"If you say you're good, I believe you."

We touched glasses and, moving in unison, drank, settled our pints carefully onto their coasters. I knew Danny had only told me a tiny portion of the past three years, but I'd heard enough to get the point. I knew the stuff that mattered.

"So have you talked to Mom and Dad?" I asked.

"No," Danny said. "I wanted to reach out to you first."

"Makes sense, I guess. You and I parted on better terms."

"We didn't part on any terms," Danny said. "I disappeared." He wrapped his hands around his glass. "I'd love to say it wasn't on purpose, but in a way it was. And it wasn't anything righteous like saving you from my sins. You just didn't fit into my life at the time, such as it was. No, that's not even true. I didn't need you again for anything after that night, so I forgot about you."

I sat back in the booth, hanging my head, picking again at the burned plastic and pouting like a little kid who'd got his feelings hurt. I couldn't help it. And it wasn't even like Danny was telling me anything I hadn't figured out a long time ago. But his words still stung. Didn't need me for anything? Maybe if he'd stuck with me he wouldn't have ended up under that bridge, or sweating it out in an interrogation room. But I'd hardly looked for him, either; I could've tried harder.

"Look, this is important," Danny said. "Disappearing was a shitty thing to do, especially to you."

"It was a shitty thing to do to all of us," I said.

"Yeah, but you hung on after Mom and Dad gave up. I owe you. I owe you a lot."

"I'm your brother, Danny. You don't owe me shit."

"Somehow, I knew you'd say that." He pushed his glass aside and leaned over the table.

"Sometimes, even now, I dream about that cop car, those red lights. It's never a good dream. I could've ruined your life that night."

"It would've ruined all our lives," I said. "Except for that cop's."

"My life was already ruined," Danny said. "I just didn't know it yet. And Tommy? He didn't last much longer after that. I'm sorry for that night. I'm sorry for it all, for all the bullshit. I'm gonna make it up to you."

"Forget it," I said.

"I'll never forget," Danny said. "I'm gonna pay you back and you can't stop me."

"How're you gonna repay me?" I asked. "You got a time machine?"

Danny leaned farther across the table. "There are some things on the horizon, certain opportunities. The answer has not yet revealed itself, but it will. And I intend to be hypervigilant.

We live, after all, in the Land of Opportunity."

"You could make your peace with Mom and Dad," I said. "I could help pave the way. That's an opportunity that's right in front of us."

Danny leaned back with his hand in the air, just like he'd done in the car. "All in good time. You first."

The bad news about Mom settled on the tip of my tongue.

"Him first what?" Al said, walking up to the table, drink in hand.

"Kids get to bed okay?" Danny asked.

Al nodded.

"You got kids, Al?" I asked.

He snorted, rocking back on his heels. "Me? Rug rats? Fuck that." He sniffed his empty glass. "I need another Crown. You guys?" Danny and I both had half a glass left. We shook him off. "Suit yourselves."

"What's his fuckin' problem?" I asked. "It wasn't that personal a question. You brought it up."

"It's got nothing to do with you," Danny said. "Trouble at work lately."

I pinched my nose. "Well, he oughta be more careful about changing diapers. Even all that cologne can't cover the smell."

Danny leaned out of the booth, checking Al's location, saw he was waiting at the bar. "Let's keep that between us. Al's kinda sensitive about certain things; he fancies himself a bit of a stud.

Thanks for not mentioning the hair."

Al finished half his Crown Royal on the way back to us. "This place sucks," he said, not even bothering to sit. "It's a goddamn sausage party. Let's get the fuck outta here."

"Danny and I used to hang out here all the time," I said.

Al raised his eyebrows at me, like I'd asked him a question he couldn't possibly answer.

"Whadda you think, Kev?" Danny asked. "You up for a little more action?"

I checked my watch. "I got school tomorrow, and a stack of papers to grade. I'm behind."

Al snorted and bulled his way toward the door.

"It's not even ten," Danny said. "C'mon. Anywhere you want. The city? Brooklyn?"

"I need to get some sleep," I said, rising from the booth.

Danny grabbed my elbow. "You need to get off this fucking island, is what you need. C'mon, man. We got the run of the capital of the free world. You worried about money? I got plenty for the both of us."

I jerked my elbow back, nailing the guy behind me right in the spine. He spun, his forearm soaked with his cocktail, jabbed two fingers into my chest.

"Yoooo, fucko. I'm standing here."

