernaulese?” When no one reacted he informed them that was the German term for the sweetest Rieslings. “People act as if sweet Riesling is like maple syrup. But they are unenlightened fools.” He turned to the waiter again. “Am I right? Am I among only the  most discerning connoisseurs?”

For James and Alison, he ordered a vintage bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. As for the meal, James and Alison agreed that the famous salmon served in a cabernet reduction sauce sounded good.

By the time they had finished the appetizer, lobster ravioli, Nate had already drunk three
glasses of Riesling. He nodded at James and Alison to excuse himself. While he was in the rest room, Alison said her parents, who had disliked Nate intensely when they met him a year ago, were not displeased when they heard of the engagement. “As long as you’re happy,” Mother said. “That’s right,” her father had added. “you’re the one marrying him, not us.”

“We’ll probably visit Mother and Father in the fall. Nate says he doesn’t care what big deal fete they throw so long as we’re already married. So I guess he’s thinking summertime.”

Nate returned, and sniffed loudly before gulping another glass of Riesling. “Why haven’t we gotten our food yet?” He raised a hand and starting waving it, but when Alison bit her lower lip, he stopped. He had not completely poured another glass of wine before his filet mignon arrived along with James and Alison’s salmon plates. Nate ate and drank with unusual, unselfconscious speed. So, done with his steak, Nate excused himself again.

James told Alison how pretty she looked and wondered, since she had not smoked in three weeks, if she had considered quitting altogether. “I’m going to try. It’s easy now. But I can’t imagine spending a night at my parents without smoking a full pack.”

“Maybe they’ll treat you differently after you’re a married woman.”

Nate returned this time running the back of his hand under his nose. He raised his hand and Alison could bite her lip all she wanted. Hand high, Nate was calling, “Garcon, Garcon! Over here if you please.”

The waiter arrived immediately.

“Veuve Clicquot, do you have that?”

“Let me bring you a list of our champagnes. And Mademoiselle? Since your dining companion seems to be hurrying, would you like me to wrap up the salmon for you?”

Alison said thank you, yes, and requested a dessert menu.

As the waiter passed, Nate grabbed the jacket point on his tuxedo. “I don’t want a list, garcon. I want to know if you have Veuve Clicquot and how much you charge for it.”

“One second, sir. Let me take care of Mademoiselle’s dinner first.”

The waiter quietly placed an open folder in front of Nate and pointed to what was printed there. Saturday evening, close to nine pm, the restaurant had reached capacity. Nate rose from his chair, cupped his hands about his mouth, and loudly informed everyone on the premises, “They’re selling Veuve Clicquot for fifty-five dollars. Think I should order a bottle?” The patrons ignored him and Nate told “Garcon” to go ahead and bring a bottle. He then excused himself from the table again.

“He did drink that whole bottle of Riesling,” Alison said.

“He enters a nice restaurant and goes right into biggest, rudest, stinking asshole mode.”

The waiter arrived with the champagne, set it in its stand, and presented Alison and James with dessert menus, laying one at Nate’s place, too.

“Crème brulee with berries for me,” Alison said. James said, “Me, too.” And when the waiter returned and Nate had not yet finished in the men’s room, James ordered a crème brulee for each of them. The desserts arrived and Alison suggested the waiter go ahead and open the champagne. He poured a glass for each of them and placed Nate’s just to the right of his dessert. Before much longer, Nate reappeared, saying, “Ahh,” as if the champagne and dessert were exactly what he wanted. From then on, Nate did not deliberately embarrass anyone. He did, however, commit one small faux pas. Apparently unaware that one did not toast oneself, he raised his champagne glass. “Here’s to Mr. and Mrs. Nathan Edward Schulaski!”

James saw Alison blanch; apparently they had not discussed name changes. Or perhaps she had not anticipated hearing herself addressed by her future title. In any case, she excused herself. As she passed Nate, he dropped his hand to offer her the amber vial. She smiled and shook her head.

As they sauntered outside, Nate pulled James back, and the two of them watched Alison shifting her new ring so it caught beams from the overhead streetlight.

“Looks like that ring has bought me another year,” Nate told James, “minimum.”

26. The Monster Returns

Upper-upper? Upper-middle? Certainly not middle or working class. Alison’s parents had manifested an acute sensitivity to where among the thinly oxygenated upper strata they most distinctly belonged. In Arlington or overseas, Colonel and Mrs. Thompson fought anxiety as the top layers shifted, either blending or separating. Mother and Father directed their profound apprehensions toward Alison. She functioned as their perfect barometer. At the American school, was she in honors or high-honors? A principal ballerina in the annual show or among the corps? How many numbers was she dancing; how many solos?

So when Nate felt out-classed somewhere and flouted convention in what James had called his “rudest asshole mode,” Alison horded her giggles. Nate knew his obnoxiousness secretly thrilled her. In private she laughed, savoring the details as she pretended to scold him. But when he had spoken of “Mr. and Mrs. Nathan Edward Schulaski,” an unexpected and unworthy shame washed over her. Since then she found nothing but the reliable stand-bys, drugs and alcohol, could banish her disgrace, which was all the more haunting because it included only herself and what she thought of herself. 

She wanted to marry Nate more than anything, but could not imagine herself as, “Mrs. Schulaski.” She would remain the ethereal Alison Thompson, whether Nate realized how lucky he was to have won her lifelong love or not. Whether he treated her with exquisite tenderness or its opposite did not matter. At this juncture, she refused to turn around, not for fear of betraying Nate but because by backing away she would only betray her most intimate sense of herself.

A few weeks after the Nate had given her the engagement ring, when James mentioned that even though Nate was backsliding double-time, he still had his good moments. “Just when I think he’s dead to me, Nate embraces me with his underlying warmth.

And Alison had said, “That’s true. No matter what, we all have our moments.”

“Do you think now that it’s springtime, he’ll take the black plastic off the windows?”

“I don’t know. But you won’t be here. Aren’t you moving in a month?”

“I’m not moving away, Alison. Just six blocks south.” James said this and immediately foresaw—he would never visit them. Especially since Alison’s reply was the same as it had been several times now, he should feel no obligation to keep watch.

