said, "You let a couple of girls beat you up?"

"They weren't girls."

Win took a sip of cognac. Myron gulped some Yoo-Hoo. "Tomorrow night," Win said, "we'll go back to this bar. Together."

It was not something Myron wanted to think about right now. Win called a doctor. It was after two in the morning, but the doctor, a gray-haired man straight from central casting, arrived in fifteen minutes. Nothing broken, he declared with a professional chuckle. Most of the medical treatment consisted of cleaning out the cuts from the heel blade and window bits. The two heel slices-the one on his stomach was shaped like a Z-required stitches. All in all, painful but relatively harmless.

The doctor tossed Myron some Tylenol with codeine, closed up his medical bag, tipped his hat, departed. Myron finished his Yoo-Hoo and stood slowly. He wanted to take a shower, but the doctor had told him to wait until the morning. He swallowed a couple of tablets and hit the sheets. When he fell asleep, he dreamed about Brenda.

In the morning he called Hester Crimstein at her apartment. The machine picked up. Myron said it was urgent. Midway through his message Hester took the calL

"I need to see Esperanza," he told the attorney. "Now."

Surprisingly, the attorney hesitated for only a moment before saying, "Okay."

"I killed someone," Myron said.

Esperanza sat across from him.

"I don't mean I actually fired a gun. But I might as well have. In many ways what I did was worse."

Esperanza kept her eyes on him. "This happened right before you ran away?"

"Within a couple of weeks, yes."

"But that's not why you left."

His mouth felt dry. "I guess not."

"You ran away because of Brenda."

Myron did not answer.

Esperanza crossed her anus. "So why are you sharing this little tidbit with me?"

"I'm not sure."

"I am," she said.

"Oh?"

"It's something of a ploy. You hoped that your big confession would help me open up."

"No," Myron said.

"Then?"

"You're the one I talk to about things like this."

She almost smiled. "Even now?"

"I don't understand why you're shutting me out," he said. "And okay, maybe I do hold out some hope that talking about this will help us return to-I don't know- some kind of sense of normalcy. Or maybe I just heed to talk about this. Win wouldn't understand. The person I killed was evil incarnate. It would have presented him with a moral dilemma no more complex than choosing a tie."

"And this moral dilemma haunts you?"

"The problem is," Myron said, "it doesn't."

Esperanza nodded. "Ah."

"The person deserved it," he went on. "The courts had no evidence."

"So you played vigilante."

"In a sense."

"And that bothers you? No, wait, it doesn't bother you."

"Right."

"So you're losing sleep over the fact that you're not losing sleep."

He smiled, spread his hands. "See why I come to you?"

Esperanza crossed her legs and looked up in the air. "When I first met you and Win, I wondered about your friendship. About what first attracted you to each other. I thought maybe Win was a latent homosexual."

"Why does everyone say that? Can't two men just-"

"I was wrong," she interrupted. "And don't get all defensive, it'll make people wonder. You guys aren't gay. I realized that early on. Like I said, it was just a thought. Then I wondered if it was simply the old adage Opposites attract.' Maybe that's part of it." She stopped.

"And?" Myron prompted.

"And maybe you two are more alike than either one of you wants to believe. I don't want to get too deep here, but Win sees you as his humanity. If you like him, he reasons, how bad can he be? You, on the other hand, see him as a cold dose of reality. Win's logic is scary, but it's oddly appealing. There is a little part in all of us that likes what he does, the same side of us that thinks the Iranians might be on to something when they cut off a thief's hand. You grew up with all that suburban liberal crap about the disad-vantaged. But now real-life experience is teaching you that some people are just plain evil. It shifts you a little closer to Win."

"So you're saying I'm becoming like Win? Gee, that's comforting."

"I'm saying your reaction is human. I don't like it. I don't think it's right. You may indeed be sinking into a quagmire. Bending the rules is getting easier and easier for you. Maybe the person you killed deserved it, but if you want to hear that, if you want absolution, go to Win."

Silence.

Esperanza's fingers fluttered near