“Such a cocksucker, this one. Good to see you, Paddy. Take care.” And with that Richie turned tail to the front of the bar.

Pat faked a smile and tried to shake the sleep out of his left leg.

“Riles, while you’re in the neighborhood.”

“Gotcha, sir.” And he lifted the Smirnoff out of the well again.

Jesus—Richie the cop is well past his twenty-and-out. Pat hobbled to the bathroom and took a piss and then returned to his dark corner. The bar was starting to fill in, and Pat realized his glow was gone. He needed to slow down, but that thought seemed to make him drink twice as fast. Pat hoisted himself back onto his stool as Reilly lit another cigarette and parked it in an ashtray below the bar. “You okay over there?”

“Just tired, stiff legs.”

“Stretch it out, Malone. And let me know when to call the ambulance.”

Pat poured the vodka into his thoughts. Forget the ambulance, call the hearse. It had started with a hitch in his step, which he chalked up to a childhood injury, a busted play at the stoop. That became tendinitis from jogging. Well, maybe it was arthritis, which his mother, Hannah, had. But in the past two years his left leg had gotten worse, not just stiff but aching, sometimes numb or tingly, and it didn’t move right, always behind the rest of his stride, never catching up. Then, three months ago, Pat first heard the term “multiple sclerosis.”

The day before his meetings at American, he had gone to his old doctor, Hugh MacNeill, another Hayes classmate, who had a good general practice going on East Eighty-Fourth balancing the sensitive humors of the upper class. It was to get a second—no, third—opinion on his MS diagnosis, but he wanted the no-bullshit version, which he got as soon as MacNeill saw his recent history.

“Pat, I could charge your insurance a bunch of money running tests to confirm it, but this Dr. Landis has done them, and these scans . . .” MacNeill sucked on his cheek. Not good. “Rather than poke and prod you to find out what we know, I think we should talk about how to deal with this.”

Pat tried to let the bluntness of that pass by, but his chin sank into his chest. He got mad at himself for that: What were you hoping for?

“You have a chronic disease, and no one can tell how it will progress. The mystery here is that MS treats everyone different. You have to take care of yourself and get stronger. You’re losing weight; you got to drink less, a glass or two of wine at most. You never smoked, right, Pat?”

“Never.”