She refused to admit that Nate was acting paranoid at all, whereas always before, they would tacitly agree—best to tiptoe with hands up. James was mostly an outsider now. He didn’t get high with them, and Alison had fooled him. After her arm had healed, she planned to shun most of her bad habits. Instead, for weeks now, she and Nate indulged themselves as if making up for lost time.

Besides all that, James was questioning—though not out-loud—if her arm had really, completely healed. He had looked up shoulder injuries on the computer at Trevor’s Cycles and every entry emphasized physical therapy as soon as possible. Alison should be doing exercises to strengthen the muscles surrounding the bone so it would stay in place. Otherwise any off-hand gesture and it might pop right out again.

Last night Nate had informed the household he was now conducting business only during the day and outside the apartment. Alison and James should not let anyone who dropped by gain entry, especially not Brad Fisher (the chiropractor) or Derrick Mason (the psychologist). Nate was still dealing with them, because they were both reliable customers who bought sizable amounts. But, he told James, they were no longer on bartering terms. Nate went to their offices and they paid in cash. Neither one was to enter the apartment.

Almost no one ever entered the apartment, which, James supposed, was just as well. He had seen Nate hole up before, watching TV and going through incredible quantities of wine, dope, and coke for long stretches of time. The door would open only for the pizza delivery guy, on schedule. Anyone else ringing the bell had to answer to Nate, who had resumed keeping a gun behind his back, ready if necessary.

Tonight after working at Trevor’s  and then playing his guitar at The Gallery, which likewise no one entered, James stood at the front door, balancing his cycle on one shoulder as he turned a third key, a recent addition, when Nate jerked the door open and stuck his gun in Nate’s chest..

Hey, he was playing; it was a joke. James had just taken it the wrong way. James summoned as much volume as his speech problem allowed, to yell, “Drop it, Nate! Now! Drop it.”

And when Nate hesitated to throw the gun he was pointing at James’ chest onto the porch floor, James fueled by outrage had grabbed Nate’s wrist and forced his hand. He’d squeezed Nate’s inside wrist until Nate did loosen his grip and the gun dangled from his index finger.

“Calm down, James. Christ. What the hell’s wrong with you? You can’t take a joke?”

Nate had heard the story about James’ childhood friend Felipe trying to rob a bank, jabbing a candy bar into his windbreaker’s pocket, and thrusting it toward the bank teller, “Stick ’em up!” How Felipe and the teller, who was their friend Scott from first grade, had planned a ridiculously easy heist, despite James’ adamant advice to the contrary. A bank guard had fired a bullet in Felipe’s back before he reached the door. Nate knew that. So what made him think James would find anything humorous about Nate waving his drug-dealing Glock in James’ face? 

“You can’t take a joke, James because you’re moving out. You’re throwing our friendship away because you’ve grown up and want to take care of yourself. Well, great. No percentage in being friends man to man.”

Arguing was a waste of James’ energy. But his new-found confidence had lowered his tolerance for being bullied. James needed to get his bicycle inside and as Nate hung on the front door frame, James shoved the drunk, stoned, cokehead monster of the way, hard enough to make Nate stumble and fall. Bolder yet, as Nate sat on his butt, blinking himself out of a stupor, James glared at him in disgust. If Nate weren’t twirling his damn gun around, and if James did not have another full month to go before moving day, he might have kicked the sick beast. A few hours later, he wished he had.

Lying in bed, James recalled having heard this shit before, but never so clearly, so loudly, and distinctly. Probably because he had never heard it when he was totally sober. Nate was yelling one vile epithet after another. The bedrooms shared a wall. The doors were hollow. Sound traveled through the heating grates as well as the plumbing. Tonight James lay there listening as Nate berated Alison, calling her every sordid, low-down insult, castigating her as a woman, while simultaneously impugning all women. He mocked Alison’s specific physical traits as pitiful and sorry; she was a grotesque example of what a woman should be.

Just this morning Alison had told James to stay out of it. She did not need his protection. She and Nate shared a rapport he had never fathomed. And now that he had all but “turned his back on them,” Alison would thank him to mind his own business.

But when he heard glass shattering and Alison whimpering, he slid his boxers back on and pounded on their closed door. “Alison, are you all right? Alison! Is he hurting you?”

Nate cracked the door opening, leering at James. “You want to come in and join us or what? My darling Alison, if you can reassure our friend Curious George here, I think he’ll go away.”

Holding the sheet taut, her face rose, pale and grinning. “Good night, James. Sleep tight.”

27. Since We're Friends

Of all the threats closing in on Nate, the one that frightened him the most was Alison’s new-found lust for role playing. Who’d have guessed she’d get off on the dominance thing so much? It was such a natural extension of their everyday relationship that he had found himself deep into it before realizing what he was doing. And that scared him. It didn’t help that he hurt her all the time, if only in the tit-for-tat way a lot of lovers hurt each other—nothing that couldn’t be fixed.

Alison had called from The Gallery, to say James had left him a note. Nate read it, tore it up, and threw it away. He allowed himself a couple of extra snorts. James had offered to accompany Nate to Berwyn whenever he wanted.

Nate had postponed that little trip indefinitely. Derrick had pushed reconnecting with his parents as if Derrick’s own life depended on it. When, in fact, Nate could live without it. And the trip to Berwyn was not even the sticking point. Alison was. Derrick had persisted in asking Nate to drag her into one of their sessions. Even Brad the chiropractor kept harping about her. Until Nate had to tell both of them—subject closed. ”Don’t talk about her again.”

No way was he listening to their weird recommendations. Not after he had told Alison that Derrick wanted to meet her because he thought she was ill. “He wants to meet you because Brad told him you’re anorexic.”

That had set off an electrical storm of wailing, weeping, denials, justifications, fury and endless accusations that he had betrayed her. He must have told them she wasn’t attractive anymore; he must have told them she was afraid to grow up. He had not told either of them anything. Brad had decided upon the illness while treating her arm and Derrick just happened to specialize in eating disorders.

“Can’t argue with that,” she had said. “Look what wonders he’s done for you.”  What a pathetic, low-down, nasty fight that had been.

Yet Derrick had refused to drop it. Nate had kept explaining that if Alison was anorexic, it wasn’t his fault. If she didn’t want to meet Derrick or keep “a food diary,” Nate couldn’t force her.

