You need to think of your future, Michael.

My future?

You don’t want to end up like your brother, right?

Oh. Yeah.

It’s pretty easy to tell we don’t have a dress code at school by looking at the Sex Pistol wannabes with their safety pins and leopard print and mile-high hair.

But still Andy stands out in his red Guardian Angel’s beret and T-shirt against the gray lockers and beige walls. Maybe it’s because I know him. Maybe it’s because he seems more on-edge since taking this gig. Maybe it’s because I’m worried Becky isn’t happy.

Or maybe I’m just listening to James too much. Hard to tell.

Patrol is going good, Andy tells me. And Dad is cool with it so long as I don’t work in the neighborhood. He says he doesn’t want me being targeted or anything. But I think he just doesn’t want me patrolling on his beat. But it’s not a problem. I’d rather deal with the tourists, anyhow. I mean, man, we gotta start taking some responsibility for keeping our city safe, right? Before it turns into a total shithole. Like, last night I saw this old woman mugged on a subway platform while the transit cop was asleep in the car on the train. I mean, that’s not right.

What did you do? I ask.

Andy readjusts his cap and says, Radar, that’s my patrol leader, he took a picture of the sleeping cop to mail to his sergeant.

No, I mean, what did you do about the woman?

Oh, we chased the guy down and held him till the other cops came. By the time we got back, the woman was gone.

May 1983

I head downtown, but on impulse, I get off the subway at Times Square.

There’s a buzz here. A dark and sexy underground buzz highlighted by the groups of sailors cruising in groups, dress whites shining against the grime of the X-rated movie houses and hot dog carts. Prostitutes, tourists, people strung out in doorways, business people hailing taxi cabs with their squealing brakes and cigarette roof ads, and plumbing smoke from the subways.

My mother hates it here. Thinks it’s dirty and crowded and loud.

And she’s right.

But somewhere in this crush, this hum, the music of this noisy, gritty, frenetic city, somewhere is a place where I belong.

I get back on the subway and head to the new almost block-long Tower Records. Lust after all the new releases waiting right inside the door. Wonder if CDs are really going to be a thing. Stare at the poster announcing that U2 is playing the Palladium on May 11. Wonder how I can get a ticket and what I can tell my parents that will get them to allow me to go to a show on a Wednesday night.

As I’m standing there, a guy in a T-shirt that says HONOR THE DEAD, SUPPORT THE LIVING pushes a flyer into my hands.

I take a ridiculously long time to read the sparse instructions that amount to: Come to the march and candlelight vigil on May 2 to demand more money for AIDS research.