Apologies caught in my throat but before I could pick one and cough it out Danny appeared between us. The stranger's drink hit the floor. Danny had him by the wrist, bending it back at an awkward angle. Fucko's face went white and his eyes started to water.

"All my fault," Danny said, looking past Fucko to his friends. "My bad. Did you know you can make a man wet his pants by bending his wrist just the right way? Should I teach it to you?"

The poor bastard didn't know which question to answer. His friends had backed away from him.

He tried blinking away the tears in his eyes.

With his free hand, Danny reached a twenty-dollar bill over the guy's shoulder to one of his friends. "Again, sorry about the drink. Let me get the next two or three. Keep the change."

Danny released the guy and the two of us had a clear path to the door.

Across the street, Al had the car running at the bus stop.

"How bad did you hurt that guy?" I asked as we crossed Forest Avenue.

"He's not injured or anything," Danny said. "He'll be fine in the morning."

Danny had overreacted. The confrontation had been one of those accidental moments in a bar that usually went nowhere. But I didn't say anything. I felt too good about it. Without Danny there, I would've slunk away intimidated and embarrassed. Instead, I walked out of the bar with my head up and yet with no real damage done.

Danny pulled open the Charger's back door for me, propped his elbow on it.

"I don't usually do things like that," he said. "But then he put his hands on you . . ."

"No big deal," I said. "Listen, about tonight." I shrugged. "I got a life, you know?

Responsibilities. Call me Friday. I'm free all weekend."

"Understood," Danny said. "C'mon, we'll give you a ride home."

FOUR.

WHEN WE STOPPED OUTSIDE MY BUILDING AND I GOT OUT OF THE car Danny got out, too. He walked past me, around the back of the car and into the middle of the street, his frown trained on the corner. He gestured for me to join him out there. I stayed rooted on the sidewalk. A couple of the corner boys noticed him, rocking from side to side for a better look at him, their faces hidden beneath their hoods.

"Those hoppers out there every night?" Danny asked.

"Mostly," I said. "Forget it. It's nothing. I hardly even notice 'em anymore."

And I didn't want them noticing me. These were street corner dealers, armed, arrogant, and angry. A whole different breed from that guy in the bar, a half-buzzed bricklayer who probably hadn't been stepped to for real in fifteen years.

Al leaned his head out the car window, rolling his toothpick over his teeth. "Problem, D.?"

My knees went weak with relief when Danny walked my way, his head still turned to the corner.

The dealers got back to business, satisfied Danny wasn't a cop or a client.

"Cowards, every fucking one of them," Danny said. "Heroin?"

"Who knows? It's nothing. I get more trouble from the neighborhood strays."

We embraced on the sidewalk.

"Let's not make it another three years," Danny said.

"That's up to you, isn't it?" I said.

"Indeed," Danny said. "Friday, then? That's cool?"

"Definitely. Look, Danny, I should maybe stop by the folks' and tell them about this. Just to let them know you're not dead."

"Like they'd care."

"Give 'em a break," I said. "You broke their hearts."

Danny looked down at the sidewalk, scratching his chin. "I know. You're right. Feel them out for me, will ya?"

"Will do," I said.

Danny climbed back into the car and Al drove them away into the night, slowing a little as they turned the corner.

INSIDE MY APARTMENT BUILDING, I checked my mailbox. Empty. Same as when I walked out the door. I snatched empty beer cans off the apartment stairs on my way up. The lightbulb over the staircase flickered and went out when I hit the landing. I tossed the beer cans out the window and into the yard. In the dark, I climbed the last flight to my floor. I had no trouble finding my front door. It was hardly the first time that light had gone out.

My apartment was almost as dark as the hall. I hadn't left a single light burning. I hated coming home to the dark but I did it to myself all the time. I turned on all the lights in the apartment and got a beer from the fridge. The Budweiser tasted flat and thin after that Guinness. I flipped on the TV, but only made it through five channels before I got bored. I killed the living room lights and opened my balcony doors, the balcony itself about the size of a crooked bookshelf. Still, it beat sitting on the porch like a kid who'd locked himself out of the house.

Not that I ever did anything worth looking at, but I didn't like sitting in plain view of the whole block. Out on the balcony I could watch the nights go by in privacy and solitude. And I liked the idea of being able to see everyone else without them seeing me. I saw more than anybody probably knew.

Though it was long after dark and early October, the night breeze blew warm with the last heat of the extended Indian summer. The air tasted of the dirty harbor and car exhaust, but when I was ankle deep in the black slush of February, I'd remember this night as a free slice of Eden.

