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in states of dysfunction. Joey knew I could help him. I was dependable and competent, and lacked the sort of ambition that would have me leaving him suddenly for a better studio and stealing his clients away.
    Almost immediately, he began to give me more responsibility. Rather than work the sound console himself, he preferred to dropby and shoot the bull with the bands. The studio was his own small kingdom where he could come and feel welcomed. Otherwise , he wasn’t too interested in the day-to-day business of the studio, and in six months I was in charge. I fired the incompetents and lobbied Joey to overhaul the main console, which he had bought used when he first opened the studio.
    This became my life, working at a third-rate recording studio in the middle of New Jersey, spending the bulk of my days with musicians of questionable talent, and then coming home to our house in the burbs. Cynthia and I were living the middle-class dream, only we weren’t middle-class, and I needed to figure out if this bothered me. And if it didn’t, why not.
    Yet I must not have been entirely without ambition, because after about a year at the studio I began to toy with the idea of starting up a small record company. At first I kept it to myself. I began to save a little, and convinced Joey to throw some money into fixing the studio’s worst atrocities.
    When I finally told Cynthia about my idea, I remember being bothered by her instant enthusiasm. It was August, and we were sitting on the back porch having breakfast. The porch was my favorite part of the house. Our little yard felt private, its perimeter lined on the sides with burning bushes and in the rear with forsythia hedges that, come fall, would turn a brilliant yellow.
    “It isn’t a terrific plan,” I told her. “It’s risky as all hell.”
    “Maybe so,” she said, “but I love the idea of our working together on something. And anyway, you need this. I know you do.”
    I hadn’t been any fun at all for quite some time. That was putting it mildly. Not that I walked around sulking. But I had accepted unhappiness as a small price to pay for a life filled with most of the things I wanted.
    “There are other remedies for depression,” I said, “besides throwing our money into a risky business.”
    “Such as?”
    “I don’t know. Prozac? Therapy?”
    Cynthia took my hand and began to rub it. And trying to sound nonchalant, she said, “Why not all three?”
    A year and a half had passed since the shooting and our flight from the city. And now, rather than the heavy exhaustion following our move to Newfield, I felt tired of mourning. Tired of being tired. Tired of sadness. It was enough already.
    And after a few more months, and with a little help from both Dr. Shelling, PhD, and Pfizer Inc., I felt myself finally coming out of something I hadn’t even known I was still so deeply in.
    Cynthia and I began to laugh a little more, make love more often. We began to talk about the future: not only the record company, but us. Being together. Starting a family. We even started thinking of names.

4
    Now, three years after Snakepit Recording Studio had first saved me, I was counting on it to save me again.
    I parked the car behind the studio, where it wouldn’t be seen from the street, and went in ahead of the others. Nobody was scheduled in the studio until my session with The Fixtures on Monday evening.
    The lights were all off. “Hello?” I called out. No reply.
    I went outside again.
    The sky had fully opened, and thunder was cracking fiercely. I trudged through puddles to the car and waved them in.
    Jeffrey got out first. He stood in the lot looking toward the street, making sure no other car was coming. Nolan went around to the backseat, opened the girl’s door, and guided her toward the studio. She had warned us in the car that her grandmother would be calling the police the minute she didn’t arrive home; we immediately used this information against her, making her