I returned from an abortive lakefront writing session one morning to find a letter addressed to me in the mailbox. My heart stood still. I thought it was from Brennan, but didn't recognize the handwriting on the envelope. I got excited all over again when I saw the postage stamp and postmark from Suomi.

Hyvaa paivaa, Hitman!

Sorry I haven't written sooner, but Pops keeps dragging us someplace different in Scandinavia every day. Don't worry. Got you a postcard from every place that had one. I'm saving them until I can give them to you in person. We're in Finland, now. Went to the sauna earlier tonight, and, boy, was it embarra.s.sing! Had to be a hundred people in there, guys and girls, and most of them were our age. Everyone was looking at me, I swear. Don't know why. I was too petrified to have a b.o.n.e.r! I'll take the sauna over the Lab School, though. The only reasons I can think of to come back are to see you and Farrah again. Miss you both a lot. I'm hoping her parents will actually let us date, now that we're all gonna be seniors. Hope we're able to spend more time together, too. Thought about you every time I bought a postcard. Hope your summer is good and you're well. Tell Brennan I said 'G.o.d dag', too.

Love and hugs from the chilly land of naked white teenagers, Zane I sat on my bed and re-read Zane's letter until the dismal urge to cry pa.s.sed.

I thought about Brennan most every day and absolutely every night.

I was ashamed about the perverse satisfaction I felt, learning about Brennan's ostracism, but what mortified me most of all was the realization I could have used his (foolishly self-inflicted, I still believed) isolation to make peace between us.

I wasn't strong enough to be susceptible to that.

My August birthday arrived, to a fanfare of silence.

I had no reason to expect or even hope for a phone call from...well, anyone, but was miserable all the same when the morning went by without so much as a wrong number.

Uncle Alex took me to Old Town, a small enclave centered on Wells Street, just north of the Loop. When I was younger, the unkempt street was lined with dusty book stores and head shops, but now was re-gentrifying into an odd-ball collection of cafes and chic furniture stores. Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum somehow made it into the new decade. The candle shop, where you could buy scented bar soap or candles in such odd fragrances as Rain, Cloud, Narcissus, Venus, or Ocean, was shuttered. The triple-X movie theater was still there, too, but now was decorated with neon signs announcing films with all-male casts. I was too embarra.s.sed to look at it twice.

We had lunch at the Steak Joynt, with its horrific, time-honored decor of velvet flock wallpaper and black leather. The food remained excellent, however, with a salad bar that included fresh Sevruga caviar and Nova Scotia smoked salmon that melted on your tongue. Unc insisted we order a bottle of Veuve Cliquot champaign. The wine steward, old waitress, maitre'd, and two Latino busboys presented the bottle with seventeen candles taped to the side of the wine bucket, and sang "Happy Birthday" to a blushing me.

We kind of indulgently took a cab up there, but rode the bus back. It let us off near a VW Bug convertible that looked as if it were being held together by the blotches of grey bondo liberally decorating the white bodywork. The top was down, which, pretty much anywhere in the city, might result in someone boosting the radio, the gear shift, the visors, the ash-tray, or the seats themselves, if they were relatively intact (which these were, surprisingly). But the interior was all there, actually almost new, if unattended.

"Can you imagine how cold that thing gets in the winter?" Uncle Alex laughed. "A VW heater and a raggedy canvas top?"

"Slow enough to freeze right there on the road," I agreed, continuing to check out the car, which Id never seen near the building before.

"Why dont you get in and see if it fits, nephew?"

"Youre a bad role model, Unc."

Out of nowhere, I was goosed from behind. Zora appeared, grinning like a devil. She tossed me a set of car keys on a VW ring, and locked arms with Unc, enjoying the sight of my confusion.

"Now that you've got your license, you need a car. Now you've got one."

I knew Uncle Alex brought new dimension to the phrase 'impulse buyer, but this was intense, even for him. I was afraid to touch the car, thinking it might disappear and I would wake up, alone in my bed, again.

"Happy Birthday, brat."

I threw my arms around my uncle and held him tight. I hadn't done that since I was much younger, when we used to sing along with the radio commercials while driving through snowy Saint Paul: "Thirst things first, get yourself a Grain Belt, get yourself a Grain Belt today..."

