I didn’t want to add to their burden with any worries of my own, so I pretended as if nothing was wrong with me. We ate chicken, and we laughed. The 126 was a madhouse, as it usually was, raucous and rough. Here, even the best of friends were one bad joke away from a fistfight. The A-Team played on the television over the bar, but no one could hear it, because the jukebox blasted “A View to a Kill” so loudly that you had to shout at the person next to you. There was new artwork on the wall, a huge painting of The Last Supper with Jesus and the Apostles smoking cigarettes and drinking pitchers of beer. Some of the local churchgoers had complained, but at the 126, nobody cared.

I knew everyone there. Norm and Will played rotation at one of the pool tables. Ruby sat at a corner table with her high school friends, her face hard and drawn. Ben Malloy was back in town, going from table to table to talk up his new Ursulina special. The show was scheduled for a prime time debut on the Saturday after Halloween, and Ben had a big party planned at the 126 for the whole town to watch. Everyone was invited. He’d announced a cash prize for the best Ursulina costume, which meant the event was going to be a monster mash.

Sandra Thoreau sat at the bar, nursing a beer and a Merit. She raised her mug at me in a toast. She wore a fraying sky-blue turtleneck, faded jeans, and American flag cowboy boots. She faced outward on the stool, making eye contact with the men around her, assessing who she was going to bring home tonight.

I excused myself from Darrell’s table and brought my basket of chicken to the bar.

“Hey,” I said to Sandra as I squirmed onto the stool next to her.

“Hey, yourself,” she replied with a sympathetic chuckle at my condition. “Looks like you’re getting close.”

“I’m a couple of weeks away, but it feels like it could be any day now.”

“You ready?”

“As ready as I’m going to be.”

“Got names picked out?”

“Actually, I was thinking about Shelby,” I told her.

“Shelby. That’s cool. It’s different, I like it. Works for a boy, works for a girl.”

“It’s a girl.”

Sandra smiled. “Well, you say that now, but prepare to be surprised. I was sure Henry was a girl, until the doc held him up in the hospital and showed me his little dick.”

“It’s a girl,” I said again.