That’s why the barter agreement ended. Nate delivered his goods, collected his cash, and vanished. Thus, no more therapy; no more chiropractic adjustments either.

Price of doing business, but still…He was honestly trying to pace himself but the annoyances never let up; Nate needed countless boosts to keep his temper at bay. Price of doing business.

A cab dropped him off in front of Chumley’s and Nate poked his head in to check for Trevor. Larry grinned and hurried over. “What’ll it be?”

“Glass of water’s enough.”

Larry said Trevor had not been there all week. “A week’s not long. Come by tomorrow.”

“A week’s not long, but lay a grand out, dollar by dollar. That’s long.”

“You gave him credit for a grand?” Larry grabbed a paper towel and wiped the bar-top.

Leaving the water untouched, Nate went to the bicycle shop. Wardell was out front.

“You’re buying a bicycle? No, let me guess. You’re looking for Trevor.”

“Let me guess. You haven’t seen him in a week.” Nate looked around and stepped toward the back.

“No worries. Jim’s out giving a new bike a trial run.”

Jim? Oh, James. Nate peered in the back again. But James had slid quietly into the far, front corner.

“Your partner owes me one thousand dollars.”

Wardell laughed, “Ooo-whee. What did Trevor do for a credit line like that?”

“Wardell, that’s your name, right? You’ve covered your partner’s debts before.”

“Not his personal debts. Never have, never would. Not much hope for poor Trevor.”

“In this case, since we’re all friends, or friends of friends, you might make an exception.”

Wardell said, “No exceptions. And don’t talk about my friends. Don’t talk about them and don’t trouble them. I run an honest business.”

“If you talk to the cops,” Nate said, “James’ll be smack in the middle.”

Wardell already knew that. James could practically see Wardell’s expression from where he was hiding.

“It’s one exception, one time.” Getting no response, Nate then called out, “James? Are you back there? Try and talk your friend into making an exception, so we’ll all be happier.”

Wardell moved around the counter fast, and James found himself waiting for him to punch Nate in the face, once, twice, until he fell to the floor unconscious.

Wardell might be yanking Nate’s shirt; James wasn’t sure. “You know, on our surveillance cameras, if it looks like you’re here to rob me, I’m within my rights shooting you dead.”

The front door closed and Wardell called James to come up front. “You don’t know anyone who’ll put you up for a few weeks? Your father will take you in for that short a spell.”

“Um, no. He’ll pay for college or a birthday dinner. He’ll make telephone calls asking a friend for a favor. But me staying with them? No.”

Wardell tsk-tsked and wrote down his telephone number and his address on Woodlawn Avenue, including his apartment number. “Call first. But in an emergency, Jim, get far away from Idiot-Nate.”

28. Damages

As night fell, made darker by cloud cover, Ziggy who owned Chumley’s stormed into Trevor’s Cycles. James was putting away parts and tools. Wardell was fashioning a fast, light bicycle that could withstand most city streets.

“He drank at my bar all day and every day. Left a two thousand dollar tab.”

“Two thousand? Trevor sure fooled y’all. Must have been that lopsided grin that made him look so trustworthy. That and those shirts.”

“If you won’t pay his bill, I don’t see any choice except legal recourse.”

Wardell hadn’t seen Trevor for weeks. When they did talk, Wardell phoned or texted, but wherever Trevor had gone he hadn’t taken his cell phone with him. A Spanish-speaking woman was using it now. So it looked like Trevor had just disappeared.

Ziggy’s long, white, and well-tended hair, his florid, squinty-eyed face, not to mention the ridiculous braided leather band at his plump neck, tempted Wardell to chuckle. But he figured, no. They owned stores in back-to-back buildings. “Legal recourse,” Wardell repeated. “You’re looking to sue me?”

“Not looking to, man. I’d much prefer you just paid your friend’s debt.”

“Trevor is or was a business partner, not a friend. So if you need legal recourse, try legal recourse.”

Leaving in an unintentionally comical huff, Ziggy cursed several mothers. “Fine, then, see you in court.”

James, who struggled to speak clearly, marveled at the way Wardell had so lightly dusted a Southern inflection through his conversation. “You sure were polite.”

“I do that when I don’t like someone but don’t want to emphasize the fact.”

“Unlike with Nate.”

“Idiot-Nate knows I don’t like him and the better he knows that—the better.”

The next morning, James rode past the front of the store and Wardell was standing in the front doorway, his arms folded across his chest, his face, really his entire body, frozen in outraged disbelief.

James hopped off his cycle, and peered inside the store. “My God.” Total chaos, which he slowly identified: cycles broken and flung all around, computer smashed on the floor, the helmets and cycle-wear ripped from boxes, spray paint clotted and snaking everywhere.

Wardell took out his cell phone. “What time you got?”

James dug for his own cell. “Eight forty.”

“Called the police at eight. They said they’d be right here.”

“Call 911.”

“Emergency’s over, Jim. I’ll call again at nine.”

“No work today. Or tomorrow. If you want a couple of days off, go ahead. Take a vacation.”

“I don’t want to take a vacation. Let me stay.”

“Shit. Something this hard and my mind shuts down. I forgot; you shouldn’t go home.”

“The destruction is sickening.”

“You haven’t even really seen it, though. Ride around back and I’ll meet you.”

The crew had used a power saw on the metal garage door. Someone must have spent half an hour sawing metal in the alley. And who’d notice? No one lived at this end of the block. Shops and storage. Wardell said he knew. Oh Lord, did he know—for a while he had walked around with a small power saw inside his backpack.

The police arrived, in uniform, a man and a woman. Wardell walked them through: all the cycles yanked from the ceiling and thrown around; all the compartments lined up against the walls, ripped loose, the contents dumped. Parts, tool, tires, wheels lying in heaps. Spray paint everywhere. In front, all the books and maps torn apart, paper littering the tumult of bashed and ruined merchandise.

The policeman called the station and talked fifteen or twenty minutes, going into detail. The policewoman returned to the squad car and brought back forms for the official report. Wardell told her about Trevor skipping town; how he had left owing thousands of dollars in bar tabs and possibly gambling.

