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refund on those DVDs, Zeb,” I say, still walking, which must look pretty cool if anyone’s filming.
    I’m tempted to stop and watch Zeb writhe on the carpet, but it’s enough that I can hear him retch.
    I am two blocks away before he draws level with me in his Prius. Someone told Zeb that Leonardo drives a Prius and that was it.
    “What the fuck, Irish? You are testing our friendship.”
    I keep walking. You can’t enter into a debate with Zeb Kronski or it will drive you demented. All the same, I can’t help thinking what I would reply.
    I’m testing our friendship? Me? Because of you I’m delivering a mystery envelope to a touchy guy in SoHo. Because of you I am involved, yet again, in a life-or-death situation. The life being mine and also probably the death.
    “I thought we were a team, Dan. Semper fi, bro.”
    Semper fi, my Irish arse. He was a medic with the Israeli army, I was a peacekeeper for the UN. Not a Marine between us.
    I stride down the block and he cruises alongside like a john.
    “Is this about Mike’s old lady? Okay, I was getting in good there, man, but at a later date I was gonna bring you in to lay some emerald pipe. I was doing it for both of us.”
    I grit my teeth. Really? Both of us? So how come I’ve got this envelope in my pocket and you’re off to inject Jersey housewives’ faces with cheap Chinese filler? Doesn’t seem fair.
    Zeb lights a fat cigar and fills the Toyota’s interior with blue smoke. “I was thinking long term. I shoot Mike’s bitches up for a couple of years and then we’re golden. How was I to know Mrs. Madden would get herself electro-fuckin’-cuted?”
    A couple more blocks, then I’m at the casino and Zeb will find himself barred from Slotz.
    “I can’t believe you hit me,” says Zeb, who never could stay penitent for long. “I thought you were my bobeshi.”
    I am starting to believe that Zeb comes out with these incredibly dense statements just to trick me into engaging. If it is a ploy, it works every time.
    I take two rapid steps to the Prius’s window. “You can’t believe I hit you?” I shout, drawing looks from the clusters of midmorning cigarette-break employees on the sidewalk. “You were begging to be hit. You lifted up your shirt, for Christ’s sake.”
    “I wasn’t begging to be hit by you,” argues Zeb. “That other guy was a jelly roll. My abs coulda taken a shot from him.”
    I change tack. “And bobeshi?” I say, slapping the Toyota with my palm. “Really?”
    “Hey,” says Zeb. “Take it easy on the car. Have you got something against the environment?”
    “I’m a feckin’ Irish Catholic and even I know bobeshi means grandmother. I’m your grandmother now?”
    Zeb is unrepentant. “Patients like the Yiddish, so I throw it in every now and then. Makes me seem wise or some shit. I was just going for the family vibe, like we’re brothers. I’m more of a Hebrew guy to be honest, Dan. Is that what this whole sulk is about? I don’t know Yiddish?”
    It’s a goddamn maze arguing with this guy. Like trying to hold onto an eel, if you’ll excuse me mangling my metaphors.
    I rest on the car for a moment, feeling it thrumming gently through my forehead, then I straighten.
    “Okay. Go home, Zeb.”
    “Are we good?”
    “Yeah. Golden. Whatever. Just forget it.”
    Zeb flicks ash onto the asphalt. “What about my accent?”
    I’m beaten now, he knows it. “Your accent?”
    “You said my Irish accent was bad. I worked on that, man. I watched Far and Away twice.” He screws up his face for a Tom Cruise impersonation. “You’re a corker, Shannon,” he lilts. “What a corker you are.”
    I feel like heaving on the sidewalk. I could be dead by nightfall and this dick is nursing a bruised ego.
    “That’s good,” I say for peace sake. “Uncanny.”
    Zeb’s eyes find the middle distance. “I coulda played the shit out of that role.”
    “Maybe they’ll do a reboot,” I say.
    I know this term because Zeb and I