Toni and me sit on the stoop and look down the street. All night long we’ll wait if we have to. In the early evening we’ll take a break for Steak-umms at her place. They have the microwave. Then we’ll be back, sitting on the stoop looking for him. When he comes we’ll tear down the sidewalk, almost as if the first one to him is to get something more special than his grin and maybe a time in his pocket fingering around for the treats he keeps there for us kids. “Candyman Carlton,” someone named him so that’s what…

It’s always at this time of day that I get the blast of sun from across the street, a reflection off of the windows of the Lenox Tower building, so despised for its hulking modernness. It that sleeps the princes of Wall Street and their families, that which blocks what I imagine was once a perfect view of the 1st Avenue Bridge.

I’ll take what I can get though. I lean back against the faded paisley wallpaper of my room. Anika is in the kitchen and something krouty smelling is wafting under my door. …

Sometimes I get tired of waiting for Tammy by the bridge. I want to walk on, quickly and get home so I can dash together a sandwich and get downstairs before she shows, maybe put a sleeve of crackers in my pocket if there are any.

If I make it in time I’ll stay down there until the light outside the basement windows starts to dim. Then I know dad will be home and it’ll be safe to go up. But Tammy makes me wait for her, always, by the little creek. I watch the water gurgle around the rocks…

“It doesn’t need to look perfect,” she said. We turned left at the light and headed down that street where I used to live when I was… don’t remember. I think I remembered the low brick ranch with the carport on the left. My head craned as we went by. I fabricated a memory of me pushing Gabby down the swooping driveway, full run speed over and over again. I told myself I remembered the bounce of the suspension system. Big rusty springs.

My memory hit a possible snag. Where’d we find that thing? There was no possiblitly. Dad? Not…

I’ve been here for nine years. It hasn’t gone by fast. Every day is a walk through a misty dream where I work the job at hand and try to remember her face. I should’ve been more careful but careful is something dad never accused me of. Instead he said I’d land right where I deserved and nothing more. Even as a young boy I took his words to mean something ominous. My mother never countered him, even when in disagreement but on this subject I don’t think she had the mind to. …

Duncan laughs at me in silent hysterics. I pull my pants up and make my way back to the car, fighting the headlights. He follows, aping my covered face with hand in an exaggerated way. I’d have them drive off without him but he’s got the cash for our next meal, I hope. It would be like him to not have it, to have forgotten it in all the scrambling and dodging about and quick clean up. Enough normalcy to allow us out of town and over the one bridge is all we needed.

When we are about a mile…

Swimming in the fresh sunlight of today I am glad for it. The memory of yesterday, gray and drizzled, is like the dry lick of a postage stamp; should have gathered more spit. I hammered through the snow turned mud, up to the field where so much opens up around me; the reward for the hundred yards of muck from where I parked my car.

I come here daily, and first spy down the straightway as much as my eyes will power to see if there is any trace of another human. If there is I’ll turn and go back…

It’s not like Patti ever minded me staying over. But I did. I lazed into it night after night however. Too cold looking out there to venture two avenues and six blocks to the Number 1 train.

I’d end up at her place as part of a circuitous set of events, mind set on fulfilling any number of evening desires, none of which involved her. And yet I’d come dragging in, partly hungry, and partly in need of her company. She filled me up.

Her place was small. Everything was in reach. We adored the Malaysian place on the corner…