"You know us veterans," said Walters, snapping shut the hinged lid of his lighter. "Marlboro reds and Zippos. We never go anywhere without 'em."

"Vanity Fair did a piece on the Zippo lighter," offered Karras, "and its place in American society relative to Vietnam." did a piece on the Zippo lighter," offered Karras, "and its place in American society relative to Vietnam."

"Here it comes," said Thomas Wilson. "'Relative to Vietnam.' Now the professor's gonna explain to us unwashed types what it all means."

Karras had been, among other things, an American lit instructor in his past life. He had mistakenly mentioned it to Wilson and Walters one night over beers at the Brew Hause.

"Give it a rest, guys," said Stephanie, trying to head off the inevitable.

But Karras said, "I could bring in the magazine for you, Thomas. If you didn't want to take the time to read it you could just, I don't know, look at all the pretty models and dream."

"Look at 'em and yawn, you mean. I've seen those gray girls you're talking about. Clothes look like they been draped over a wire hanger and s.h.i.t. Naw, you can keep your Caucasian junkies, Dimitri. And anyway, you know I prefer women with a little back on 'em."

"Yeah, but what do they think of you?"

Karras smirked at the glimmer in Wilson's eyes. Wilson liked to try and shock the group - play their idea of the street spade if he could get away with it. Karras didn't let him get away with it.

Walters pushed up the bill on his faded Orioles cap - just the bird, no script - and scratched his graying beard. He was barrel-chested gone heavy, but he carried the weight on a broad back.

"So what'd the article say, Dimitri?" said Walters.

"It talked about how the soldiers used to have all these sayings engraved on their lighters.'Born to Die,' like that. How the GIs were very attached to those lighters."

"I used mine," said Walters, "to burn villages. I must have torched at least a dozen like that. You could set a really good fire to those straw roofs they had. That article say anything about that?"

"It did say something, now that you mention it."

"Course they do know a lot about Vietnam - in New York."

"I mentioned your smoking," said Stephanie, "because, I don't know, usually in these kinds of groups it seems like everybody smokes. Right, Dimitri? It's unusual that it's only you who lights up, Bernie."

"Yeah, that's true." Karras thought of his old rehab group, where he had met Lisa. "I was never a smoker myself. But I used to come out of my old group wanting to just throw my stinking clothes away."

"The reason I thought of it," said Stephanie, "was that my husband was in GA for a while. You know, Gamblers Anonymous. I ever tell you guys that? Steve used to come home and say that everyone there smoked but him."

Karras shifted in his seat. This part - the first mention of the spouse, or the best friend, or the son - invariably made him uncomfortable. And Stephanie seemed to be the one who always kicked it off.

"What'd Steve like?" said Walters. "The ponies?"

"He liked any kind of action," said Stephanie, "and May's was a place where you could always place a bet. Numbers, the over-under, horses... Steve liked it all."

"So what sent him into GA?" said Wilson. "Must have been one special time where he hit the bottom, right? Always is."

Stephanie pushed a strand of her shoulder-length chestnut hair behind her ear. Karras liked to watch her do that; she was not a small woman, but her movements were graceful. And she had nice hands.

"It was this one weekend over the holidays. Must have been the Christmas of ninety-three. Steve had lost a bundle on the weekend NFL play-off games, and then a couple hundred more on some college basketball game that same day. We had a family get-together that night, Steve's mother was there - this was the year before she pa.s.sed away - and Steve got a little looped on whiskey. Steve did like his Crown Royal."

Wilson chuckled. "Charlie used to tell me, 'We got this bartender, every night after he closes down the place, he dims the lights and pours himself a drink - only one - out of this pretty-a.s.s bottle he keeps up on the top shelf."

"That was his routine." Stephanie smiled. "Anyway, that night, it must have been midnight or so, Steve was really loaded. He got on the kitchen phone with his bookie and tried to place a bet, letting him know that he was good for the losses he had taken that afternoon. Well, this bookie wasn't having any of it. Steve blew his cool, started screaming at the guy over the phone. Then Steve glanced over and saw his mother sitting at the kitchen table, looking at him with something close to disgust in her eyes. And Steve did look like h.e.l.l that night - sweaty and red faced from the drink. I guess his mother shamed him with that look of hers. On Monday morning he made a phone call and got himself into GA. And he never gambled again. He was stronger than I thought he would be. He surprised me."

