t became their motto, and Jonesy couldn't for the life of him remember which of them started saying it first. Payback's a bitch, that was his. Fuck me Freddy and half a dozen even more colorful obscenities originated with Beaver. Henry was the one who taught them to say What goes around comes around, it was the kind of Zen shit Henry liked, even when they were kids. SSDD, though; what about SSDD? Whose brainstorm had that been?

Didn't matter. What mattered was that they believed the first half of it when they were a quartet and all of it when they were five and then the second half of it when they were a quartet again.

When it was just the four of them again, the days got darker. There were more fuck-me-Freddy days. They knew it, but not why. They knew something was wrong with them - different, at least - ?but not what. They knew they were caught, but not exactly how. And all this long before the lights in the sky. Before McCarthy and Becky Shue.

SSDD: Sometimes it's just what you say. And sometimes you believe in nothing but the darkness. And then how do you go along?

1988: Even Beaver Gets the Blues

To say that Beaver's marriage didn't work would be like saying that the launch of the Challenger space shuttle went a little bit wrong. Joe 'Beaver' Clarendon and Laurie Sue Kenopensky make it through eight months and then kapow, there goes my baby, somebody help me pick up the fuckin pieces.

The Beav is basically a happy guy, any of his hang-out buddies would tell you that, but this is his dark time. He doesn't see any of his old friends (the ones he thinks of as his real friends) except for the one week in November when they are together every year, and last November he and Laurie Sue had still been hanging on. By a thread, granted, but still hanging on. Now he spends a lot of his time - too much, he knows - in the bars of Portland's Old Port district, The Porthole and The Seaman's Club and The Free Street Pub. He is drinking too much and smoking too much of the old rope-a-dope and come most mornings he doesn't like to look at himself in the bathroom mirror; his red-rimmed eyes skitter away from his reflection and he thinks I ought to quit the clubs. Pretty soon I'm gonna have a problem the way Pete's got one. Jesus-Christ-bananas.

Quit the clubs, quit the partying, good fuckin idea, and then he's back again, kiss my bender and how ya doin. This Thursday it's the Free Street, and damned if there isn't a beer in his hand, a joint in his pocket, and some old instrumental, sounds a little bit like The Ventures, pouring from the juke. He can't quite remember the name of this one, which was popular before his time. Still, he knows it; he listens a lot to the Portland oldies station since he got divorced. Oldies are soothing. A lot of the new stuff. . . Laurie Sue knew and liked a lot of it, but Beaver doesn't get it.

The Free Street is mostly empty, maybe half a dozen guys at the bar and another half a dozen shooting eightball in the back, Beaver and three of his hang-out buddies in one of the booths, drinking draft Millers and cutting a greasy deck of cards to see who pays for each round. What is that instrumental with all the burbling guitars? 'Out of Limits'? 'Telstar'? Nah, there's a synthesizer in 'Telstar' and no synth in this. And who gives a shit? The other guys are talking about Jackson Browne, who played the Civic Center last night and put on a kick-ass show, according to George Pelsen, who was there.

'I'll tell you something else that was kick-ass,' George says, look?ing at them impressively. He raises his undershot chin, showing them all a red mark on the side of his neck. 'You know what that is?'

'Hickey, ain't it?' Kent Astor asks, a bit timidly.

'You're fuckin-A,' George says. 'I was hanging around the stage door after the show, me and a bunch of other guys, hopin to get Jackson's autograph. Or maybe, I don't know, David Lindley. He's cool.'

Kent and Sean Robideau agree that Lindley is cool - not a guitar god, by any means (Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits is a guitar god; and Angus Young of AC/DC; and - of course - Clapton), but very cool just the same. Lindley has great licks; he has awesome dreads, as well. All down to his shoulders.

Beaver doesn't join in the talk. All at once he wants to get out of here, out of this stale going-nowhere bar, and cop some fresh air. He knows where George is going with this, and it's all a lie.

Her name wasn't Chantay, you don't know what her name was, she blew right past you like you weren't there, what would you be to a girl like her anyway, just another working-class longhair in another working-class New England town, into the band bus she went and out of your life. Your fuckin uninteresting life. The Chantays is the name of the group we're listening to, not the Mar-Kets or the BarKays but the Chantays, it's 'Pipeline' by the Chantays and that thing on your neck isn't a hickey it's a razor burn.

He thinks this, then he hears crying. Not in the Free Street but in his mind. Long-gone crying. It goes right into your head, that crying, goes in like splinters of glass, and oh fuck, fuck me Freddy, somebody make him stop crying.

I was the one who made him stop, Beaver thinks. That was me. I was the one who made him stop. I took him in my arms and sang to him.

Meanwhile George Pelsen is telling them about how the stage door finally opened, but it wasn't Jackson Browne who came out, not David Lindlev, either; it was the trio of chick singers, one named Randi, one named Susi, and one named Chantay. Yummy ladies, oh so tall and tasty.

'Man,' Sean says, rolling his eyes. He's a chubby little fellow whose sexual exploits consist of occasional field-trips to Boston, where he eyes the strippers at the Foxy Lady and the waitresses at Hooters. 'Oh man, fuckin Chantay.' He makes jacking-off gestures in the air. At that, at least, Beav thinks, he looks like a pro.

'So I started talkin to them . . . to her, mostly, Chantay, and I ast her if she'd like to see some of the Portland night-life. So we . . .'

The Beav takes a toothpick from his pocket and slides it into his mouth, timing the rest out. All at once the toothpick is just what he wants. Not the beer in front of him, not the joint in his pocket, certainly not George Pelsen's empty kahoot about how he and the mythical Chantay got it on in the back of his pickup, thank God for that camper cap, when George's Ram is rockin, don't come knockin.

It's all puff and blow, Beaver thinks, and suddenly he is desperately depressed, more depressed than he has been since Laurie Sue packed her stuff and moved back to her mother's. This is utterly unlike him, and suddenly the only thing he wants is to get the fuck out of here, fill his lungs with the cool, salt-tanged seaside air, and find a phone. He wants to do that and then to call Jonesy or Henry, it doesn't matter which, either one will do; he wants to say Hey man, what's going on and have one of them say back Oh, you know, Beav, SSDD. No bounce, no play.

He gets up.

