“I’m so proud of him,” one of them says, the man with the same curly hair as Greg. “He hates it up there. Janet and I always tell him we don’t care. That he could be playing video games in the basement. He doesn’t have to be up there! But the kid just puffs up his chest and says, ‘Yes I do, Dad!’ Amazing kid.”

“It’s very brave,” my dad comments solemnly.

“Your boy loves it up there,” the other decidedly younger man says, throwing a light fist into Dad’s shoulder. “You might have a future senator in him, going by the way the crowd loves him.”

Senator? I’ll have to give Yadira my deepest sympathies for her dad’s drug usage.

“I don’t know what I have.” Dad sighs in response. My stomach briefly slips somewhere around my kneecaps, but he’s smiling to himself and continues.

“I don’t think he knows yet either, but he’s starting to figure it out. They’re all still so young, but at the same time, they’re there, y’know? They’re fully made. It’s a hell of a thing to see. We just have to watch and steer when we can.”

It’s not just the fedora; he’s even sounding like a jazz lyricist these days.

“I just know he’s pretty damn great. They all are.”

“I know what you mean.” Yadira’s dad nods in agreement. “Not that I would ever tell her. You can’t lose the upper hand!”

“Not for a second,” Dad agrees immediately.

“They’re monsters once they have the upper hand.”

“And entitled too.”

“So fricking entitled!”

All right, that’s enough of that. Jeez. I back away from the hallway on the tips of my toes before the fathers start to aggregate our disappointments and it’s my fault for not cutting the eavesdropping on a high note. I slip away and back toward our empty, favorite rehearsal room, where Yadira and Greg are, for lack of a better word, decompressing with their shoes off and ties loosened. The silver trophy is lying flat on its side on a nearby desk.

“There he is!” Yadira exclaims. “I’ve been texting you.”

She sounds deflated. It’s a very strange aura on her typical piss-and-vinegar brand. A loss is still a loss.

“I’m . . . on a forced hiatus from the device that lets you receive text messages.” I sigh, taking off my jacket. “Long story. How long has he been like that?”

Greg is in the corner leaning against a vertical mirror, lost in the reflection of his own glazed eyes.

“Since we got in here! I offered him a hand job, and he didn’t even flinch like he normally does.”

“Don’t be crude,” Greg eventually mumbles, and he sounds like he might be drooling.