"Now you listen..." He pulled back a few inches, but kept his perpetually paint-stained hands on my face. "That's a fun car if you know how to drive it. You're new behind the wheel, so take it easy for a while. Don't start driving like Bond until there's a few thousand miles behind you."

Zora pulled us apart and led me like an Israeli Army officer might to the driver's door, which she opened for me. The freshly scrubbed black vinyl smelled and felt great as I slid behind the wheel and started the asthmatic engine. The glove compartment was filled to the brim with soul ca.s.settes, still in their wrappers, obviously scored from the record store down the street.

My words were stifled with disbelief and joy. "Where should I go for my first ride?"

"Anywhere you want. Here's some cash." Uncle Alex handed me a wad of mostly singles. "Buy some spray paint, maybe."

"Hey! Is this some of my tuition money?"

Unc blushed while Zora cackled wickedly. "No, bubbala. That's safely tucked away so neither of you can pilfer it on your own. This," she said, patting the Bug as if it were a thoroughbred Lipizzaner, "is paid for by the enduring appeal of avant-garde landscaping."

Unc cleared his throat. "I packed a bag for you, too. It's in the trunk, er, up front, with a couple of new notebooks."

"Are you throwing me out?"

"No. But a drive should do you some good. School doesn't start for another two weeks, right? Plenty of time to have an adventure someplace." We smiled at each other. It was the greatest birthday present anyone ever got. "Just don't get arrested, don't wreck the car, and don't be out driving past midnight."

Zora added, "Lock the doors and maybe put up the top until you get to the expressway." They walked arm-in-arm toward the apartment building and waited for me to putter around the corner before they waved goodbye. Just like that.

I figured on reaching the Canadian border in four hours or so.

Pain? What pain?

The Interstate that connects Chicago to all points east pa.s.ses through a particularly unimpressive stretch of northern Indiana, which, because of vast overuse and poor Federal upkeep, remains a fragile choke point to the constant stream of traffic that is forced to use the route.

After I had sat in b.u.mper-to-b.u.mper gridlock for an hour, I threw the Bug into gear and wobbled down the gra.s.sy shoulder to the next exit. It took me another hour to side-street my way back into Illinois and to Chicago's far southern suburbs, where I hoped I could find someone to spend a few minutes of my birthday with.

n.o.body was home. n.o.body. I checked Brennan's house twice. Even the DeVere's nursery was closed.

And there I was, sitting in my new car, perfectly miserable and quite alone, having the uselessness of my birthday and the rest of my life stuffed down my throat.

Alone. Ah, that pain.

I had been hiding on my little unsafe balcony for over an hour. My legs and bare feet hung over the side of the concrete railing with my back pressed flat against the building. I glanced back and forth, watching the nighttime traffic motor along on South Sh.o.r.e Drive below. The air was warm, still, and muggy. The orange glow from the city's lights prevented me from seeing any stars.

Uncle Alex stepped out from my bedroom and sat down on the single canvas director's chair I kept on the balcony. He had a large snifter of bloodcurdling Portuguese Marsala in his hand. I guess that meant Zora had gone back to her aircraft hangar of a house near Northwestern, of which, she quipped, "they call the Harvard of the Midwest, and I call the Harvard of Evanston."

"That wasn't a very long ride." As if side-streeting through northern Indiana wasn't a long ride through a suburb of h.e.l.l.

"I wanted to go to Canada, but a couple of trucks killed themselves on I-94. I couldn't get through."

"Canada, huh?"

"I figured I could maybe reach Kingston by sundown, and head to Quebec tomorrow." Despite Uncle Alex's paratrooper view of life, I decided against telling him I had intended to keep going east, far beyond Quebec, until I reached the ocean.

"Well, at least in Quebec, it feels like you're in a different country."

"That's what I hoped."

"Try again in the morning."

"I don't think so. It won't help."

"Help what?"

"I'll still be alone." My voice took a bitter edge. Happy f.u.c.king Birthday.

"You're not alone." He waved me off and sipped his rot-gut.

The sound of the pa.s.sing traffic below took over as I didn't say anything for a few minutes. "That's what everyone tells me, but I still feel that way. All the time, it seems like."

"Then stop being alone. You have a choice, you know."