Later a surveillance videotape showed four blurry figures in ski masks destroying the store. James offered to stay there, so Wardell could take a break. “Visit Lexi,” he said. But Wardell refused to leave the scene. The store carried a shit-load of insurance. He had already contacted the companies, who were sending damage estimators. The day sped by; it dragged on indefinitely. Before Wardell and James left for the night, they had boarded the garage door and locked up. Some remains, arranged in lots, could probably be sold at auction.

29. Extra Insurance

After the break-in Wardell rode his own bicycle all night. No way could he relax enough to eat or sleep—best to ride as fast and hard as possible, not that he expected it to dissipate his anger or sorrow, not that he expected anything.

The destruction sickened but did not surprise him. Still, it threw him far beyond who-done-it, even past that trap, vengeance. He did not trust himself the same as usual. When  he and Jim boarded up the back door, Wardell looked at Jim directly, prompting him to speak up.

Jim said, “I don’t know.” Meaning he knew no better than Wardell if Idiot-Nate did this. And while Wardell’s judgment teetered uncharacteristically, Jim gently pressed his finger between Wardell’s knuckles, a spontaneous gesture, which startled Wardell at how much it meant.

James hated to think it was possible Nate had called in some thugs. Nate and Alison had left The Gallery without a word that night. For months now, James did not recognize his first protector and friend-for-life Nate. Except now and then when Nate would smile, dropping an arm around him, and for a second the real Nate peered out before his eyes fell dead again. Then he’d spill a line of coke on his arm, offer it to James, call him “Dumb ass,” and inhale it himself, one more, and one and one, again.

The next day, Wardell had no time for guessing games. The insurance companies were working fast. A salvage crew carted away everything in the store. James wrote up lists of the tools and parts he used. By afternoon Wardell needed a designer to choose new paint and carpeting, the lighting, and displays. The insurance company named a design firm, but Wardell wanted a referral from someone he knew. Lexi worked freelance for some marketing firms and her contacts recommended the same Italian man. Ennio designed all kinds of stores, but he loved bicycle shops; his father had owned one in Turin. Ennio was willing to put off his current job for Wardell. He arrived in a cab and drew a layout on the spot. By two in the afternoon Ennio had two painters prepping the surfaces before applying the primer.

When the new computer arrived, Wardell gave James DVDs to install: back-up records through February. Wardell telephoned his suppliers, most of whom had heard the news. Except for custom-made parts, like the seats Wardell used, the suppliers agreed to make a special delivery as soon as he was ready for the merchandise.

Shortly after six, Ziggy stepped into the cycle shop, stumbling over the painters’ tarps. Wardell did not greet his neighbor with a neighborly, just-folks manner this time. He finished what he was doing on a laptop while the bar owner spoke.

“Police contacted me yesterday. Their first questions involved Trevor. They asked if he owed me money and how much, since they supposedly did not already know.”

“If they knew Trevor’s tab, why would they ask?”

“So maybe you didn’t tell them. Everyone knew Trevor drank at my place, and that now he’s run off.”

Wardell crossed his arms, and stood there perfectly still, perfectly silent.

Ziggy continued, “By law my bar closes at two a.m. on weeknights. No one saw or heard anything. I did not do this and neither did anyone I know.”

“You told the police the truth? Always best if you can tell the truth.”

“I honestly told them everything they wanted to know.”

James watched Ziggy leave. A nervous static emanated from him so powerfully that the sleek, self-satisfied man James had seen two days ago gave the illusion of a much older, hunched up man, with oily white hair to his shoulders and the trace of a limp.

When the day’s light grew dim, Wardell added more clip-on work lamps to those the painters had brought. At six-thirty, only James and Wardell remained.

“I want to show you something, Jim. The police checked my record, which is nonviolent and twelve years ago. As a shopkeeper now, I qualify for a permit.”

Wardell removed a big pistol from beneath the cash register. “Ever shot a gun?”

“When I was little, my father took me target shooting in the country. Twenty-twos.”

“You only use a forty-five to kill someone.”

He handed the gun to James and showed him how to release the safety.

“If someone comes in to rob the store, don’t hesitate. Pop the safety, point, and shoot.”

“What if the robber has a gun?”

“All the more reason to be ready. Pull this out and don’t worry about aiming. Point at close range and fire.” Wardell emptied the weapon of bullets and handed it back. “Try it a few times, Jim. So you know how it feels.”

It felt heavy and very deadly. James practiced popping the safety, pointing and shooting.

“This pistol this big has a kick. A skinny guy like you should plant your feet so it the explosion doesn’t knock you back. And aim a little low because the nose will recoil upwards..”

James practiced until it no longer felt alien to him. He handed it back to Wardell, who dropped the bullets back in the chamber and clicked the safety on.

“Doubt very much you’ll ever need it. Just know it’s here.” He laid it in a slot by the cash register, grip out. “But if you ever think some guy’s going for a stick-up, don’t hesitate. Don’t even blink, Jim. We’re within our rights.”

30. Hair Trigger

 Nate’s accountant convinced him to declare bankruptcy on The Gallery and sell the inventory. A lovely Indian girl just out of college made the telephone calls. Luckily, feeling as bright and intuitive as Nate usually did during the day-time, he remembered that he should retrieve Alison’s drawing cabinet. The Gallery’s demise would leave Alison more adrift than ever.

After the accountant he rode in a hired car for an appointment with his source. He had just read about a popular sleeping pill that occasionally compelled people to eat in their sleep. Like sleep walking, except it was sleep eating. It sounded like the answer for Alison. She needed more sleep and healthy food.

His cocaine connection lived in the suburbs along Lake Michigan’s north shore. The security system fed directly into the local police station; that’s how confident the man was, rich beyond suspicion. Cocaine dealer or not, nothing rattled the man. Handsome and urbane in soft, understated casual clothes, he impressed Nate as the most comfortable, efficient person on earth. Nate hated to ask him for sleeping pills, but no one else would meet the request so graciously. And over the years Nate had proved a consistent, tactful, and ever more successful dealer.

Afterwards, the driver, whom Nate paid in cash and tipped with a vial, dropped him off in front of The Gallery. When he told Alison the store was bankrupt, her eyes brimmed.

“It’s for the better, honey, you’ll see. This weekend we can take a vacation.”

Her eyes grew round. “A vacation!”

