“Eight hundert,” said Billy.

“Dollars?”

“Yeah, dollars.”

“Wow!”

The boys were quiet again. They stared at their beers.

“I pray a lot,” said Billy Constable.

“I’ll bet you do,” said Jimmy Joel.

“More than before.”

“Because of them bent nose guys?”

“Yeah.”

“You in a little trouble or a lotta trouble?”

“A lotta trouble.”

“And prayin’ pays off?” asked JJ.

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

“You’re sure of what?”

“I’m sure prayin’ pays off. Look what He did for me.”

“He who?” asked Jimmy Joel, bewildered.

“God. Who do you think, JJ? He…God…dropped a shitload of valuable fight tickets right outta heaven into my lap.”

“I thought you found them tickets in a closet.”

“Aw, come on, JJ, you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. That was a joke, sorta. Why are the tickets so valuable?” asked Jimmy Joel, wiping more beer foam from his upper lip with his shirtsleeve.

“Because I can sell them ringside tickets for at least three times what they cost, that’s why. That box’s the answer to my prayers.”

“You sure?”

“’Bout what?” asked Billy.

“’Bout them tickets bein’ the answer to your prayers.”

“I ain’t worried, if that’s what you mean.”

“You said you were.”

“When’d I say that? I never said I was worried. I said I was scart, not worried.”

“Maybe you ought to be worried too.”

“Maybe you ought to shut up.”

Of course, if Billy Constable had thought about it, and considered why the box was buried like it was under all that stuff and placed as far back in the closet as it was, Billy might have been worried too.

Very worried.

Theresa Mendavey traveled to San Francisco, took up with a crowd of hippies, met friends named Sunshine, Harmony, Tiger, Plump One, Moonbeam, Aquarius, and Angel Dust. She did some new drugs, slept with some weird guys and a few weird girls, woke up a couple of months later on a putrid, stained-from-God-knows-what futon on a dreary Saturday morning in 1997. She was twenty-four years old. She had just awakened from a sound sleep totally bummed. What am I doing here in this flophouse in the Haight? she wondered. And why am I lying next to this damn fool, skinny, no-good, drugged-up jerk? I’m here because I’m rebelling, right? But exactly who am I rebelling against? My mother? My father? Are they a worthwhile cause? Are those two losing one ounce of sleep over me?

“I THINK NOT!” she yelled aloud.

“What?!” asked Kip Dynamite, shooting up to a sitting position next to her. He had been sound asleep and was now all bleary-eyed and very halitocular. “You say something?”

Kip Dynamite, whose real name was Allan Gorchick, was a twenty-year-old dropout from Stanford University. Kip had been a brilliant premed student for about five minutes. He was also hypochondriacal and confused, a kid who couldn’t take the pressure and dropped out of Stanford to major in hallucinatory products.