The second half started. The cake arrived. I gorged myself on sugar while 300-pound men in pads and helmets pounded each other senseless as Mrs. Schmulowitz provided her usual expert, play-by-play commentary on the game. By the fourth quarter, consumed by memories, I’d turned inward and silent.

Mrs. Schmulowitz looked over, her dark eyes filled with compassion. She rested her hand on mine and said, “Tomorrow’s another day, bubeleh.”

“Think I’ll take a little walk.”

“Late-night stroll. A fine idea. Fresh air, burn off some of that brisket, get the old ticker pumping. I could use a little exercise myself. How ’bout a little company?”

“I’d really rather be by myself tonight. You understand.”

“Do I understand? Of course, I understand! Don’t give it another thought. Go. Just promise me one thing.”

“Name it.”

“Look both ways before crossing the street. This town is filled with meshugener old people. I haven’t seen one yet who knows how to drive, especially in the dark.”

I assured her that I’d look both ways.

The moon that night was a silver sliver hanging low in the western sky, bracketed by Venus and some faint star, the name of which I didn’t know. A dark and still night save for the throaty rumble of a motorcycle on a nearby street, its exhaust chopped to make the bike sound deafening — a not-so-subtle flipping of the bird to the rest of staid, refined Rancho Bonita.

I’d left Mrs. Schmulowitz’s house and was halfway down the block when a large man came charging out from between two parked cars and tackled me to the sidewalk.

His right arm was around my throat, his biceps and inner forearm pressing against the carotid arteries on either side of my neck, while his right hand hooked into the inside elbow of his left arm, which was clamped around the back of my neck. A classic sleeper hold. We practiced the same move frequently on each other at Alpha. I knew that I had no more than about three seconds before I lost consciousness.

I brought my right hand back over my head to rake his face, but he seemed to anticipate my intentions and shifted his weight to the left, keeping his head just out of my reach. I attempted to tuck my chin into his bicep so that he could only squeeze my jaw and not my neck, but he forecast that move, too, adjusting his hold and maintaining pressure.

Then I remembered the gold pen Mrs. Schmulowitz had given me.

I grabbed it from my pocket and gouged the tip deep into the soft tissue above his right elbow. He yelped in pain and immediately relinquished his hold, rolled onto his left side, and shouted, “Son of a bitch!”

I’d have recognized that voice anywhere.

“Buzz?”

“Jesus, Logan, you stabbed me?”

“What was I supposed to do? You attacked me.”

“You call that an attack? That wasn’t an attack,” he said, sitting up and clutching his arm. “If I had attacked you, god-dammit, you’d be dead.”

He was built stout as a whiskey barrel, with a crew cut and a leather patch over his right eye.

“What’re you doing out here, Buzz?”

“They sent me out, to see if you still had it.”

“Had what?”

“You know what, Logan. The good stuff. Your mojo.”

I looked at him, not fully understanding.

“Who’s they?” I said.

He winced. “I can’t believe you stabbed me. Jesus Christ, this thing hurts like a mother. Help me up, will ya?”

I helped him to his feet by his good arm.

“We’re putting the band back together,” Buzz said.

“Alpha?”

“Something new. A variation on the theme. It’s got your name written all over it.”

“I appreciate the offer, Buzz, but I’m really not in that line of work anymore.”

“You’re not in any line of work, from everything I’ve been able to gather.”

I had to admit, he had a point.

“You got nothing else going on, Logan. We both know that. Nothing holding you down. Nothing to come home to at night except what, that cat of yours? I’m offering you a chance to do good work again, to get back in the game. Maybe even save the world.”

A porch light came on. From behind the front door of the house came an older woman’s voice:

“I’m calling the police if you don’t get off my property right now.”

Buzz looked back at me. “How about I read you in and give you the full brief while you drive me to the emergency room?”

“Sounds like a plan.”

The Buddha said that uncertainty along the path of life is the only certainty there is. I had no way of knowing at that moment where my path would lead me. But Buzz was right about one thing: wherever it led, I had little to keep me from following it.

We started back toward Mrs. Schmulowitz’s house and my truck.

“Sorry I stabbed you, buddy.”

“Hey,” Buzz said, “once a badass, always a badass.”

And then he grinned.

For the first time in a long while, so did I.