'Hey, man,' George says. Beaver went to Westbrook junior College with George, and then he seemed cool enough, but juco was many long beers ago. 'Where you goin?'

'Take a leak,' Beaver says, rolling his toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other.

'Well, you want to hurry your bad ass back, I'm just getting to the good part,' George says, and Beaver thinks crotchless panties. Oh boy, today that old weird vibe is strong, maybe it's the barometer or something.

Lowering his voice, George says, 'When I got her skirt up - '

'I know, she was wearin crotchless panties,' Beaver says. He registers the look of surprise - alnost shock - in George's eyes but pays no attention. 'I sure want to hear that part.'

He walks away, walks toward the men's room with its yellow?-pink smell of piss and disinfectant, walks past it, walks past the women's, walks past the door with OFFICE on it, and escapes into the alley. The sky overhead is white and rainy, but the air is good. So good. He breathes it in deep and thinks again. No bounce no play. He grins a little.

He walks for ten minutes, just chewing toothpicks and clearing his head. At some point, he can't remember exactly when, he tosses away the joint that has been in his pocket. And then he calls Henry from the pay phone in Joe's Smoke Shop, up by Monument Square. He's expecting the answering machine - Henry is still in school - but Henry is actually there, he picks up on the second ring.

'How you doing, man?' Beaver asks.

'Oh, you know,' Henry says. 'Same shit, different day. How about you, Beav?'

Beav closes his eyes. For a moment everything is all right again; as right as it can be in such a piss-ache world, anyway.

'About the same, buddy,' he replies. 'Just about the same.'

1993: Pete Helps a Lady in Distress

Pete sits behind his desk just off the showroom of Macdonald Motors in Bridgton, twirling his keychain. The fob consists of four enameled blue letters: NASA.

Dreams age faster than dreamers, that is a fact of life Pete has discovered as the years pass. Yet the last ones often die surprisingly hard, screaming in low, miserable voices at the back of the brain. It's been a long time since Pete slept in a bedroom papered with pictures of Apollo and Saturn rockets and astronauts and space-walks (EVAs, to those in the know) and space capsules with their shields smoked and fused by the fabulous heat of re-entry and LEMs and Voyagers and one photograph of a shiny disc over Interstate 80, people standing in the breakdown lane and looking up with their hands shielding their eyes, the photo's caption reading THIS OBJECT, PHOTOGRAPHED NEAR ARVADA, COLORADO IN 1971, HAS NEVER BEEN EXPLAINED. IT IS A GENUINE UFO.

A long time.

Yet he still spent one of his two weeks of vacation this year in Washington DC, where he went to the Smithsonian every day and spent nearly all of his time wandering among the displays with a wondering grin on his face. And most of that time he spent looking at the moon rocks and thinking, Those rocks came from a place where the skies are always black and the silence is everlasting. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took twenty kilograms of another world and now here it is.

And here he is, sitting behind his desk on a day when he hasn't sold a single car (people don't like to buy cars when it's raining, and it has been drizzling in Pete's part of the world ever since first light), twirling his NASA key-chain and looking up at the clock. Time moves slowly in the afternoons, ever more slowly as the hour of five approaches. At five it will be time for that first beer. Not before five; no way. You drank during the day, maybe you had to look at how much you were drinking, because that's what alcoholics did. But if you could wait . . . just twirl your keychain and wait . . .

As well as that first beer of the day, Pete is waiting for November. Going to Washington in April had been good, and the moon rocks had been stunning (they still stun him, every time he thinks about them), but he had been alone. Being alone wasn't so good. In November, when he takes his other week, he'll be with Henry and Jonesy and the Beav. Then he'll allow himself to drink during the day. When you're off in the woods, hunting with your friends, it's all right to drink during the day. It's practically a tradition. It -

The door opens and a good-looking brunette comes in. About five-ten (and Pete likes them tall), maybe thirty. She glances around at the showroom models (the new Thunderbird, in dark burgundy, is the pick of the litter, although the Explorer isn't bad), but not as if she has any interest in buying. Then she spots Pete and walks toward him.

Pete gets up, dropping his NASA keychain on his desk-blotter, and meets her at the door of his office. He's wearing his best professional smile by now - two hundred watts, baby, you better believe it - and has his hand outstretched. Her grip is cool and firm, but she's distracted, upset.

'This probably isn't going to work,' she says.

'Now, you never want to start that way with a car salesman,' Pete says. 'We love a challenge. I'm Pete Moore.'

'Hello,' she says, but doesn't give her name, which is Trish. 'I have an appointment in Fryeburg in Just - ' She glances at the clock which Pete watches so closely during the slow afternoon hours. ' - in just forty-five minutes. It's with a client who wants to buy a house, and I think I have the right one, there's a sizeable commission involved, and . . .' Her eyes are now brimming with tears and she has to swallow to get rid of the thickness creeping into her voice. ' . . . and I've lost my goddam keys! My goddam car keys!' She opens her purse and rummages in it.

'But I have my registration . . . plus some other papers . . . there are all sorts of numbers, and I thought maybe, just maybe you could make me a new set and I could be on my way. This sale could make my year, Mr . . .' She has forgotten. He isn't offended. Moore is almost as common as Smith or Jones. Besides, she's upset. Losing your keys will do that. He's seen it a hundred times.

'Moore. But I answer just as well to Pete.'

'Can you help me, Mr Moore? Or is there someone in the service department who can?'

Old Johnny Damon's back there and he'd be happy to help her, but she wouldn't make her appointment in Fryeburg, that's for sure.

'We can get you new car keys, but it's liable to take at least twenty-four hours and maybe more like forty-eight,' he says.

She looks at him from her brimming eyes, which are a velvety brown, and lets out a dismayed cry. 'Damn it! Damn it!'

An odd thought comes to Pete then: she looks like a girl he knew a long time ago. Not well, they hadn't known her well, but well enough to save her life. Josie Rinkenhauer, her name had been.

'I knew it!' Trish says, no longer trying to keep that husky thickness out of her voice. 'Oh boy, I just knew it!' She turns away from him, now beginning to cry in earnest.

Pete walks after her and takes her gently by the shoulder. 'Wait, Trish. Wait just a minute.'

That's a slip, saying her name when she hasn't given it to him, but she's too upset to realize they haven't been properly introduced, so it's okay.