“I mean, at home, just you and me. But I promise, next month, I’ll arrange things so we can go away for a week.”

He had already stopped at the apartment, arranged his supplies, and locked up. He had parked his truck in front of The Gallery, by a fire hydrant but so what. He hauled the drawing cabinet into the back. Alison remembered James’ guitar; the rest was for the bank.

At home, Nate thought that since Alison was chronically sleep-deprived, she might want to try a sleeping pill. But she jumped up and wrapped her legs around him to kiss him. She said that as long as she slept at night, she wanted to play all day. Then she dressed in a pale T-shirt dress, with ruching along the hips that added to her shape, and matched him line for line. Nate removed his pants and socks but left on his boxers and shirt.

They romped around the place, snorting up too many lines to count, clutching at each other and laughing. Nate said, “Wait a minute. Let’s up the ante,” and he retrieved his gun from the drawer in the dining room.

“Put that down. Only guys think guns are sexy. You want danger, lie down here.” Alison jumped on top of his swollen body and tried to wrap her hands around his neck. He tore her hands loose and bent the fingers back. He slapped her face until tears formed at the corner of her eyes.

*

At Trevor’s Cycles, James was asking Wardell what he should do next.

“We’re looking good. Go home.”

Wardell would say, “Looking good,” no matter what he was looking at. But the store was looking great and after tomorrow it would look better than it ever had.

Turning right on to Halsted and racing several blocks, James stopped short. The Gallery was dark. Rolling his cycle up to the front window, he peered inside. From the nearby streetlamps, he could tell the store was empty.

Before he stepped inside the kitchen he called, “Hello! Nate, Alison! It’s James!” He called as loudly as he could, but to compensate for his speech problems, his shout was kind of soft. He wheeled his bicycle into his room and could hear Alison crying. She was saying, “Don’t, you bastard. Stop! You’re hurting me.”

He heard Nate say, “You love it, bitch. You love it and I’m not letting go until you admit it.”

James sidled into the dining room quietly. Nate was pulling Alison’s long hair from the nape of her neck so hard she was bending backwards. She fell and he hauled her up. After pressing her into a corner, he slapped her. First her face, one side and the other, then her body. When he grabbed her neck in one hand and she gasped, pounding his chest, so that he bellowed even as he was smacking her, James noticed the Glock on the dresser. The safety mechanism was not where he could find it. The gun was nothing like Wardell’s forty-five.

Still, Nate was butting his head into Alison’s thin body and she was screaming. James pointed the gun low, at Nate’s feet, and pulled the trigger. He stumbled on the carpet, which was askew and uneven. A fold he didn’t expect caught his toes, throwing him off balance so that he pulled the trigger again.

Simultaneously with the explosion, blood blossomed from Nate’s lower backside. Alison shifted to the side, screaming at James. “Don’t you know anything?” She swore and wept and shrieked. James glanced back as he hurried away, seeing blood pooling as Nate’s  hand slid down the wall. Halfway out, hopping on his cycle, he could still hear Alison screaming, “Murder! James, you murdered him!”

Tears blinding him, he raced back to the cycle shop. Wardell was working at the computer still, utility lamps burning.

Before James reached the door, Wardell had already hurried outside, taking the boy by the shoulders as he extricated himself from the bicycle. What is it? What’s happened?”

Whatever it was, Wardell could not understand a word Jim said. He flew apart, scattering like a tray of beads on cement. “Deep breaths, now. Take deep breaths.”

Before long James managed to explain what he’d done. “Chances are, Jim, you did not kill him. And if you did, there are different ways to consider it. My own bias is that you did a favor to humanity. Objectively, there’s self-defense, Alison-defense, one man’s life or two others…You know what? Call your father. Get yourself under control and call him up.”

James splashed cold water on his face. He felt surreal, as if he had left his body and was floating around, free of the world. But he did what Wardell said.

He called his father. “Hello. This is James.”

“Hello James.”

“I’m in trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“I might have killed someone.”

“So you need a lawyer.”   

31. Suspension

In the cycle shop, which looked like a way-station now, the utility lights casting strange beams and shadows, the bare, blank walls giving off a sickening, chemical smell, James grew aware of a chattering sound: his teeth knocking together. He knew his father was going to help him. Whatever ordeal was lying ahead, whatever that big dark hole engulfing his future was, his father had offered to provide a lawyer.

Unless he clamped his jaw tight, the chattering scraped hard against what he imagined must be his brain-pan. His teeth were grinding. His bones were rattling. And out of his mounting confusion and panic appeared Wardell. A light hand on James’ shoulders and a sharp, angry command: “Stop it, Jim! Sit. Be steady.”

James followed him around the counter, behind the computer screen that spun bright wheels of color in a kaleidoscopic cycling theme.

Wardell pulled two stools from the shadows and ordered James to sit tall. “Palms down on your thighs. Breathe deep and listen to me!”

Wardell sat on the second stool, pulling it around so he faced James. “Nothing’s wrong with you, Jim! You just need to concentrate.”

After a minute, James stopped shaking. He sat still but his heart was beating too loudly.

“That’s a little better. You see, Jim? No calamity’s going on.”

Wardell sat on the stool and spoke gently for several minutes, his words forming a clear stream, a soothing coolness that seemed to run just beneath James’ feet. If James wanted, he could step down and let the ankle-deep water cleanse him, pure and lucid.

Wardell told James that right now no one knew what the story was. So they needed to wait. “Don’t project yourself into situations you can not foretell. For all we know Nate’s in the hospital doing fine. Tell your mind to slow down. You know what I’m saying?  Hold it all in suspension.”

James nodded. “There was so much blood.”

“Flesh wound. You just don’t know. Don’t worry about what you don’t know. You need to keep yourself steady. So when the pieces do fall into place, you’re primed.”

James nodded again. Wardell told James that losing a friend to time, where the years took you in one direction and your friend  to some other place, was hard. The longer a person lived, the more that happened to them. Hard, too, if an accident took away a friend.

“No escaping that,” Wardell said. “But right now, Jim, you don’t know which one’s the case, only that you can’t go back. You know that, right? Maybe Nate was good once upon a time. But he hasn’t been good since I learned about him. You and Nate aren’t friends. Doesn’t matter how the events play out, he’s gone.”

