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doesn’t include a daily newspaper. Harry wants confirmation that the world has carried on without him for the past forty-eight hours.
    “I’ve got to pick up Sarah at the babysitter’s in ten minutes,” I tell him.
    “It’ll just take a minute,” he says. Harry burrows his way into the loosely formed line, not in the British fashion of properly queuing-up, but with head down, right shoulder used as a wedge. Harry in line is like a mole in rutting season. My guess is he’s after the sporting green. He’s probably placed bets on the pay phone from the jail. He shoves the guy next to him in line a bit. The fellow gives Harry a dirty look, then focuses on me like maybe I’m Hinds’s trainer for this bout.
    This face staring at me is something from the past. We each stand there. One of those awkward moments. He is older, but I suppose he would say the same of me.
    After ugly seconds of silence, he says: “Mr. Madriani. A long time.”
    There is nothing overtly hostile in this. But his tone tells me that if he had his way, he would nudge me off the curb, under one of the fast-moving buses now churning by in the rush hour.
    We stand there, Harry lost in his paper. I’m not sure whether I should introduce them. The mixture of Adrian Chambers and Harry Hinds could be volatile.
    “It’s been a few years,” I say.
    “Ten to be exact,” he says.
    I’ve not seen Adrian Chambers since his conviction for suborning perjury, and his removal from the practice of law. In his late forties, he has aged well beyond those years. Of the hair that I remember, generous brown waves, he now has only a gray fringe ringing his head above the ears. This is cropped close to the head, military style. He is, after all, a former marine. Around his forehead there are the subtle shadows, a few age spots like amoebas creeping under the skin. In the handful of times that he has graced me with it, I have seen a tight-lipped thin smile. It always had the appearance of being forced. It is not that the man is without humor so much as that his chief amusement comes from denigrating others. Adrian is a bundle of scorn, tightly strung.
    After all these years, if I were to pass him on the street I might not recognize him at all—except for two abiding features, his penetrating dark eyes, cold as steel, and a hard athletic body, the lean and mean obsession of a former gyrene. Studying him here as we each take the other’s measure, I note that Adrian Chambers looks like nothing so much as Robert Duvall’s incarnation of the Great Santini.
    “They tell me you left the DA’s office.” He says this like he’s been asking questions about me.
    “Some time ago.” He’s talking about the Capital County District Attorney’s Office where I haven’t worked in more than a decade.
    “That’s too bad. I was looking forward so, to seeing you in court again,” he says. “I’ve waited a long time.”
    “I still get there,” I tell him. “I’m just on the other side now, at the defense table,” I say.
    “Oh, but it wouldn’t be the same,” he says.
    I am giving him puzzled looks, like what difference could it possibly make to a disbarred lawyer.
    “The place is open to the public,” I tell him. “Come, sit in the audience. Hiss if you like.” I give him a little grin like this unpleasant conversation is coming to an end.
    Harry has found what he was looking for in the paper. From his look he could have saved himself the effort, and me fifty cents.
    “Oh, they didn’t tell you?” says Chambers.
    He waits for me to say something, but I don’t bite.
    “I’m practicing law again. I thought they would have told you, of all people,” he says, “being that you took such a personal interest in my case.”
    I think my vacant gaze gives him some satisfaction, that I am hearing this for the first time.
    “Oh yes, several years now,” he says. “Contrary to popular belief, there is life after disbarment. The state supreme court says I’m