'Where did you come from?' he asks. 'I mean, you're not from Bridgton, are you?'

'No,' she says. 'Our office is in Westbrook. Dennison Real Estate. We're the ones with the lighthouse?'

Pete nods as if this means something to him.

'I came from there. Only I stopped at the Bridgton Pharmacy for some aspirin because I always get a headache before a big presentation . . . it's the stress, and oh boy, it's pounding like a hammer now. . .'

Pete nods sympathetically. He knows about headaches. Of course most of his are caused by beer rather than stress, but he knows about them, all right.

'I had some time to kill, so I also went into the little store next to the pharmacy for a coffee . . . the caffeine, you know, when you have a headache the caffeine can help . . .'

Pete nods again. Henry's the head shrinker, but as Pete has told him more than once, you have to know a fair amount about how the human mind works in order to succeed at selling. Now he's pleased to see that his new friend is calming down a little. That's good. He has an idea he can help her, if she'll let him. He can feel that little click wanting to happen. He likes that little click. It's no big deal, it'll never make his fortune, but he likes it.

'And I also went across the street to Penny's. I bought a scarf. . . because of the rain, you know. . . 'She touches her hair. 'Then I went back to my car. . . and my son-of-a-damn-bitch keys were gone! I retraced my steps . . . went backward from Renny's to the store to the pharmacy, and they're not anywhere! And now I'm going to miss my appointment!'

Distress is creeping back into her voice. Her eyes go to the clock again. Creeping for him; racing for her. That's the difference between people, Pete reflects. One of them, anyway.

'Calm down,' he says. 'Calm down just a few seconds and listen to me. We're going to walk back to the drugstore, you and I, and look for your car-keys.'

'They're not there! I checked all the aisles, I looked on the shelf where I got the aspirin, I asked the girl at the counter - '

'It won't hurt to check again,' he says. He's walking her toward the door now, his hand pressed lightly against the small of her back, getting her to walk with him. He likes the smell of her perfume and he likes her hair even more, yes he does. And if it looks this pretty on a rainy day, how might it look when the sun is out?

'My appointment - '

'You've still got forty minutes,' he says. 'With the summer tourists gone, it only takes twenty to drive up to Fryeburg. We'll take ten minutes to try and find your keys, and if we can't, I'll drive you myself.'

She peers at him doubtfully.

He looks past her, into one of the other offices. 'Dick!' he calls.

'Hey, Dickie M.!'

Dick Macdonald looks up from a clutter of invoices.

'Tell this lady I'm safe to drive her up to Fryeburg, should it come to that.'

'Oh, he's safe enough, ma'am,' Dick says. 'Not a sex maniac or a fast driver. He'll just try to sell you a new car.'

'I'm a tough sell, she says, smiling a little, 'but I guess you're on.

'Cover my phone, would you, Dick?' Pete asks.

'Oh yeah, that'll be a hardship. Weather like this, I'll be beatin the customers off with a stick.'

Pete and the brunette - Trish - go out, cross the alley, and walk the forty or so feet back to Main Street. The Bridgton Pharmacy is the second building on their left. The drizzle has thickened; now it's almost rain. The woman puts her new scarf up over her hair and glances at Pete, who's bare-headed. 'You're getting all wet,' she says.

'I'm from upstate,' he says. 'We grow em tough up there.'

'You think you can find them, don't you?' she asks.

Pete shrugs. 'Maybe. I'm good at finding things. Always have been.'

'Do you know something 1 don't?' she asks.

No bounce, no play, he thinks. I know that much, ma'am.

'Nope,' he says. 'Not yet.'

They walk into the pharmacy, and the bell over the door jingles. The girl behind the counter looks up from her magazine. At three-twenty on a rainy late September afternoon, the pharmacy is deserted except for the three of them down here and Mr Diller up behind the prescription counter.

'Hi, Pete,' the counter-girl says.

'Yo, Cathy, how's it going?'

'Oh, you know - slow.' She looks at the brunette. 'I'm sorry, ma'am, I checked around again, but I didn't find them.'

'That's all right,' Trish says with a wan smile. 'This gentleman has agreed to give me a ride to my appointment.'

'Well,' Cathy says, 'Pete's okay, but I don't think I'd go so far as to call him a gentleman.'

'You want to watch what you say, darlin,' Pete tells her with a grin. 'There's a Rexall just down 302 in Naples.' Then he glances up at the clock. Time has sped up for him, too. That's okay, that makes a nice change.

Pete looks back at Trish. 'You came here first. For the aspirin.'

'That's right. I got a bottle of Anacin. Then I had some time to kill, so - '

'I know, you got a coffee next door at Christie's, then went across to Renny's.'

'Yes.

'You didn't take your aspirin with hot coffee, did you?'

'No, I had a bottle of Poland water in my car.' She points out the window at a green Taurus. 'I took them with some of that. But I checked the seat, too, Mr . . . Pete. I also checked the ignition.' She gives him an impatient look which says, I know what you're thinking: daffy woman.

'Just one more question,' he says. 'If I find your car-keys, would you go out to dinner with me? I could meet you at The West Wharf. It's on the road between here and - '

'I know The West Wharf,' she says, looking amused in spite of her distress. At the counter, Cathy isn't even pretending to read her magazine. This is better than Redbook, by far. 'How do you know I'm not married, or something?'

'No wedding ring,' he replies promptly, although he hasn't even looked at her hands yet, not closely, anyway. 'Besides, I was just talking about fried clams, cole slaw, and strawberry shortcake, not a lifetime commitment.'

She looks at the clock. 'Pete . . . Mr Moore . . . I'm afraid that at this minute I have absolutely no interest in flirting. If you want to give me a ride, I would be very happy to have dinner with you. But - '

'That's good enough for me,' he says. 'But you'll be driving your own car, I think, so I'll meet you. Would five-thirty be okay?'

'Yes, fine, but - '

'Okay.' Pete feels happy. That's good; happy is good. A lot of days these last couple of years he hasn't felt within a holler of happy, and he doesn't know why. Too many late and soggy nights cruising the bars along 302 between here and North Conway? Okay, but is that all? Maybe not, but this isn't the time to think about it. The lady has an appointment to keep. If she keeps it and sells the house, who knows how lucky Pete Moore might get? And even if he doesn't get lucky, he's going to be able to help her. He feels it.

