One

It was Monday, another soul-sucking, numbness-inducing day exactly like every other day, except for a single moment that ambushed Dooley like a pop quiz. Dooley didn’t like pop quizzes. He didn’t like surprises. This particular moment was like a pop quiz in his favorite subject, the kind of quiz where you think, hey, no problem. All you have to do is circle the right answer: A, B, C, or D. You whiz through it so fast and with so much confidence that you’re out of there before anyone else, convinced you aced it, until sometime in the space between when you downed your pencil and when you have that class again, it hits you: They were trick questions.

The day started like this:

He got up at seven after going to bed a mere six hours earlier because Kevin, the shit manager—shift manager—at the video store where he worked insisted that everyone—and that includes you, Dooley—close at least one weeknight every week. Closing meant nudging all the lingering customers out the door as soon as possible after midnight (Dooley still hadn’t figured out just how bored or desperate or just plain disorganized a person had to be to show up at a video store at five minutes to twelve in the first place) and then straightening the shelves and mopping the floors while the shift manager—usually, unfortunately, Kevin—counted the cash and prepped the bank deposit, which, in turn, meant not getting out of the store until twelve-thirty at the earliest—most nights it was more like a quarter to one—and that meant not getting home until sometime after one and having to unwind without being able to indulge in any of the fun unwinding activities that he used to enjoy. Big whoop.

After dragging himself out of bed, he went downstairs for breakfast. On a Monday morning, it was usually just Dooley and his uncle in the kitchen, unless Jeannie, his uncle’s friend—which is how Dooley’s uncle had introduced her to Dooley: friend, not girlfriend—had stayed over. If she had, then either Dooley had the kitchen to himself because his uncle was still upstairs with Jeannie, or he’d find her in the kitchen reading the business section of the newspaper (she owned and managed two ladies’ wear stores), her perfume mixing with the smell of coffee, while Dooley’s uncle tackled the local news, which consisted almost exclusively of crime stories (he was a retired cop). This morning, it had been just Dooley and his uncle, and his uncle had been in the same crappy mood he’d been in for the past couple of days. Dooley kept waiting for him to explain what he was so pissed off about, but so far he’d kept that to himself while he carped about everything and anything. Like: “When the hell are you going to return those library books? I thought you finished that assignment.”

Which was true. Dooley had finished it. And what a fun exercise it had been—one thousand riveting words about the causes of one of the dullest wars in history, the first big one.

“I’ll get to it,” Dooley said.

“When?” His uncle snapped the word at him. The guy should have been a reporter—his favorite words were who, what, when, where, and why (as in, Why the hell did you [fill in the blank with some dumb-ass thing Dooley had allegedly done]?).

“When I get a chance,” Dooley said.

“I saw the slip. They’re due tomorrow.”

“So I’ll take them back tomorrow.”

“Why don’t you take them back today? You’re done with them, aren’t you?”

“I said I’d take care of it,” Dooley said.

“You should have taken care of it yesterday. That’s when you handed in your assignment, correct?”

Jesus, it was like he was living with a cantankerous, semi-senile old granny instead of a supposedly on-the-ball uncle.

“I was working yesterday,” Dooley said. In fact, he’d done a double shift, taking one from Linelle because she’d asked him and because he owed her—which his uncle knew because he was worse than a probation officer the way he kept tabs on Dooley.

“Always with the excuses,” his uncle muttered.

Dooley looked across the table at him. His uncle was forty-nine years old, retired four years. He was a little shorter than Dooley and had more weight on him, but all of it was one hundred percent muscle. He wasn’t a cop anymore. He was a small-businessman, but that didn’t mean he’d let himself go. No, he ate right (except on poker night), worked out regularly—weights and cardio—and didn’t take shit from anyone, ever. He could be one scary dude. He could also, like now, be a major pain in the ass. Dooley could have explained to his uncle—again—that he wasn’t making excuses. He could have said, what’s the problem; the books aren’t even due yet. He could have told him, even if they were due, the fine is only thirty cents a day, and he could handle that easily; he had a job; that’s where he had been for six-and-a-half hours yesterday. He could have said, back the fuck off. But that wouldn’t have ended it. On the contrary, it would have been like trying to put out a smoldering fire with a can of kerosene. Besides, this wasn’t about a couple of library books. It wasn’t even about Dooley. It was about something that, so far, his uncle didn’t want to talk about. As Dooley’s therapist would have put it, it wasn’t Dooley’s monkey. So Dooley got up, rinsed his cereal bowl and put it into the dishwasher, and moved on to the next thrill of the day, which was:

School.

