Whitey thought fast. "No place."

"No place is right. Equipment stays here."

Whitey came forward, tossed the steel-tipped pole onto the truck bed. "No harm intended."

The guy just looked at him.

A bus drove up, number 62. He checked the social worker's handwritten instructions: his bus; it stopped a block from the halfway house. But Whitey didn't get on. Instead he set off toward a neon-lit intersection he could see in the distance, the kind of intersection where there might be liquor stores, bars, women. Whitey felt in his pocket. He had thirty bucks, plus four hundred and some in the bank account the social worker had helped him open the night before.

What would thirty bucks buy? A Pepsi, for starters. They hadn't had Pepsi inside, just Coke, and Pepsi was Whitey's drink. He went into the first convenience store he saw. "Wow," he said to himself, or maybe out loud. There was so much stuff. He went to the cooler at the back and found the Pepsi. They'd changed the design on the can. He liked the old one better. Had they fooled around with the taste as well? He remembered hearing something about that.

Whitey took a six-pack, went to the front of the store, laid it on the counter next to a cigar display. "With you in a sec," said a voice a few aisles away.

Whitey eyed the cigars. Weren't cigars in these days? He'd never smoked a cigar, not once in his whole goddamned life. Whitey glanced around. There was a video camera, but it hung loose from the ceiling, all askew. Whitey boosted the biggest cigar in the box, slipping it up his sleeve in the familiar motion of a man patting his hair in place.

The clerk appeared. "Anything else?" he said.

"Matches," said Whitey.

"Matches are free."

Whitey took two packs. "Thanks a bunch."

He walked another block toward the neon intersection, stopped, cracked open a Pepsi, tilted it up to his mouth. Christ, it was good, even better than he remembered. He swallowed half of it, then lit the cigar, filling his mouth with a thick ball of hot, wonderful smoke, slowly letting it out, curling through his lips. He was alive. Standing outside an electronics store-a banner on the window read: ARE YOU READY FOR HIGH DEFINATION?-Whitey sipped his Pepsi and puffed his cigar. A gorgeous weatherwoman on a big-screen TV was pointing at flashing thunderclaps on a map of some European country, France, maybe, or Germany. European weather: this was the big time. Whitey watched transfixed until he happened to notice the price sticker on the TV. And that was the sale price. He walked away.

Cigar in his mouth, the remaining five cans of Pepsi dangling from the empty plastic ring, Whitey reached the intersection. Liquor stores, yes. Bars, yes. Women, no. He went into Angie's Alligator Lounge and sat at the empty bar.

"What can I get you?" said the bartender.

Alcohol was out: halfway house rules. "What've you got?" said Whitey.

"What have I got?"

"Beer," said Whitey, first word that came to mind. "Narragansett." That had been his beer.

"Narragansett?"

"Bud, then."

The bartender served him a Bud. "Buck and a half."

Whitey gave him two bills, waved away the change, just waved it away with his cigar, very cool.

"I'll level with you," Whitey said. He waited for the bartender to say something or change the expression on his face. When none of that happened, he continued, "The truth is I been away for a while."

The bartender nodded. "Narragansett is kind of a collector's item."

"And a little company would be nice, you know?Someone to talk to," he added, but the bartender had already picked up the phone. He spoke into it quietly for a few moments, not looking at Whitey once, hung up. Less than a minute later, a woman walked through the front door, sat down beside Whitey; the bartender found something to do among the bottles. Whitey laughed, more like a giggle that he modulated at the end.

"What's funny?" said the woman.

Whitey took a hit off the cigar. "Inside you get shit," he said. "Out in the world all you got to do is ask." He turned to her. She was stunning. He could smell her. That was stunning, too. What sounds would she make, coming and coming? His mouth dried up.

She was watching him, squinting just a little, possibly from the cigar smoke, or maybe she'd forgotten her glasses. "You're the one wanted a date, right?"

Whitey swallowed. "A date," he said, liking the sound of that. "Yeah."

"You wanna finish your beer first?"

"Beer's a no-no."