'I'm going to do something a little weird now,' he says, 'but don't let it worry you, okay? It's just a little trick, like put?ting your finger under your nose to stop a sneeze or thump?ing your forehead when you're trying to remember someone's name. Okay?'

'Sure, I guess,' she says, totally mystified.

Pete closes his eyes, raises one loosely fisted hand in front of his face, then pops up his index finger. He begins to tick it back and forth in front of him.

Trish looks at Cathy, the counter-girl. Cathy shrugs as if to say Who knows?

'Mr Moore?' Trish sounds uneasy now. 'Mr Moore, maybe I just ought to - '

Pete opens his eyes, takes a deep breath, and drops his hand. He looks past her, to the door.

'Okay,' he says. 'So you came in His eyes move as if watching her come in. 'And you went to the counter . . .' His eyes go there. 'You asked, probably, "Which aisle's the aspirin in?" Something like that.'

'Yes, I - '

'Only you got something, too.' He can see it on the candy-rack, a bright yellow mark something like a handprint. 'Snickers bar?'

'Mounds.' Her brown eyes are wide. 'How did you know that?'

'You got the candy, then you went up to get the aspirin. He's looking up Aisle 2 now. 'After that you paid and went out . . . let's go outside a minute. Seeya, Cathy.'

Cathy only nods, looking at him with wide eyes.

Pete walks outside, ignoring the tinkle of the bell, ignoring the rain, which now really is rain. The yellow is on the sidewalk, but fading. The rain's washing it away. Still, he can see it and it Pleases him to see it. That feeling of click. Sweet. It's the line. It has been a long time since he's seen it so clearly.

'Back to your car,' he says, talking to himself now. 'Back to take a couple of your aspirin with your water . . .'

He crosses the sidewalk, slowly, to the Taurus. The woman walks behind him, eyes more worried than ever now. Almost frightened.

'You opened the door. You've got your purse . . . your keys . . . your aspirin . . . your candy . . . all this stuff . . . juggling it around from hand to hand . . . and that's when . . .'

He bends, fishes in the water flowing along the gutter, hand in it all the way up to the wrist, and brings something up. He gives it a magician's flourish. Keys flash silver in the dull day.

' . . . you dropped your keys.'

She doesn't take them at first. She only gapes at him, as if he has performed an act of witchcraft (warlock-craft, in his case, maybe) before her eyes.

'Go on,' he says, smile fading a little. 'Take them. It wasn't anything too spooky, you know. Mostly just deduction. I'm good at stuff like that. Hey, you should have me in the car sometime when you're lost. I'm great at getting unlost.'

She takes the keys, then. Quickly, being careful not to touch his fingers, and he knows right then that she isn't going to meet him later. It doesn't take any special gift to figure that; he only has to look in her eyes, which are more frightened than grateful.

'Thank. . . thank you,' she says. All at once she's measuring the space between them, not wanting him to use too much of it up.

'Not a problem. Now don't forget. The West Wharf, at five-thirty. Best fried clams in this part of the state.' Keeping up the fiction. You have to keep it up, sometimes, no matter how you feel. And although some of the joy has gone out of the afternoon, some is still there; he has seen the line, and that always makes him feel good. It's a minor trick, but it's nice to know it's still there.

'Five-thirty,' she echoes, but as she opens her car door, the glance she throws back over her shoulder is the kind you'd give to a dog that might bite if it got off its leash. She is very glad she won't be riding up to Fryeburg with him. Pete doesn't need to be a mind-reader to know that, either.

He stands there in the rain, watching her back out of the slant parking space, and when she drives away he tosses her a cheerful car-salesman's wave. She gives him a distracted little flip of the fingers in return, and of course when he shows up at The West Wharf (at five-fifteen, just to be Johnny on the spot, Just in case) she isn't there and an hour later she's still not there. He stays for quite awhile just the same, sitting at the bar and drinking beer, watching the traffic out on 302. He thinks he sees her go by without slowing at about five-forty, a green Taurus busting past in a rain which has now become heavy, a green Taurus that might or might not be pulling a light yellow nimbus behind it that fades at once in the graying air.

Same shit, different day, he thinks, but now the joy is gone and the sadness is back, the sadness that feels like something deserved, the price of some not-quite-forgotten betrayal. He lights a cigarette - in the old days, as a kid, he used to pretend to smoke but now he doesn't have to pretend anymore - and orders another beer.

Milt brings it, but says, 'You ought to lay some food on top of that, Peter.'

So Pete orders a plate of fried clams and even eats a few dipped in tartar sauce while he drinks another couple of beers, and at some point, before moving on up the line to some other joint where he isn't so well-known, he tries to call Jonesy, down there in Massachusetts. But Jonesy and Carla are enjoying the rare night out, he only gets the baby-sitter, who asks him if he wants to leave a message.

Pete almost says no, then reconsiders. 'Just tell him Pete called. Tell him Pete said SSDD.'

'S . . . S . . . D . . . D.' She is writing it down. 'Will he know what - '

'Oh yeah,' Pete says, 'he'll know.'

By midnight he's drunk in some New Hampshire dive, the Muddy Rudder or maybe it's the Ruddy Mother, he's trying to tell some chick who's as drunk as he is that once he really believed he was going to be the first man to set foot on Mars, and although she's nodding and saying yeah-yeah-yeah, he has an idea that all she understands is that she'd like to get outside of one more coffee brandy before closing. And that's okay. It doesn't matter. Tomorrow he'll wake up with a headache but he'll go in to work just the same and maybe he'll sell a car and maybe he won't but either way things will go on. Maybe he'll sell the burgundy Thunderbird, goodbye, sweetheart. Once things were different, but now they're the same. He reckons he can live with that; for a guy like him, the rule of thumb is just SSDD, and so fucking what. You grew up, became a man, had to adjust to taking less than you hoped for; you discovered the dream-machine had a big OUT OF ORDER, sign on it.

In November he'll go hunting with his friends, and that's enough to took forward to . . . that, and maybe a big old sloppy?-lipstick blowjob from this drunk chick out in his car. Wanting more is just a recipe for heartache.

Dreams are for kids.