He hated school. He always had, even back when it consisted of finger painting and counting. He couldn’t figure out what use he would ever have for geometry or trigonometry or even, let’s be honest, French. He liked to read—when he was locked up that time, his uncle had brought him a book every time he came to visit, and Dooley had read them all. But he hated the reading they were assigned in school, always stuff they were supposed to learn a lesson from, the teacher always asking what the theme was, like that’s what people’s lives were about, instead of chance and mischance and good intentions gone all to hell. He only stuck with school because it was a condition they’d put on him when he was released, along with holding down a job, staying away from drugs, alcohol, weapons, and baseball bats, and attending regular counseling—all of which he did, finding, to his surprise, that going to school was the hardest to comply with. The school administration hadn’t been exactly delighted when his uncle had enrolled him. Mr. Rektor, the A-to-L vice-principal, did everything he could to encourage Dooley to pack it in. He probably would have liked nothing better than to see Dooley in trouble again. His teachers all knew about his past, even though they probably shouldn’t. One of them, a new female teacher who lived in the suburbs, had yet to make eye contact with him; a couple of times when he’d gone up to her desk to turn in an assignment, she had visibly cringed, as if she were afraid he was going to attack her. His history teacher was openly hostile to him. Dooley had lost count of the number of times the guy had been writing on the chalkboard, his back to the class, and someone had acted up, maybe stage-whispered some remark that made everyone laugh, and who did the teacher’s eyes go to when he whirled around to locate the troublemaker? Yup. Dooley. The only class he even remotely liked was phys. ed., and that was mostly because he could work off some of what he was feeling. The gym teacher was a tough old guy who looked like he might have been a drill sergeant. He yelled at all the guys, not just Dooley. It was like being back inside.

Worse than school was homework, and he was looking at a gigantic heap of it when he stepped outside again at three-twenty that afternoon. At least, that’s what he was looking at, at first. And then there it was—that pop-quiz moment. It wasn’t even multiple choice. It came down to A or B—pay attention to this or pay attention to that. It seemed dead easy.

He had just left school through one of the side doors when he saw a car pull up half a block away—a midnight blue Jag convertible with the top down, because it was an astonishingly warm day for early November and the sun was brilliant in the clear blue sky overhead. Dooley stopped short on the school steps, surprising the kid behind him, who rammed into him and swore at him: Why the fuck didn’t he watch where he was going? Dooley turned and, okay, there was no point in denying it, he got a kick out of way the snarl and bluster died on the kid’s face when he saw who he’d rammed into. He got even more of a kick out of the kid’s muttered apology. He turned from the kid to stare again at the Jag. Even at this distance he could see that the guy behind the wheel had more going for him than just the vehicle he was driving. He also had a haircut that looked like it was windproof. He’d probably paid a bundle for it so that it would lie down where it was supposed to, when it was supposed to, no matter what. His teeth were so white that they gleamed like a porcelain gash across the middle of his face when he flashed a smile at his passenger. The fact that he was driving a Jag meant that he was probably loaded—or, more likely, Daddy and Mommy were. Also—and this was where Dooley’s stomach did a backward double-gainer—he had the prettiest girl Dooley had ever seen sitting right up there beside him.

Beth.

Her head was turned to the driver, but Dooley would have recognized her even if she’d had her back to him and she was a full block away. He continued down the steps and onto the sidewalk. The driver of the car was saying something, and Beth was laughing. Dooley stepped back a pace so that he was out of sight while he tried to figure out what it all meant. What was Beth doing with that guy? Who the hell was he? What were they doing here?

Then, behind him, someone—a woman—said, “Excuse me” in a soft voice.

Dooley tore his eyes away from Beth and the guy with the porcelain mouth and turned toward the sound of the voice.

