"Hey."
Bob turned, his round face open and smiling. "Willy. Hey, yourself. Gosh, it's good to see you."
He moved to give Willy a hug, discovered the hot dog still in his left hand, laughed with embarrassment, and settled for a quick handshake followed by a pat of Willy's left shoulder, which his face then showed he instantly regretted.
"It's okay, Bob," Willy told him. "It won't break."
Bob's face reddened. "I know. I'm sorry. Would you like a dog? My treat."
Willy looked at the multihued mess he was being offered and shook his head. "I'll pass."
Suddenly selfconscious, Bob stared down at his meal. "Yeah, I guess this isn't too appetizing. I can only eat the stuff when Junie's not around. She gives me hell otherwise. I'll buy you something else, though. What would you like?"
Two minutes into the conversation, and Willy was already getting restless. "Give it a rest. I'm not hungry."
Bob looked crestfallen. "Okay. Sorry. Well, let's sit down, at least."
He led the way into the park, giving his hot dog a tentative bite and dropping a glob of fluorescent mustard onto the sidewalk. Willy walked around it in disgust. As with Ward Ogden earlier, he was going to have to mind his manners to get what he was after, but with Bob, he wasn't so sure he'd be able to pull it off. The older brother's impulse to slap the younger one down was going to be hard to resist. He'd had so many years of practice before leaving home-something Bob should have remembered and resented, as Willy would have in his place, but never had.
Bob took them through the playground nearest the street, filled with screaming, running kids, past several benches lining the curving walkway, and up a flight of steps onto a broad, paved observation platform at the back of the park. This had been built expressly for its commanding view of the George Washington Bridge, which spanned at an oblique angle the width of the Hudson River into New Jersey.
Bob settled onto a bench facing the view, patting the seat next to him as if inviting a pet to jump up. Willy remained standing, slightly off to one side, so they were looking at the same scenery.
Bob was now holding his meal as if wondering how it had appeared in his hand. He glanced quickly at Willy. "I was really surprised to hear your voice on the phone. I couldn't believe you were back in town."
"In town, or that I called you up?"
Bob looked away. "Both, I guess. It's been a while."
Willy snorted. "No shit."
"You been okay?"
"Yeah. Terrific. You been seeing Mary?"
Bob's head jerked up. "What?"
"Mary. You know. I was married to her."
"No. I mean, yeah. I was just surprised is all. I mean, you and Mary. That was so long ago."
"So, you've been seeing her?"
"Talking to her, really. Junie, too. She'd call up, just to chat. Didn't seem to matter which one of us answered the phone. Why? What's up?"
Willy ignored the question. "What did she talk about?"
"I don't know. Nothing in particular. She asked about you a few times. She was happy you were doing better."
"Not a drunk, you mean?"
"Yeah. Well, that and getting the new job."
"You told her about that?"
"Sure. It wasn't a secret, was it?"
"How did she seem? Up, down? What?"
Bob thought a moment. "Pretty much up, I'd say. Junie told me that wasn't always true. Maybe she was more honest woman-to-woman. But it seemed like her biggest trouble was money. Things were tight. She was getting along otherwise, though. She liked her job, she'd kicked her habit, she was talking about finding a new place to live when she'd saved up enough."
"Tell me about the job."
Bob hesitated. "What's going on, Willy?"
"Later. The job."
As if in protest, Bob took a large bite of his hot dog instead of answering, forcing his older brother to stew in silence for several minutes.
"It was at a place called the Re-Coop," he finally said. "A drug rehab center run by some nonprofit setup. I don't know who. Anyhow, she'd gone there to straighten up, and did well enough that they offered her a job. Nothing fancy, but she was pretty proud of it."
"She ever talk about her social life? A boyfriend, maybe?"
Bob shook his head. "Not to me. At least not recently. Last boyfriend I knew about was Andy, but that was a few years ago."
"Andy Liptak?"
"Sure. You keep up with him?"
Willy didn't answer. Andy Liptak and he had been in 'Nam together. Both from New York, both from workingclass families. Liptak had done well for himself later. Willy thought he lived in Brooklyn somewhere, near his old neighborhood. He'd known Andy and Mary had hooked up years ago, after the divorce and Mary's moving to New York. Hell, Willy had introduced them at a party she and Willy had attended in the city, what seemed like a lifetime ago, and Andy had dropped by their house in Vermont a couple of times on skiing trips. Mary had always liked him, which Willy had written off to his highroller city ways and Mary's hunger for something bigger and better than the rural life she'd been born to.
"What was between them?"
Bob was looking increasingly confused. "Geez, Willy. They were boyfriend /girlfriend-for years. She lived with him. You know how it goes."
"How'd they break up?"
"Same as always, I guess. I don't know the details. She wasn't calling us back then. Well, she did early on, after the divorce, but then she stopped for a long time. I suppose they weren't compatible, finally. She was still on dope in those days, you know? That must've made it tough. I don't think it was anything he did, though. He sounded like a decent enough guy."
"When did she start calling?"
Bob shrugged, resigning himself to never hearing the reason for this grilling. "The second time? About six months ago, after she got the job at the Re-Coop."
"Out of the blue?"
"Yeah. She told us, now that she was putting her life back together, she wanted to reopen some of the doors she'd shut behind her, or something like that. I didn't care about her reasons. It was just nice to hear from her again. Oh, yeah, she also said something about our being almost the only family she had, since she and her mom don't talk and you were out of the picture. I just figured it was a nostalgia thing."
"And you last talked pretty recently?"
Bob looked at him wide-eyed. "How'd you know that? If you've seen her, why all the questions, Willy? Just ask her this stuff yourself."
"Would if I could. She's dead."
Bob's mouth dropped open. "What?"
Willy's voice was a monotone. "Overdose. They found her with a needle in her arm."
"My God," Bob murmured. He caught sight of the partially eaten hot dog still in his hand and dropped it into the trash barrel beside the bench.
"I'm just trying to figure what she was up to," Willy added.
Bob finally stood up and faced his brother. His pale features were splotchy with anger, but as he spoke, his words were almost calm, barring a slight tremor. "That's really big of you. You are one son-of-a-bitch, you know that? You walk through life with your own little black cloud, like you were the only one who had it tough, and you treat people like shit as if we all owed you something. Well, we don't. In fact, we deserve a little courtesy for putting up with your crap. You threw Mary away. You beat her, climbed into your bottle, and pulled the cork in after you."
He smiled bitterly at Willy's slight grimace. "Oh? You didn't know we knew that you smacked her? Sure. She told us about it, and about a lot more, too. You were a total bastard, and she still loved you anyway. That's why she was calling us lately: not so much because we were the only family she had, but because we were your family, and she wanted to know how you were doing."
He sat back down, his elbows on his knees, and shook his head sorrowfully. "And then you come around like Dick Tracy, playing twenty questions and not even telling me she'd died. You are some piece of work."