“Can I hitch a ride to the city?”
   Stephanie felt a little rise in her chest. “Of course,” she said. “You have a meeting?”
   “Not really. I just feel like getting out.”
   As they walked to the car, Jules glanced behind them and said, “I think she’s watching us. Noreen. Through the fence.”
   “Wouldn’t surprise me.”
   “You just let that go on?”
   “What can we do? She’s not hurting us. She’s not even on our property.”
   “She could be dangerous.”
   “Takes one to know one, eh?”
   “Not nice,” Jules said.
   In the Volvo, Stephanie slipped an advance copy of Bosco’s new album, A to B, into the CD player out of some sense that in doing so she was strengthening her alibi. Bosco’s recent albums consisted of gnarled little ditties accompanied by a ukulele. It was only out of friendship that Bennie still released them.
   “Can I please turn this off?” Jules asked after two songs, then did so before Stephanie had answered. “This is who we’re going to see?”
   “We? I thought you were hitching a ride.”
   “Can I come with you?” Jules asked. “Please?”
   He sounded humble and plaintive: a man with nowhere to go and nothing to do. Stephanie wanted to scream; was this some kind of punishment for lying to Bennie? In the past thirty minutes she’d been forced to cancel a tennis game she was dying to play, piss Kathy off, embark on an invented errand to visit a person who was sure to be unconscious, and now bring her rudderless, hypercritical brother along to witness the demise of her alibi. “I’m not sure how much fun it’ll be,” she said.
   That’s okay,” Jules said. “I’m used to not-fun.”
   He watched nervously as Stephanie maneuvered from the Hutch onto the Cross Bronx Expressway; being in the car seemed to scare him. When they had fully entered the flow of traffic, he asked, “Are you having an affair?”
   Stephanie stared at him. “You’re out of your mind.”
   “Watch the road!”
   “Why are you asking me that?”
   “You seem jumpy. You and Bennie both. Not like I remember you guys.”
   Stephanie was stricken. “Bennie seems jumpy?” The old fear rose in her so quickly, like a hand at her throat, despite Bennie’s promise two years ago, when he turned forty, and the fact that she had no reason to doubt him.
   “You seem, I don’t know. Polite.”
   “Compared to people in prison?”
   Jules smiled. “Okay,” he said. “Maybe it’s just the place. Crandale, New York,” he said, elongating the words. I’ll bet it’s crawling with Republicans.”
   “About half and half.”
   Jules turned to her, incredulous. “Do you socialize with Republicans?”
   “It happens, Jules.”
   “You and Bennie? Hanging out with Republicans?”
   “Are you aware that you’re shouting?”
   “Watch the road!” Jules bellowed.
   Stephanie did, her hands shaking on the wheel. She felt like turning around and taking her brother back home, but that would involve missing her nonexistent meeting.
   “I go away for a few years and the whole fucking world is upside down,” Jules said angrily. “Buildings are missing. You get strip-searched every time you go to someone’s office. Everybody sounds stoned, because they’re e-mailing people the whole time they’re talking to you. Tom and Nicole are with different people . . . And now my rock-and-roll sister and her husband are hanging around with Republicans. What the fuck!”
   Stephanie took a long, calming breath. “What are your plans, Jules?”
   “I told you. I want to come with you to and meet this—”
   “I mean what are you going to do.”
   There was a long pause. Finally Jules said, “I have no idea.”
   Stephanie glanced at him. They’d turned onto the Henry Hudson Parkway, and Jules was looking at the river, his face devoid of energy or hope. She felt a contraction of fear in her chest. “When you first came to New York,” she said, “all those years ago, you were full of ideas.”
   Jules snorted. “Who isn’t, at twenty-four?”
   “I mean you had a direction.”
   He’d graduated from the University of Michigan a couple of years before. One of Stephanie’s freshman suitemates at NYU had left school for treatment of anorexia, and Jules had occupied the girl’s room for three months, wandering the city with a notebook, crashing parties at the Paris Review. By the time the anorexic returned, he’d gotten himself a job at Harper’s, an apartment on Eighty-first and York, and three roommates — two of whom now edited magazines. The third had won a Pulitzer.

5

  

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