And there it was—suddenly he had two females claiming his attention, and all he had to do was pick one and let the other one go.

It was a no-brainer. He turned back to see what Beth was doing. He was aware of the soft voice behind him, but the blood was pounding so loudly in his ears that he couldn’t make out the words. He could barely feel his feet on the sidewalk, either. He was looking at the Jag but, from where he was standing now, all he could see was the front bumper and the hood. Beth hadn’t appeared yet. She must still be in the car with that guy. What was she doing?

He started toward the car, but found himself tugged backward and felt something—a slip of paper—being pressed into his hand. He glanced over his shoulder, annoyed. The voice speeded up, the words coming at him in a breathless rush, like the woman who was talking was afraid he was going to walk away before she finished whatever it was she had to say.

He heard a car door slam.

Beth stepped into sight down the block. Dooley caught his breath as he waited to read the expression on her face. She smiled. She seemed glad to see him. And, boy, he was always glad to see her. She had lively brown eyes, and hair the same color, only glossy. She had creamy white skin and full pink lips, and she was nice and slim.

He crumpled the slip of paper, let it fall to the ground, and started to walk away. Something closed on his arm again, and again he felt himself being hooked backward. The crumpled paper was pressed into his hand again. Jesus, what was the matter with her; why didn’t she leave him alone? He jerked his hand away and strode toward Beth, jamming the piece of paper into his pocket this time, thinking he would toss it later. His heart pounded. His eyes and thoughts were on Beth and only her. He wanted to throw his arms open and see if she would walk into them, but at the last minute he was afraid to, because what if she didn’t? She came straight to him and slipped her arms around his waist. He inhaled the familiar scent of her hair, her skin, the soap she used, the shampoo, and then, he couldn’t have stopped himself even if he’d wanted to, he kissed her and slid his arms around her and marveled, not for the first time, at how soft she was and how firm, too, underneath the long sweater she was wearing.

“Surprised to see me?” she said.

“Yeah,” Dooley said, and that was the truth. “You skipping school?” Beth went to a private school, girls only. She actually seemed to like it. She took school seriously, too. But her classes ended twenty-five minutes later than his, so there was no way she could be all the way down here so early, even if someone—Mr. Midnight Blue Jag—had given her a lift.

“There was a faculty meeting,” she said. “They let us out early, so I decided to surprise you.” She glanced around him. “Who were you were talking to?”

Dooley turned and saw that the woman was standing exactly where he had left her. He gave her a sharp look. Her eyes met his and a little smile played across her lips. She nodded almost imperceptibly before turning and walking away.

“Just some woman,” Dooley said.

“What did she want?”

“She was lost. She wanted directions,” Dooley said. He glanced at her again. She was a block away now, looking small and getting smaller with every step she took. “Who’s the guy in the Jag?”

Beth’s cheeks turned pink, like she’d been caught out.

“That’s Nevin,” she said.

“Nevin?” Who the hell was Nevin? Dooley had never heard the name before. And what kind of name was Nevin anyway? “Who’s he?”

“A guy I know. From school.”

“From school? I thought your school was girls only.”

“I don’t mean he goes to my school,” Beth said. “He’s on the debating team at his school.” Beth was on her school’s debating team. Dooley didn’t understand why. He didn’t understand why anyone would want to be on a debating team. But Beth said it gave her experience in public speaking and in thinking on her feet. She said they were important life skills, and it would be good for her to know how to do both things. “We debate all kinds of schools, Dooley, not just other girls’ schools. We debate boys’ schools, co-ed private schools, even public schools.”

“So, what, you know him pretty well?” Dooley said.

“I guess. His parents are friends of my parents—well, of my mom’s.” So she didn’t know him just from school. “You should see him in action.” Dooley bet he was really something, especially with that Jag. “He’s amazing. He wins almost every debate he enters. We get together sometimes and take each other on.”

“Take each other on?”

“We put a bunch of be-it-resolveds into a hat—you know, be it resolved that history is the academic branch of propaganda, or be it resolved that citizens should be required by law to vote—and then we debate them raw.”

“Raw?” He didn’t like the sound of that.

“That’s what Nevin calls it. It means without any preparation. I’ve learned a lot from him.”

He wondered why she’d never mentioned that before.

