I met him in rehab. He was leading a reading group. A greatest hits of Western philosophy, more or less. I remember the first thing I heard him say: “Socrates says that the unexamined life isn’t worth living; Sartre says the examined life isn’t worth living. I say they’re both wrong. Every life is worth living.” I almost walked out right then, but it was better than a lot of the other crap they tell you in rehab, and Frank’s class got better, after a while.

“I’m not here to justify your life,” Frank said, “and the things you’ve done in it. But I’m here to justify you being alive and, I hope, introduce you to people who think about what that means.”

I tried not to think about it. I knew where I was and what I’d done to get there. And who I owed for helping me. Froehmer was paying for my treatment. “What do you think your dad would do?” he asked.

“I’d be on my own, in jail for all he’d care.”

“Well, I’m not doing this for your dad; I’m doing this for you.”

It wasn’t cheap, and I knew Froehmer wasn’t doing it for free. I’d be back swiping stuff from construction sites and industrial parks and city garages and wherever else he wanted as soon as I got out. And I didn’t care. What else was I going to do? I didn’t need Socrates and Sartre and Frank to help me with any of that. At least that’s how I thought. I only wanted a distraction from all the other stuff that went on, group sessions and counseling, talking and more talking. At least Frank would have us reading something and talking about something other than ourselves.

Frank’s seven years older than I am; he’d been to college and had worked a lot of different jobs. He worked on a server farm at some big tech firm, worked packing boxes at a warehouse for an online retail company, installed alarm systems for a while, worked as a landscaper, a handyman, pushed a broom as a janitor, painted houses, jobs like that, one after another, never staying with any of it for long. “I’d get high and not show up for work,” he said, “sometimes for days. And I’d just not go back. Or I’d get caught stealing. I got fired a lot.”

“What did you steal?”

“Anything I could grab quick and sell quick. I didn’t care, anything that would give me a little cash to get high again.”

“Jail?”