Like Chance, I had little desire to go home. Instead, I pointed the car at the city line. I couldn’t remember the exact house where I’d collected Jason the other day, but I remembered the intersection: Water Street and Tenth. When I got there, a couple guys were in the front yard throwing a football back and forth. They were older with long hair, lit cigarettes, and T-shirts with the sleeves cut away. I parked the car, followed a cracked sidewalk, and waited until one looked at me. “Hey. I’m looking for my brother.”

“Who’s that?”

“Jason.”

“In the back.”

I said thanks, and ducked my head so the football wouldn’t take it off. Inside, I followed the sound of clanking metal to another open door and a small porch on the back of the house. Jason was there, shirtless in faded jeans. He was doing curls with a heavy bar and thick plates. When he saw me, he lifted his chin.

“What’s up, little brother? You need something?”

“Hey, it’s cool. Finish your set.”

He worked through the rest of his set, and veins popped in his arms, no fat anywhere. What I saw most clearly was the bruising. It ran on the left side of his face, and on his ribs, too, seven or eight places, each the size of a fist. He lowered the bar, then whipped a shirt off the rail and shrugged it on, speaking as he did. “What are you doing here?”

I pointed at his ribs. “I heard about the fight.”

“What, this?”

“Bikers, I heard.”

“A few, maybe. Who told you?” Jason flipped the lid on a Styrofoam cooler and dug around for a Budweiser. “Chance, right? I saw his cousin there. Weasel-looking little sucker.”

“He said it was pretty hard-core.”

“Is that right?”

He handed me a beer. I opened it. “What was it about?”

“The fight?” He shrugged. “Tyra, I guess.”

“How so?”

“She’s a shameless flirt. And she gets ideas.” There was a lie in there somewhere, or at least some evasion. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I’m done with her, anyway. You seen Sara?”

A sudden flush embarrassed me. Sara was a fantasy, a schoolboy’s dream. “Not since the day.”

“You should follow up on that. She’s a good girl, and not like Tyra.”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“So, why are you here?”

He leaned on the rail, and it was strange to see cop eyes in a convict’s face. I tried to find the best answer: that I didn’t want to go home, that maybe it was about Sara. Deep down, though, it was about being brothers. “Bored, I guess.”

“You should try prison sometime.”

He drained the can and crumpled it; and I tried to understand why things felt so different from the last time. He was aloof, impatient. He scratched at an arm, and I thought, Shit, is he using?