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try to comfort him silently. This almost worked until Alistair dropped back from the others just as we reached the parking lot of the White Castle, to say, "You should have pitched the curve down when I asked for it."
    To which Kerry and Tony replied loudly, "Yeah!" before going inside and helping the others send the middle-aged counterman and his teen-queen-daughter waitress into total confusion with a score of conflicting orders.
    Augie didn't want to go inside.
    "I know he's your cousin, Rog, but...," he stammered, "he shouldn't just go around, you know... telling people... what to... do!"
    "Ignore him, Augie. He'll be gone soon."
    "What if he was right?"
    "He wasn't."
    "He was taught by Whitey Ford!"
    "He met Whitey Ford!" I corrected.
    "I don't know, Rog."
    "Let's go inside. Or there won't be anything left for us to eat."
    That motivated Augie. Even so, it was clear that Alistair had been bad-mouthing him to the others. Augie and I sat alone, and only Bob Cuffy came to talk to us, the others remaining among themselves.
    At home, later, I caught Alistair leaving his room to go take a bath. He had enough towels for five people and was carrying a small leather bag which I knew from my father held toiletries.
    "That was a rotten thing to do today!" I said.
    "What are you talking about? Oh, that game! They're all just kids, you know."
    I was about to ask what he thought I was, or for that matter, he was.
    "All you need to do to control kids like that is learn a little psychology," Alistair concluded shrewdly. "Believe me, it will make your life a lot easier."
     
    The split among us fourth-grade boys only seemed to widen in the next few days at school. I didn't much mind, but Augie was feeling ostracized for the first time in his life, and for something he hadn't even done. To make him feel better I decided to try to bring him and Alistair together. I hoped this would accomplish two things: let Alistair see how hurt and confused Augie was by what he'd done and thus bring out whatever good qualities might still lurk in my second cousin's breast; and show Augie that Alistair hadn't meant to hurt him specifically, that he pretty much did it naturally, running roughshod over everyone, moving from one scene of destruction to the next without much thought and little care for his effect. Maybe, just maybe, I was foolish enough to think, they'd even come to like each other, befriend each other, thus healing the wider social rift among us.
    I chose Thursday afternoon to do that. "Thor's-day," Alistair explained. "He was the thunder god of the ancient Teutons. Always causing a storm. You wouldn't happen to know any Wagner? No, I thought not."
    "Why won't you come over to Augie's?" I argued. "His garage is full of all sorts of neat things. Augie's dad's an inventor for Bell Labs."
    "No, thanks," Alistair said, plumping himself down on the family room sofa. "There's a movie on TV I want to see. Shall We Dance" he confided.
    I didn't know it.
    "It's terrif," Alistair assured me. "Astaire, Rogers, Gershwin."
    I'd never heard of any of them.
    "It never ceases to amaze me! Here you are, living not thirty miles from the Chrysler Building, and for all you care you might as well be in... Paducah!"
    The film on "Million Dollar Movie" began, and I could see in its first ten minutes that it would be just like all the other movies Alistair had watched since he arrived: well-tailored people in over-smart settings saying clever things and occasionally breaking into song and dance.
    I waited for a commercial before saying, "That's not what it's like, you know!" "What?"
    "Manhattan."
    "How would you know?" Alistair asked.
    "Because I've been to Manhattan. To Radio City Music Hall and the Roxy Theater and to the circus at Madison Square Garden and to Broadway to see South Pacific and to Central Park and to the Plaza Hotel and to the Empire State Building. And it's not like in those movies."
    "You still wouldn't know," he said, unfazed, "since the