“Worrying about someone is fine—you just have to be selective in what you worry about, Adam.” The coach could tell I was puzzling over what he meant. “Anyone can lose a fight, Adam—especially in a parking lot, where there are no rules. I lost twice,” Mr. Dearborn told me, “and that was on the mat, where I knew the rules.”

“I get it,” I said. The coach sat smoking in his sweatpants and socks; he was wearing a T-shirt, but he still had to put on his wrestling shoes. The other coaches would soon be arriving in the locker room, the snowshoer among them. As before, I was leaving the coaches’ locker room when I saw Mr. Dearborn light a fresh cigarette.

“You shouldn’t smoke so much,” I told him. I understood what he meant about selective worrying, but I was worried about him, too.

With his cigarette, which he held between the thumb and index finger of his right hand, Coach Dearborn pointed to his left wrist. “Ice, Adam,” he said, smiling. “Twenty minutes should suffice.”

When I once more mentioned the episode in the fish-market parking lot to the little English teacher, I tried to be as incisive concerning fights without rules as Coach Dearborn had been with me. “I don’t care what you know about wristlocks, Elliot, or that your wrestling has enabled you to get the better of a drunk, a deliveryman, and a couple of teenagers—you were lucky,” I told him. “Anyone can lose a fight, Elliot. Even Coach Dearborn lost—he lost twice—and that was on the mat, where he knew his opponent didn’t have a knife or a gun. What if, next time, one of your attackers has a knife or a gun?”

“My dear Adam,” the snowshoer said. “I’ll be more careful next time—if there is a next time,” he said. “I just wanted to see if I could be convincing as a woman.”

“It sounds like you were pretty convincing,” I told him. “I’m just not sure how the fish deliveryman got the worst of it—he was hurt worse than the boys. I thought the deliveryman was trying to help you, or is that just what he told the cops?”

“He tried to feel me up under my coat—under your mother’s coat, I should say,” Mr. Barlow explained. “I’m not sure how feeling me up constitutes coming to my assistance, as the fish deliveryman said.”

“He said ‘there was something a little off’ about you. What did he mean by that?” I asked the snowshoer.

“I suppose he meant he couldn’t find my boobs, though he was feeling all around for them,” Elliot admitted.

“So you broke his wrist,” I said.

“I thought he had it coming,” the snowshoer said. “I feel bad that I had to hurt those boys, but I tried to hurt them a little less.”