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those bodies. When I saw him after the beating, I told him Greg’s crew was looking for him and he should probably leave town. He was lucky they never caught up with him. If they had, he would have been history.
    I used to see Linda’s father driving in the neighborhood, but I wouldn’t even look at him. Once, though, I was walking on Avenue I and I passed by a coffee shop just as he was coming out. He was only about fifteen feet in front of me. When I saw him, I stopped. He just turned his head and looked at me and kept walking. He didn’t smile, but it wasn’t an “I’m going to fucking kill you” kind of look. It was just a normal look. I looked at him, and that was it.
    One day shortly after that, I was outside swinging my baseball bat on my porch. I lived right on Avenue I. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Linda walking on the other side of the street. She looked all dressed up in a nice dress. I was wondering what the occasion was.
    As I was swinging my bat, I looked up and saw her starting to walk across the street toward me. I was thinking, Don’t do it. Don’t do it. I was minding my own business, on my own porch, and she was coming over to me.
    When she got close enough so I could see her, I noticed that she had matured a little bit. She was looking better than she ever did. I also noticed she was wearing a gold necklace that said Greg and Linda in diamonds.
    â€œYou wasted your money on that, because that’ll never happen.”
    Those were the first words I said to her in a year and a half.
    She looked at me and said, “Oh, I didn’t buy it. It’s my mother’s.”
    I forgot that her mother’s and father’s names were Greg and Linda. I had just made a complete idiot out of myself. (Linda told me years later that she wanted me to think it was referring to me and her.)
    So we talked a little bit in front of my house.
    â€œI miss you,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
    â€œI know, but we can’t be seen together. We shouldn’t be talking. I miss you, too, but there’s nothing we can do. We can’t see each other or anything.”
    Well, that changed in a hurry.
    She left and I went inside my house, and I knew she was going to call. I knew it, so I was waiting. I wanted to answer that phone as soon as it rang. A few minutes later she did call.
    â€œI want to see you. My sixteenth birthday is coming up in the middle of the week next week. My parents are away this weekend picking up my little brother, Joey, from sleepaway camp.”
    I was thinking, Jesus, after a sit-down, her parents are away, and she’s inviting me in the house. Am I that crazy to go over there?
    â€œI’m nervous,” I told her.
    â€œDon’t worry. My friend, Justine, will be there, and her boyfriend. So there will be another couple there.”
    â€œOkay, I’ll come over.”
    Of course, I went. We hung out the whole day and night, pretty much into the wee hours of the morning.
    Linda’s family moved off Avenue J in August, not long after her Sweet Sixteen, and that pretty much ended things. I saw her one time after that at the Festa di Santa Rosalia, what we called the Eighteenth Avenue Feast. We smiled at each other, and that was it. I didn’t see her again for twenty years.
    When I was an adult, I always used to jog past her old house and think of her every time. One day, after I had just passed her house, I heard her voice calling me. I thought I was hearing things. I kept jogging. Then I heard her yell my name. She sounded exactly the same.
    I turned around and there she was. She told me she had been in a cab going to an appointment when she saw me. She made the driver stop and let her out.
    We hugged and took a walk—we always used to take walks when we were kids—and talked. We went to Coney Island. I just wanted to keep it simple and try and forget about what had happened.
    I didn’t want to