"Nah. I used to run when I was playin' ball." Stony yawned. "That was somethin' else. The whole team used to run together, forty guys in cleats around the reservoir. We sounded like a goddamn army," he snickered, "we scared the hell out of everybody."

"You don't play ball anymore?" Harris rolled his napkin in a ball and tossed it into a trash can.

"Nah, those days are over."

"Are you going to college?"

"I got in someplace in Louisiana, but I ain't goin'. You ever been down south?"

Harris smiled. "Once or twice."

"You go to school down there?"

Harris flash-imaged sit-ins, dogs, black faces, jail, sunglasses like mirrors. "In a manner of speaking." He picked a shred of sauerkraut that was dangling from his beard. "So if you're not going to college, what are you going to do?"

Stony shrugged. "I guess be an electrician with my old man."

"You don't sound too excited."

"Well, you know, the bread's good. What can I tell you?"

"You ever think of doing something else?"

"To be honest with you, I never given it much thought, except..." Stony leaned forward, elbows on knees. "I useta have this fantasy a workin' with kids. I dig kids. I get along with them. About four years ago I was a camp counselor. I really dug that. I had fifteen third-graders, yeah. I really had some heavy times. I'm a dynamite storyteller, you know?"

"So why don't you work with kids?"

"I dunno. You can't just work with kids all your life."

"Why not? I do."

"Yeah, but you're a doctor."

"If I wasn't a doctor I'd still want to work with kids, why not you?"

"I dunno, I can't do that. It's ... I dunno."

"Do you want to be an electrician?"

"Well, I dunno." Stony grimaced. "Not really, I mean, I guess I could get into it." A gray-haired man in bermuda shorts and an orange beret zoomed by on a bicycle. "I mean, it's responsible work. I dunno what I'm talkin' about." Stony laughed apologetically. "Like I said, I never really thought about it either way. It's a living."

"How old are you, Stony?"

"Eighteen."

"You sound like you're forty-five."

"Is that good?"

"It's pathetic. If you feel like this now, how do you think you're going to feel twenty years from now, coming home for dinner, watching TV, going to sleep, going back to the construction site in the morning?"

Stony felt himself getting angry. "Hey, look, I stick with it twenny years I ain't gonna be runnin' around in a damn T-shirt. I'll be a goddamn foreman pullin' down forty-thou."

"I asked you how do you think you'll feel coming home, eating dinner, watching TV, going to sleep and starting all over the next day. How much juice do you think you'll be getting out of your life?"

"How the hell do I know?"

"I can make a phone call and get you a job as a recreation assistant at Cresthaven Hospital in the children's ward starting Monday."