1998: Henry Treats a Couch Man

The room is dim. Henry always keeps it that way when he's seeing patients. It's interesting to him how few seem to notice it. He thinks it's because their states of mind are so often dim to start with. Mostly he sees neurotics (The wood's are full of em, as he once told Jonesy while they were in, ha-ha, the woods) and it is his assessment - completely unscientific - that their problems act as a kind of polarizing shield between them and the rest of the world. As the neurosis deepens, so does the interior darkness. Mostly what he feels for his patients is a kind of distanced sympathy. Sometimes pity. A very few of them make him impatient. Barry Newman is one of those.

Patients who enter Henry's office for the first time are presented with a choice they usually don't register as a choice. When they come in they see a pleasant (if rather dim) room, with a fireplace to the left. It's equipped with one of those everlasting logs, steel disguised as birch with four cunningly placed gas jets beneath. Beside the fireplace is a wing chair, where Henry always sits beneath an excellent reproduction of Van Gogh's 'Marigolds'. (Henry sometimes tells colleagues that every psychiatrist should have at least one Van Gogh in his or her consulting space.) Across the room is an easy chair and a couch. Henry is always interested to see which one a new patient will choose. Certainly he has been plying the trade long enough to know that what a patient chooses the first time is what he or she will choose almost every time. There is a paper in this. Henry knows there is, but he cannot isolate the thesis. And in any case, he finds he has less interest these days in such things as papers and journals and conventions and colloquia. They used to matter, but now things have changed. He is sleeping less, eating less, laughing less, too. A darkness has come into his own life ?that polarizing filter - and Henry finds he has no objection to this. Less glare.

Barry Newman was a couch man from the first, and Henry has never once made the mistake of believing this has anything to do with Barry's mental condition. The couch is simply more comfortable for Barry, although Henry sometimes has to give him a hand to get Barry up from it when his fifty minutes have expired. Barry Newman stands five-seven and weighs four hundred and twenty pounds. This makes the couch his friend.

Barry Newman's sessions tend to be long, droning accounts of each week's adventures in gastronomy. Not that Barry is a discriminating eater, oh, no, Barry is the antithesis of that. Barry eats anything that happens to stray into his orbit. Barry is an eating machine. And his memory, on this subject, at least, is eidetic. He is to food what Henry's old friend Pete is to directions and geography.

Henry has almost given up trying to drag Barry away from the trees and make him examine the forest. Partly this is because of Barry's soft but implacable desire to discuss food in its specifics; partly it's because Henry doesn't like Barry and never has. Barry's parents are dead. Dad went when Barry was sixteen, Morn when he was twenty-two. They left a very large estate, but it is in trust until Barry is thirty. He can get the principal then . . . if he continues in therapy. If not, the principal will remain in trust until he is fifty.

Henry doubts Barry Newman will make fifty.

Barry's blood pressure (he has told Henry this with some pride) is one-ninety over one-forty.

Barry's whole cholesterol number is two hundred and ninety; he is a lipid goldmine.

I'm a walking stroke, I'm a walking heart attack, he has told Henry, speaking with the gleeful solemnity of one who can state the hard, cold truth because he knows in his soul that such ends are not meant for him, not for him, no, not for him.

'I had two of those Burger King X-tras for lunch,' he is saying now. 'I love those, because the cheese is actually hot.' His fleshy lips - ?oddly small lips for such a large man, the lips of a perch - tighten and tremble, as if tasting that exquisitely hot cheese. 'I also had a shake, and on my way back home I had a couple of Mallomars. I took a nap, and when I got up I microwaved a whole package of those frozen waffles. "Leggo my Eggo!"' he cries, then laughs. It is the laugh of a man in the grip of fond recall - the sight of a sunset, the firm feel of a woman's breast through a thin silk shirt (not that Barry has, in Henry's estimation, ever felt such a thing), or the packed warmth of beach sand.

'Most people use the toaster oven for their Eggo waffles,' Barry continues, 'but I find that makes them too crispy. The microwave just gets them hot and soft. Hot . . . and soft.' He smacks his little perch lips. 'I had a certain amount of guilt about eating the whole package.' He throws this last in almost as an aside, as if remembering Henry has a job to do here. He throws out similar little treats four or five times in every session . . . and then it's back to the food.

Barry has now reached Tuesday evening. Since this is Friday, there are plenty of meals and snacks still to go. Henry lets his mind drift. Barry is his last appointment of the day. When Barry has finished taking caloric inventory, Henry is going back to his apartment to pack. He'll be up tomorrow at Six A.M., and sometime between seven and eight, Jonesy will pull into his driveway. They will pack their stuff into Henry's old Scout, which he now keeps around solely for their autumn hunting trips, and by eight-thirty the two of them will be on their way north. Along the way they will pick up Pete in Bridgton, and then the Beav, who still lives close to Derry. By evening they will be at Hole in the Wall up in the Jefferson Tract, playing cards in the living room and listening to the wind hoot around the eaves. Their guns will be leaning in the corner of the kitchen, their hunting licenses hung over the hook on the back door.

He will be with his friends, and that always feels like coming home. For a week, that polarizing filter may lift a little bit. They will talk about old times, they will laugh at Beaver's outrageous profanities, and if one or more of them actually shoots a deer, that will be an extra added attraction. Together they are still good. Together they still defeat time.

Far in the background, Barry Newman drones on and on. Pork chops and mashed potatoes and corn on the cob dripping with butter and Pepperidge Farm chocolate cake and a bowl of Pepsi Cola with four scoops of Ben and Jerry's Chunky Monkey ice cream floating in it and eggs fried eggs boiled eggs poached . . .

Henry nods in all the right places and hears it all without really listening. This is an old psychiatric skill.

God knows Henry and his old friends have their problems. Beaver is terrible when it comes to relationships, Pete drinks too much (way too much is what Henry thinks), Jonesy and Carla have had a near-miss with divorce, and Henry is now struggling with a depression that seems to him every bit as seductive as it does unpleasant. So yes, they have their problems. But together they are still good, still able to light it up, and by tomorrow night they will be together. For eight days, this year. That's good.

'I know I shouldn't, but I just get this compulsion early in the morning. Maybe it's low blood sugar, I think it might be that. Anyway, I ate the rest of the pound-cake that was in the fridge, then I got in the car and drove down to Dunkin' Donuts and I got a dozen of the Dutch Apple and four or - '

Henry, still thinking about the annual hunting trip that starts tomorrow, isn't aware of what he is saying until it is out.

