"Disappear," he says.

"I'm right here. This is Manfred," I say.

"Nice to meet you . . . Manfred," Brady says. "C'mon, we're getting breakfast," he says to me.

"I thought you were sleeping," I say.

"I was, but when I woke up and realized that you left, I couldn't sleep anymore. God only knows what trouble you'd get into."

"Well, I look forward to chatting some more," Manfred says as Brady pulls me off.

"Wait!" I say. "What about the lyrics?"

Manfred cocks his head and gives me a sly wink. "That's the fun of it," he says. "It's open to interpretation."

"What?" I say to Manfred, but Brady's pull on my arm is too strong. I mean, really. He's almost yanking the thing out of its socket.

"Do you know who that was?" I whisper.

"Uh . . . Manfred?" Brady says.

"Yeah! Manfred Mann. He sang that do wah diddy song!"

"No he didn't."

"Yes he did! And he was about to solve one of life's eternal mysteries. You know, was it 'dressed up like a douche, I'm gonna run her in the night'?" He looks at me with a Joker face-exactly like the Joker from Batman.

"Dressed up like a douche?" he laughs derisively. "First of all, it's 'revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night.' And B, Manfred Mann was English. From England-accent and all."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure. God, you'll believe anything! I can only imagine who you think you saw earlier."

"Oh, I don't think I saw someone. I know I saw someone. We had an interaction, in fact."

"I'll bet," he says.

"And I'm not telling you who."

"And I'm still okay with that," he says. Then he mocks, "Manfred Mann . . ."

Well, really. Why would he lie about that?

Brady.

Heaven and I grab breakfast at a place called the Griddle Cafe. We both order pancakes. The tablecloths are paper, and they have crayons on the tables for those who want to color. Naturally, Heaven picks up a crayon and starts to draw.

When the food arrives, there is an ungodly number of pancakes before us.

"And there are people starving," I say.

"Then we shouldn't waste any."

"I am not going to eat all of this."

"I'll bet you I can eat more than you can," she says.

"I doubt that," I say, knowing full well my capacity for food intake greatly outdoes hers.

"And faster," she adds.

"I'm not racing you," I say. "I'd like to just enjoy my pancakes if you don't mind." But before I can even finish my sentence, she's shoveling pancakes in her mouth like a chipmunk.

And it is on. I start shoveling food in my mouth too, but I'm at least chewing. She has so much food in her mouth that there's no way she can possibly fit more in. Yet she does. In goes another forkful. It's like nothing I've ever seen.

"Chew," I order with a mouthful of food myself.

"I am," she says. At least I think that's what she says, even though it sounded like "ugn-aaahn." But by deductive reasoning and a keen talent for understanding people with too much food in their mouth (having lived with crooked-dick Phil for four years), I am fairly certain that she said "I am."

And when all's said and done, I'm mortified to say that Heaven out-ate me by a landslide. She sits there all smiles and rubs her imaginary Buddha belly. She has syrup all over her face and a few pancake crumbs stuck on there as well.

"You're a mess," I say. She licks her tongue around her mouth, trying to clean it up a bit, but it's a lost cause. I dip my napkin in my water glass and wipe her face off. And she lets me. She just sits there, face forward, eyes scrunched shut, jaw tilted up, and lets me wipe her off like a little child. In that moment she seems so innocent, and as I'm doing it I feel protective of her. I feel almost like I've known her since she was that little child. And then I think, This sweet little child fucked Darren Rosenthal last night, and my stomach flips.

"Let's go," I say, throwing some money on the table. She reaches into her pocket, takes out some money, puts it on the table, picks up the money that I put down, and shoves it into my pocket.

"Pancakes are on me," she says.

"No, they were on you. I think I wiped most of them off," I say, poking her in the rib cage.

"Don't," she says as she laughs.

"You don't have to buy," I say.

"You're paying for the hotel," she says.

"But I'd be paying for it even if you weren't here."

"Whatever. I'm buying the pancakes," she orders. "Plus, you didn't even get to enjoy them."

"True. And I guess loser should buy," I say, knowing full well that she kicked my ass.

"Pardon?" she says.

"You heard me."

"Oh, I know you didn't just say what I think you said."

"I think you heard exactly what I said."

"Funny," she says. "I guess we'll have to have a rematch at lunch."

"Lunch? After what we just ate? I'm good until at least dinner. Maybe even until next Tuesday." She starts to cluck like a chicken. I just ignore her.

My cell phone rings, and it's the lawyer I hired during my week off telling me that the trademark for Cinnamilk has gone through. This is my first bit of good news in a while. Then the air conditioner in our rental car dies. Does everything have to be a trade-off?