"Those programs work," said Walters, keeping it going. "Surrendering your will to a higher power. I'm telling you, it does the trick."

Thomas Wilson looked over at Karras, who wore a frown of agitation. Wilson believed in G.o.d himself. And he had real affection for Bernie Walters. But Bernie never had the good sense to give that bulls.h.i.t a rest.

"Ah, come on," said Karras. "G.o.d didn't help me kick cocaine. It was the love of a woman. It was living, breathing flesh. I fell for Lisa and decided that I wanted to sleep next to her for the rest of my life. That to do that, I needed to live. And then, when Jimmy was born, there wasn't any question. I never even thought about c.o.ke again. But G.o.d? Gimme a break."

"Where were we?" said Walters.

Stephanie tried to catch Karras's eye, but he was staring ahead. Picturing his son alive, Stephanie knew. She'd come to recognize that empty gaze of Karras's face. Wilson looked at a spot on the floor between his feet and patted the shaved sides of his face.

"Smoking," said Karras. "Tonight's theme."

"Right," said Wilson. "All right, here's something. I can remember the first time me and my boy Charles bought a pack of cigarettes. At the Geranium Market, up on the corner of Georgia and Geranium Avenue?"

"That place is still there," said Karras.

Wilson nodded. "I don't know who runs it now. But back then this Jewish guy had it. Man by the name of Schweitz. Yeah, kind old guy. I told Mr. Schweitz the smokes were for my moms. He was friendly with my mother and he knew my mother didn't smoke. He sold them to us anyway, though. Probably knew we'd get turned off by it right quick. And did we ever. We took that pack of Kools - had had to be double O's 'cause we to be double O's 'cause we knew knew that all the bad brothers smoked those - over to Fort Stevens Park, and don't you know we smoked them right after the other. I can still picture Charles, taking a pull off that stick, trying to blow rings, checking it out, lookin' all cross-eyed and s.h.i.t.... d.a.m.n, what was that, almost twenty-five years ago? Anyway, right about then, both of us got sick. You should've seen Charlie, huggin' one of those Civil War cannons they have over at the fort." that all the bad brothers smoked those - over to Fort Stevens Park, and don't you know we smoked them right after the other. I can still picture Charles, taking a pull off that stick, trying to blow rings, checking it out, lookin' all cross-eyed and s.h.i.t.... d.a.m.n, what was that, almost twenty-five years ago? Anyway, right about then, both of us got sick. You should've seen Charlie, huggin' one of those Civil War cannons they have over at the fort."

"Bet you never smoked again," said Walters.

"Charles never did. But I did. See, I was never as smart as Charles. When I came back to D.C. after being away for a few years and Charles saw me lightin' up, he wouldn't let up on me, calling me a fool and everything else he could think of in front of the ladies. I stopped smoking soon after." Wilson cleared his throat. "Charles always did look out for me like that."

"It's good to remember it," said Walters. "That your friend loved you, I mean."

"Yeah, we were like kin." Wilson sat up straight. "Bernie?"

"Let me think." Bernie Walters tapped ash off his cigarette. "Right. The first time I caught Vance smoking was at this dance he was in charge of when he was in junior high. I don't know what he had to do with it, exactly. He liked to put that kind of stuff on - do the promotion, decorate the gym, all that. I went to pick him up, and I saw him standing outside with a couple of his friends. They were pa.s.sing a b.u.t.t back and forth. I got p.i.s.sed off, not because he was smoking but because of the way he looked with that cigarette. He was holding it up, pitchfork style, the way some women do. I guess he was trying to be... what do you call that, Professor?"

"Cosmopolitan," said Karras.