'Maybe this compulsive eating, Barry, maybe it has something to do with thinking you killed your mother. Do you think that's possible?'

Barry's words stop. Henry looks up and sees Barry Newman staring at him with eyes so wide they are actually visible. And although Henry knows he should stop - he has no business doing this at all, it has absolutely nothing to do with therapy - he doesn't want to stop. Some of this may have to do with thinking about his old friends, but most of it is just seeing that shocked look on Barry's face, and the pallor of his cheek. What really bugs Henry about Barry, he supposes, is Barry's complacency. His inner assurance that there is no need to change his self-destructive behavior, let alone search for its roots.

'You do think you killed her, don't you?' Henry asks. He speaks casually, almost lightly.

'I - I never - I resent - '

'She called and she called, said she was having chest-pains, but of course she said that often, didn't she? Every other week. Every other day, it sometimes seemed. Calling downstairs to you. "Barry, phone Dr Withers. Barry, call an ambulance. Barry, dial 911."'

They have never talked about Barry's parents. In his soft, fat, implacable way, Barry will not allow it. He will begin to discuss them - or seem to - and then bingo, he'll be talking about roast lamb again, or roast chicken, or roast duck with orange sauce. Back to the inventory. Hence Henry knows nothing about Barry's parents, certainly not about the day Barry's mother died, falling out of bed and pissing on the carpet, still calling and calling, three hundred pounds and so disgustingly fat, calling and calling. He can know nothing about that because he hasn't been told, but he does know. And Barry was thinner then. A relatively svelte one-ninety.

This is Henry's version of the line. Seeing the line. Henry hasn't seen it for maybe five years now (unless he sometimes sees it in dreams), thought all that was over, and now here it is again.

'You sat there in front of the TV, listening to her yell,' he says. 'You sat there watching Ricky Lake and eating - what? - a Sara Lee cheesecake? A bowl of ice cream? I don't know. But you let her yell.'

'Stop it!'

'You let her yell, and really, why not? She'd been crying wolf her whole life. You are not a stupid man and you know that's true. This sort of thing happens. I think you know that, too. You've cast yourself in your own little Tennessee Williams play simply because you like to eat. But guess what, Barry? It's really going to kill you. In your secret heart you don't believe that, but it's true. Your heart's already beating like a premature burial victim beating his fists on the lid of a coffin. What's it going to be like eighty or a hundred pounds from now?'

'Shut - '

'When you fall, Barry, it's going to be like the fall of Babel in the desert. The people who see you go down will talk about it for years. Man, you'll shake the dishes right off the shelves - '

'Stop it!' Barry is sitting up now, he hasn't needed Henry to give him a hand this time, and he is deadly pale except for little red roses, one growing in each check.

' - you'll splash the coffee right out of the cups, and you'll piss yourself just like she did - '

'STOP IT!' Barry Newman shrieks. 'STOP IT, YOU MON?STER!'

But Henry can't. Henry can't. He sees the line and when you see it, you can't unsee it.

' - unless you wake up from this poisoned dream you're having. You see, Barry - '

But Barry doesn't want to see, absolutely will not see. Out the door he runs, vast buttocks jiggling, and he is gone.

At first Henry sits where he is, not moving, listening to the departing thunder of the one-man buffalo herd that is Barry Newman.

The outer room is empty; he has no receptionist, and with Barry gone, the week is over. Just as well. That was a mess. He goes to the couch and lies down on it.

'Doctor,' he says, 'I just fucked up. 'How did you do that, Henry?

'I told a patient the truth.

'lf we know the truth, Henry, does it not set us free?

'No,' he replies to himself, looking up at the ceiling. 'Not in the slightest.

'Close your eyes, Henry.

'All right, doctor.'

He closes his eyes. The room is replaced by darkness, and that is good. Darkness has become his friend. Tomorrow he will see his other friends (three of them, anyway), and the light will once more seem good. But now . . . now ...

'Doctor?

'Yes, Henry.

'This is a bona fide case of same shit, different day. Do you know that?

'What does that mean, Henry? What does that mean to you?

'Everything,' he says, eyes closed, and then adds: 'Nothing.' But that's a lie. Not the first one that was ever told in here.

He lies on the couch, eyes closed and hands folded on his chest, and after a little while he sleeps.

The next day the four of them drive up to Hole in the Wall, and it is a great eight days. The great hunting trips are coming to an end, only a few left, although they of course do not know this. The real darkness is still a few years away, but it is coming.

The darkness is coming.

2001: Jonesy's Student-Teacher Conference

We don't know the days that will change our lives. Probably just as well. On the day that will change his, Jonesy is in his third-floor John Jay College office, looking out at his little slice of Boston and thinking how wrong T.S. Eliot had been to call April the cruelest month just because an itinerant carpenter from Nazareth supposedly got himself crucified then for fomenting rebellion. Anyone who lives in Boston knows that it's March that's the cruelest, holding out a few clays of false hope and then gleefully hitting you with the shit. Today is one of the untrustworthy ones when it looks as if spring might really be coming, and he's thinking about taking a walk when the bit of impending nastiness just ahead is over. Of course at this point, Jonesy has no idea how nasty a day can get; no idea that he is going to finish this one in a hospital room, smashed up and fighting for his goddam life.

Same shit, different day, he thinks, but this will be different shit indeed.

That's when the phone rings, and he grabs it at once, filled with a hopeful premonition: it'll be the Defuniak kid, calling to cancel his eleven-o'clock. He's gotten a whiff of what's in the wind, Jonesy thinks, and that is very possible. Usually it's the students who make appointments to see the teacher. When a kid gets a message saying that one of his teachers wants to see him . . . well, you don't have to be a rocket-scientist, as the saying goes.

'Hello, it's Jones,' he says.

'Hey, Jonesy, how's life treating you?'

He'd know that voice anywhere. 'Henry! Hey! Good, life's good!'

Life does not, in fact, seem all that great, not with Defuniak due in a quarter of an hour, but it's all relative, isn't it? Compared to where he's going to be twelve hours from now, hooked up to all those beeping machines, one operation behind him and three more ahead of him, Jonesy is, as they say, farting through silk.

'Glad to hear it.'