James nodded.

“Everything’s stripped to its fundamentals now. This isn’t ordinary talk. This is putting things back in place. So nodding like that isn’t enough, Jim. You have to say it.”

“Um, thanks. Thanks, Wardell, for talking sense into me. And, um, don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried. Anyone with human feeling’s going to panic first time around. Just tell me you’re not going to see Nate or his girlfriend again.”

“You’re right. I won’t. Nate and Alison and me—that’s over.”

“Now I’m going over to Chumley’s, Jim, to get some orange juice. I’ve gotten real thirsty and you should drink something whether you feel like it or not.”

James nodded his head, the rest of himself continuing to hold still.

Two days ago Wardell had had a see-through refrigerator stocked full of sports drinks. Now he had to ask Ziggy to hand him two glasses of orange juice.

Wardell walked into a cavern of bronze lamps, dark wood, white drinkers, which didn’t surprise him really. The bartender acted glad to see him, maybe a little too eagerly. Shook Wardell’s hand, introduced himself as Danny.

“My assistant and I are working late at the cycle shop. Can I get two glasses of juice to go?”

“Orange or grapefruit?” Danny pulled unopened half-quart wax-coated cartons, water trickling off the tops.

Danny handed him the orange juice, asking him with a wink, “Want this on Trevor’s tab?”

“Hadn’t thought of that, but if it’s all the same to you, yeah.”

James saw Wardell approaching through the glass and hopped off the stool, opening the door for him. They drank their juice and James told him he was staying at this girl Jordan’s, on the couch for now.

They left from the newly installed roll-back, galvanized steel door, which locked automatically. James cleared his throat as he always did before speaking, but Wardell told him, “Enough thanks. See you tomorrow.”

32. Dead or Alive

James did not sleep well on Jordan’s couch. His left brain argued with his right in harsh voices he had never consciously heard. He was a traitor, a criminal, a stumbling, lisping idiot. And he was a child. Wardell did not appear, but his advice grew ever more insistent, his words echoed and resounded, “Quiet, suspension, hold steady, hold still.”

He moaned and tossed and caused enough commotion to wake Jordan, who looked angelic standing above him, haloed by streetlamps filtered through sheers. He blinked, so surprised to see her, he wondered if he weren’t still asleep. Jordan, who in daylight hid her face beneath Pierotte-like make-up, appeared as a rosy soft-faced pixie, her spicy sweet breath hovering over him. In a flannel nightshirt and thick wool socks, she told him, shush, and led him by the hand. In her bed, she promised him that tomorrow they could just be roommates if that’s what worked best. “Tonight is one night.”

Jordan’s soft, fragrant body was profoundly pleasurable and reassuring. And afterwards, cradling her in his long, ropey arms, James slept oblivious, wrapped in unconscious relief.

The next morning, Wardell said, “Looks like you slept well, Jim. That’s a good sign.”

By nine-thirty Ennio had finished installing a parts-organizing unit that covered one workroom wall to James’ shoulders. Sleek, with a hammered metal look, the design used much less space than the previous set-up. When the painters had finished, the store gave off a fresh aura of such pleasing green, blue, and white that it suggested a beautiful day outdoors. Even the work area shone, white on the ceiling, a geometric pattern of blues and greens on the walls. The work area’s floor, spray paint eradicated, had been leveled and its smooth gray cement lacquered so that grease wouldn’t stick.

James was stamping a compartment’s upper slot, spelling “linear-pull brakes” with a press gun when his cell phone sounded. His father was already speaking when James flipped it open. “You didn’t kill anyone, James. It was a flesh wound and your friend is not pressing charges.”

James said, “Thank you.”

“For your records, I’ve asked the lawyer to fax you a copy of the police report. But I need a number.”

“Just a minute.”

Wardell wrote down the cycle shop’s fax number and after James read out the numbers, his father cleared his throat as if to say more, but then opted to end the conversation without questions or recommendations. “Well, good-bye.”

The first cycles arrived and Ennio was indicating where James should hang them. Wardell was setting up a corner space that Ennio had designated for selling cycling shoes, which Trevor’s had not offered before. The fax arrived and Wardell, who was standing near it, asked James, “May I?”

Half-way through the first page, Wardell chuckled. The Glock, registered to Nate Schulaski, had discharged one bullet, which had entered and exited the outer quarter-inch of its owner’s right buttock. The police had found the bullet lodged in the wall.

“Quarter-inch? You think they just stitched it up? Or would he need internal procedures?”

“Idiot-Nate’s butt cheek? They stitched the fat mother up and sent him home. Didn’t find his cocaine, though. The gun, the bullet, and an ounce of marijuana on the table.”

“An ounce? Does that mean Nate goes to jail?”

“Probably not. Two years probation, a fine.”

“The ER will cost him a lot, too. No drug dealers’ insurance.” James smirked, but hurried back to work, surprised by his disloyalty. Recently, Nate had put him in danger and threatened to kill him, but before that, for a much longer time, he had treated James like family, supporting him emotionally and sometimes financially. He had taught him how to survive day to day. Before cocaine made him paranoid and often vicious, he had shared whatever he had with James. But just as Wardell had said last night, James had lost his friend forever.

Nate was as lost to James as his boyhood partner, Felipe, who had died five years ago. Thank God Nate was not dead. If James had tripped farther or pointed the gun higher, he easily might have killed him. Thank God he didn’t. He didn’t, though; absolutely didn’t; totally didn’t.

In the police report, Nate had made a statement. He would not prosecute James on the condition that he never saw James Walsh again for as long as they lived.

From the earliest moments he could recall, James as a child had imagined his parents behind a veil. That’s how they were. Nate, by contrast, was always right there, no artifice, no fooling, just Nate and James, friends seeking no retreat. James wondered if he would ever happen to catch sight of Nate again, in passing, waiting to see a movie, eating breakfast in a local diner. But if he did, even if twenty years passed, they would each look away, having lost so much.

“Take a break, Jim. Ride around town until the tension drains away.”

“I’m okay.”

“Take twenty minutes and later I’ll visit Lexi.”

James rode south along Lake Michigan, face toward the furious wind, which snatched errant tears from his burning eyes.

