"You broke my nose, you know," Greg said.

Myron kept quiet.

"And my vision hasn't been the same. I'm having trouble focusing on the basket."

Myron could not believe what he was hearing. "You blaming me for your crappy season, Greg?"

"I'm just saying--"

"You're getting old, Greg. You've played fourteen seasons, and sitting out the strike didn't help you."

Greg waved a hand. "You wouldn't understand."

"You're right." Myron's knob turned from Simmer to Boil. "I never got to play pro ball."

"Right, and I never fucked my friend's wife."

"She wasn't your wife," Myron said. "And we weren't friends."

They both stopped then. Greg kept his eyes on the road. Myron turned away and stared out the passenger window.

Waterbury is one of those cities you bypass to reach another city. Myron had probably taken this stretch of 84 a hundred times, always remarking that at a distance Waterbury was a butt-ugly city. But now that he had the opportunity to see the city up close, he realized that he had underestimated the city's offensiveness to the eyes, that indeed the city had a butt-ugly quality to it that you just couldn't appreciate from afar. He shook his head. And people make fun of New Jersey?

Myron had gotten directions from the MapQuest Web site. He read them off to Greg in a voice he barely recognized as his own. Greg followed them in silence. Five minutes later, they pulled up to a dilapidated clapboard house in the middle of a street of dilapidated clapboards. The houses were uneven and crammed so close together, they looked like a set of teeth needing extensive orthodontic work.

They got out of the car. Myron wanted to tell Greg to stay back, but that would be pointless. He knocked on the door and almost immediately a gruff voice said, "Daniel? That you, Daniel?"

Myron said, "I'm looking for Davis Taylor."

"Daniel?"

"No," Myron said, yelling through the door. "Davis Taylor. But maybe he calls himself Daniel."

"What are you talking about?" An old man opened the door, already in full-suspicious squint. He wore glasses too small for his face, so that the metal earpieces were embedded into the folds of skin beneath both temples, and a bad yellow wig, like something Carol Channing wore once too often, adorned his crown. He had on one slipper and one shoe, and his bathrobe looked as if it'd been trampled over during the Boer War.

"I thought you was Daniel," the old man said. He tried to readjust the glasses, but they wouldn't move. He squinted again. "You look like Daniel."

"Must be the clouds in your eyes," Myron said.

"What?"

"Never mind. Are you Davis Taylor?"

"What do you want?"

"We're looking for Davis Taylor."

"Don't know no Davis Taylor."

"This is 221 North End Drive?"

"That's right."

"And there's no Davis Taylor living here?"

"Just me and my boy Daniel. But he's been away. Overseas."

"Spain?" Myron asked. He pronounced it Spahhheeeeen. Elton would have been proud.