"Right, like that magazine. So when I came up on the group, he knew he was busted. He took me aside and asked me not to yell at him right there in front of his friends. Well, I gave him that much. But on the way home I really let him have it. Told him he looked like a d.a.m.n girl, smoking that cigarette." Walters regarded the Marlboro between his fingers. "It was dark in that car, but I could see the tears come into his eyes. It hurt him so much for me to call him a girl. Not that he was confused. He knew who he was, even then. No, that wasn't the problem; the problem was me. me. If I could have shown just a little understanding, it wouldn't have been so rough on him, growing up the way he did. h.e.l.l, he didn't even like cigarettes. The only reason he tried smoking at all was because I smoked. He thought... I mean, can you imagine what was going on in his head to do something like that? To smoke a cigarette to try and please your dad? You all ever hear of such a thing?" If I could have shown just a little understanding, it wouldn't have been so rough on him, growing up the way he did. h.e.l.l, he didn't even like cigarettes. The only reason he tried smoking at all was because I smoked. He thought... I mean, can you imagine what was going on in his head to do something like that? To smoke a cigarette to try and please your dad? You all ever hear of such a thing?"

"The two of you got a lot of things straight before he died," said Stephanie. "Don't forget that."

"We got some things straight," said Walters.

For a while no one said a thing. Then Wilson said, "Dimitri?"

"Yeah."

"Your turn, man."

"My son was just five years old when he was murdered," said Karras. "So forgive me if I don't have any smoking stories for you tonight. But if I think of any, I'll let you know."

FIVE.

FRANK FARROW TOOK the last dinner plate from a gray bus tray and used an icing wand to sc.r.a.pe what was left of a rich man's lunch into the garbage receptacle by his side. He fitted the plate onto a stack of them and set the load down into the steaming hot water of the soak sink in front of him. He used the overhead hose to rinse off the bus tray and dropped the empty tray onto the floor, where the boy would come and pick it up. the last dinner plate from a gray bus tray and used an icing wand to sc.r.a.pe what was left of a rich man's lunch into the garbage receptacle by his side. He fitted the plate onto a stack of them and set the load down into the steaming hot water of the soak sink in front of him. He used the overhead hose to rinse off the bus tray and dropped the empty tray onto the floor, where the boy would come and pick it up.

Farrow had dumped silverware into a plastic container called a third. He dripped liquid detergent into the third, filled the container with hot water, and capped it tightly with a plastic lid. He shook the third vigorously for about a minute, then drained the container of suds and rinsed it out. The silverware was clean.

Farrow grabbed the bottle of Sam Adams he had placed on the ledge over the sink. Grace, the waitress with the howitzers, had brought the beer in to him after lunch, told him it was on her for the good job he had done "turning those dishes" during the rush. He watched her wiggle her a.s.s as she walked out of the dishwasher's room, and he whistled under his breath, because that was what she wanted him to do.

He looked into the brownish water of the sink. The plates could soak for a while. He decided to go out back and have himself a smoke.

He s.n.a.t.c.hed his cigarettes off a high shelf, took his beer, and went to the doorway leading to the kitchen. Bobby, the f.a.ggoty young chef who called himself an artist, was boning a salmon on a wooden cutting block. He was gesturing broadly with his hands, describing the process to an apprentice, a kid from the local college who was struggling to stay interested. The other kitchen help, black guys from the north side of town, were walking around behind Jamie the Artist, their hands on their hips, their white hats cool-c.o.c.ked on their heads, elaborately mouthing his words in mimicry, pa.s.sing each other, giving each other skin.

Farrow stood in the doorway watching them with amus.e.m.e.nt. When Bobby looked up, Farrow said, "Dishes are soaking. I'll be out back, catching a weed."

"Okay, Larry," said Bobby with a wave of his hand.

Larry. That's what they called Farrow in this town.

There was a small alleyway off the back of the kitchen. The owners of the hotel had erected latticework along the edge of the alley's red bricks. A piece of lattice above, thin with grapevine, completed the camouflage and hid the alleyway from the guests of the hotel who liked to stroll in the adjacent courtyard.

