He looked up and noticed Central Park across the street. Surprised that he’d already walked to Fifth Avenue, he turned uptown. As he reached the Eighties he noticed a blaze of flashing red lights ahead. Curious, he joined the crowd of gawkers gathered behind the yellow tape across the street from the Metropolitan Museum.

Ambulances and police cars blocked Fifth Avenue. Jammed traffic was being diverted. Emergency workers were tending dozens of injured people while cops dragged bloodied well-dressed men into blue-and-white paddy wagons.

“What happened?” Luc said to the Hispanic-looking fellow next to him.

“Some kind of riot.” He wore a Mets cap and a Rangers sweatshirt. “Bunch of preppies, I heard.”

“Preppies?” Luc said. “I don’t see any preppies.”

“Not kids. Older guys. Some prep school class was having its twenty-fifth year reunion tonight and decided to go on a rampage.”

A premonitory worm of unease began to wriggle in Luc’s gut. “Anyone… killed?”

“Not that I know of, but I—oh, shit! What’s that guy doing?”

Luc squinted toward where the man was pointing. He spotted what must have been one of the rioters—disheveled, bloody, but the crest on his blazer certainly looked preppyish—handcuffed to the door handle of one of the police cars. He squatted there with his face against his handcuffed wrist.

“Oh, Christ!” Luc’s neighbor said. “Is he doing what I think he’s doing?” He began shouting to the nearest policeman. “Officer! Yo, Officer! Check out that guy over there! By the unit! Oh, man, stop him before he kills himself!”

Luc spotted a growing pool of blood by the handcuffed man’s feet. His gorge rose as he realized the man was gnawing at his wrist, as if trying to chew it off.

The cop went over to him, saw what he was doing, and called the EMTs.

“Shit, I heard of trapped animals doing that,” said the man in the Mets cap, his voice tinged with awe, “but never a human.”

Luc could not reply. His throat felt frozen.

The preppy started kicking and screaming when the EMTs converged on him and tried to restrain him. As they surrounded the handcuffed man he continued to struggle and shout. Luc couldn’t be sure but he thought he saw the cop’s nightstick rise and fall once, and abruptly the man was silent. One of the EMTs signaled for a stretcher.

Feeling sick and weak, Luc turned and staggered away. What an awful, tragic scene.

And he was to blame.

3

“I think she’s asleep,” Gia whispered.

She sat on the bed next to her sleeping daughter, holding her hand. Jack stood on the other side.

“About time,” he said, looking down at the skinny little form curled under the covers of her bed. He reached out and smoothed her dark hair. “Poor kid.”

Vicky had huddled between Jack and Gia in the back of the cab, shaking and sobbing all the way home. Even the safety of her own bedroom hadn’t calmed her.

“What kind of human garbage would frighten a child like that?” Gia said.