33.  Straighten Up and Fly Right

After James’s otherworldly night-long intimacy with Jordan, he left for Trevor’s Cycles before she had fully wakened. Returning to her apartment at ten p.m. (he was still working late each night with Wardell after the break-in), James had stalled, collecting his nerve outside her building on Bissell Street.

The prospect of seeing Jordan in her mime-makeup and doll clothes, after she had offered her lovely naked self to him so freely, frightened him. James ached to fall in love with her as a real woman. But when she took pains to appear like a girly clown, he couldn’t help it: Jordan became grotesque. Embarrassed that at bottom he was so conventional, James couldn’t accept her choosing such a silly persona.

But when she greeted him she was wearing the same night-shirt and socks as before, her face radiant and unmasked.

When she invited him into the shower with her, his qualms scurried off for the farthest crevices in his brain. Later, in her bed, no longer shower-fresh, but once again sweaty and winded, he despaired. How in the world could he talk to her about the freak get-up?  In a heartbeat though, unbidden, she was dreamily admitting she had only worn the clown/doll disguise for a few weeks. A recent DePaul graduate, Jordan had panicked to find herself no longer a student, but instead...just about anyone, any young woman. Stupid, but for her helpful, it was a comical stint now outgrown.

Upon hearing this, James grew almost recklessly brave, as Jordan already was. So that neither of them guarded their slightest idiosyncrasy.

Days later, Wardell caught him humming, and smiling vacantly into space.

“Real happy for you, Jim, but you’ll be better off if you quit dreaming when it’s time to get out of bed. Live your separate life.”

One week after they learned James had not killed Nate, and that the gunshot had only nicked him, the long winter’s biting wind blew away. Fixed up, Trevor’s Cycles looked fresh and spacious, even though it stocked more cycles, more parts, accessories, and equipment than before.

The exhilarating spring air, the beautiful new shop, falling in love—each had occurred once James had stopped using drugs, and finally was not living with a drug dealer. He had escaped from a cage where he had been trapped for years, a cage which had ensnared him straight out of his caged childhood.

Wardell winked. ‘Straighten up and fly right.’”

“You’ll tell me if I’m not.”

“For now, Jim. Not forever.”

Nonetheless, for now, Wardell was insisting that James get college recommendations from his old high school teachers. “What is it? Almost three years since they’ve seen you? Those letters should have been in the mail weeks ago.”

“They were, I think. That day you sent me home? I visited my Latin teacher, who liked me even when no one else did.”

“Your fancy private school had a Latin teacher but no speech therapist.”

“Dr. Grayson taught me Latin from grade six through twel-th, twelve.”

“Say something in Latin.”

“‘Veni, vidi, vici.’”

“Sure, I’ve heard that. So what’s it mean?”

“I came, I saw, I conquered.”

“ ‘Veni, vidi, vici.’ Why the hell not?”

“Carpe diem.”

“Know that one, just from being alive. ‘Seize the day.’ ”

“Easier said than done.”

Wardell grinned his barely perceptible grin. “The hard truth behind old sayings.”

34. Almost Rich

Trevor’s Bicycles reopened with fanfare expertly orchestrated by Wardell. On a sunny Saturday afternoon, he had arranged for representatives from the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation to promote bicycling safety and upcoming charity events. The enthusiastic reps drew a small but festive crowd.

The store’s clothing, shoes, and helmets sold as well as the cycles. Demand for Wardell’s customized vehicles continued to grow. He and James continued to banter with each other while they worked. But running the store cut deeper into their days, the “running” dimension lengthening in proportion to the pure, meditative act of working on bicycles.

By now Wardell trusted the perfect-pitch, slurry-speaking kid like no one else. James had lived close to the streets even while possessing the high-faluting, formal education that opened the iconic gates to top universities. And Wardell did not dismiss the rich-folks aspect of James’s upbringing. Especially because being rich looked as if it lay straight ahead—just waiting for Wardell to pluck it from the ground. The very concept of having money was so foreign to Wardell that he worried one false move could cost him everything.

Wardell began asking for James’s opinions, even though the boy was so sick in love (apparently for the first time) that he sometimes seemed unsteady on his feet. What should Wardell do about Trevor, for instance? Trevor Palmer had simply vanished, but unless he had died, the man still owned half the store. So if he showed up ten years from now, Wardell would owe him half of ten year’s income, for starters.

Lacking a solution to this, James asked, “Are you still doing your own bookkeeping?”

“I’m worried about Trevor and you’re asking for another raise.”

“Wardell, if you hire someone to do the bookkeeping, you can take a day or two off. Like everyone else.”

“Bookkeepers are notorious embezzlers.”

“Only if the owner doesn’t pay attention.”

Wardell returned to the task at hand. Hours later, though, he was still wondering. “Maybe you’re right, Jim. When a guy gets ripped off, it’s usually because he’s drinking or drugging or running around.”

“Plus you, more than most people, can rely on your intuition.”

“Like my intuition about you.”

James returned to work but Wardell called after him. “Wasn’t wrong, Jim. My intuition about you.”

A week later, Wardell interviewed five bookkeepers, while James sold shoes, maps, even the just-for-fun wrist-mounted GPS they had started carrying. During one interview, he sold an anxious mother a safe, sound bicycle and helmet, both in pink as requested by her eight-year-old girl, who was so excited she hopped up and down.

James was still a painfully reluctant salesman, but Wardell had insisted. If Wardell could sell merchandise to Lincoln Park residents, so could James.

After each interview, Wardell asked, “Jim? Any impression?”

“Wasn’t paying attention.”

With no more ado, Wardell hired a tiny Puerto Rican woman, who barely stood five feet tall in three inch heels.  Carmen Romero wore little tailored suits like lawyers on TV and bright make-up just shy of too much. All for two afternoons a week. A few hours into her new job, she told Wardell he could not leave Trevor’s half-ownership floating. He needed to hire a reputable and persistent lawyer. Resolving the problem would require a lot of drawn-out legal work, but by her lights, he had no other option.  Trevor Palmer may have thrown away his interest in Trevor’s Cycles, but until Wardell could prove this legally, half his profits would always be Trevor’s profits.