She’d never mentioned Nevin, either.

“This getting together and taking each other on,” he said.

“When does that happen?”

She shrugged. “Just whenever.”

“Do you do it at school?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes we do it at his place. Or my place.”

“Your place?”

She pulled away from him a little, and the warmth that her body had imprinted on him cooled almost instantly.

“You’re not jealous, are you, Dooley?” she said, frowning up at him. “He’s just someone I know. He gave me a lift, that’s all. I came over here to see you. I thought we could go to the library and do our homework together. How about it?”

Dooley’s chest, which had been so tight that he could hardly breathe when he’d seen Beth sitting in the Jag, slowly relaxed. He pulled Beth close and noticed right away that, as usual, she didn’t resist. Sometimes they held each other for what seemed like forever. It was the best feeling in the world, better even than being high. If there was something between her and Nevin, she would have been pulling away from him, wouldn’t she? He would have been able to feel it—wouldn’t he?

Then she did it. She wriggled free of him.

“So,” she said. “Are we on?”

Dooley reached into his pocket, feeling like a pathetic loser because now he had to do something that he bet Nevin never had to do. He had to call his uncle to ask—ask, for Christ’s sake—if he could go to the library because, as his uncle never tired of telling him, they had a deal. The deal was: Dooley went to school and then, unless he was scheduled to work, he went straight home. Any deviation from the deal required a phone call and the third degree.

He pulled out the cell phone that his uncle had finally agreed to let him have to replace the stupid pager that was all his uncle had allowed at first.

“Yeah,” Dooley said when his uncle asked him if he couldn’t just as easily do his homework at home, meaning where his uncle could call him on the home phone and know, when Dooley answered it, exactly where he was, whereas with a cell phone, well, who really knew where anyone was? “Yeah, I could do it at home. But I’m with Beth.”

Beth took the phone from him and, with a smile in her voice that outdid the one on her face, said, “Hi, Mr. McCormack.” She chatted with Dooley’s uncle for a minute and laughed and said, yes, she bet it was hard to get used to, before finally handing the phone back to Dooley. “He wants to talk to you again,” she said.

Dooley put the phone to his ear.

“You gonna at least return those books?” his uncle said.

Jesus. Dooley said goodbye and dropped his phone into his pocket.

“You just bet what’s hard to get used to?” he said to Beth.

“The thought of you in a library.”

Dooley started to say he didn’t know what was so hard about that. His uncle knew he went to the library; where did he think he’d gotten those library books he kept nagging Dooley to return? But he was interrupted when his cell phone rang again. He checked the display. J. Eccles.

Jeffie.

What the—?

Jeffie was never good news. But Dooley took the call anyway because Jeffie was one of those people, if you ignored him, he’d keep calling and calling until you finally found yourself answering just so you could tell him to leave you the fuck alone. The first thing he said to Jeffie was, “How did you get this number?”

“I heard where you were working,” Jeffie said. “There’s this girl there.” Dooley bet he was referring to Linelle. “I told her how long I’ve known you and some of the shit we did together—nothing you probably wouldn’t tell her yourself.” Uh-huh, Dooley thought. “Hey, is she with someone, because she sounds—”

“What do you want?” Dooley said.

He listened to what Jeffie had to say and then thought about his request while Jeffie moaned about how important it was and about the shit he’d be in, clear up to his mouth, maybe even over his head; he’d be drowning in it, if Dooley didn’t help him out.

“You owe me, Dooley,” Jeffie said. “If it hadn’t been for me, you would have ended up just like Tyler.”

Just like Tyler? No way, Dooley thought. But, yeah, he owed Jeffie. He owed him big-time.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay, I get the picture. I’ll see if I can get away.” Jeffie didn’t like the if part. Well, too bad for him. “I’ll do my best, but I can’t guarantee it,” Dooley said and then held the phone away from his ear—when it came to bitching and moaning, Jeffie was a champion.

“Can’t guarantee what?” Beth said when Dooley dropped his cell phone back into his pocket. “Who was that?”

“No one,” Dooley said. When she gave him a look— where had she heard that before?—he said, “Really, it’s nothing.” There were some things that it was better she didn’t know, especially if she was learning stuff from a guy named Nevin who drove a Jag.

