When we reached the road, the traffic was already tapering off, although the bars were still doing brisk business. Jake told Nancy he was going to get the car and asked if she would please buy the beer, because obviously they weren’t going to have sex now and he was going to need more alcohol to drink away his blues.

This time she took the money. She tried not to smile but couldn’t quite help herself. Even I could see that Jake was adorable when he made himself pathetic.

WHEN WE TOOK OFF for my parents’ summer cottage, I was in the passenger seat of the Corvette, with Geri on my lap and Nancy squeezed between my hip and the door. They all had bottles of Sam Adams, even Jake, who drove with one nestled between his thighs. I was the only one who wasn’t drinking. I could still smell the operator on my hands, an odor that made me think of decay, of cancer. I didn’t have the stomach for any more, and when Geri rolled down the window to chuck her bottle out into the night, I was glad for the fresh air. I heard her empty Sam Adams hit with a musical crunch.

We were careless, irresponsible people, but, in our defense, we didn’t know it. I’m not at all sure I’ve made you see the times clearly. In 1994 those Mothers Against Drunk Driving ads were just background noise, and I had never heard of anyone getting a ticket for littering. None of us wore seat belts. It never even crossed my mind.

I’m not sure I have properly shown you Geri or Jake Renshaw either. I’ve tried to show you they were dangerous—but they weren’t immoral. Maybe they even had a stronger sense of morality than most, were more willing to act if they saw someone wronged. When the universe was out of whack, they felt obliged to put it back to rights, even if that meant defacing an antique horse or robbing a drunk. They were entirely indifferent to the consequences to themselves.

Nor were they thoughtless, unimaginative thugs. Nancy and I wouldn’t have been with them if they were. Jake could throw knives and walk a tightrope. No one had taught him how to do those things. He just knew. In his last year of high school, after showing no interest in drama for his entire life up until then, he tried out for the Senior Shakespeare. Mr. Cuse cast him as Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and damn it, he was good. He said his lines as if he’d been speaking in iambic pentameter all his life.