Heaven and I walk into Ralph's Supermarket and I'm stopped dead in my tracks. They have Jolt Cola. This was my favorite cola in the eighties, and I haven't seen it since. There it is, row after row. There are certain discontinued foods and drinks that I miss more than I probably should. Aspen Soda was an apple-flavored soda which was almost like apple 7-UP. It was made by Pepsi as a test beverage, and I fell in love with it, only to have them discontinue it within the same year. I went around buying it up from every store I could find it in. There was Quisp Cereal . . . Team Cereal . . . There was the Reggie Bar, which was a candy bar endorsed by Reggie Jackson . . . Munchos, the light, airy potato chips that came in the bright orange bag . . . Funyons, the onion-flavored potato chips in little onion rings (which occasionally you can still find) . . . and of course Taco Flavored Pizza at Pizza Hut. It's painful to think that I will never have any of these things again. I can almost hear the theme from Brian's Song as I remember them.

But here before me is a boatload of Jolt. And dammit if I'm not going to buy up every last can. I go get a cart and start grabbing them off the shelf.

"What are you doing?" Heaven asks when she finds me with half the cart full.

"They have Jolt!"

"And?"

"Don't you remember Jolt? It was my favorite soda ever. It had enough caffeine to wake the dead."

"No, but I miss Tab," she says wistfully. I'm sure that she's now going through her mental list of favorite discontinued items. "And Maisie's White Popcorn." See? "So what are you going to do? Buy every can?" she asks.

"Yes," I say matter-of-factly as I continue to load the cart.

"Okay," she says. And without missing a beat she starts to join me in collecting the Jolt cans and loading up my cart. I know that she understands and would probably do the same thing.

All of a sudden the most important thing in the world is for me to find her some Tab.

While we're standing in line with two carts full of Jolt, Heaven turns to me, all excited, with this big lightbulb-over-her-head idea.

"Wanna thumb-wrestle?" she asks. This is what had her all excited. The mind reels.

"Here? You don't thumb-wrestle in the middle of the grocery line."

"You don't?"

"No, it's like arm wrestling. You need to be sitting down."

"I didn't know."

"Now you do," I say, immediately starting to move my thumb around to loosen it up for the impending match.

My cell phone rings when we get outside, and it's Phil.

"Hey, buddy," he says.

"Hi, Phil," I say, not sure exactly how I want to deal with the Sarah situation.

"How's L.A.?" he asks.

"Great," I say. I roll my eyes at Heaven, who looks confused because she doesn't know why I'm rolling my eyes.

"So, um . . ." he stammers. "What's up with the band?"

"The offer's on the table. Actually, there are two offers on the table."

"Two?"

"Yeah. Darren Rosenthal made them an offer."

"Fuck," he says.

"Yeah," I say. "So now it's just a bit of wait and see."

"Fuck," he says again.

"Yeah," I say. And we go quiet for a minute. There's a giant pink elephant balancing on a ball, singing show tunes, but neither of us is mentioning it. And I'm not going to be the one to say anything.

"All right then, bro. Call me when you hear anything," he says.

"That's it? You're not even going to address the fact that you're fucking Sarah?" So much for me not saying anything.

"Oh," he says, and there's a long pause.

"What?" Heaven yells. "He fucked Sarah? Your Sarah? Psycho Sarah?"

"Shhh," I say to Heaven, waving her away.

"Dude, what can I say?" Phil says. "It happened."

"Yeah," I say.

"Oh my God!" Heaven says. I shoot her a look to shut up, and she just covers her mouth with both hands and looks shocked.

"Look, it just sorta happened," he says. "I don't blame you for being pissed. But remember in college when I was all about Marnie Williams, and you wound up dating her? Or . . . or . . . what about that time that we both saw that blonde at the Village Idiot? The one who took her bra off and left it on the bar?"

"Which you stuffed in your pocket when she went to the bathroom? Yes, I remember."

"Well, exactly," he says. "I got the bra, and you wound up taking her home."

"Phil, this all has nothing to do with anything. Let's not kid ourselves. All these things you're mentioning are serving no other purpose than to not so thinly veil your shitty judgment and blatant disregard for our friendship. It's like a guy going to the grocery store and buying twenty dollars worth of groceries he doesn't need, to cover up the fact that he's there to buy tampons for his lady. Be a man. Walk up to the cashier with nothing but a giant box of Tampax, and I'll at least have some respect for you."

"Sarah needs Tampax? That's weird because-"

"Oh, man," I say. Analogies are always lost on Phil. I don't know why I bothered.