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orphanage?”
    “Who knows? We never thought about it.”
    Tom nodded again. “Kids don’t know what anything’s made of. The content of things. They can be irresponsible, which I don’t approve of. Yeah, so…you score tonight? At the rich kids’? What’s that girl’s name?”
    “Portia.”
    “Spicy?”
    “Very appealing. But not sexy in the porn-star sense.”
    Lloyd shifted his weight so he could lie flat on his back, disheveling the covers. Tom righted them, pulling them up to Lloyd’s shoulders.
    “She’s a bit brisk,” Lloyd went on. "The sex, I mean. Really young but very experienced. She knows exactly what she wants from a man. And she doesn’t kiss all that much. Sometimes not at all.”
    “Never heard of that,” said Tom. “Girls live to kiss and kiss to live.”
    “Not Portia.”
    “All those rich kids are different, I guess. They all have cars? Bought by daddy?”
    Lloyd nodded.
    “Didn’t I know it?” Tom said, laying one hand flat on the covers over Lloyd’s chest. “But don’t go riding in those vehicles after hours, now, because they’ll attract law enforcement with a dead taillight or not signaling or just generally being selfish rich kids. Stop the vehicle for a violation means search it. Yeah, and what do we find? Substance . Okay, who belongs to that? And the rich kids point at you with ‘Him, officer!’ Don’t relish being called to bail you out of jail some night for rebellious behavior.”
    “I’ll be careful, Tom.”
    “And write the contact intel for that rich kids place for me and leave it under one of the fridge magnets, in case of...you know. Some eventuality. You're always going over there, sure. It's right to be a part of something. Membership in it, a guy they respect. Sure. But then you always want to return to the place that's yours. Feeling your breathing under my hand like this, like to know you’re home and happy now.”
    They paused there, and then Tom rose and folded the edges of the bedclothes in between the mattress and the box spring.
    “Tuck you in,” said Tom, “so you’ll rest easy. Get you off to a solid start come morning.”
    As Tom leaned over to even out the lie of the blanket, his yellow hair brushed Lloyd’s forehead. Then Tom stretched to his full six feet four inches and left the room.
     
     
    Tom had an old buddy named Jake, and Lloyd couldn’t stand him. It was an odd pairing, Lloyd thought, because Jake was closer in age to Lloyd than to Tom, yet Tom claimed he and Jake went “all the way back to milk and cookies.” There was only one thing to know about Jake: he didn’t own a television. That meant he had to come to Tom’s on certain weekends to watch The Game.
    There was always a Game, and enthusiasm about the teams, and a whole encyclopedia of bygone Games and famous players. Lloyd found it as tedious as hearing realtors talk rents, and he suffered an evil close encounter when his editor suggested a column or two on local high-school teams. Lloyd insisted on leaving sports to the paper’s sports guys.
    On the other hand, Jake would provision an amusing column, if Lloyd could bear writing about him: a noisy galoot in a Stetson who made obnoxious jokes. Whenever Jake was to be around Tom’s girl, Lucy, Jake had to promise—solemnly, on their friendship itself—that he would behave.
    “And my old Jake will keep that promise for just about two hours,” Tom explained to Lloyd. “Then it’s a pure case of Dam is bust, head for the hills!”
    It was typical of Jake that he was never actually introduced to Lloyd: Jake simply pushed open Lloyd’s door to barge in and snarl, “This is the Eurozone secret police. Are you hiding a woman in this room?”
    At his desk, Lloyd turned in alarm just as Tom came in.
    “This your new sidekick?” Jake asked Tom. “He’s pretty.”
    “Pay him no mind,” Tom advised Lloyd.
    “You know what they call a pretty guy where I come from?” Jake asked Lloyd.
    “Cut it out, Jake,”