***

"Where the hell are you taking us?" Marie asked as Tommy turned the car onto the George Washington Bridge.

"Keep your draws on." Tommy smiled. Albert sat in back chewing on his fingernails and staring at some sailboats. Stony was playing basketball in his head, doing weaving, whirling lay-ups in slow motion against a whole team of six-foot-ten spades. Then he started running numbers in his head. Cheri. Under their new agreement they were both free to play. Last week after graduation the Mount rented out Club D'Artagnan for a shit-face and Cheri started coming on to Mott the Bear. Stony went berserk and Butler had to shove him into the john to stop a fight. If she wanted to play, she didn't have to be insulting about it. Mott the Bear, Christ. Tommy. His old man was starting to break his chops about the union. His only alternative was college. Stony wasn't in love with the idea of more school, and more school wasn't in love with the idea of Stony. The only place he could get into his counselor had to find with a magnifying glass. Purdy Free Normal, Purdy, Louisiana. Hot damn. He didn't have anything against construction work. It was healthy, good bread, but... but... but. Marie. His old lady was coming down hard on Albert these days. That scared him. The kid had a constitution like a dandelion. If he wasn't careful he'd get loved to death.

A few miles into New Jersey Tommy swung the car into a cemetery driveway and drove up the narrow, steep lane for a quarter of a mile until he came to crosshatched blocks of graves. He stopped the car and took a scrap of paper out of his jacket.

Marie turned white. Afternoon sun glinted off the cellophane strips keeping the lacquered black curls in place by her ears.

"Tommy..." She pressed her fingers to her lips. Her eyes were wide. "This ain't funny."

Stony sat up and stared in puzzlement at the endless tombstones. Tommy read directions from the paper and continued driving, making sharp rights and lefts for a mile more through the heart and into the outer regions of the cemetery that were more sparsely populated. He drove with his head out the window reading names on headstones.

Marie lit another cigarette. Her hands were shaking so bad she had to use the car lighter instead of a match.

"Lucca!" Tommy shouted, and slammed on the brakes. "Everybody out!" He jumped out of the car, studied the paper again and walked to a grassy headstoneless twenty-by-twenty plot slightly uphill from a headstone marked Lucca. Tommy turned around and waved impatiently for his family to join him.

"What the hell is goin' on, Tommy?" Marie fumbled in her purse for a yellow pill. "Shit," she winced. She couldn't take pills without water.

"This is weird." Stony gawked. "Whatta we doin' here?"

"Well how d'ya like it?" Tommy beamed.

"What?"

Tommy extended his arms over the patch of grassy earth. "That's ours."