Jonesy might have heard the heaviness in Henry's voice, but more likely it's a thing he senses.

'Henry? What's wrong?'

Silence. Jonesy is about to ask again when Henry answers.

'A patient of mine died yesterday. I happened to see the obit in the paper. Barry Newman, his name was.' Henry pauses. 'He was a couch man.'

Jonesy doesn't know what that means, but his old friend is hurting. He knows that.

'Suicide?'

'Heart attack. At the age of twenty-nine. Dug his grave with his own fork and spoon.'

'I'm sorry.'

'He hasn't been my patient for almost three years. I scared him away. I had one of those things. Do you know what I'm talking about?'

Jonesy thinks he does. 'Was it the line?'

Henry sighs. It doesn't sound like regret to Jonesy. It sounds like relief 'Yeah. I kind of socked it to him. He took off like his ass was on fire.'

'That doesn't make you responsible for his coronary.'

'Maybe you're right. But that's not the way it feels.' A pause. And then, with a shade of amusement: 'Isn't that a line from a Jim Croce song? Are you all right, Jonesy?'

'Me? Yeah. Why do you ask?'

'I don't know,' Henry says. 'Only . . . I've been thinking about you ever since I opened the paper and saw Barry's picture on the obituary page. I want you to be careful.'

Around his bones (many of which will soon be broken), Jonesy feels a slight coldness. 'What exactly are you talking about?'

'I don't know,' Henry says. 'Maybe nothing. But . . .'

'Is it the line now?' Jonesy is alarmed. He swings around in his chair and looks out the window at the chancy spring sunlight. It crosses his mind that maybe the Defuniak kid is disturbed, maybe he's carrying a gun (packing heat, as they say in the mystery and suspense novels Jonesy likes to read in his spare time) and Henry has somehow picked this up.

'I don't know. The most likely thing is that I'm just having a displaced reaction from seeing Barry's picture on the all-done page. But watch yourself the next little while, would you?'

'Well . . . yeah. I can do that.'

'Good.'

'And you're okay?'

'I'm fine.'

But Jonesy doesn't think Henry is fine at all. He's about to say something else when someone clears his throat behind him and he realizes that Defuniak has probably arrived.

'Well, that's good,' he says, and swivels around in his chair. Yep, there's his eleven-o'clock in the doorway, not looking dangerous at all: just a kid bundled into a big old duffel coat that's too heavy for the day, looking thin and underfed, wearing one earring and a punky haircut that spikes over his worried eyes. 'Henry, I've got an appointment. I'll call you back - '

'No, that's not necessary. Really.'

'You're sure?'

'I am. But there's one other thing. Got thirty more seconds?'

'Sure, you bet.' He holds up a finger to Defuniak and Defuniak nods. But he just goes on standing there until Jonesy points to the one chair in the little office besides his own that isn't stacked with books. Defuniak goes to it reluctantly. Into the phone, Jonesy says, 'Shoot.'

'I think we ought to go back to Derry. Just a quick trip, just you and me. See our old friend.'

'You mean - ?' But he doesn't want to say that name, that baby-sounding name, with a stranger in the room.

He doesn't have to; Henry says it for him. Once they were a quartet, then for a little while they were five, and then they were four again. But the fifth one has never exactly left them. Henry says that name, the name of a boy who is magically still a boy. About him, Henry's worries are more clear, more easily expressed. It isn't anything he knows, he tells Jonesy, just a feeling that their old pal might need a visit.

'Have you talked to his mother?' Jonesy asked.

'I think,' Henry says, 'it might be better if we just . . . you know, orbited on in there. How's your calendar look for this weekend? Or the one after?'

Jonesy doesn't need to check. The weekend starts day after tomorrow. There's a faculty thing Saturday afternoon, but he can easily get clear of that.

'I'm fine both days this weekend,' he says. 'If I was to come by Saturday? At ten?'

'That'd be fine.' Henry sounds relieved, more like himself. Jonesy relaxes a little. 'You're sure?'

'If you think we ought to go see . . .' Jonesy hesitates. ' . . . see Douglas, then probably we should. It's been too long.'

'Your appointment's there, isn't he?'

'Uh-huh.'

'Okay. I'll look for you at ten on Saturday. Hey, maybe we'll take the Scout. Give it a run. How would that be?'

'That would be terrific.'

Henry laughs. 'Carla still makin your lunch, Jonesy?'

'She is. 'Jonesy looks toward his briefcase.

'What you got today? Tuna fish?'

'Egg salad.'

'Mmm-mmm. Okay, I'm out of here. SSDD, right?'

'SSDD,' Jonesy agrees. He can't call their old friend by his right name in front of a student, but SSDD is all right. 'Talk to you I - '

'Arid take care of yourself I mean it.' The emphasis in Henry's voice is unmistakable, and a little scary. But before Jonesy can respond (and what he would say with Defuniak sitting in the corner, watching and listening, he doesn't know), Henry is gone.

Jonesy looks at the phone thoughtfully for a moment, then hangs up. He flips a page on his desk calendar, and on Saturday he crosses out Drinks at Dean Jacobson's house and writes Beg off - going to Derry with Henry to see D. But this is an appointment he will not keep. By Saturday, Derry and his old friends will be the furthest things from his mind.

Jonesy pulls in a deep breath, lets it out, and transfers his attention to his troublesome eleven-o'clock. The kid shifts uncomfortably in his chair. He has a pretty good idea why he's been summoned here, Jonesy guesses.

'So, Mr Defuniak,' he says. 'You're from Maine, according to your records.'

'Uh, yeah. Pittsfield. I - '

'Your records also say that you're here on scholarship, and that you've done well.'

The kid, he sees, is actually a lot more than worried. The kid is on the verge of tears. Christ, but this is hard. Jonesy has never had to accuse a student of cheating before, but he supposes this won't be the last time. He only hopes it doesn't happen too often. Because this is hard, what Beaver would call a fuckarow.

'Mr Defuniak - David - do you know what happens to scholarships if the students holding them are caught cheating? On a mid-term exam, let us say?'

The kid jerks as if a hidden prankster under his chair has just triggered a low-voltage electrical charge into one of his skinny buttocks. Now his lips are trembling and the first tear, oh God, there it goes down his unshaven boy's cheek.

