"I need to stop here," said Hugh, "and fish something out of the trash that I mistakenly threw away yesterday. I'll leave the car running, okay? Heater on, radio if you want it."

"No problem," said Theresa. "Is that house where you work?"

"Yep."

Theresa watched him walk away, briskly and purposefully. The way he moved seemed familiar; The set of his shoulders and back, his stride, reminded her of someone. Her mind played around the edges of telling her who, then changed the subject: Hugh was clearly screening his actions from her. When he removed the lid from the trash can and leaned to reach inside, the memory clicked into place: her brother leaning over the engine of the family car.

Feelings boiled up through her. That old battle! The force of her voice against the silence surprised her, for she had spoken aloud. Then Hugh was simply Hugh again, shoving something into the pocket of his windbreaker with his right hand, holding a piece of paper in his left, reading it, stiff and alert as a startled animal. He folded the paper, pocketed it, and bent forward, rested his hands on the edge of the trash can for a moment. Then he shook off his burden and began searching again, first with one hand then with two. The seconds ticked away as he rummaged through the trash. The car engine sputtered and died.

Theresa slid behind the wheel and checked the gas guage: not much but some. She turned the ignition key, and the starter ground repeatedly but emptily.

"You have to pump it three times," said Hugh, suddenly at the door and opening it, "then take one deep breath and start sweet-talking her as you turn the ignition. Sometimes prayer helps. But I need the keys for a minute, please. Got to check the spare, I just remembered." He extended his left hand, sheilding his right side from her gaze. His grin was a tight mask pulled across fear. Their eyes locked for a moment, a long moment. Then Theresa turned her attention to removing the keys.

"Boyohboyohboy," said Hugh as he sank down and squatted on his haunches. "Boy oh boy. Whoa, brother! Of all the people on God's green earth...." He laughed. "Theresa, you are quite possibly the most unbullshitable person I have ever met in the first place, and really the person I want least to even try to bullshit right now, and here I am like a wind-up dimestore tin conman..."

"I can't get these keys out."

"Well, okay, here." He rose. "Slide over." He got behind the wheel and wiggled and pulled at the keys, which refused to budge. He sighed, pumped the gas and turned the ignition. The engine roared obediently to life. He glanced at her, grinned, shrugged, turned away, massaged his neck with both hands, leaned back and squeezed his face shut, then let it open. Theresa watched with the absorption of a child looking into a kaleidoscope.

"Forgive me for being who I am," said Hugh, "but I just spent what felt like half an hour looking for this damn thing," he opened his hand to show her the crumpled bag of marijuana, "and it's got a half-smoked doobie in it, and for reasons I don't want to go into, I simply have to smoke it, right now. And if you don't want the odor on your clothes, I mean you really smell nice, I can go over by that catalpa tree..."

"Hugh..."

"Damn, now I want to apologize for being apologetic. It's just - It's like there's this hawk circling around over your head, and every time I make a wrong move, it swoops down and digs its claws in, and I can't make a..." Theresa leaned forward and kissed him firmly on the mouth.

"A right move," she said. "Now will you shut up?" Brows lifted, eyes wide, Hugh nodded.

"Hugh... Yes, there's a hawk, and yes, I guess it's protective, but it's never clawed anyone worse than it has me... Look, the problem is, I got off on the wrong foot with you from the first. Something about silverware, flatware; you were showing off, you said. 'See what an intelligent guy I am.' But I took it the wrong way, I felt like you'd slapped me. - Go ahead and smoke that if you want to, I don't care. - It puzzled me a little at the time, but I let it go. I didn't see any problem with the way I was relating to you until this morning, back in Liz's room, when you said you thought of me as your constant critic, and I snapped something back about male ego - and even while I was saying that, I realized, 'My God, I'm proving him right!'" Hugh snorted out a cloud of marijuana smoke.

"The hawk," he said.

"The hawk. The ever-vigilant hawk, that finally dug out of my own trash can the reason I've been treating you like an enemy instead of a friend. Simply put, you remind me of my brother."

"Your brother. And that's bad?"

"The sibling rivalry from hell. My dad left us, just disappeared, when I was five and my brother was three. And Mom said Ken, my brother, would have to be the man of the house now. That meant he was the boss. But I was the oldest, you see; I was supposed to be in charge! We fought constantly - fists, tears, and it was always my fault; I was older, I was supposed to know better. Worst of all, we traded accusations, again and again, about whose fault it was Daddy had left."

"Ouch."

"For years it went on, until it was the only way we could be together - with the repeated, exhausted refrain from Mom, 'Stop fighting, go to your rooms.' A dreary sick family habit. Finally Mom broke down and cried - I mean heartweary-heartworn-sobbing cried. 'I can't stand this any more! You've got to stop quarreling! For God's sake, please! Treat each other the way brothers and sisters are supposed to treat each other!' Whatever that might be."

