“I’m Mae,” she said softly.

“It is a pleasure, Mae,” he said and shook her hand formally. “I bet you turn frogs into princes in your spare time. You are definitely something to see.”

She looked at me, curious and slightly confused, but I could see by the flush of her face and the charge in her pupils that Phil had already worked his magic.

“I’m Mae,” she said again.

“And I’m Phillip,” he said. “This guy taking care of you all right?”

“He’s my pal,” Mae said. “He’s Patrick.”

“No greater pal to have,” Phil said.

You didn’t have to know Phil when he was younger to recognize his ability with people, no matter what their age. Even when he was drinking too much and abusing his wife, it was still there. Phil, since he climbed out of the crib, had had this gift. It wasn’t cheap or vaudevillian or contrived or consciously manipulative. It was a simple but rare ability to make the person he talked to feel like he or she was the only person on the planet worthy of attention, as if his ears were placed on his head specifically so he could listen to what you had to say, as if his eyes existed only to see you, as if his sole reason for being was to have his encounter—whatever its nature—with you.

I’d forgotten that until I saw him with Mae. It was so much easier to remember him as the drunken asshole who’d somehow managed to marry Angie.

But Angie had remained married to him for twelve years. Even while he beat her. And there was a reason for that. No matter how unforgivable a monster Phil had become, he was still—somewhere inside of him—the Phil who made you glad you’d met him.

That was the Phil who rose from his place by Mae as Angie said, “How you doing, pretty girl?”

“I’m great.” Mae reached up to touch Angie’s hair.

“She likes your hair,” I said.

“You like this mess?” Angie dropped to one knee as Mae ran her hand through her hair.

“It’s very tangly,” Mae said.

“That’s what my hairdresser says.”

“How you doing, Patrick?” Phil held out his hand.

I considered it. On a bright autumn morning with the air so fresh it felt like a tonic and the sun dancing lightly on the orange leaves, it seemed silly to not be at peace with my surroundings.

I let my hesitation speak for itself, then reached out and shook the hand. “Not bad, Phil. How about yourself?”

“Good,” he said. “Still taking it day by day and all, but, you know how it is, everyone’s life has static.”

“True.” I looked some of my own static dead in the face.

“Yeah, well…” He looked over his shoulder at his ex-wife and a child playing with each other’s hair. “She’s a prize.”

“Which one?” I said.

He smiled, a rueful one. “Both of them, I guess. But I was talking about the four-year-old at the moment.”