“Oh,” she said. “Before I forget—I finally got my own cell phone.” She’d had a cell phone before, but her mother had paid for it and had got into the habit of borrowing it from time to time, which had led to a major screwup one time before Dooley realized what was going on. He’d punched in Beth’s number, had assumed the hello was hers, and had started in being cute—he thought. It turned out the hello had come from Beth’s mother, and she was not amused. “Here’s the number.” She wrote it down on a scrap of paper she tore from her school agenda. He put it in his pocket.

Five hours later, Dooley was dancing from foot to foot and wishing he was still with Beth, partly because there was nothing better than being with her, partly because, if he was with her, he wouldn’t be freezing his ass off down in this godforsaken ravine, and mostly (he hated to admit it) because if he was with her, it meant that Nevin couldn’t be. His hands were buried in the pockets of his jean jacket and he was thinking he should have put on something warmer. It had been bright and sunny after school, but then the air had started to change. A sheet of cloud had rolled across the sky like a tarp across stadium turf, signaling fun over. In the past couple of hours, it had turned bitingly cold. The wind whipped away the protective layer of warmth that came off Dooley’s body, leaving the dampness in the air to close in until he felt like he was encased in a film of ice. He looked around. Where the hell was Jeffie? On the phone, he’d told Dooley ten o’clock. It was twenty after already and Dooley was still waiting. And why had Jeffie insisted on this place? Why outdoors? Why not a nice, warm restaurant? Even a not-so-nice restaurant would have been fine, just so long as it was heated.

Dooley caught movement out of the corner of his eye and turned toward it. He tensed up immediately. There, fifteen or twenty meters away up the path, was an animal of some kind. A raccoon, maybe? No, a dog. Jesus, a big one, too, and it was coming Dooley’s way. He scanned the ravine for human life, specifically, a dog owner dangling a leash from one hand, but he didn’t see anyone. In Dooley’s experience, dogs in dark, out-of-the-way places were like people in dark, out-of-the-way places. You never knew what they were doing there or what they might do. But a dog with an owner and a leash—that was a different story. It was almost comforting. Well, most of the time it was. There was a guy who used to live in Dooley’s old neighborhood. He strutted around with a pair of fight-hungry pit bulls at the end of a couple of chains. There was nothing comforting about that.

Dooley averted his eyes from the dog and hoped it would change direction or walk on by. It didn’t. It stopped. Dooley ventured a quick peek. The dog was standing maybe ten meters up the path now, its eyes focused on Dooley, its body rigid. Dooley looked away quickly and forced himself 15 to breathe in and out at regular intervals. He tried to make like a tree or a rock, something immobile and uninteresting to a dog. Okay, so maybe a tree wasn’t the best idea.

The dog didn’t move. It didn’t come down the path toward Dooley, which was good, but it didn’t retreat either. It seemed to be studying Dooley. Goddamn Jeffie. Dooley would give him five more minutes, less if the dog so much as twitched in Dooley’s direction, and that was it. It had been a major pain in the ass to get here in the first place. His uncle had wanted to know where the hell he was going at nine-thirty on a school night. Yeah, well, Dooley had been prepared for that one.

“I’m going to drop off those library books you’ve been nagging me about.”

“The library’s closed.”

“They have a drop box. The books are due tomorrow. I don’t want to forget.”

“You told me you’d take care of it,” his uncle said.

“And I’m going to. Right now. What’s the matter? You don’t trust me?”

His uncle fixed him with that used-to-be-a-cop look of his that was supposed to tell Dooley that, no, as a matter of fact, he didn’t.

“Give me a break,” Dooley said. “I’m holding down a job. I’m going to school, and so far I’m passing everything. You gonna give me a hard time for the rest of my life?”

His uncle stuck with his cop look, but Dooley had been around him long enough by now to know that he wasn’t the one-hundred-percent tyrant that he worked hard at making himself out to be.

“I spent two-and-a-half hours in the library this afternoon writing an essay for English,” Dooley said.

“You couldn’t have returned the books then?”

“We were at the reference library. You can’t borrow books from there and you can’t return them there. Besides, my brain feels like it’s gonna explode. I thought I’d take a walk, clear my head, return the books. That’s all.”

