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good? And how many hours a day did you spend with a guitar in your hands, on average?”
    “I was always noodling around…”
    “And now, after not playing for twenty years, you expect to spend three or four hours and be any good? Why would you think that?”
    Black shook his head and began walking. “Because sometimes I’m a dope.”
    “No, it’s because you have that penis thing going on, where you want to be the dominant one at all times, and it blinds you to reality. Men are competitive, and they forget the negatives in order to blunder forward. What you’re guilty of is being male, not a dope. Although you can be a dope, too.”
    “That’s reassuring. I’m not only delusional, but also stupid. I wonder why I never thought about putting that on my dating profile.” He grunted. “Thanks for the pep talk.”
    “My job here is done.”
    Silence reigned on the way home. When Black dropped Roxie off she turned to him, the car door still open. “What are you going to do?”
    “Turn it down. This isn’t for me. God’s just trying to torture me. It doesn’t mean I need to cooperate.”
    “Sleep on it.”
    “Good night, Roxie. And thanks. For everything.”
    The drive to Sylvia’s seemed to take forever. Black was lightheaded from the booze, but not so much that he was seeing double – it was always a reliable warning sign he might have overindulged when he had to hold one hand over an eye while clutching the steering wheel to keep from falling.
    Sylvia greeted him at the door. Her face changed almost imperceptibly when she smelled the alcohol. She returned to where she’d been sitting on the sofa, reading a book on her Kindle, and Black moved to her postage-stamp kitchen and got a glass of water.
    “Rough day?” she asked.
    “Yeah, you could say that.”
    “What were you up to?”
    “I spent it trying to remember how to play guitar. Then tonight I jammed with some friends, and it reminded me that there’s no rewind on life.”
    She regarded him curiously. “Why the interest in rekindling your musician days? Not that there’s anything wrong with that…”
    “It’s not important. Just a suggestion from a friend. A well-intentioned friend, but in the end, a bad idea.”
    “There’s no harm in doing something artistic with your free time.”
    “I know. But I think my playing days are over. I prefer admiring my favorite artists from afar.”
    “Hopefully not that far. Come over here and let me get a look at those magic musician hands.”
    “That’s the best offer I’ve had all night.”
    “It had better be.”
     

Chapter 6
    Black awoke to dust motes floating lazily in the sunlight streaming through Sylvia’s window. He watched the display as he evaluated whether or not he was going to have a headache, and when the throbbing in his temples started, conceded that he had no reason to expect to get off scot-free after a bunch of rotgut tequila and a few beers. Sylvia was already awake, moving around in the kitchen. He trundled to the bathroom, took two aspirin, and was somewhat relieved that the hangover was no more than a two or a three – not the nine- or ten-alarm blazes he used to have when he was really putting it away. And he hadn’t smoked, which always seemed to ratchet up the pain exponentially.
    He studied his reflection in the mirror and took in the slight jowls that were developing, the dusting of gray in his morning beard, the bloodshot eyes, and shook his head at the sight. What had he been thinking? What had Bobby? There were too many miles on the chassis. Maybe Bono or Johnny Depp could look like a million as they crossed from forty to fifty, but Black’s genes displayed a lifetime of bad decisions on his face like a map of the stars’ homes, and it wasn’t going in a positive direction. He wondered absently whether, if he had the money, he would go under the knife like Bobby so regularly did, and was glad he didn’t have to make that decision. Life had done it for him,