"These foolish things, remind me uh-huh yooo," Butler crooned.

Stony laughed. "That ain't all. My father got me this big cowboy hat. It was a little too big so no one could tell I was bald. I used to wear it everywhere, even when my hair grew back, but about a week after he got me all the cowboy stuff, my family went out with Chubby and Phyllis to Nino's, this Italian restaurant in Monticello. I was all dressed up with all the stuff, the hat, the guns, the whole shtick. We're all sittin' there an' some mook puts 'High Noon' on the juke. You know, Frankie Laine? 'Do not forsake me, oh my dar-ling.' So all the grown-ups are talkin'. I start stalkin' aroun' the restaurant like Gary Cooper with my hands by my guns, right? Everybody in the whole place starts laughin'. I was so fuckin' cute. This waiter comes out with this tray an' when he sees me, he puts down the tray an' starts walkin' towards me like he got two guns an' we square off about twenny feet apart. Everybody's goin' berserk, Frankie Laine is singin' in the background and I'm serious as hell an' we're slowly gettin' closer an' closer. All of a sudden I pull out my two guns, they're loaded with caps, an' I shoot him. The fuckin' guy falls on the floor grabbin' his heart like he's dead. Everybody stands up and starts cheerin' and clappin'. I jus' blow the smoke from my guns. put 'em back in my holster and go sit down. Chubby was laughin' so hard he had to have two glasses a water to stop gaggin'. My mother had tears on her face from laughin'. Later, Nino himself came out and gave me an ice cream sundae for dessert. I didn't see what was so funny. I thought everybody was laughin' because they knew I was bald under my cowboy hat." Stony wiped the sweat from the side of his face with his shoulder. "That's how I got my nickname."

"Stony?"

"Yeah. When Nino came over to the table with the ice cream, he slapped my father on the back an' said, 'Your kid got real stones.'" Stony examined his nails, then squinted at the sun. "You know somethin', Butler? I knew I wasn't goin' to Amsterdam las' night. I think I jus' went out there to see what it would feel like."

"Like what would feel like?"

"Leavin' home."

9

ALBERT'S DOCTOR was Ralph Harris, ne Hochman, a thirty-five-year-old heavy, bearded, pediatric resident who spent two of the first five years of his life in a concentration camp. He was saved from the gas chamber by a sympathetic guard who smuggled him out of the camp in a truck loaded with corpses. In 1955, at fifteen, Ralph Hochman migrated to America from Poland, where he had been living with relatives of the guard who saved him. The guard himself was executed in 1949 on atrocity charges. It had been his job to keep the children orderly on their way to the gas chambers. He had developed a whole repertoire of hand and shadow games to keep them amused and distracted while they waited for the chambers to be cleared of previous tenants.