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couple blocks over, on Beverley, but Angie said she couldn’t wait and pulled him into a doorway, lifted up her skirt. Ritchie tore her panties off and they screwed right there.
    Jackie said, “I always thought you two could be good together,” and Ritchie said, what?
    â€œYou and Angie. I don’t know why she didn’t dump Frank. I don’t know why she went out with him the first place. You have any idea?”
    Ritchie said no, but shit, it was all he thought about for years. Why did Angie string him along and keep seeing Frank, move in with Frank, get engaged to Frank? Because she was a fucked-up kid? Because she wanted it all? The drugs? She was like the girl in a million songs, and Ritchie couldn’t figure her out. When they were together it was great, the time they could steal to be together. Maybe that added to it, the excitement, the danger, but it was all phoney. All she had to do was dump Frank.
    â€œMust have been the drugs,” Jackie said.
    Ritchie said, yeah, “The drugs.”
    â€œAnyway,” Jackie said, “that’s water under the bridge a long time ago, isn’t it? We can all be adults now, can’t we?”
    Ritchie said, sure, why not? He was game if everybody else was.
    Looking in the back of the bus he saw the three amigos all serious, nodding and sipping their Scotch and he thought, hell, if we’re going to be adult about something, it’ll be a first.

TWO
    Angie Maas was sitting across the desk from her boss thinking she liked him better when he was a music biz asshole, before he became a gangster asshole. She waited for him to finish his phone call, full of uh-huhs and yeahs and you know its and rolling his eyes. The phone was clipped to his ear, the tiny blue light on it looking like something out of Star Trek . He said, “Yeah, I know,” and made a face at Angie and she just waited, not laughing or even smiling.
    Frank said, “Okay, good. Talk to you Friday,” looked at Angie and said, “You’re in a shitty mood.”
    â€œShould I be in a good mood?”
    â€œWhy not, Ange? You tell me, why not?”
    â€œOh, I don’t know, Frank,” she said. “Numbers are down across the board, shows are playing to half-empty houses, they’re breathing down our neck from Philly to cut costs,” and, she wanted to say, you just got off the phone with Vic from Niagara Falls telling you all about shylocks getting ripped off in their own parking lot, but she wasn’t supposed to know about that.
    Frank said to relax, shit, numbers go up and down. “That’s the casino business. It’s not your concern.”
    â€œDo you know the only show that’s sold out as of right now? Do you?”
    Frank looked at her, that you-tell-me look, and she said, “Bjorn Again. Do you what that is?” She knew he wasn’t going to answer her. When he hired her, making sure she knew what a favour he was doing her, he was running the Showroom. It was his baby, he loved it, hanging out with the stars — Tom Jones and Howie Mandel and the Doobie Brothers, even without Michael McDonald — but then it turned out he loved being a gangster even more.
    She said, “It’s an ABBA tribute band.”
    â€œSo? That Mamma Mia! was a big hit.”
    â€œThe Australian Pink Floyd show, that sold out in a day.”
    â€œGood. You should be happy. Try smiling, it won’t wrinkle up your face like that.”
    â€œAnd, of course,” she said, “the Chinese acts.”
    Frank got up and walked around his desk, just a big glass table really, with nothing on it but a phone and a laptop that, as far as Angie knew, he never opened. Behind his desk the wall was all glass, the view fantastic, if, as Frank said, you like trees and water and all that boring shit, which he let you know often enough he didn’t. All blue and green, he’d say. Nothing but fucking blue and green. Give me