“Probably a physics lab and they were having trouble with the concept of gravity.”

“One’s got a broken arm, the other a broken leg. Four cops it took to arrest the teach. Know what he said when they finally subdued him? ‘They were talking while I was talking! Nobody talks when I’m talking! Next time they’ll listen!’“

“Somehow I doubt there’ll be a next—hey, what are you doing?”

Abe had just dumped a mass of black papaya seeds and their gooey matrix on the sports section of the Times.

“What? I should dump them on my nice clean counter?”

Jack wasn’t going to get into that—the counter was anything but clean. “What if I wanted to read that?”

“Suddenly you’re Mr. Yankee Fan? A jock you’re not.”

“I used to be a star hitter in Little League. And what if I wanted to know who won the Knicks game?”

“They didn’t play.”

“All right. The Nets, then.”

“They lost to the Jazz, one-oh-nine to one-oh-one.”

Jack stared at Abe. He believed him. Abe listened exclusively to talk radio. He’d probably heard the scores a dozen times already this morning. But Jack wasn’t giving up. He rarely read a sports section outside of World Series time or Super Bowl season, but a principle was at stake here. He wasn’t sure which one, but he’d come up with something.

“But sometimes I like to read about a game.”

Abe had freed up the orange papaya fruit but left the crescents lounging in their rinds. Now he was cross-slicing the crescents into bite-size pieces.

“You know the score already. You need more? For why? You’re going to read some self-styled mavin’s postulations on why they won or why they lost? Who cares unless you’re the coach. Team A won; Team B lost; end of story; when’s the next game?” He gestured at the papaya with his knife. “Eat.”

Jack popped a piece into his mouth. Delicious. As he reached for another piece, Abe gestured to where Parabellum was eyeing the gloppy mass on the sports section. The parakeet cocked his head left and right with suspicion, hungry for the seeds but not sure what to make of the goo.

“Such a fastidious bird I’ve got.”

“You kidding?” Jack said. “You plopped that stuff down on George Veczy’s column, and now he can’t read the end.”

Abe fixed him with a silent, over-the-reading-glasses stare.

Jack sighed. “All right then, hand me the Post, will you—unless you’ve messed up its sports section too.”

Abe’s hand started toward it then stopped. “Well, well, well. Here’s something that might interest you.”

“Something about the Mets, I hope,” Jack said.

“A different kind of sportsman—your preppy rioter friends are in the news again.”

“Sent to Sing-Sing, I hope.”

“Quite the contrary. They’re walking—all of them.”

Jack’s mood suddenly darkened. “Let me see that.”

Abe gave the Metro Section a one-eighty spin and jabbed his finger at a tiny article next to the lottery numbers box. Jack scanned it once, then, not quite believing his eyes, read it again.