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guess I’ll follow up on and maybe get paid, maybe not. Either way, I feel like I owe it to him, that I’d be dishonoring him somehow if I just gave up. But yeah, I might be out of a job.”
    â€œI’m so sorry, Ruddy.”
    â€œYeah, well, unemployed beats being in jail,” I responded somewhat pointedly.
    Tom’s mouth became an unhappy line. “Look, Ruddy, your prescription is way more than six months old. I can’t legally fill it.”
    â€œBut if Schaumburg calls and you tell him I haven’t been taking my meds, he says he’ll violate me, and I’ll have to do the rest of my probation behind bars.”
    Tom spread his hands. “I don’t know what I can do.”
    â€œWell,” I reasoned, “when Schaumburg calls you can say, ‘Yes, Ruddy was just in here recently to pick up his meds.’ That’s not a lie, it is why I’m here.”
    â€œWhat if he asks if you’ve been taking your medications?”
    â€œYou tell him the truth. You don’t know. Hell, Tom, how would you know if anybody was taking their medications, really?”
    â€œYou’re asking me to lie to a doctor. I could lose my license.”
    â€œHe wants to put me in jail! Just for not taking some antipsychotic medication! Is that fair?”
    â€œWhy haven’t you been taking them?” Tom asked curiously.
    I hesitated. I didn’t want to tell him I was trying not to suppress Alan’s chances of coming back, because that would sound like I did need the meds. “I don’t like their effect,” I finally replied evasively.
    â€œRuddy … I’m sorry,” Tom said mournfully. “If Schaumburg asks, I’m going to have to tell him the truth. That’s just how it is.”
    *   *   *
    We held Milt’s memorial service at the funeral parlor owned by Katie’s mother, Marget. Katie begged off attending, saying she had to work, but I knew the real reason for her absence was that she did not want to risk having Marget try to talk to her. I didn’t press the issue. Katie knew how much Milt meant to me, and I knew what Marget had done to Katie.
    I saw her, though, Marget, standing silently in the back of the room. Her white-blond hair, thin and straight, could not have been more different from Katie’s curly reddish-brown locks, though they shared the same electric-blue eyes. Marget stared at me in a way I knew meant she was going to try to engage me in conversation, which I dreaded.
    I met Kermit’s brother, Walt, for the first time. Walt looked a little like Milt, with pale skin and a lean body. Kermit was short and squat, the kind of guy coaches always thought would be tough to tackle but weren’t. Where Kermit’s darker skin color came from, I did not know. Both men both spoke about their uncle, praising him for his generosity and kindness, and I thought about how good a friend Milt had been to me, splitting the repo fee from the bank fifty-fifty, though it was his truck and his lot and his reputation that we operated on. His wife, Trisha, sat in the front row and sort of sagged against a man I later learned was her brother.
    When friends were invited to talk, I stood and told everyone that Milt was the only person who would give me a job when I got out of prison. That he cared about me and if we had a slow period, he would advance me some pay so I didn’t starve. Milt would have been disappointed at the way his big tough repo man’s voice cracked, the way tears wet my cheeks, and how I had trouble finishing what I started out to say. Milt’s kindness and fatherly concern for me had propped me up when I was in danger of going into a dark spiral of my own.
    And the money helped, too. Being a bouncer didn’t pay well or often—Becky gave me some of the proceeds when she was in the black, but it wasn’t as if I had a regular salary. I didn’t mention the part