Farrow stood out here on his breaks, smoking, peering through the gaps in the lattice, watching the guests walk in the courtyard, silently laughing at them, thoroughly hating them. Well-to-do white people. There wasn't anything more pathetic. Khaki pants, Ba.s.s Weejuns, outdoor gear, sweaters tied around the neck for those days when the weather was on the warm side but "unpredictable." They had come down here with their spouses for an overnight at the "quaint" bed-and-breakfast. They'd go "antiquing" around the town, have a nice dinner, wrestle for a couple of minutes in the four-poster bed, go home the next day just as sad and unsatisfied as when they arrived. The point was, they could tell their friends they had spent a quiet weekend on the Eastern Sh.o.r.e. Farrow guessed it was all about making some kind of statement.

He'd look at the husbands, stepping out of the elevator of the Royal Hotel on their way to the dining room, their hands just touching the round backs of their shapeless, overweight wives, and he'd see boredom in their eyes, and something like contained desperation. For them, it had come down to this: They had to spend two, three hundred a night, and drive two hours from the city, just to f.u.c.k a woman they no longer desired to f.u.c.k. When all the time they'd rather be getting their d.i.c.k yanked by some stocky Korean woman in a ma.s.sage parlor for forty bucks.

Then there were the husbands with their trophy wives. These men thought that people looked at them with envy. But the truth was, people looked at them and imagined wrinkled, bony old men struggling to stay hard inside of luscious young women.

Well, that was their problem, not his. But it was funny just the same.

He took a swig of his beer. The day was cold but not bitter. It felt good to be away from the heat of the sink.

Here in Edwardtown he was known as slow-witted Larry. Larry with the black-framed gla.s.ses who never met their eyes. Who had gotten the job on the recommendation of Mr. Toomey, the electrician who serviced the Royal Hotel. Larry had never even filled out an employment form.

"I'll work for half pay if you give me cash money under the table," said Larry to his boss, Harraway. Larry looked down at his own shoes, chuckled in a humble, homespun way, and said, "Had a little trouble once with the IRS, you understand, and they're aimin' to take most everything I earn for the rest of my life."

"We can do that," said Harraway. "I'm no fan of the government myself."

Farrow had been down here in Edwardtown, a small Maryland city thirty miles south of Delaware on the Edward River, for two and a half years. A liberal arts college sat on the northeast corner of the city limits. Outside of town, farmers rotated soybean and corn while their wives worked at the local Wal-Mart, and crabmen made a modest living on the river.

The north end of town housed blacks and poor whites. The south end - nineteenth-century clapboard row houses on narrow cobblestone streets - meant old white money clamped in rigor-mortised fists. The Royal Hotel was on High Street, one block away from the river. As in every small town in the country, High Street was the area where the landed gentry had always resided.

This was the kind of people Farrow hated most. Strange that he would be down here now, washing their dishes.

This was only temporary, though, and when he thought about it rationally, Edwardtown had been the perfect place for him to lie low. But now, he felt, it was time to make a move.

He hotboxed his smoke and dropped it on the bricks. He crushed the b.u.t.t beneath his boot.

Farrow drove the hopped-up Taurus up High Street, took Kent Boulevard over along the campus, where that famous 1960s novelist had tenure. Farrow spent much of his free time in the campus library, which stocked a good deal of worthy fiction. He had read one of the famous writer's early novels and had once seen him, a small bald man with tortoisesh.e.l.l eyegla.s.ses, crossing the library floor. He had enjoyed the man's book but felt in the end that the writer had been holding back, had not gone far enough into that black rotted place that surely would have existed in his lead character's mind.

In the end, the writer had been afraid. In general, thought Farrow, that was the flaw in most people, a timidity that separated them from those who were strong. They used their idea of Goodness and Love as an excuse for living a life of weakness. People were afraid to go to that black place and use it when the time came, or even admit that it was there. To be powerful and free while on this earth, and to stay alive as long as possible, these were Farrow's goals. In death there was only the equality of failure.

