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walk home.”
    Danny stood his ground, arms still spread. “Then let’s get started. You lead.” I didn’t move; my brother didn’t, either. He swallowed hard. “Say the word and I’m outta here. Believe me, I wouldn’t blame you.”
    “Three years is a long goddamn time,” I said.
    “Would it do any good,” Danny asked, “to make it longer?”
    I took a deep breath. He had a point. I could keep talking, I figured, or I could do the right thing. I walked down the stairs and into his arms. Fuck pride. And history. This was my brother back from the dead. He had always been my breaking point. Even as kids, he asked and I gave. That’s just how it was. Maybe he had changed over the past three years. I hadn’t.
    He squeezed me hard, lifted me a few inches off the ground. “You are the fucking man. Thank you. I mean it, Kev. I’m off the shit and back for good.”
    I stepped back after he released me. “I can see that you’re clean. As for the rest of it, let’s start with that beer and go from there.”
    “Good enough for me,” Danny said, waving his hand in the air. “I won’t even ask you to drive.”
    Headlights popped on down the street. The car, a black late-model Charger with deeply tinted windows, stopped in front of us. It gleamed and purred, immaculate, under the streetlight. Silently, the driver’s-side window rolled down. I stepped to the car.
    “You remember Al Bruno,” Danny said. “From back in the day.”
    I did, though he’d lost quite a bit of his hair. What remained was cut short, revealing a prominent widow’s peak. In the blue lights of the dashboard, in his black clothes, Al looked vaguely vampiric. He stuck out his hand across his chest, not turning to look at me.
    “How you been, Kev?” he asked, nearly crushing my hand when he shook it. Al had been hitting the weights, either at the gym or at the jailhouse.
    “Can’t complain. I’m still teaching, over at the college.”
    “Noble,” Al said, sliding a medallion back and forth along the gold chain around his neck.
    “What’re you doing these days?” I asked. Parole? Probation? Hardly anything noble, I figured. Definitely not community service.
    Al turned to look at me. “Little of this, little of that. I got a few things workin’.”
    Those few things working probably wore pricey watches and hung around supermarket parking lots. Danny’s choice of companions wasn’t doing much for my faith in him.
    Danny slapped me on the back. “New, different things,” he said. “Right, Al?”
    “You gotta change with the times,” Al said.
    “Okay then, this is cool and all,” Danny said, “but wouldn’t it be more fun over a beer?”
    “Danny,” I said, “talk to me a minute.” I took a few steps away from the car. Danny stayed put. “Over here.”
    “I know what you’re gonna say,” Danny said, “and I don’t blame you. But it’s all good. Al and I went through rehab together. The old days are behind us, Kev.”
    Al said nothing, just took a toothpick from behind his ear and put it in his mouth, his same old junior gangster act.
    Danny opened the back door for me. “Hop in. One beer. Let me pay you back that much.”
    I got in the car and Danny climbed in the passenger seat. Al rolled up his window and pulled the car into the street, spinning his tires on the pavement, kicking up a screech and a cloud of smoke as if he needed to announce his departure to the block.
    Squeezing between the front seats, I asked Danny where he’d been the past three years. He held up his hand, telling me it was not the time for questions. I thought maybe he didn’t want Al hearing what he told me. Maybe he couldn’t hear me over Kid Rock. But he smiled as he watched the island fly by out the window and I thought maybe he was just enjoying the reunion. He and I in a car again, heading out after dark, this time with a chance to make things right. I had to admit, I liked the feeling, too.
     
     
     
    AL EASED THE CHARGER up to