"Maybe, like, for an eighth of a second, she thought I smacked my lips. Or I clicked my tongue at her."

"Then what?"

"Then she understood I had food in my teeth and I was wedging it out. The way you wedge it out with the tongue. But she looked at me and she saw who it was and she decided she rather be insulted."

"I can understand this."

"You can understand this."

"I can understand this because even if you didn't insult her, you could have."

"I didn't. But I could have. This is what you're saying."

"I known you twenty years. And you could have."

"Just so I understand. I didn't. But I could have."

"That's right. Because you, I could believe it."

"But I didn't."

"But you could have."

"Regardless I was wedging food."

"Regardless Jesus walked on water. Because you could have." "So this is where you're taking us." "Where am I taking us?"

"To where I have to say something. And you know what I have to say? And I say it to you and your sister. The both of youse." "Be careful."

"You're gonna hear this very good. To you but mostly to your sister." "Be careful, Anthony." "I'll fuck you in your heart, you fucker." 'Anthony. But what a mistake you're making." "You and your sister. I'll fuck you in your heart." "Who I know twenty years." 'And your mother for good measure."

"Who he thinks I'm gonna listen to this from a hard-on like him." 'And your mother," he said.

A kid went by with a baseball glove hooked to his belt, eating a melorol.

The longshoreman stood across the street with that massive mustachioed head of his, a whal-yo off the boat about a year ago, works the Jersey docks, strong as a Mack truck.

Two guys pushed a car that had no one in it.

Nick stood in front of the grocery eating a hero sandwich and holding a beer that Donato's wife had sold him, concealed in a paper bag.

The fresh-air inspectors.

Sammy Bones who ran on the field during a game at the Polo Grounds so he could be seen on TV, except nobody he knew was watching and he's been arrabbiato ever since, like mad-dog angry.

A girl in her confirmation outfit, a white dress and stockings and white shoes, and wearing red ribbons in her hair, and carrying white flowers in crinkly red cellophane.

Juju came by and took the sandwich out of Nick's hand and looked inside.

The old man on the stoop across the street who spreads his handkerchief dainty on the top step and then sits and fills his pipe with cigarette tobacco and the shreddings of a crumbled DeNobili cigar, the perennial guinea stinker, and whatever else he can find that doesn't belong in a pipe.

"You're serious about these weights."

"I'm doing bench presses where my mother grabs the bar when I yell. Supine presses," Juju said in a slightly snobbish tone.

"How many bites you're gonna take out of my sandwich?"

"I'm doing a whole program. You should come over."

"Hey. I work, remember. I got 7-Up I lift all day long."

"That's not a program," Juju said.

"I rather die than lift weights."

"See, now that's an attitude where you're only showing your ignorance of the subject."

"I rather die the death of a thousand cuts."

"Show your ignorance."

"I rather be ignorant. Look over there. The one in the yellow blouse. That's a 36D."

"What, you measured?"

"What kind of measured? I have a trained eye."

"You can tell a D cup from a C cup from this distance."

"I rather eat sheep stomach than lift weights," Nick told him.

The super's wife looking peacefully out the window at 610, called Sister Katy. So when she got screaming raging drunk, about once a month, the kids chanted up to her, Sing it Sister Katy.

"She sells you beer on Sunday? Before one o'clock?"

"What kind of beer? This is root beer."

A boy in a white suit with a red tie and a red armband and his hair plastered down trying to wriggle out of the grip of his mother, who's swinging her handbag at his head.

"What's your confirmation name?"

"Never you fucking mind," Juju said.

First the close air of the long stairway and the metallic taste of the air and the thick distant stir of men's voices on a busy night, the roil of muddy voices, and the smoke of the big room and a ball game on TV and a player softly chalking his stick, looking like a soldier in some old eccentric war, and the beautiful numbered balls and green baize and dreamy prowl of a shooter on a run, and the endless caroming clack of the balls hitting, the touch sounds of the cue, the balls, the cushions, the slap of the pocket drop.

That night Nick shot a game with George the Waiter. George parked cars at the racetrack on his nights off from the restaurant and he told stories about the cars he parked, about flooring the pedal and slamming the brake, that sounded like dirty jokes, the chrome and upholstery and handling, all tits and ass.

Nick felt a little wary of George since the episode of the needle. He felt cut off in a way, less free and easy, but George never referred to the thing and didn't even seem to remember.

Still, he felt he'd lost some standing with George, showing shock and confusion that way.

Nick looked up from the shot he was lining up. There was something in George's face that made him follow the man's line of sight to the other end of the room.

"Who's that?"

"You don't know him?"

Mike stood talking to a man near the counter, heavyset, in a too-tight jacket, two-toned, over an open-collar shirt.

"Take your shot," George said.

He called seven in the side.

"That's Mario Badalato," George said.

He made the shot.

"Not bad," George said. "You know this name?"

He wasn't sure but shook his head.

"It's a name, over the years, that's been connected to that particular life."

Nick moved crouched to the far end of the table, studying his next shot.

"Understand what I'm saying? Father, uncles, cousins, brothers."

"That particular life."

"You're never gonna bank the four. You should be looking anywhere but the four," George said. "People in that life."

"That life," Nick said.

"Malavita. Who, once they're in, they're in for good."

Nick glanced at the man in question, forty years old, maybe, thick and packed, a thickness of body that had no rolling or sagging but was hard, packed, built on other men's lesser luck, on the way an unfortunate occurrence across town makes you stronger.

"You should be looking at the two ball meanwhile. The four is not your shot, Nicky."

"The two ball."

"Madonn', what do I have to do, send an engraved invitation?"

"That life," Nick said.

"That particular life. Under the surface of ordinary things. And organized so that it makes more sense in a way, if you understand what I mean. It makes more sense than the horseshit life the rest of us live."

Nick studied the table some more.

"So is this the man who had Walls, you know, put on ice?"

"What do I know? I don't know, I don't want to know, I don't even want to talk about it no more."

"No more, no more."

"Take your shot," George said.

Mario Badalato. Maybe he knew this name from somewhere. They shot a couple of games and George gave him hints and tips and a guy at the next table was singing to the tune of a popular song.

"Don't know why. I've got lipstick on my fly. Slop-py blow-job."

"It's almost beach weather, George."

"This makes you happy? I hate the beach. I used to work at the beach."

"Don't tell me lifeguard. I pity the drowning child."

"Wise guy. I used to sell ice cream. This was years ago. Ninety degrees with a cooler on my back that felt like a thousand pounds."