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don't think this one is for me.”
    “How will you know if you don't try it? Hey, Frank, get me thekeys to this thing, we're taking it out. Come on, Tamara, we're out of here.” He handed me the keys Frank had promptly delivered.
    As I sped on to the street, I felt the sheer pleasure of driving a car that yields to your every command. The Demon, with its stalls and quirks, had gotten me out of many a scrape, but there was always that dreadful moment when I had to claim it at parking lots, all those times I prayed it would start and spare me the humiliation of calling AAA for the fifth time that month. There would be none of that with this one. It glided onto the Garden State Parkway as if it were on skates. With a touch of the accelerator, I was in the left lane, leaving bigger, fancier cars in my wake. I whizzed past exits on the Parkway, barely slowing down for the toll gates. With style and panache, I finally rolled onto Route 280 and back into the streets of Newark, vaguely hoping that somebody I knew would spot me. When I drove into Rayson's Used Cars, I didn't want to return the keys.
    “Great car,” I mumbled as I handed them back to Larry.
    “Your car. I can tell by the way you handle it.”
    “No, I'd better look around some more.” I tried not to sound like a disappointed kid.
    “How much you got to spend?”
    “Not enough for this.” I looked him in the eye for the first time since I'd gotten out of the car. “I can't afford this one, Larry. I didn't get much for my other car, which was totaled, and I can't afford to take anything else out of my savings.”
    “I didn't ask you all that, Tamara, I just asked you what you can afford to spend.”
    I told him and for the briefest moment, disappointment flashed in his eyes, but he recovered quickly. “I think we can work with that.”
    ‘Are you crazy?”
    “Yeah, maybe, a little bit. Hey, it's a beautiful day, you're a beautiful lady, and we go way back.”
    He was right about that. We went further back even than the leavings of my fish sandwich on his lapel, and the irony of confronting my history with Celia struck me again.
    He had been one of three popular seniors headed places most of the kids in my school would never see. They were all smart, athletic, fine, with the pick of any girl they wanted. The three of them ran the school, never held back by the boundaries that limited the rest of us. They called Larry “Chessman” because he loved the game and had won some hard-played matches with players from richer, better schools, bringing fame and pride to our city in the pages of the Star-Ledger.
    He was the friendliest of the three, the only one who would look down from his perch to acknowledge me and Celia, although I suspected Celia had other dealings with one or all of them; there was something secretive about the way she acted when she was around them. But she never admitted to anything, and I never asked her. Even as kids, we respected each other's privacy. It wouldn't have surprised me, though. Like every other girl in the freshman class, we had crushes on all three. “Chessman” was my favorite, though. Maybe it was because he always remembered my name.
    “High school was a long time ago,” I said.
    “Not as long as you might think.” I wondered if something in his past was catching up with him, too.
    “So whatever happened to your friends, those two guys you used to hang with? I'm sure you all went to college and did great, importantthings with your lives.” I hadn't meant to sound cynical, and the look that shadowed his eyes made me wish I'd altered my tone.
    He paused before he answered. “Clayton ended up a big-time judge. I used to see him and his wife a couple of times a year. He died a year ago last August. Drew and I are still very good friends. I see him at least once or twice a week. He went to pharmacy school and has ended up rich as all hell. Me, well you see where I am in life. All of us got married, had kids, me and Drew