"Well, I watch it on TV," I lied. "All the time, the Knicks, the Rangers."

Juan rolled his eyes at me behind Darla's back.

That Thanksgiving, it snowed. We had fifteen people for dinner, neighbors and friends and a mail sorter Tim brought home from the deli when Juan sent him out for cranberries. We cooked a twenty-pound turkey in Juan and Philip's oven, and cornbread and candied yams in ours. Mrs. Zibintzky from downstairs made pumpkin pies, and Morty brought a grocery sack of canned olives and sweet pickles and Cheez Whiz. Zak lugged up a case of beer and bags of ice for the tub, and Darla arranged her mother's china on the two kitchen tables. There wasn't enough room for all of us in any one room, so Tim shuffled food and conversation back and forth across the hall. He was inventing new words to "Over the River and Through the Woods," and every few minutes we got the latest verse, loud and off-key.

"Okay, okay, you guys." Morty stood up and began clanking his fork against a wineglass. "I wanna say a few words on this occasion. I just wanna say that I appreciate you having me into your home. Timmy, I met you, what, two, three months ago and here we are." Morty's eyes welled up. "Eating turkey and so on. Anyways, here's to family, wherever we may find them."

Outside, the lights of the city had receded behind a gauzy curtain of flakes, and the sounds of traffic were muffled and far away. I had the heady sensation that the rooms had somehow come unmoored and we were floating high above the city. Our little group laughed and drank and sang, snug in a cocoon of yellow light, as galaxies of snow whirled past the windows.

Whatever we might later say against him, Tim made us feel like we belonged somewhere.

Zak used to try out his new routines on Tim, who chuckled appreciatively at just about anything. When Zak got on the roster for amateur night at Catch a Rising Star, Tim went along as his fan. One night, they came back and announced that Tim had signed up for a slot the following week.

"Oh, for Chrissake, Zak," Darla whispered furiously when Tim left the room. "Like it's not bad enough you have to suffer like that? You have to drag Tim into it? They'll eat him for breakfast. Does he even have any material?"

"He does those jokes with the puppets."

"Oh, sure, yeah right, they're gonna love that. Live at the Tropicana, Shari and Lamb Chop. You are such a dimwit sometimes."

She had a point. Each of us privately imagined Tim, our gentle Tim, being savagely humiliated, thrown to the lions. Still, we all went as a show of support, even Mrs. Zibintzky, who never went anywhere. This is what friends do. The group had once endured four hours of Shakespeare when I played Ophelia at the Little Theatre Under the Bridge. We'd been to a garage in Brooklyn to watch Juan dance with people dressed in Hefty bags. Now, we were going to pay our admissions, buy our watery drinks, and writhe through an evening of bad comedy. Afterward, we intended to lie with enthusiasm and to point out the shortcomings of the audience.

By the time Tim was introduced near the end of the evening, I had downed four or five gin and tonics, which were proving to be less diluted than I'd imagined. The room looked precariously unstable. Through the smoky haze, I watched Tim meander onto the stage and then stand blinking in the glare of the spotlight.

"Hi, my name's Tim." He waited expectantly, with the glazed smile of an actor who has forgotten his next line. The silence stiffened. Finally, Darla sighed and said, "Hi, Tim."

"Well, hi, Darla." He smiled at her gratefully. "That's my friend Darla. Actually, I brought several friends with me tonight." Tim reached into the paper sack at his feet and brought out a skinny puppet with a wide grin. He talked as he fitted the puppet over his hand.

"This nightclub thing is kind of new to me. Usually I do children's parties. You know how kids love puppets. But I think we're all really just kids. My mother thinks so, too. For my birthday, she bought me an extra-large sweater. 'You'll grow into it,' she said."

Our little table responded on cue. We sounded like opera singers laughing, ha ha ha ha.

"Now, this puppet is Rocky. I named him after my mother. I'm just kidding. Actually, Mom's name is Rambo. Rocky, say hi to all the nice folks out there."

The puppet's vacant gaze rested on Tim. "You're dying out here, Tim, you know that?"

"Well, I…"

Then the puppet did the bit that's become his trademark. The punchline where he lifts up his hand and all but the middle finger falls over. I still don't think it's funny, but I yelped with laughter at the incongruity of Tim telling a dirty joke. The audience was laughing now, too, and I could feel the tension ease around our table.

Up on the stage, Tim looked genuinely puzzled.

"Please excuse Rocky," Tim said. "I don't know what's gotten into him."

"Your friend Philip, that's what got into me. I'm talking sodomy, Tim. Didn't you notice it's a little sticky in there?" Tim froze, his eyes moving slowly toward his left hand. The room sniggered and squealed.

"Puppet fucker." The puppet leered directly at Philip.

"Rocky, now hush."

"Once you've had a puppet, you never go back. Right, Phil baby?" I looked over at Philip, who smiled good-naturedly at the stage.

Mrs. Zibintzky said, "I may be too old for this."

Tim and Rocky started this riff on plastic surgery. Pretty funny stuff and I was laughing, and then he said something very specific about a neighbor and a botched breast job, and I realized he was talking about Darla. No one was supposed to know. I mean, it was a ridiculous secret, but when you come right down to it, most of our secrets are. I stole a glance at Darla, who was staring rigidly into some middle distance.

"Man, I've got more real parts than she does." The puppet cackled viciously. "It must be hard on that boyfriend of hers."

"Why do you say that?"

"He can't tell for sure when he's two-timing her. 'Did you have your ass done, honey, or am I having another affair?'"

"The little shit," Zak croaked. Darla rose and I started to say something – I don't know what. Zak was already reaching toward her, but her look stopped all of us cold. She left.

My name crackled over the mike.

Tim was looking quizzically at his puppet. "I thought you liked her, Rocky."

"She's a loser, Tim. I went to see her in that Shakespeare play. Man, that was painful."

"Well, it was a tragedy, Rocky."

"You're telling me. She was so bad, the Surgeon General had warnings posted in the program. I ignored that, I'm tough, but Tim, there's a limit to what a human being can endure. Halfway through her mad scene, the audience started chanting 'Jump, Jump, Jump.' First play in New York closed by the Board of Health."

There was more, but the words began to run together, blurring into a howl of laughter. I kept staring at Tim, transfixed by his placid smile. His lips were slightly parted, and I couldn't tell whether they moved when the puppet spoke.

Afterward, we congratulated Tim, not warmly, but he didn't seem to notice. He hugged me and then giddily introduced a man in a slouchy silk suit named Graham. I held out my hand, but Graham had already turned back to Tim.

"Tim, first rule: you don't use real names. You don't want your roommate suing you for libel, now do you?" Graham laughed like someone who gets paid to, which, as it turns out, he does. He works for the cable company where Tim got his first break.

When we left the club, Tim was chatting it up amiably with a bartender and a few others who acted like he was their best and oldest friend. He waved to us happily and said he'd be along later, but he never came back. I heard later he was living in a loft downtown that belongs to some LA muckety-muck.

The apartment building was dark when we returned to it that night, every window a blank. We let ourselves in and I suppose we said good night or something to that effect, but all I recall was the buzzing of the fluorescent tubes in the vestibule and, as I climbed the stairs, the sound of doors shutting quietly below me, one by one, the click of deadbolts turning.