It was the image of Jake striking flint and steel that kept recurring; he would allow his mind to dwell on it for a second or two, like a bee alighting on some sweet flower, and then he would take off again. Because that memory wasn’t what he wanted; it was just the way in to what he wanted, another door like the ones on the beach of the Western Sea, or the one he had scraped in the dirt of the speaking ring before they had drawn Jake... only this door was in his mind. What he wanted was behind it; what he was doing was kind of... well... diddling the lock.

Zonin, in Henry-speak.

His brother had spent most of his time putting Eddie down—because Henry had been afraid of him and jealous of him, Eddie had finally come to realize—but he remembered one day when Henry had stunned him by saying something that was nice. Better than nice, actually; mind-boggling.

A bunch of them had been sitting in the alley behind Dahlie’s, some of them eating Popsicles and Hoodsie Rockets, some of them smoking Kents from a pack Jimmie Polino—Jimmie Polio, they had all called him, because he had that fucked-up thing wrong with him, that clubfoot—had hawked out of his mother’s dresser drawer. Henry, predictably enough, had been one of the ones smoking.

There were certain ways of referring to things in the gang Henry was a part of (and which Eddie, as his little brother, was also a part of); the argot of their miserable little ka-tet. In Henry’s gang, you never beat anyone else up; you sent em home with a fuckin rupture. You never made out with a girl; you fucked that skag til she cried. You never got stoned; you went on a fuckin bombin-run. And you never brawled with another gang; you got in a fuckin pisser.

The discussion that day had been about who you’d want with you if you got in a fuckin pisser. Jimmie Polio (he got to talk first because he had supplied the cigarettes, which Henry’s homeboys called the fuckin cancer-sticks) opted for Skipper Brannigan, because, he said, Skipper wasn’t afraid of anyone. One time, Jimmie said, Skipper got pissed off at this teacher—at the Friday night PAL dance, this was—and beat the living shit out of him. Sent THE FUCKIN CHAPERONE home with a fuckin rupture, if you could dig it. That was his homie Skipper Brannigan.

Everyone listened to this solemnly, nodding their heads as they ate their Rockets, sucked their Popsicles, or smoked their Kents. Everyone knew that Skipper Brannigan was a fuckin pussy and Jimmie was full of shit, but no one said so. Christ, no. If they didn’t pretend to believe Jimmie Polio’s outrageous lies, no one would pretend to believe theirs.