She rose. He went with her to the back of the lounge and out a back door. "We're leaving?" Whitey said.

"Know what a liquor license costs?"

She led him into an alley, around a corner, and into a hotel. The sign said HOTEL, but there was no lobby, just a beefy guy behind bulletproof glass, his head on a desk. The woman went by it, up a flight of stairs-oh, following her ass up the stairs, that was something-into a room with a bed and a sink in it and nothing else.

"Mind washing off?" said the woman, nodding to the sink. "Can't be too careful these days." She was still stunning, despite the harsh strip lighting in the room. Her pimples or whatever they were didn't bother him at all, and he was used to that kind of lighting.

Whitey washed off. When he turned to her, she was sitting on the bed, yawning. " 'Scuse me," she said. "Okay. Suck is twenty-five, fuck is forty, suck and fuck fifty."

Whitey didn't know what to say, couldn't have spoken anyway, his mouth being so dry. He tried some calculations. Suck and fuck was clearly a deal, but fuck alone was what he wanted-to be deep inside her, to make her make those Melanie Griffith sounds-and all he had was thirty dollars, minus what he'd paid for the beer and the Pepsi. Christ! He couldn't even afford suck.

"But since you look like a nice guy," she said, breaking the silence, "I could maybe do you a little discount."

Whitey tried to say something, could not, put all his money, even the change, on the bed. She stared at it. He leaned over her, smoothed out the crumpled bills.

"Oh, hell," she said, scooping it all into her sparkle-covered purse, "let's not . . . what's the word? Starts with D."

Whitey didn't know. He just knew that he was going to get laid after all. The knowledge turned on a kind of buzzing inside him, a buzzing he hadn't heard for a long time, not since-but best not to think about that. He put his arms around the woman and pulled her close, knocking her head awkwardly against his belt buckle.

"Easy," she said. "Take your pants off."

But Whitey didn't have time for that; he made do with just pulling them down below his knees. Meanwhile the woman lay back on the bed, hiked up her skirt, pulled off her panties, and he saw that other sex, the lips and hair, all real, right there, as the buzzing grew louder. She stuffed the panties down the side of her boot. Whitey fell on her, shoved himself inside.

Not quite inside, perhaps against her thigh. She reached down between them, took his penis in her hand-"Dicker," she said, "that's the word I was looking for"-and guided him in.

"Oh, God," Whitey said, "oh my God." He thrust himself in and out, almost drowning in the buzz, about to come any second, when suddenly he remembered Melanie Griffith. Slow down, big guy, slow down, he told himself. He had to hear those female sounds. He slid his hand down her stomach, into the wetness, found her clit, or something, and started thrumming it back and forth, fast as he could.

"Knock it off," said the woman.

Whitey froze. His hard-on went droopy inside her, just like that. The buzzing stopped. In the silence he heard some little animal behind the wall. The woman made a hitching motion with her hips.

"You stupid bitch," Whitey said.

"Huh?"

Everything was going sour, like the last time. Where were the smart women? His needs were simple and this one was supposed to be a professional, for God's sake. It made Whitey so angry, he hit her, not hard, only the back of his hand against her pimply face.

Whitey realized almost right away that he had to make it up to her. "Okay, so we both made mistakes," he said. "Don't mean we can't-" But she writhed around under him and jabbed at a button on the wall that he hadn't noticed. "What's that about?" said Whitey. "Look, we were getting along pretty good there for a while. No reason we-"

The door burst open. All fucked up, like the last time, but things that hadn't happened before were happening now, like this beefy guy coming in with the baseball bat. But the panic inside Whitey was the same: a screaming gusher from deep in his chest, boiling up and spraying red in his brain. It took away visual continuity, leaving Whitey with a few strobe-lit impressions: the beefy guy going down, the bat now in his own hands, blood here and there, are you ready for high definition? And then he was out the door and in the street.

Whitey returned to the halfway house at 6:05, signed the clipboard. "Sorry I'm late," he said. "Got off at the wrong stop."

"Everyone does, first day," said the social worker. "But don't make it a habit."

"I brought you a Pepsi."