“At nine-thirty at night?” his uncle said.

Boy, once a cop … “You want to come with me, hold my hand?” Dooley said.

“Yeah, and maybe keep you out of trouble?”

“Jesus,” Dooley said, starting to pull off his jacket. “Forget it, okay? I’ll do it after school tomorrow, if I remember.” He wrestled free of the jacket, tossed it onto the back of a chair, and turned to leave the room.

Worst case: Jeffie would have to wait a day.

“Where were you planning to walk?” his uncle said pretty much on schedule, which is to say, when Dooley was halfway down the hall on his way to the stairs. One thing (but probably not the main thing) that Dooley had learned over the past few months was that a little credibility goes a long way. When he had first come to live with his uncle, he’d had none. He’d been, in the eyes of his uncle, a fuckup—someone who had screwed up so much and sunk so low that he was going to have to both eat and shovel shit for an eternity, and smile while he was doing it, just to prove that he could take whatever the straight-and-narrow world chose to dish out to him. Well, he’d done that. He’d paid those almighty dues. He’d abided by each and every condition dictated by his uncle and the court. And he had not, repeat not, fallen into that major sinkhole a while back. He’d left that to the rich kid.

Dooley didn’t turn when his uncle asked him where he was planning to walk. He just glanced over his shoulder, like, what difference did it make now?

“I was going to go to the library and then walk around and get some air. If I’m not at school, I’m at work. If I’m not at work, I’m here.” Well, most of the time. Sometimes he got sprung. Sometimes he got to be with Beth.

And then there it was, that heavy sigh, the sweet sound of his uncle caving.

“Be back by eleven at the latest,” his uncle said, laying out terms so that it was clear who was in charge.

“Forget it,” Dooley said. “It’s not important.”

“Jesus, Ryan,” his uncle said, exasperated. That was one thing Dooley could always count on: The pinched look on his uncle’s face and the impatient snap in his voice every time Dooley didn’t do whatever his uncle had it in mind that he should do. “You want to take a walk and return those damned books, then do it. All I’m saying is, be back by eleven.”

“Well …” Dooley said, thinking it over. “Okay.”

Down in the ravine now, books safely deposited into the library’s drop box, Dooley eased his arm out slowly—he wasn’t making any sudden moves as long as that dog was still there—and glanced at his watch. The only way he was going to be home by eleven was if he started back no later than twenty to. But what was the point in waiting that long?

Jeffie had said ten. It was twenty-five after now—no, make that twenty-six-and-counting after. Fuck it.

“Dooley. Hey, Dooley!”

Dooley turned and saw a familiar figure scrambling down the path toward him. Jeffie, looking thinner and smaller than Dooley remembered, his baggy jeans so low on his hips that they looked like they were going to slide right off, his jacket—leather, Dooley noticed—unzipped, its cuffs half covering Jeffie’s hands. The dog saw him, too. It barked and growled. Jeffie stopped, bent down, picked up something—a rock?—and whipped it at the animal. He must have hit the mark, too, because the dog yelped and ran off in the other direction. Dooley shook his head.

“What if you’d pissed it off and it attacked you?” he said when Jeffie was close enough to hear him.

“Then I would have blasted it,” Jeffie said.

Whoa.

“You have a gun?” Dooley said. No way did he want to be around anyone who was armed. Not now. Not ever again.

“Relax,” Jeffie said. “It’s a figure of speech.” Dooley wasn’t sure that his English teacher would agree, but that was another difference between Dooley and Jeffie: Dooley had an English teacher. “You think I’d take a chance like that?”

Dooley didn’t know what to think. Except for a brief chance meeting on the street at the beginning of the summer, he hadn’t seen or spoken to Jeffie in a long time.

“Besides,” Jeffie said, “I showed him who’s boss, didn’t I?”

Right.

“What took you so long to get here?” Dooley said. “You said ten. It’s nearly ten-thirty.” His voice echoed a little down under the bridge where he was standing, and he was startled to hear how much he sounded like his uncle. Was that where he was headed?

“You know how Teresa can be,” Jeffie said.

