“Don’t know if I ever told you this,” Vic says, the traditional introduction to a story you’ve absolutely never heard in your life, or heard dozens of times and always the same way. “But once? Years, years, years ago. I was poking at some issues with our very first launch, at that café on Twenty-Fourth, remember, it’s some other place now. Between”—he lets go of her hand to stand with both arms out, weathervaned at right angles so he can place himself in a different neighborhood. The box is along for the ride in his palm—“Castro and Diamond.”

“The Meat Market,” she says.

“The Meat Market!” he agrees in amazement, back in her arms. “Well suddenly, in the back of the place, there’s just a, a tremendous, all this shouting and a chair falls, ruckus, and these two guys are just, both of them, locked in, punching and pushing and whaling on each other. It was like a bar fight, a bar fight in a movie, and in this quiet place!” Vic is grinning, almost; a bit of manic happiness on the way down to scatter Maureen. “People were like, hey, what the, break it up. And the manager or whoever called the cops obviously, because they came in and pulled them apart. Spitting at each other!” They keep walking and, down the road a ways, hear their own yelly children, going at it loud, but any pro parent can tell when it’s a fight and when it’s, basically, all in fun. “You could just tell,” he says, “I mean, whatever, it’s ridiculous, but you could just tell it was both their faults. And then, that night, these guys from the old Hyper Magazine have me over and I sit next to Maureen. That’s how we met. Her boyfriend is supposed to be there, and you know what she tells me? That he was at, of course, the Meat Market and, her words, he was minding his own business and some guy jumps him and he’s arrested and getting stitched up. She can’t see him. And I tell her.”

“It was both their faults,” Padgett says, and smiles. It’s like her, growing up with a brother, to interrupt with the punch line. Vic laughs and Padgett laughs too. “And you ended up stealing her from him?”

“I don’t know if you’d call it stealing,” Vic says, as their children yelp around again. “A guy with a broken nose can’t take much competition.”

“You guys had some fun, right?”

“Not much,” Vic says ruefully. “I remember when they shoved me out of the room to work on her, I thought, I was in those green scrubs, This has got to hurt worse than divorce.”