“You coulda done anything with your life. Coulda stayed a Sandhog.”

“That job wasn’t for me.”

She rolls her eyes. One of her signature moves. Jess always had a little attitude. A little fire at the end of her tongue, a sparked flint in her eyes. That’s why he liked her. She was tough. She needed to be to deal with him. Nora’s got that spark. Maybe too much of it.

“You were just afraid of becoming like your Dad.”

“Who isn’t?”

“You didn’t have to be a Hog. You had choices, Mikey.”

“Mook. Mookie.” A hard wind kicks up. “Not Mikey.”

“You were Mikey to me then, you’re Mikey to me now, and nothing can change that. What’s done is done.” She laughs softly. “You had the chance to be lots of things. I almost got you that garbage man job.”

“I don’t want to be a garbage man.”

“You already are a garbage man, just without the uniform. But fine, OK, whatever. You didn’t want to be the trash-man. What about that job Bobby Pallotta offered you? Bouncer at the – what was that strip club?”

“The Lady Lair. Didn’t pay enough.”

Above, the sky shifts – sudden clouds move swiftly overhead. Faces appear in the clouds, faces he can’t make out. But all of them are in pain.

“Could’ve been a skip tracer. Deshawn Washington was a–”

“He wasn’t the skip tracer. Deshawn was a repo guy. You’re thinkin’ of his brother, Demarcus, from Queens.”

“To-may-to to-mah-to, Mookie. Either of those damn jobs would’ve been–”

“Still not enough money!” he roars. “We had a mortgage! You had to have that… that goddamn Chevy Malibu. We sent Nora to that girl’s school. We needed real cash, not fucking… Monopoly play money.”

“I told you, I would’ve gotten a job.”

“No! No wife of mine gets a job.”

“Big man with big balls doesn’t want his little wifey to work? You’re smarter than that, Mikey. Everyone says you’re dumb, but I see it in your eyes – you’re smarter than that.” Jess walks up, thrusts her finger in his chest. Over her shoulder, he sees a glimpse of something, someone: a tall man in a beige suit. Candlefly. Then he’s gone. Jess keeps talking. “You think because your wife works, what, you’re not a tough guy anymore? Wife brings home some coin your dick will shrink a couple sizes? C’mon, Mikey. I could’ve helped. You never let me help. And then when you left…”

“I kept sending money. You never had to work. I took care of that. All you had to do was handle Nora–”

“She was a good kid. She didn’t need handling. She needed her father.”

“Jess, I know I made mistakes–”