Mark had recently become a manager at JCPenney, and he was wearing navy slacks, a striped shirt, and a pinned-on name tag. When I spotted him entering the restaurant, he looked tired, but his face lit up when he noticed us. Mark had clipped his hair very short and shaved off his mustache, and the cleaner look made him seem older and more confident, somehow.

Tolliver and his brother went through the guy greeting ritual, thumping each other on the back, saying “Hey, man!” a number of times. I got a more restrained hug. Just at the right moment, we got a buzz to tell us we could be seated. When we were in a booth and supplied with menus, I asked Mark how his job was going.

“We didn’t do as well as we should this Christmas,” he said seriously. I noticed how white and even his teeth were, and I felt a stab of resentment on his brother’s behalf. Mark had been old enough to get his teeth aligned, unlike Tolliver. By the time Tolliver should have been getting his middle-class-American-teen complement of braces and acne medicine, our parents had started their downward spiral together. I shook off that unworthy twinge of resentment. Mark had just been lucky, on that count. “Our sales weren’t as high as they should’ve been, and we’re going to have to scramble this spring,” he said.

“So what do you think happened?” Tolliver asked, as if he gave a rat’s ass why the store wasn’t performing as well as it ought to have.

Mark rambled on about the store and his responsibilities, and I tried to show a decent interest. This was a better job than his previous position managing a restaurant; at least, the hours were better. Mark had put himself through two years of junior college, and he’d taken night classes since then. Eventually, he’d earn a degree. I had to admire that dedication. Neither Tolliver nor I had done that much.

The truth was that though I made sure I looked like I was listening, and I truly was fond of Mark, I was bored silly. I found myself remembering a day Mark had knocked down one of my mom’s visitors, a tough guy in his thirties who’d made a blatant pass at Cameron. Mark hadn’t known if the guy was armed (many of our parents’ buddies were), and yet Mark hadn’t hesitated a second in his defense of my sister. This memory made it easy for me to pretend I was hanging on Mark’s every word.

Tolliver was asking relevant questions. Maybe he was more into this than I’d thought. I wondered, for the hundredth time, if Tolliver would have enjoyed having a regular life, instead of the one we led.

But I figured he’d pretty much set that fear to rest the day before.