Talking, I was a little drunk or coked up or both. Robert’s high was “natural” as we window-shopped, crunching through minor snow, gossiping the whole thirty blocks. We slowly began to feel followed. I said, “‘Hushed are the streets of many peopled Thebes.’ Robbie, is there an echo out here or have you attracted further admirers?” He ignored me, and we went on discussing Edvard Munch’s erotic oddities. Probably our first mistake.

We were set upon by brigands; they wore do-rags, their lower faces smothered behind railroad bandannas. Two weedy kids, maybe fourteen—smaller, sourer, tighter-wound than we. If we lived “hungry,” they looked hungry.

Through magnolias’ perfume, I seemed to smell burned electrical wiring. My head cleared quick. I passed the flower arrangement to Robert. He was so perplexed, he took it. In my disoriented state, saving these flowers seemed the goal, along with doing something heroic for Robert.

“Quick, take off!” Having accepted flowers, he, confused, made two steps forward. They were on him.

Kids’ being so whip-thin only made their single huge silver gun—held high and trembling at arm’s length—appear cartoon-gigantic. They slowly explained that this was a real gun. And, in it, real bullets.

“We never doubted that, not for one single sec, fellows.” Robert, our leader—being the natural platinum blond—now got pressed back against a storefront grate. He asked the gangboss (the one with the gun), “What you need, man? Like some pretty flowers?—No. Say you want all my money I got?—Spent it. Back there. Fuckin’ clip joint. Cover charges, two-drink minimum. No fair to us, is it? I mean, you guys go out. You know the clubs.”

They told him he looked rich. “Give us it. Don’t, we pop you.”

“Fellows? If I had it, you’d be spending it by now. Trust me. Can’t give you cash I should have. Check my pockets. We are walking home, right? It is four a.m., whatever. We did liberate the centerpiece. You figure we’d risk a stroll if we had a subway token or anything to hide?”

Shifting magnolias into one hand, his other strained to pull one pocket free of his velvet pants. Soon as I saw my friend’s back tense, preparing, I knew this would be a bad move. It might seem sudden. It did. Robert’s confidence always inspired him to rush things to their next theatrical level, then the next.

The outturned pocket showed white as a truce flag. But the second it appeared, one boy came at me and placed something into my side. I saw his eyes choosing just where it should go. It felt like one of the long hatpins my grandmother used to secure her black hats. Having placed a long pin in me, the kid stepped back.