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“Now
that’s
funny. Sorry, I’ll always be Carnie’s man.”
    “That’s ’cause he bought you beers all night long.”
    “He knows how to show his appreciation.”
    “I’m sorry, but I already went shopping for the month.”
    “Really?” Alec said, his eyes looking reckless and amused. “But have you gone hunting?”
    Jake looked at him and tried not to smile. “No.”
    “Oh, yes.”
    “No, not tonight.”
    “And why not?”
    “Bad idea.”
    “There’s no such thing as a bad idea. A simple notion or conviction can’t ever be bad. When was the last time you went shopping-cart hunting?”
    “It’s been awhile.” Jake turned his head around to look around the empty lot. “The moron who taught me how suddenly disappeared off the face of this earth.”
    “But you’re not bitter about that, are you?”
    “Go ahead,” Jake said, daring him as he lit up a cigarette off the pack of smokes he had bummed off Carnie.
    “Got one for me?”
    “You’re going to get pulled over.”
    “I wonder what they’ll say about me not having a driver’s license?” Alec laughed, then floored the gas.
    The Jeep raced over the yellow lines of the parking spaces toward the one lone shopping cart resting dead center in the middle of the lot. Jake started laughing before they reached it. Then, as the bumper of the Jeep slammed into the cart and sent it careening upwards and outwards, amazingly without effort and without slowing the Jeep’s 70 mph, the two of them laughed uncontrollably.
    “You’re an idiot,” Jake screamed above the screeching voice of Kurt Cobain, Alec’s hero, who had suddenly begun singing as if on cue.
    “Such a best friend.”
    “Best?”
    Alec sucked in his cigarette and drove out to the street. He looked over at Jake and only laughed.
    “You can fool all the others, but you’ll never fool me. I know you’re glad I’m back.”
    A block down the street, stereo speakers thumping with angry rock, the Jeep driving steadily, the two of them passed a policeman driving the opposite way.
    Jake looked at Alec. His friend—okay, maybe his best friend, if he really wanted to be honest—raised his eyebrows and laughed.
    “It’s all about timing, Jakester,” he said. “All about timing. And some of us are just born lucky.”

EIGHT
          June 2005
    IT WAS NINE O’CLOCK , and I was staying at a Fairfield Inn close to campus. Kirby had asked several times if I wanted to have dinner with him and his family, and after the tenth or eleventh time I finally said okay. I had just gotten back to the hotel, about ten minutes away from Providence, and was sprawled across the bed watching ESPN when the phone rang.
    I assumed it was Kirby. Who else knew where I was? I never expected the voice on the line.
    “This is Alyssa,” the voice said, sounding the same way she did a decade ago.
    “Alyssa? As in Providence College’s Alyssa Roberts?” I said, trying to be funny but probably not succeeding.
    “The one and the only.”
    “How’d you know—” I began.
    “One guess.”
    “Did Kirby call you?”
    “He might have possibly said something about you being in the area.”
    “I just had dinner with him.”
    “Yeah, I know.”
    I had asked about Alyssa during dinner and hadn’t gotten alot of information. But Kirby had smiled, as if he found my interest in her surprising after all these years.
    “Are you—Where are you calling from?”
    “I live in Orland Park.”
    “Still close by, huh? So—how are you?”
    “Wide awake,” she said, surprising me. “Any chance you’d want to get a cup of coffee?”
    I had just had maybe four cups back at Kirby’s house. “Sure, I’d love some.”
    “David told me you would be leaving tomorrow, and I thought—well, it’s been awhile.”
    My mind had finally caught up with my adrenaline, and I had to ask. “Are, uh—does tonight work? I mean, if tomorrow worked better—I don’t want to take you from, you know—”
    “It’s just