"That was thoughtful of you, Whitey. I've been going through your file. Seems you were quite the stickman up north."

Silence. "Stickman?"

"Isn't that the term? Hockey player. I don't really know the game."

"That was a long time ago."

"What I'm getting at, we're big on recreation here at New Horizons. Physical activity helps to take the edge off, if you know what I mean. Ever considered maybe getting into jogging, for instance?"

"I'll think about it," Whitey said.

"That's all we ask."

4.

Francie, in her bedroom, stripped off the heavy brown wrapping paper and had a good look at oh garden, my garden-the best kind of look, alone, private. She'd bought it on her way home from the office for $950, unable to resist, now that it was for Ned. The artist hadn't cared at all whether the buyer was Francie or the foundation. His only request had been for payment in cash. Francie hadn't anticipated that, but on reflection it suited her fine. Standing at the foot of her bed, with the painting propped up on the pillows, she liked it more than ever.

There was a knock at the door. She almost said "Who is it?" but who else could it have been?

"Dear? Are you awake?"

Francie slid the painting under the bed, kicked the wrapping paper in after. "What is it?" she said, thinking, dear?

"Can I come in? Into the matrimonial chamber?"

"It's not locked, Roger."

The door opened. Roger came in, wearing a Harvard-crested robe over his shirt and tie and carrying two tumblers. "You're in your nightie."

"I'm going to bed."

He sat down on the end of it, held out a tumbler. She noticed that his feet were bare; legs under the robe, bare, too. "Care for a drink?"

"Thank you, Roger," she said, laying it on the dresser. "But I'm a little tired."

He gave her a long look, as though he was trying to communicate some emotion. She had no idea what it could be. "Is something the matter?" she said.

He laughed, that single bark he'd been using for laughter the past year or so. "We haven't played tennis in some time, have we, Francie?"

"No." He hadn't played in years. But they'd met on a tennis court: Francie, on her college team; Roger, a few years out of Harvard, helping the coach after work. Francie was a good player, if not in Roger's class, but good enough so there were boxes of mixed-doubles trophies somewhere in the house. Had he come to set up a match? She almost laughed herself but lost the impulse when she saw him staring at her thighs.

Roger licked his lips. "I understand you know Sandy Cronin."

"We've met."

"I had breakfast with him today."

"How did it go?"

"Quite well." Roger took a sip from his glass, a sip that became a long drink. Silence. Then: "Do you know the word putz?"

"Yiddish for prick."

His eyes glazed at the word, or maybe the word coming from her mouth. What was going on? He touched her hand. "Let's go to bed."

That would have been her last guess. The perfect reply, the honest reply, came to her immediately: I'm a one-man woman, Roger. I don't sleep around.

"Is something funny?" Roger said. His hand was still touching hers, not holding it, just touching the back. An odd gesture-not friendly, not warm, not erotic.

"No."

"Sit down, Francie."

"Why?"

"Is that a lot to ask?"

She sat down. His hand covered hers, stroked slowly up her arm: a hard, horny hand, like that of a manual laborer, which Roger was not.

"Have you been drinking?" she said.

"That's not a very nice suggestion," said Roger. "And inaccurate. I'm feeling uxorious, if you must know."

His hand reached her shoulder, jerked quickly down, took possession of her breast. Francie recoiled, but he hung on to her nipple, manipulating it in various ways, as though hoping to stumble on some combination that would change her mood, like a safecracker fiddling with a lock.

"Roger, for God's sake." She tried to push him away. He fell on her-was much bigger and stronger-and as he did she noticed for the first time that although there wasn't a single white hair on his head, his nostrils were full of them. His Harvard robe fell open, his penis pressed against her, and at that moment-unbidden, ill-timed, insane-the image of Ned's penis appeared in her mind.

Roger's, almost a schematic in contrast, butted against her rigid body.

"Stop it now," she said. And then his mouth was on hers, his tongue probing. This wasn't him at all. She twisted her head, tried to roll away, but Roger got his hand under her ass, pulled her close, forcing his penis against her. At the same time, she felt his finger moving behind her.