After fuming for days, Wardell called James over and confessed to an unshakable, deep-seated aversion to lawyers. His one encounter with them followed his arrest for stealing eight bicycles. Nonviolent, first offense, and at eighteen, Wardell was technically a juvenile. But Wardell Jackson was famous for stealing bicycles, so his court-appointed “counsel” had practically talked the judge into giving him the maximum penalty for an adult. The prosecuting attorney even waived his spiels because the defending champion was wrapping up such a solidly raw deal.

“Sentenced to two years in Cook County jail, Jim, and served two years, despite such good behavior I completed my GED and taught two old timers to read.”

“So how’d you keep your sense of decency? Really, Wardell. Some guys are mean and bitter forever, simply because they were picked last for dodge ball.”

Carmen Romero refused to let the ownership problem rest. Wardell could stew and cuss under his breath all he wanted; she was not about to stop harping. She bugged him practically nonstop. Thereby earning his respect alongside his fierce annoyance. What did she recommend he do first?

She had written out a list, but while she was reading it, Wardell got up and left. He waved to James as he exited, which was enough to indicate he was visiting Lexi and Andrew.

Since Carmen was paid by the hour, same as James, he asked her if she’d consider taking charge of the entire rigmarole about Trevor. She agreed. She agreed even more so to let James act as middleman for the lawyers’ payments. The bills would disgust Wardell at first; only after a time would he be able to stomach them.

35. Times Over

Before James had even stored his bicycle, Wardell was calling him. The U. of C. on-line application for next year’s freshman class was on their website. “Choose one of three essay questions.”

“I’m almost finished with my essay, Wardell. Because they let you pick your own topic. So I wrote about you and me and Trevor, Trevor’s Cycles, the break-in, and Trevor’s Cycles restored.”

“You’re sure about that, Jim? The suggested topics are all set-ups for your personal theories.”

“Those are for the Shaker Heights valedictorians. My essay comes from the real world, which is a big contrast to their world.”

“If you say so, Jim. When do I get to read it?”

“After I prepare you. Traditionally, essay writers give people pseudonyms. I thought of using W. for you, but since you hate nicknames—remember my first day? In a big hurry, I called out, Ward—?’”

Hearing that set off an involuntary shudder. But then Wardell laughed, claiming he didn’t remember. “But I’ll bet I set you straight on that real fast.”

“You could decide: no pseudonym. Since I’m not slandering you. Your preference.”

“Let me think about it, Jim.”

”Either way’s fine. But one other thing. I should’ve thought of this sooner, or I did, but then I forgot about it. Would you write me a recommendation?”

“Damn it, Jim. You told me your high school teachers mailed those in months ago.”

“Two of them did. But no one else was going to remember me. Besides, Wardell, you’re teaching me more than anyone.”

Wardell spent two nights writing his letter of recommendation. James claimed he wasn’t supposed to see it. So he asked Carmen to read it. She said it was “perfect.” “Beautiful, Wardell.” He assumed she must be playing with him until he looked at her twice. That’s how she was. A woman so given to flattery, she can’t recognize her own bullshit.

Before closing for the evening, Wardell asked James to picture him growing up across the street from this great institution, enormous gothic buildings and sunny “quads” where students fooled with each other. An enclosed place full of flower gardens, towering trees, and fields of green lawns. While directly across the street, Wardell and some other kids grew up in crack houses, fighting over turf that was rubble and ash.

“Considering that, can you understand how much real gratification I’ll feel if you go to that college? You’re like my stand-in, Jim.”

The next morning James handed Wardell his essay, which was the opposite of bullshit, but so fond and truly sweet, Wardell had to hold himself in check from getting sentimental. So if James didn’t get into the college with this essay, maybe Wardell had it all wrong. Maybe the U. of C. wasn’t what he imagined.

Handing it back, he said, “I’d like it if you identified me. Wardell Jackson. Maybe someone there will remember who I used to be. Maybe not. Just so long as they get Mr. Wardell Jackson on record.”

After summer had turned to winter, winter to early spring, James received his acceptance package. And again Wardell had to suspend his feelings, or else, looking through the glossy folders, he’d feel syrup in his veins, not blood.

The summer before James left—no part-time job, his father wanted A-pluses out of his investment, and would pay whatever—Wardell hired two new guys, real repairmen who had worked at other cycle shops. But all the way through James’s last week, he and Wardell got along like always. Why prepare for the end by putting distance between them that wasn’t there yet? Their rapport never let it up. James and Wardell had that down.

Until his last day. Starting first thing, James had to struggle to maintain. What was this whole thing about saying, “Good-bye”? “Good-bye” as if leaving didn’t hurt worse than a slow, tortuous death? As if that wasn’t, in fact, exactly what was happening behind the jokes and back-slapping, and “See ya, man.” “Yeah, see ya.”

One glance at Wardell revealed his kindred attitude. No, “Drop by, whenever, Jim.” Because Wardell knew that the next time he and James laid eyes on each other, they’d be living different lives. Times go along, long enough so you relax, you’re happy, everything’s cool, and then, one day times change. Times over.

If they ever ran into run into each other, they’d hug. They’d say, “hey, how’re you doing?” “Great to see you!” But that rapport, that unique interaction that only yesterday they had down? That didn’t hold up after “Good-bye.” Soon as you’re saying the superficial shit you say to everybody—“How’re you doing?”—the connection was gone. Dead and gone.

Traces might remain but no way to share them. Several times during James’s four years at the U. of C., he wanted to quit. He didn’t fit in with the suburban valedictorians. Of course, Jordan claimed he’d regret it if he left. But the  reason he stayed was that no one had ever cared what he did or didn’t do the way Wardell had cared about him succeeding at the U. of C.

When he finally did graduate, cum laude, American History, about as useful as veni, vidi, vici, he sent Wardell an invitation to the ceremony followed by a party his parents were hosting at the ritzy, old-boy Chicago Club. He sent one to his Woodlawn Avenue address and one to Trevor’s Cycles, which he knew was hugely popular now. James thought maybe he’d spotted Wardell among the crowd, but maybe not. And the party was not Wardell’s style.

Still, one day, when James was through grieving for the way it used to be, maybe he’d stop by Trevor’s Cycles and call out, “Hey, Wardell, how’re you doing? Great! Great to see ya.”

The End