'I can tell you, 'Jonesy says. 'Such scholarships evaporate. That's what happens to them. Poof, and gone into thin air.'

There is a folder on Jonesy's desk. He opens it and takes out a European History mid-term, one of those multiple-choice monstrosities upon which the Department, in its great unwisdom, insists. Written on top of this one, in the black strokes of an IBM pencil ('Make sure your marks are heavy and unbroken, and if you need to erase, erase completely'), is the name DAVID DEFUNIAK.

'I've reviewed your course-work, David; I've re-scanned your paper on feudalism in France during the middle ages; I've even been through your transcripts. You haven't exhibited brilliance, but you've done okay. And I'm aware that you're simply satisfying a requirement here - your real interests don't lie in my field, do they?'

Defuniak shakes his head mutely. The tears gleam on his cheeks in that untrustworthy mid-March sunlight.

There's a box of Kleenex on the comer of Jonesy's desk, and he tosses it to the boy, who catches it easily even in his distress. Good reflexes. When you're nineteen, all your wiring is still nice and tight, all your connections nice and solid.

Wait a few years, Mr Defuniak, he thinks. I'm only thirty-seven and already some of my wires are getting loose.

'Maybe you deserve another chance, 'Jonesy says.

Slowly and deliberately, he begins to crumple Defuniak's mid?term, which is suspiciously perfect, A-plus work, into a ball.

'Maybe what happened is you were sick the day of the mid?-term, and you never took it at all.'

'I was sick,' David Defuniak says eagerly. 'I think I had the flu.'

'Then maybe I ought to give you a take-home essay instead of the multiple-choice test to which your colleagues have been subjected. If you want it. To make up for the test you missed. Would you want that?'

'Yeah,' the kid says, wiping his eyes madly with a large swatch of tissues. At least he hasn't gone through all that small-time cheapshit stuff about how Jonesy can't prove it, can't prove a thing, he'd take it to the Student Affairs Council, he'd call a protest, blah-blah-blah?de-blah. He's crying instead, which is uncomfortable to witness but probably a good sign - nineteen is young, but too many of them have lost most of their consciences by the time they get there. Defuniak has pretty much owned up, which suggests there might still be a man in there, waiting to come out. 'Yeah, that'd be great.'

'And you understand that if anything like this ever happens again - '

'It won't,' the kid says fervently. 'It won't, Professor Jones.' Although Jonesy is only an associate professor, he doesn't bother to correct him. Someday, after all, he will be Professor Jones. He better be; he and his wife have a houseful of kids, and if there aren't at least a few salary-bumps in his future, life is apt to be a pretty tough scramble. They've had some tough scrambles already.

'I hope not,' he says. 'Give me three thousand words on the short-term results of the Norman Conquest, David, all right? Cite sources but no need of footnotes. Keep it informal, but present a cogent thesis. I want it by next Monday. Understood?'

'Yes. Yes, sir.'

'Then why don't you go on and get started.' He points at Defuniak's tatty footwear. 'And the next time you think of buying beer, buy some new sneakers instead. I wouldn't want you to catch the flu again.'

Defuniak goes to the door, then turns. He is anxious to be gone before Mr Jones changes his mind, but he is also nineteen. And curious. 'How did you know? You weren't even there that day. Some grad student proctored the test.'

'I knew, and that's enough,' Jonesy says with some asperity. 'Go on, son. Write a good paper. Hold onto your scholarship. I'm from Maine myself - Derry - and I know Pittsfield. It's a better place to be from than to go back to.'

'You got that right,' Defuniak says fervently. 'Thank you. Thank you for giving me a chance.'

'Close the door on your way out.'

Defuniak - who will spend his sneaker-money not on beer but on a get-well bouquet for Jonesy - goes out, obediently closing the door behind him. Jonesy swings around and looks out the window again. The sunshine is untrustworthy but enticing. And because the Defuniak thing went better than he had expected, he thinks he wants to get out in that sunlight before more March clouds - and maybe snow - come rolling in. He has planned to eat in his office, but a new plan occurs to him. It is absolutely the worst plan of his life, but of course Jonesy doesn't know that. The plan is to grab his briefcase, pick up a copy of the Boston Phoenix, and walk across the river to Cambridge. He'll sit on a bench and eat his egg salad sandwich in the sun.

He gets up to put Defuniak's file in the cabinet marked D-F. How did you know? the boy had asked, and Jonesy supposes that was a good question. An excellent question, really, The answer is this: he knew because . . . sometimes he does. That's the truth, and there's no other. If someone put a gun to his head, he'd say he found out during the first class after the mid-term, that it was right there in the front of David Defuniak's mind, big and bright, flashing on and off in guilty red neon: CHEATER CHEATER CHEATER.

But man, that's dope - he can't read minds. He never could. Never-ever, never-ever, never-ever could. Sometimes things flash into his head, yes - he knew about his wife's problems with pills that way, and he supposes he might have known in that same way that Henry was depressed when he called (No, it was in his voice, doofus, that's all it was), but stuff like that hardly ever happens anymore. There has been nothing really odd since the business with Josie Rinkenhauer. Maybe there was something once, and maybe it trailed them out of their childhoods and adolescence, but surely it is gone now. Or almost gone.

Almost.

He circles the words going to Derry on his desk calendar, then grabs his briefcase. As he does, a new thought comes to him, sudden and meaningless but very powerful: Watch out for Mr Gray.

He stops with one hand on his doorknob. That was his own voice, no doubt about it.

'What?' he asks the empty room.

Nothing.

Jonesy steps out of his office, closes the door, and tests the lock.

In the comer of his door's bulletin board is a blank white card. Jonesy unpins it and turns it over. On the flip side is the printed message BACK AT ONE - UNTIL THEN I'M HISTORY. He pins the message side to the bulletin board with perfect confidence, but it will be almost two months before Jonesy enters this room again and sees his desk calendar still turned to St Patrick's Day.

Take care of yourself, Henry said, but Jonesy isn't thinking about taking care of himself. He is thinking about March sunlight. He's thinking about eating his sandwich. He's thinking he might watch a few girls over on the Cambridge side - skirts are short, and March winds are frisky. He's thinking about all sorts of things, but watching out for Mr Gray isn't one of them. Neither is taking care of himself

This is a mistake. This is also how lives change forever.