My dad finished his job for the Good Luck Company and we moved up to eastern Kentucky, where he went to work doing much the same thing as he had in Alabama, only on a grander scale. Plenty of mines in that part of the world, you know. We lived in the town of Ironville long enough for me to finish high school. In my sophomore year, just for a lark, I joined the Drama Club. People would laugh if they knew, I suppose. A little mousy fellow like me, who made a living doing tax returns for small businesses and widows, acting in things like No Exit? Talk about Walter Mitty! But I did, and I was good. Everyone said so. I thought I might even have a career in acting. I knew I was never going to be a leading man, but someone has to play the president’s economic adviser, or the bad guy’s second-in-command, or the mechanic who gets killed in the first reel of a movie. I knew I could play parts like that, and I thought people might actually hire me. I told my dad I wanted to major in drama when I got to college. He said okay, great, go for it, just make sure you have something to fall back on. I went to Pitt, where I majored in theater arts and minored in business administration.

The first play I was cast in was She Stoops to Conquer, and that’s where I met Vicky Abington. I was Tony Lumpkin and she was Constance Neville. She was a beautiful girl with masses of curly blond hair, very thin and high-strung. Far too beautiful for me, I thought, but eventually I got up enough nerve to ask her out for coffee. That was how it began. We’d sit for hours in Nordy’s – that’s the hamburger joint in Pitt Union – and she’d pour out all her troubles, which mostly had to do with her dominating mother, and tell me about her ambitions, which were all about the theater, especially serious theater in New York. Twenty-five years ago there still was such a thing.

I knew she got pills at the Nordenberg Wellness Center – maybe for anxiety, maybe for depression, maybe for both – but I thought, That’s just because she’s ambitious and creative, probably most really great actors and actresses take those pills. Probably Meryl Streep takes those pills, or did before she got famous in The Deer Hunter. And you know what? Vicky had a great sense of humor, which is something many beautiful women seem to lack, especially if they suffer from the nervous complaint. She could laugh at herself, and often did. She said being able to do that was the only thing that kept her sane.

We were cast as Nick and Honey in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and got better reviews than the kids who played George and Martha. After that we weren’t just coffee buddies, we were a couple. Sometimes we made out in a dark corner of the Union, although those sessions often ended with her crying and saying she knew she wasn’t good enough, she’d fail at acting just like her mother said she would. One night – this was after the cast party for Deathtrap, our junior year – we had sex. It was the only time. She said she loved it, it was wonderful, but I guess it wasn’t. Not for her, anyway, because she’d never do it again.

In the summer of 2000, we stayed on campus because there was going to be a summer production of The Music Man in Frick Park. It was a huge deal because Mandy Patinkin was going to direct it. Vicky and I both tried out. I wasn’t a bit nervous, because I didn’t expect to get anything, but that show had become the biggest thing in Vicky’s life. She called it her first step to stardom, saying it the way people do when they’re joking but not really. We were called in by sixes, each of us holding a card saying the part we were most interested in, and Vicky was shaking like a leaf while we waited outside the rehearsal hall. I put my arm around her and she quieted, but just a little. She was so white her makeup looked like a mask.

I went in and handed over my wish-card with Mayor Shinn written on it, because that’s a smallish part in the show, and damned if I didn’t end up getting the lead role – Harold Hill, the charming con man. Vicky tried out for Marian Paroo, the librarian who gives piano lessons. She’s the female lead. She read all right, I thought – not great, not her best, but all right. Then came the singing.

It was Marian’s big number. If you don’t know it, it’s this very sweet and simple song called ‘Goodnight, My Someone.’ She’d sung it for me – a capella – half a dozen times, and she was perfect. Sweet and sad and hopeful. But that day in the rehearsal hall, Vicky screwed the pooch. That girl was just clench-your-fists-and-close-your-eyes awful. She couldn’t find her note and had to start again not once but twice. I could see Patinkin getting impatient, because he had half a dozen other girls waiting to read and sing. The accompanist was rolling her eyes. I wanted to punch her right in her stupid, horsey face.

By the time Vicky finished, she was trembling all over. Mr Patinkin thanked her, and she thanked him, all very polite, and then ran. I caught up with her before she could get out of the building and told her she had been great. She smiled and thanked me and said we both knew better. I said that if Mr Patinkin was as good as everyone said, he’d look past her nerves and see what a great actress she was. She hugged me and said I was her best friend. Besides, she said, there will be other shows. Next time I’ll take a Valium before I try out. I was just afraid it would change my voice, because I’ve heard that some pills can do that. Then she laughed and said, But how much worse could it be than it was today? I said I’d buy her an ice cream at Nordy’s, she said that sounded good, and off we went.

We were walking down the sidewalk, hand in hand, which made me remember all the times I walked back and forth to Mary Day Grammar holding hands with Marlee Jacobs. I won’t say those thoughts summoned him, but I won’t say they didn’t, either. I don’t know. I only know that some nights I lie awake in my cell, wondering.

I guess she was feeling a little better, because as we walked along she was talking about what a great Professor Hill I’d make, when someone yelled at us from the other side of the street. Only it wasn’t a yell; it was a donkey bray.

GEORGE AND VICKY UP IN A TREE! F-U-C-K-I-N-G!

It was him. The bad little kid. Same shorts, same sweater, same orange hair sticking out from under that beanie with the plastic propeller on top. Over ten years had passed and he hadn’t aged a day. It was like being thrown back in time, only now it was Vicky Abington, not Marlee Jacobs, and we were on Reynolds Street in Pittsburgh instead of School Street in Talbot, Alabama.

What in the world, Vicky said. Do you know that boy, George?

Well, what was I going to say to that? I didn’t say anything. I was so far beyond surprise I couldn’t even open my mouth.

You act like shit and you sing worse! he shouted. CROWS sing better than you do! And you’re UGLEEE! UGLEE VICKEE is what you are!

She put her hands over her mouth, and I remember how big her eyes were, and how they were filling up with tears all over again.

Suck his dink, why don’t you? he shouted. That’s the only way an ugly no-talent cunt like you will ever get a part!

I started for him, only it didn’t feel real. It felt like it was all happening in a dream. It was late afternoon and Reynolds Street was full of traffic, but I never thought of that. Vicky did, though. She caught me by the arm and pulled me back. I think I owe her my life, because a big bus went past only a second or two later, blaring its horn.

Don’t, she said. He’s not worth it, whoever he is.

There was a truck right behind the bus, and once they were both by us, we saw the kid running up the other side of the street with his big ass jouncing. He got to the corner and turned it, but before he did, he shoved down the back of his shorts, bent over, and mooned us.