“You still with her?” Dooley said, surprised. Teresa was small and dark and, when she was out in public with Jeffie, she came across as kind of cute and helpless. But Dooley had seen them alone together. Then she was always at Jeffie for something: Why hadn’t he remembered this, why hadn’t he done that, always sounding like she was mad at him for something, which made Dooley wonder why she stayed with Jeffie. She sure didn’t seem to like him much. More important, he couldn’t figure out why Jeffie put up with her and her constant carping.

“Yeah,” Jeffie said. “It’s okay, I guess. She keeps saying we’ve been together long enough, we should make it legal. And she’s been hinting around about a kid.” Dooley couldn’t figure how any of that fell into the category of okay. “She keeps telling me what a great father I’d be.”

Dooley tried to picture Jeffie soothing a baby who was teething or giving it a bottle, but couldn’t. For one thing, Jeffie was in the wrong line of work. Also, he was too impulsive. He’d get an idea to do something and, boom, off he’d go and do it without thinking about the stuff he was supposed to be doing in the first place. He wasn’t that bright, either. Mostly it was because he had a learning disability—Dooley knew a lot of guys like that. He’d heard somewhere that a high percentage of guys who got into trouble had either a learning disability or some kind of mental problem. Jeffie couldn’t spell for shit. He was a disaster at math. And his memory? Tell him a phone number or an address, and chances were he’d forget it within five minutes. Plus, he had no reference point, no idea what a father was, let alone a great one.

“You gonna do it?” Dooley said. “You gonna have a kid with her?”

“Are you crazy? I’m nineteen. Who wants a kid at nineteen?”

Dooley couldn’t think of a single person.

“What about you?” Jeffie said.

“What about me?”

“You with someone?”

Dooley didn’t answer. Jeffie was past tense. Beth was the present and, he hoped, the future. Jeffie didn’t push it. He had other things on his mind.

“I really appreciate it, Dooley,” he said. “You know I wouldn’t have asked, but—”

“What’s it for, Jeffie?”

Most of the time, Jeffie had a goofy-sweet expression on his face, like he was only catching about eighty percent of what was going on. But what you saw with Jeffie wasn’t always what you got. Jeffie was no genius, but he was no fool, either. Nor was he a pushover. Anger flashed in his eyes.

“What difference does it make?” he said.

“I want it back, that’s what,” Dooley said. “If you’re just gonna piss it away on some game—”

Jeffie bristled. When he was wearing his normal, befuddled expression, he looked harmless. Make him angry though, and you’d better watch out. But he didn’t scare

Dooley, who had worked out exactly how many hours he’d put in at the video store to earn what he was about to hand over to Jeffie.

“You’re good for it, right, Jeffie?” he said.

“I said I was, didn’t I?” Jeffie was trying to make himself as tall as Dooley. They locked eyes for a few seconds, Jeffie breathing hard at first and then, gradually, slowing it down, maybe figuring he’d better back off a little if he wanted Dooley to deliver. “One week, that’s all I’m asking,” he said. “There’s this guy, Dooley. He’s one of those downtown guys, you know, in one of those big towers. He has more money than he knows what to do with. He was looking for a connection. The guy could be a gold mine. He likes to party. Hey, and you know what? He reminds me of you.”

Right. Ryan Dooley, party animal. He wanted to tell Jeffie, I don’t do that anymore; I’ve cleaned up my life. But what were the chances that Jeffie would believe him?

“This guy,” Jeffie said. “If I deliver, I’m set.”

“So why do you need me?” Dooley said.

Jeffie shrugged, as if it was no big deal, but Dooley caught the shadow of fear in his eyes. “There’s this guy I owe. He’s insistent, you know? He doesn’t want to wait. If I tell him he’s got nothing to worry about, all he needs is to give me another couple of days, he’s gonna—”

“Okay, whatever,” Dooley said, cutting it short. He didn’t want to know what Jeffie was into. He just wanted to know that he wasn’t flushing hard-earned money down the toilet. “I need it back, that’s all I’m saying. Some people work for a living, Jeffie.”

