“I’m sure there are good people out there,” he said, as he eyed the door. “I’m just not one of them.” He talked. It was his way of calming down. We were in a bar up near Times Square. You know the place or someplace like it. They serve boilermakers and boiled dogs, and no, there was not a soul in the place you’d want to take home to meet your mother. The bleeding over his eye was no better, and the hand he used to hold a wad of bloody napkins up to the gash was starting to swell. Every time the door opened, he’d jump and now he had me doing it too. When we were young and faced with something to bear, we’d summon a magic to make us invisible. We’d close our eyes and count to twenty-five. It never worked, but it might have, I closed my eyes. The violence had been rapid and real and I don’t want to talk about it.