Farrow hit the interstate, open country on either side. He pa.s.sed farmland with flocks of gulls resting in the icy pockets of plow lines. Ahead, the straightaway lay clear and stretched for a quarter mile. He downshifted the Ford to second, redlined it, caught air at the peak of a grade, slammed the shifter into third as the wheels touched asphalt. Manuel had been right about the Ford: It could really fly.

SIX.

ROMAN OTIS STEPPED up onstage. There were just a few people in the late-afternoon crowd, sitting at the bar. The joint was down on the east end of Sunset, just past Fountain, one of those places that served Tex-Mex as an afterthought. The sign said El Rancho, but in his mind Otis called the place El Roacho because he had seen plenty of them crawling the brick walls. No, he'd never eat the food at El Roacho, but they did have a nice karaoke machine set up with a premium sound system, and that was why he came. Otis had slipped the owner a few bucks to buy the tapes of some of those old ballads and midtempo tunes he loved so much. up onstage. There were just a few people in the late-afternoon crowd, sitting at the bar. The joint was down on the east end of Sunset, just past Fountain, one of those places that served Tex-Mex as an afterthought. The sign said El Rancho, but in his mind Otis called the place El Roacho because he had seen plenty of them crawling the brick walls. No, he'd never eat the food at El Roacho, but they did have a nice karaoke machine set up with a premium sound system, and that was why he came. Otis had slipped the owner a few bucks to buy the tapes of some of those old ballads and midtempo tunes he loved so much.

Past the stage lights that shone in his eyes, Otis could make out silhouettes at the bar, a couple of Chicanos and a woman named Darcia, nice-lookin' woman with a fat onion on her, who had come in to hear him sing. At the end of the bar sat Gus Lavonicus, top-heavy and kind of leaning to the side, with that cinder-block-of-flesh-looking head of his. Otis would be done in a few minutes, and Gus could have waited outside in the Lincoln. But Gus was a thoughtful kind of guy who liked to support Otis whenever he performed. Otis felt it was a d.a.m.n shame that his sister and Gus weren't getting along.

The music track began. Otis closed his eyes as his cue for the first verse neared, and then he jumped in. He kept time with his hand against his thigh, kept his other hand free to gesture along with the music. He thought of it as a kind of punctuation, what he liked to call his "hand expressions." This would have been his signature as a performer had his life gone the other way. But it hadn't gone the other way, and to get negative about that now went against his principles of positivity. He was fulfilled, in his own small way, just singing in places like this when he got the chance.

"So very hard to go," sang Otis, "'cause I love you sooooo..."

Yeah, this was a good one. He sounded right, stretching out and bending those vowels against the Tower of Power horn section. This here was one of his favorites, had inspired him to get the custom-made "Back to Oakland" ID bracelet he wore.

"Thanks, y'all," said Otis as the music ended, Gus and Darcia's applause filling the dead air. "I appreciate it. I truly do."

Otis stepped down off the stage and went to the bar. He put his car keys down in front of Lavonicus.

"Go ahead and get the Mark warmed up, Gus," said Otis. "I'm right behind you, man."

"You sounded good, bro," said Lavonicus.

Lavonicus got off his stool, uncoiling to his full seven feet. He ducked his head to avoid a Budweiser mobile suspended from the ceiling as he turned. One of the Mexicans nudged the other as Lavonicus pa.s.sed.

Otis pushed his long hair back off his shoulders, rubber-banded it in a tail. He said to Darcia, "Get up, baby. Let me have a look at what you got."

Darcia stood up, smiled shyly, struck a pose. She wore cinnamon slacks with a matching top.

"Now turn around," said Otis, and as she did, Otis nodded his head and said, "Yeah," and "Uh-huh."

"You like the way I look, Roman?"

"Baby, you know I do."

"We gonna see each other tonight?"

"Wished I could, but I can't. Gonna be out of town for a few weeks, I expect. But when I get back we're gonna hook up, hear? Maybe I let you cook me a nice meal. Afterwards..." He leaned forward and whispered in her ear. She giggled as he brushed a hand across her hip.

"For real?" she said.

"I'm gonna get a nut in you real real good, baby. I wouldn't lie." good, baby. I wouldn't lie."