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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.”
    Willy didn’t respond at first. He stayed rooted in place, his exterior rigidly placid. In all their years as brothers, Bob had maybe spoken to him like that three times—and that was probably an exaggeration. Willy had always lorded over Bob, using his powerful personality to cut him off even if he had no reason to.
    The sad thing was that Willy admired his brother for keeping his life together, for not letting