I tipped leftover rainwater out of my plastic chair and sat, throwing my feet over the railing, beer in my lap. With my left hand I reached up for the brown leaves of the hard-luck spider plant I'd hung by the door. Right down by the dirt, the leaves stayed green, but the life and the color never got very far. Danny's return to the land of the living inspired a lot of questions in me, but it put to bed the biggest, most important ones. Was he dead? Locked up? Was there any hope? I felt satisfied with the answers I had. Deeply satisfied. But my contentment didn't last.

Two teenaged boys broke off from the crew on the corner and sauntered up the street, shoving each other, yelling taunts at the neighborhood mutts that barked as they passed. One kid popped the other in the chest and darted up an unlit driveway. I lost sight of him. The other watched from the sidewalk, giggling, covering his mouth with his hands. Then I heard the first kid shaking and kicking the gate of a chain-link fence and the high, whiny howling of a dog driven to spasms of anger.

I felt guilty, like I always did when I sat there and did nothing while those same two punks tortured that poor dog. Like I often did after the ritual ended, I sat there wishing for a gun, all different kinds: a pistol, a rifle, a flare, or a speargun. Not to kill anyone, just to drill one of those kids in the thigh, teach him a lesson. I imagined Mrs. Hanson stepping onto the porch one night, cradling a big shotgun. Someone should stick up for that poor dog.

What I really wanted, though, was for Maxie to bust through that gate. Just once. Then we'd see how brave those boys really were, when there was no gate and no lock protecting them from those snapping, snarling jaws. Maxie was old and blind, but I believed in my heart that given the chance, he could still roll with the best of them.

When the porch light came on and the front door flew open, the kids took off down the street.

Maxie kept howling. Mrs. Hanson, an eighty-something widow in an orange housecoat, waving a spatula over her head, screamed at the boys from her porch as they wheeled around the far corner. Someone else on the block threatened to shoot that fucking mutt. Cursing, Mrs. Hanson went back inside. Moments later, I could hear her in the backyard, singing in Polish to her ancient German shepherd. The howling stopped. Maxie's collar jingled as he followed Mrs.

Hanson into the house.

The block stayed quiet after that, the corner boys working car after car without a sound. I sat staring at the numbers above Mrs. Hanson's front door. They commanded my attention more and more these days. 136. Across the island, the same numbers hung over my parents' door.

It shamed me to think it but Mrs. Hanson reminded me of my mother, not where Mom was but where she might be headed. Or maybe it was Maxie and his hopeless striking out at the darkness, his failure to get his teeth into what tortured him. I should've had the nerve to tell Danny. He'd want to know.

Early Alzheimer's, the doctors said, a tragedy but not unheard of. The disease would take its slow, sweet time. We'd have a few more years with her. It was their idea of good news. I could never decide if that was merciful or cruel. Her good days still far outnumbered her bad, but her bad days were awful. She'd wander the house like she still worked at the hospital, scolding my father for taking out his IV tubes and trying to help him from his chair to the bathroom. My father played along, holding his breath for the day she wouldn't come back to him. Who knew what he'd do then?

Staring at the shining skyline of Manhattan, I wondered where Danny was and what he was doing at that moment. It had nothing to do with the family. Probably holding court in some fancy uptown club I'd never heard of and would never see, shaking the ice in his club soda. It'd be just like Danny, making soda water look cooler than any fancy martini, leaving everyone else embarrassed at ordering something as mundane as a fifteen-dollar cocktail. He was probably surrounded by the cool friends he'd made before his conscience prodded him into coming to look for me. Weren't apologies part of those twelve-step programs addicts went into?

I leaned my elbows on the railing. That was a shitty way to think about him. He should have a chance to prove his sincerity about being family again. What did I have to lose? And if his return really was all about the apology, well then, that was the least I could do for him. Maybe that big talk about a big night out had been just that-talk. He could be home sleeping right now. I didn't think so, though. One of those distant lights probably shone right on him. I wondered again where he was and what he was doing.

And where would he go home to after his big night ended? I had a feeling he wasn't back on the island. But I didn't know for sure because I hadn't asked. Where did he live? What did he do?

Was he dating anyone? He hadn't offered any of that information. I watched a twinkling ferry cross the harbor on its way to Manhattan. Probably the eleven o'clock boat. I had to get up at six A.M. I poured the rest of my beer into the spider plant and went back inside.