“I hear some people even live with ex-cops and go to school regular,” Jeffie said, grinning at Dooley now, like, are you for real? “When are you up, Dooley? When are you gonna cut loose?” Meaning, when could Dooley go back to being Dooley? There were times—plenty of times—when Dooley thought about exactly that—when he would have the authorities off his case, when he could party again, when he could do all the things he used to do that made him forget all the crap in his life, that made him float, that took the sharp edges off, that made all the bullshit go away. If he wanted it, Jeffie could fix him up with something. It would be so easy.

“I’m out of that now,” Dooley said.

“Right,” Jeffie said, still grinning—see?—not believing him. Well, why would he? Why would anyone who had known Dooley then believe that he was different now? It irked him, though, to have put in all that time, to have done everything that he had these past few months, and then to come face-to-face with someone like Jeffie and realize that Jeffie didn’t see the difference. What was the point?

Dooley dug into his jeans pocket and pulled out the money he had withdrawn from the bank. It was a good thing—good for Jeffie—that he had called when he did because what he wanted was more than the daily limit that Dooley was allowed to withdraw from an ATM. Twenty minutes later, the bank would have been closed and Jeffie would have been out of luck. But because he’d called when he had, Dooley still had time. He’d told Beth he wouldn’t be long; he had to do an errand and he would meet her at the library. Then he’d gone and stood in a long line to get the money from one of two tellers working at a counter that had six teller stations. He held the money out to Jeffie now. Jeffie snatched it out of his hand, like he was afraid if he didn’t, Dooley would change his mind. He started to count it.

“Hey, fuck you,” Dooley said. Didn’t anyone trust anyone anymore?

“You have any idea what kind of shit storm I’ll be in if I’m short?” Jeffie said. He continued thumbing the bills. When he finished, he jammed the money into his pocket.

“You’re sure you’re good for it?” Dooley said.

“One hundred percent.”

“Because I can find you if I have to, Jeffie. You don’t want to mess me up over this, you really don’t. You got that?”

Jeffie grinned, but even in the darkness Dooley caught the uncertainty in his eyes as Jeffie remembered the Dooley he used to know. Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe it would give Jeffie the right incentive to pay him back.

“Don’t worry,” Jeffie said. “You’ll get your money. If you want, I’ll deliver it to your house.”

That was the last thing Dooley wanted.

“There’s a restaurant across the street from where I work,” he said. He told Jeffie where it was. “Meet me there on Monday, nine o’clock. That’s when I get my break.” He ignored Jeffie’s amused smirk and checked his watch. Unless he wanted to have to come up with excuses, which he knew his uncle would never buy, he had to get moving. “Monday night, Jeffie. Nine o’clock. Be there, okay?”

“Yeah, sure,” Jeffie said. “Don’t sweat it.”

“Jesus H. Murphy,” Dooley’s uncle said as he came into the kitchen the next morning. “Just because I own a dry-cleaning store”—in fact, he owned two—“that doesn’t make me head laundress around here. The hamper is overflowing. When was the last time the thought of laundry crossed your mind, Ryan?”

“I’ll get to it,” Dooley said.

“Yeah? Like you’re going to get to picking up the clothes all over your floor? There’s a closet in your room, in case you didn’t notice. A chest of drawers, too.”

Dooley gulped down the last of his orange juice and stood up.

“You still want me to come by the store after school?”

“What for?”

What for? Dooley shook his head. “You told me a hundred times last week you’re getting the offices painted.”

There were three offices at the back of his uncle’s original store—his uncle’s, the store manager’s, and the bookkeeper’s—all dingy and windowless. “You said you wanted me to move furniture for you.”

“I have to go downtown today.”

“How come?”

“I have a meeting with Larry.” Larry Quayle, his uncle’s financial advisor.

“I thought you met with him last week.” In fact, Dooley was sure of it. He had come down to breakfast one morning and found his uncle sitting at the kitchen table with a bunch of documents spread out in front of him. He’d been grousing about interest rates and the stock market.

His uncle gave him a sharp look. “You’re keeping tabs on me now?” he said.

Dooley rinsed his juice glass and set it in the dishwasher. Whatever had flown up his uncle’s nose, Dooley wished he’d snort it out soon.

“I gotta go,” he said. “I’m gonna be late. I’ll go by the store after school and move the furniture, okay?”

His uncle grunted.