Ryan said they had better drive him back, he wasn’t buying anything today after all. Ahead of them he could see the stoplight at Six Mile Road. They were approaching it, but the car slowed down and turned left into an alley before they reached the corner. The car stopped; the headlights beamed down past trash cans and incinerators and the shadowed back walls of stores. The headlights went off and the guy next to the driver, thin-faced with long hair, about Ryan’s age, turned with his arm on the backrest. He said it would cost ten bucks. He said whether they took Ryan to the school or back to the gas station or anywhere, it would cost ten bucks. Ryan said no, he had changed his mind. The guy looking at him said, man, nothing was free. Everything cost ten bucks. Ryan said okay, I’ll make you a deal. You don’t have to drive me back. I’ll get out here.

The inside light went on as the driver opened his door. Ryan remembered seeing the girl, her hair lighter than he thought it would be; he remembered feeling the beer running up his sleeve, colder than it had tasted, as he raised the bottle by the neck and saw the guy next to the driver drop behind the backrest. Ryan was out, slamming the door, moving along the car to the rear, then sliding in the gravel and changing his direction. As the driver came past the front end Ryan went into him, chopping the bottle against the side of his head backhanded so that the guy fell against the hood.

The bottle didn’t break. In the movies the bottle breaks, but this one didn’t. He held on to it and ran, all the way down the alley and right, past the brick side of a store to Six Mile, across the street and east along the sidewalk, not aware that he was still holding the bottle. He was in the next block when he felt the car moving along next to him. He didn’t want to look at the car, he wanted it to pass and he wanted to keep walking.

But the car didn’t pass and he did a dumb thing. He looked at the car because he had to, a car that as soon as he looked at it was a black-with-yellow-lettering police car. And he ran. He didn’t think, he ran. Later, thinking about it, he realized what a dumb thing he did and made a resolution it would never happen again; but later was too late. He ran to the corner and around it; he ran down the length of a cyclone fence, down to the end of it and up over the fence. He hid in the darkness and silence against the wall of the lumber company, in the aisle between ten-foot stacks of two-by-fours, and he was standing there with the beer bottle in his hand when they put the flashlight on him. He held the beer bottle half raised at his side, the light in his eyes, and finally he let go of it.

The judge at Morning Sessions, a nice calm-looking guy with his hair starting to get gray at the sides, gave him sixty days in the Detroit House of Correction.

He had had enough bad luck. It was time to have some good luck. There had to be a beginning to the good luck if he was going to have any, and maybe this was the beginning. It was good to have a car again. It was good driving along at night with the radio on. It was good rolling into the Bay Vista and angle-parking in front of the office. If this was the beginning of the good luck, he would have to watch and be ready and, finally, at one point, if it still looked good, he would have to say yes and step into it and do it, go all the way.

Why would it be any harder than going into a house for TV sets and fur coats? Or any harder than walking into his own room.

From the bed, sitting across it against the wall and his cracked curl-toed boots sticking out over the side, Frank Pizarro said, “Hey, Jack, how you doing?”

“Get off the bed.”

“What’s the matter with you?” Pizarro pushed himself to the edge and sat with his legs hanging, not touching the floor.

“How’d you know I was here?”

“Billy tole me. What’s the matter with you?”

“I mean this room.”

“A guy outside, when I came. I ask him.”

“He tell you to walk in, make yourself at home?”

“No, I wait out there awhile, then I think maybe you sleeping and don’t hear me, so I try the door and it’s open. Listen, I got fired from my job.”

“I heard.”

“From Billy. But he didn’t tell you about the bus.”

“Frank, I’ll see you, okay?”

“Listen, Camacho wants me to drive the bus back for the money I owe him. Drive him in it and leave my truck because the goddamn thing’s busted anyway.”

Ryan hesitated. “That’s fine with me.”

“Sure, but how do the rest of them get home? See?”

“In the bus.”

“No. Camacho say, ‘I don’t have to take them home.’ I say, ‘But they already pay you to take them.’ He say, ‘That was when I was crew leader. But I’m not crew leader no more, so I don’t have to take them.’ He say then, ‘But if they want to pay my bus company five hunnert dollar and give me money for the airplane, then I leave the bus here.’

“Come on. They believe that?”

“What are they going to do? They tell him they don’t like it, Camacho leave them here.”

“What do you care? You’ve got a ride.”

“What do I care? They all my friends.”

“Come on, Frank.”

“I mean it. I work with them seven years.”

“All right, so why come to me?”

“Man, we been friends, right? Billy say, ‘Why don’t we borrow the money from Jack?’ Pizarro’s flat, open face stared up at Ryan.

“Five hundred dollars.”

“Billy say you got it. He say if you spent it, you can get some more easy.”

“Where is Billy?”

“He don’t want to come. You know, to ask you.”

“It doesn’t bother you any.”

“Listen, I don’t ask you for the money. Billy say that. I want to borrow it from you and we pay you back.”

“You think I have five hundred?”

“You don’t, you can get it. Easy.”

“If I loaned you what I have, you’d pay it back, uh?”

“You know that. Sure.”

“When?”

“Next year when we come up.”

“It’s been nice knowing you, Frank.”

“Man, we got these families. How they going to get home?”

“Come on-I’ve got this family.”

“You don’t care what happens to all those people?”

“Hey, Frank, I’ll see you.”

“Okay, buddy,” Pizarro said. He came off the bed slowly. “Screw you too.”

Pizarro moved past him and opened the door; narrow shoulders and drooping pants seat, checkered pants that were worn and dirty, shapeless, with slash continental pockets and a snappy snap-around elastic waist.

“Wait a minute,” Ryan said. “You got your truck?”

“I tole you, it’s busted.”

“You going to walk?”

“No, I’m going to rent a goddamn Hertz car.”

Ryan hesitated, watching Pizarro holding the door open, but only a moment. He said, “See you, Frank.”

Pizarro noticed the mustang in front of the office. He looked at the car as he walked past it and something about it was familiar. There were a lot of dark green Mustangs, but there was something else about a Mustang that stuck in his mind. He walked down to the first side road beyond the Bay Vista and got his panel truck out of the trees and headed for Geneva Beach as fast as the rusted-out panel would move. But by the time he got there, the bars and liquor stores were closed and the town was locked up for the night. Goddamn Ryan.

Waiting for Ryan and not finding anything to drink in Ryan’s place, he had thought of getting a bottle of something, tequila or gin. Or a bottle of red. If he bought wine, he’d have a few bucks left over. He had four dollars and sixty cents of the hundred Ryan had given him as his cut. Sure he had waited in the truck. But, goddamn, it was his truck; he was the one to drive it. At the time he should have pulled off the road and laid it on him. “Hey, man, where’s my cut? No chickenshit hunnert dollars, my cut.” Lay it on him and let him know. Ryan had been lucky with Camacho; but that didn’t mean he was always lucky.

He had never liked Ryan. Ever since San Antonio, at the gas station: Ryan standing there with his bag looking for a ride, standing there with his hands on his hips looking them over as they pulled in-the bus, the panel truck, and two cars, all migrants; then talking to Camacho for a while and getting in the bus. Ever since then. Ever since, on the trip up, Ryan started going into the stores where they had trouble being served to get the pop and stuff to make sandwiches. Ever since in the town in Oklahoma talking the gas station man into letting them use his stinking broken-down washroom, thinking he was a big shot because he did it. Ever since he started talking to Marlene Desea and before they were out of Missouri had got her to leave the panel truck and ride in the bus with him. Somebody else, one of the other girls, had said, “Frank, I would love to ride with you.” But he had told her nothing doing, nobody was riding with him now.