Win snapped on the TV, and they watched Antiques Roadshow. A snooty woman with a lazy drawl had brought in a hideous bronze bust. She started telling the appraiser a story about how Dean Martin in 1950 offered her father ten thousand dollars for this wretched hunk of metal, but her daddy, she said with an insistent finger-point and matching smirk, was too wily for that. He knew that it must be worth a fortune. The appraiser nodded patiently, waited for the woman to finish, and then he lowered the boom:

“It’s worth about twenty dollars.”

Myron and Win shared a quiet high five.

“Enjoying other people’s misery,” Win said.

“We are pitiful,” Myron said.

“It’s not us.”

“No?”

“It’s this show,” Win said. “It illuminates so much that is wrong with our society.”

“How so?”

“People aren’t satisfied just to have their trinket be worth a fortune. No, it is better, far better, if they bought it on the cheap from some unsuspecting rube. No one considers the feelings of the unsuspecting yard salesman who was cheated, who lost out.”

“Good point.”

“Ah, but there’s more.”

Myron smiled, sat back, waited.

“Forget greed for the moment,” Win went on. “What really upsets us is that everybody but everybody lies on Antiques Roadshow.”

Myron nodded. “You mean when the appraiser asks, ‘Do you have any idea what it’s worth?’ ”

“Precisely. He asks that same question every time.”

“I know.”

“And Mr. or Mrs. Gee-Whiz act like the question caught them totally off guard—as if they’d never seen the show before.”

“It’s annoying,” Myron agreed.

“And then they say something like, ‘Gasp-oh-gasp, I never thought of that. I have no idea what it might be worth.’ ” Win frowned. “I mean, please. You dragged your two-ton granite armoire to some impersonal convention center and waited in line for twelve hours—but you never, ever, not in your wildest dreams wondered what it might be worth?”

“A lie,” Myron agreed, feeling the buzz. “It’s up there with ‘Your call is very important to us.’ ”

“And that,” Win said, “is why we love when a woman like that gets slammed. The lies. The greed. The same reason why we love the boob on Wheel of Fortune who knows the solution but always goes for the extra spin and hits Bankrupt.”

“It’s like life,” Myron pronounced, feeling the booze.

“Do tell.”

But then the door’s intercom buzzed.

Myron felt his stomach drop. He checked his watch. It was one-thirty in the morning. Myron just looked over at Win. Win looked back, his face a placid pool. Win was still handsome, too handsome, but the years, the abuse, the late nights of either violence or, as with tonight, sex, were starting to show just a little.

Myron closed his eyes. “Is that a . . . ?”

“Yes.”

He sighed, rose. “I wish you’d told me.”

“Why?”

They’d been down that road before. There was no answer to that one.

“She’s from a new place on the Upper West Side,” Win said.

“Yeah, how convenient.”

Without another word Myron headed down the corridor toward his bedroom. Win answered the door. As much as it depressed him, Myron took a peek. The girl was young and pretty. She said, “Hi!” with a forced lilt in her voice. Win did not reply. He beckoned her to follow him. She did, teetering on too-high heels. They vanished down the corridor.

As Esperanza had noted, some things refuse to change—no matter how much you’d like them to.

Myron closed the door and collapsed onto the bed. His head swam from drink. The ceiling spun. He let it. He wondered if he was going to get sick. He didn’t think so. He pushed thoughts of the girl out of his head. She left him easier than the girls used to, a change in him that was definitely not for the better. He didn’t hear any noises—the room Win used (not his bedroom, of course) was soundproof—and eventually Myron closed his eyes.

The call came in on his cell phone.

Myron had it set on vibrate-ring. It rattled against his night table. He woke from his half-sleep and reached for it. He rolled over, and his head screamed. That was when he saw the bedside digital clock.

2:17 a.m.

He did not check the caller ID before he put the phone to his ear.

“Hello?” he croaked.

He heard the sob first.

“Hello?” he said again.

“Myron? It’s Aimee.”

“Aimee.” Myron sat up. “What’s wrong? Where are you?”

“You said I could call.” There was another sob. “Anytime, right?”

“Right. Where are you, Aimee?”

“I need help.”

“Okay, no problem. Just tell me where you are.”

“Oh God . . .”

“Aimee?”

“You won’t tell, right?”

He hesitated. He flashed to Claire, Aimee’s mother. He remembered Claire at this age and felt a funny pang.

“You promised. You promised you wouldn’t tell my parents.”

“I know. Where are you?”

“Promise you won’t tell?”

“I promise, Aimee. Just tell me where you are.”

CHAPTER 7

Myron threw on a pair of sweats.

His brain was a little hazy. There was still some of the drink in him. The irony did not escape him—he had told Aimee to call him because he didn’t want her to get in a car with somebody who’d drank, and here he was, slightly tipsy. He tried to step back and judge his sobriety. He figured that he was okay to drive, but isn’t that what every drinker thinks?

He debated asking Win, but Win was otherwise preoccupied. Win had also drunk even more, despite the sober façade. Still, he shouldn’t just rush out, should he?

Good question.

The fine wooden floors in the corridor had recently been redone. Myron decided quickly to test his sobriety. He walked along one plank as though it were a straight line, as though a cop had pulled him over. He passed, but again Myron was, all modesty aside, pretty damned coordinated. He could probably pass that test whilst wasted.

Still, what choice did he have here? Even if he found someone else to drive at this hour, how would Aimee react to him showing up with a stranger? He, Myron, had been the one to make her promise to call him if such a situation were to arise. He had been the one who jammed his card with all the phone numbers into her hand. He had been the one, as Aimee had just pointed out, who swore complete confidentiality.