“Oh yeah, right. So what are you gonna do, hang out in Providence and go to Reject like every other dumb fuck?”

He sat on my bed and sulked. “Okay,” he said, “I’m gonna blow your mind. There’s something I been meaning to tell you.” He drew a deep breath and said, “I wasted Mousy.”

“Is that right?”

“Is that right? What the fuck, is that right! I tell him I killed—is that right, he says.”

“You killed him?”

“Yeah. I loosened the tire on his car. I did it because one of us had to and you wouldn’t. Did it for his own damn good.”

“You murdered Mousy for his own damn good?”

“He was sick, Dunph. You know that.”

“Sick? He makes a decision on how he wants to live his life and because you disagree, he’s sick? When did you become a fucking guidance counselor? I mean, who the hell are you?”

“A friend, that’s who.”

“You know, DeCenz, this is exactly what’s messed me up my whole life: worrying about other people’s decisions. Well, I’m through with it. I can’t help it that my mother killed herself, and I can’t help it that Mousy wanted to work for a power plant. I can’t help those things, and I’m not gonna worry about them any more. I’m just gonna worry about things I can do something about. That’s what Mousy was really saying. Remember the tree that got cut down? Mousy was trying to teach us a lesson. Face up to your problems, DeCenz. Do what you can do while you can do something.”

I turned and looked out the window. “Go back to Pawtucket. Listen to your conscience for once.”

“I can’t go back now,” he said.

“Because of Mousy?”

He shrugged.

“Cut the shit,” I said. “I know you didn’t kill nobody. You’re making the crime fit the accident.”

“Who says?”

“I say. You’d have to be a fucking homicidal maniac to try it with Bunny in the car.”

“Listen, Columbo, maybe I didn’t know she was there. You ever think of that?”

“Are you telling me that you thought that by loosening the tire you could get Mousy to drive his car into a telephone pole and kill himself? Come on, it doesn’t make sense. You already said that you had him up on the water tower with you earlier that night. Why didn’t you just push him off? Would’ve been a hell of a lot more practical. No way, DeCenz, you couldn’t hurt a mosquito and you know it.”

“Look, man, we planned to go to Arizona and I’m going. I’m the only one who does what I say I’m gonna do.”

“Don’t go, it’ll be another mistake.”