The man stopped, turned around. Kyle pulled up short as the man eyed him.

He was nobody, nothing, just a man walking down the street, fortysome years old with a dark shirt and a head of prematurely gray hair. The man cocked his head and then turned around and kept going.

And Kyle felt stuck there, right there, on the sidewalk, as if the rubber of his soles had melted onto the cement. He needed somebody to pry him loose, and he thought of Kat.

CHAPTER 5

AS HE WALKED east down Lombard, he saw her sitting on the steps of her apartment building, a converted brick town house just past Seventh Street. She was thin and tall, with lustrous black hair, tied back into a ponytail, wearing short shorts that showed off her long, athletic legs and a T-shirt two sizes too small. Had she been anyone else, Kyle would have been smitten on sight and fallen right into pickup mode. But she wasn’t someone else; she was Kat.

They had been friends for as long as Kyle could remember, growing up in the same working-class neighborhood outside Philadelphia. Kat was the brain with attitude and looks, Kyle was the superstar athlete. They had been friends too long to date, but even as they went out with other people, they were a unit, far closer to each other than to their ostensible partners. For a long time it had been assumed that Kat was secretly in love with Kyle, the big man on his high-school campus. Now it was assumed that Kyle was secretly in love with Kat, the rising legal eagle with the fat bank account and the glittering future. In truth, there was nothing secret about what they felt for each other and love was but a pallid word to describe it.

As he approached, she smiled wearily.

“You waiting up to tuck me in?” said Kyle, who’d been crashing at Kat’s place almost every night now, since Kyle was currently between places and had been since his childhood home had been seized by the bank a number of weeks back.

“I tried calling,” she said.

“I think I left my phone somewhere.”

She pulled his phone out of her pocket and tossed it at him. “Thanks,” he said. He flipped it open to check his messages. “It helps if you charge it,” she said.

He closed the phone, jammed it in his pocket, sat down beside her

on the stoop. “So why are you still up?”

“I was waiting for you. Is everything all right?”

He looked at her, saw the unwelcome maternal concern in her

eyes, turned away. “Word travels, I guess.”

“A bit, yeah. And it got me a bit worried. There’s a lot going on in

your life right now.”

“Is that the way it seems to you? Because to me it seems like there’s

nothing going on at all.”

“So really, how are you doing?”

“Just dandy. And yourself?”

“Fine, sweetie, but then I’m not the one still seeing my dead father

in the outfield.”

“You don’t have to. Yours is alive.”

“You sound like you resent it.”

“Sure. I resent everyone who’s not orphaned. The resentment is

about the only thing I have left in the world—that and my car. And it

doesn’t cost fifty a pop to fill up my resentment.”

“You’re a strapping twenty-six, hardly the image of the poor orphan boy.”

42 WILLIAM LASHNER

“But still, when you call me an orphan, you want to hold me in your arms and mother me, right?”

She reached a hand to his face, rubbed his cheek forcefully with her thumb, examined the smear of red there. “Looks like somebody beat me to it.”

“One of Skitch’s friends,” he said, unembarrassed.

“What happened to her?”

“She had to go back to New Jersey.”

“Ahh, a Jersey girl. And a friend of Skitch, so you know she’s a class act all the way.”

“She was nice. A teacher, I think.”

“You going to see her again?”

“Maybe, if I can remember her name.”

“But that’s why you drink, right? To forget.”

“I only had a few.” He sat, thinking for a moment. “And maybe a few after that.”

“It hadn’t happened in a while, had it?” she said.

“No, and then tonight I saw him twice.”

“Twice?”

“Again outside McGillin’s. I saw him, and I chased him down, and it was just some guy.”

“It’s always just some guy.”

“I know.”

“What are you hoping for when you chase these ghosts?”

“I don’t know. He was my dad. Maybe he can teach me the one thing I need to know.”

“What’s that?”

“If I knew, I wouldn’t need him.”

“Kyle, sweetheart, don’t be such a lummox.”

“How’s your dad doing?”

“He’s fine.”

“You see him a lot, right?”

“Once or twice a week.”

“What do you talk about?”

“You’re pathetic.”

“I know, but humor me.”

“We talk about stupid stuff. His kidneys. His golf scores. My sister’s husband.”

“Sounds nice.”

“It’s not like he’s relaying the meaning of life to me.”

“But you see, maybe he is. You’re just not listening carefully enough.”

“You know my dad—he’s more concerned with the meaning of his phone bill than the meaning of life.” She roughened her voice into a strong Korean accent. “ ‘What is this charge here? I don’t understand. Fees on top of fees. And don’t get me started on damn cable bill.’ ”

“Sounds lovely,” said Kyle. “So why were you calling?”

“To relay a message.”

“Oh, yeah? From who?”

“Bubba Jr. Were you supposed to be at the bar tonight?”

Kyle let his head drop between his shoulders. “Crap,” he said, in a calm, unconcerned voice. “I knew I was forgetting something. Maybe I should stroll on over there.”

“Don’t bother,” she said. “I think he fired you.”

“Fired me? He can’t fire me. I’m his shortstop.”

“Not anymore, honey,” she said. “Not anymore.”