the woods, tinkering with a discarded two-stroke engine, chopping wood,
or carving a block of wood into an animal head. He never complained
about Welch, and unlike Lori and me, he'd made a lot of friends there.
But I thought it was in Brian's long-term interest to get out of the town. I
made a list of reasons he should move to New York, so I could argue him
into it.
I called him at Grandpa's and presented my case. He'd need to get a job
to pay his share of the rent and groceries, I said, but jobs were going
begging in the city. He could share the living room with me—there was
plenty of space for a second bed—the toilet flushed, and the ceiling
never leaked.
When I finished, Brian was silent for a moment. Then he said, "When's
the soonest I can come?"
Just like me, Brian hopped the Trailways bus the morning after
completing his junior year. The day after he got to New York, he found a
job at an ice-cream parlor in Brooklyn, not far from The Phoenix. He
said he liked Brooklyn better than Manhattan or the Bronx, but he also
developed a habit of dropping by The Phoenix when he got off work and
waiting for me until three or four in the morning so we could take the
subway together up to the South Bronx. He never said anything, but I
think he figured that, as when we were kids, we both stood a better
chance if we took on the world together.
I now saw no point in going to college. It was expensive, and my aim in
going would have been to get a degree to qualify me for a job as a
journalist. But I now had my job at The Phoenix. As for the learning
itself, I figured you didn't need a college degree to become one of the
people who knew what was really going on. If you paid attention, you
could pick things up on your own. And so, if I overheard mention of
something I was ignorant about—keeping Kosher, Tammany Hall, haute
couture—I researched it later on. One day I interviewed a community