Unc made it sound so d.a.m.ned easy. "I didn't have a choice about Mom and Dad."

"You can choose to stop hurting about it."

"Why? Have you?"

"No. I probably never will. But I'm trying to keep on going, to wherever I'm headed to. Whether I get there or not, well, I don't know. At least I'm trying, though."

"And I'm not..." His logic humiliated me into sullen and self-absorbed quiet.

"Oh, you're trying, all right, but not to figure out how not to hurt over people you cant have back. Youre building some fortress around yourself, hiding behind all your music and your notebooks and all the being-a-teenager opera you take like some kind of drug. That's not the someplace you want to go, that's for sure."

Click.

I wasn't making a sound, but I was crying. Brennan had made fun of me once, after I blurted out how much I hated crying, how badly I felt when I did, and how much I despised how often I did. "Crying is a sign of strength," he said. "You're someone who's strong enough to hurt, and strong enough to show that hurt by crying." I thought he was full of s.h.i.t, Brennan and his metaphysical quasi-spiritualism.

Uncle Alex waited for me to stop the salt.w.a.ter before he continued. "I should know. I've been there, more than once."

"How alone have you been, carrying on all these years?"

He chortled at me. "Im alone every time I look at a blank canvas. I look in the mirror into my own eyes, remembering people and places that have gone away, all the hundreds of things I didn't do very well, or never did at all. Most people call it getting old."

"You're no old man, Uncle Alex."

"Okay, then, call it aging."

We repeated one of his pet phrases together. "Everyone ages. Only old people get old." We laughed together, too.

"I'm not pretending to know a lot about anything - "

"Unc, you're one of the smartest people I know."

"Three divorces and counting. Yep. I sure am smart."

"You're not any good at being married. So what?"

"Exactly! So f.u.c.king what? So what if the world isn't nice to you? It's not nice to anyone. So what if your wives turn out to be creatures from the Black Lagoon? Go out and get new ones."

"What are you, the Sultan of Constantinople? The guy who always tells me the only way to make something happen or keep anything worthwhile is through sustained effort?"

"And it is the only way," he said. "The bottom line is that, when something goes wrong, make it go right, and if you can't, not won't or don't, but can't, then hit the silk. Get on up and get away. Move the f.u.c.k on."

"I don't want to, alone." Did Nicolasha feel this alone, I wondered? Is this what I did to Felix, make him feel like he was the last man on Earth? Whether he deserved it or not, remorse blocked up my heart, tasting what I had so easily dished out to that absent friend. Was he sitting all alone, over a thousand miles away?

Uncle Alex stood up and put his hand over my eyes. "Sit back and take a deep breath." I did. "Clear your mind of everything." Sure. "Now, close your eyes and try to relax. Is your mind clear?" I lied with a nod. "Good. I'm going to ask you a question, and I want you to say the first thing that comes into your mind. Don't think about it, and don't try and come up with something you think I want to hear, or you ought to say. Answer immediately." I nodded again. "Fine. It's the day after your birthday. If you could have one wish, for anything in the world, what would you want?"

I took a deep breath and opened my eyes. "I want Mom and Dad back."

"You can't. G.o.d has them, now."

"Do you believe that?"

"It makes it easier when you try to. Next wish." He snapped his fingers, and I closed my eyes again.

"I don't want to be alone, anymore."

"Too vague. Be more specific." His fingers snapped once more, and I took another deep breath.

"I want to be friends with Brennan again." I opened my eyes and looked at the sky. I may not have been able to see them, but there were stars, somewhere up there. That was my wish, first star I see tonight.

"Out of all the things you could have in the world, that's all you want?"

Thats all? Resentfully, I decided to jump into the far end of an ocean I suddenly wasn't afraid of. I didn't know how cold the water was, or care how deep the waves were. (Spoken like someone who grew up swimming in pools, not not oceans.) But I did know someone was already in that ocean, and was hopefully was still waiting there for me. "Yes. l love him."

Uncle Alex's eyes lowered for a moment. He knocked back a gulp of his revolting red wine, swallowed loudly, and shot me an Oh, well, why not? look. "So, go find a star up there and make your wish."

X X I I.

If thou rememb'rest not the slightest folly

That ever love did make thee run into, Thou hast not loved.