"Like Dick, Jane, Sally and Spot, presumably."

"Right, in the book where Daddy's always coming home. But all we could do was take it underground. To the extent grade-schoolers can become masters of the vicious hint, the poisonous innuendo, the just-kidding gut-slash, so we became. That's what my male-ego remark was, a just-kidding gut-slash; I knew exactly what I was doing, after decades of practice, but not why was I doing it to you - until I saw you walk away."

"It's my cute little butt, isn't it? Your brother has a cute little butt."

"Noooo."

"Hey, you're smiling. I've never seen you smile before. It's a very nice, crinkly-at-the-edges, Shirley McClaine smile. Oh my, with matching blush."

"Hugh..."

"Okay, flirting aside: You hurt, I hurt. Even if you've told that story a hundred times to a hundred different therapists... I mean, God damn! The love that could have been there, should have been there - the help and support you could have been to each other! All that... loss!"

"Yes. All that loss, all that waste. While the hand moved forward round the dial, flicking away second after inexorable second, simple human kindness, much less affection, much less love, became less and less and less possible. Finally, when I was sixteen and he was fourteen, I tried. I think we both did. He was doing algebra homework, and I scanned the page upside down, solving all the problems as I went. Glanced at his work - the long way when it wasn't the wrong way. I said, 'Ken, I'll help you with that, if you'll let me.' He looked up - and all of a sudden it was a man's face looking square at me. 'No,' he said. 'It's better for me I do it, mistakes and all. I know how it is out there already. You don't yet.' There was no smugness in his saying that, no clever attempt to bait, no regret, phony or otherwise; just one grownup delivering facts to another. 'The other stuff,' he said, brushing it aside with a wave, 'that's just a game, you know.' 'What stuff? What game?' 'Our Not Getting Along Game. It's like Battle or Yonkerdu. You try to figure out where the other player has put his forces - where he thinks you won't think he's put them - and then you fire, and find out if you've scored a hit. That's what we do with each other. It's just a game, and when it's over nothing's really changed. Out there, it's different. Out there it's not a game.' Then he went back to algebra. And I went back to whatever I was into at the time.

"I've wondered since, what if I'd walked over and put my hand on his shoulder, given it a squeeze, told him he was one of the good guys? But that's something a woman might do, not a sixteen-year-old girl. Besides, there was no one there I wanted to touch. Who he had become I did not like. We had nothing in common. Still don't. For a while, we'd get together at Mom's for Thanksgiving - God Lord, that's today, isn't it? - And he'd bring in his crude stories, his crude opinions and prejudices, his crude wife, and his two crude brats, brother and sister - who yell at each other and hit each other until the wife stomps over and yells at both of them and swats them apart."

"Oh, Good Lord... And that's the guy I reminded you of?"

"Last time I saw him, he had a beard - I think that's part of it. But mainly it's here... in the curve of the shoulders, like you're carrying the world up there but you're used to it. And a way of walking like you're on your way to knock a door down. Whatever the cause, when you came back from your, ah, expedition, I could see your face for the first time, your real face, unclouded by the mask of my brother's, and - No, please don't say anything self-deprecating or clever. And - You know how someone's face looks when you really see it, all that interplay of infinitely variable and expressive musculature - it's like watching a symphony. Your face is, anyway. It is anything but the humorless mask of a man who had to grow up before he knew what childhood might turn out to be. It's got pain in it, yes, but there's study in it, too, and thought and..." He placed his fingers agaist her lips, and shivered with the pleasure of feeling them.

"A warning buzzer just went off," he said. "I've never heard it before, but I'm pretty sure there's a red light along with it, flashing Overload, Overload, Overload... Aha! And there's a very real gas guage saying we'll be lucky if we make it to the Seven Eleven before gasping to a stop."

"Dammit, Hugh! Is that a gun?" His gaze followed hers to the right pocket of his windbreaker.

"Oh shit, thank you for reminding me. No, you did not see that, and that is not a gun. It is a 38-caliber albatross that got hung around my neck by a fast-talking piano player and a psychotic idiot - Geez, kid, you're really scared."

"Hell yes, I'm scared! People kill people with those things!"

"But not when they're unloaded, as this is, and not by me." He turned the engine off. "And not by anyone when I put it in the trunk where it belongs." He pulled firmly on the key, which refused to budge. "All right what do I have to wiggle here? Shift lever? Nope. Wheel? Ah ha! Voila! Now, do you remember Eddie Dean? Think plaid jacket."

"The guy who was so crazy they threw him out."

"The guy who was so crazy he made the rest of us look sane, and yes they threw him out. Would you like the full and complete story on that? Of course you would. - Good grief, you're still worried. Look: Not the face of a killer, right?" She smiled and shook her head. He kissed her quickly and was out the door, striding like a man kicking clouds aside.

***