1977.
"...oh, no, of course it wasn't *your* fault--because NOTHING's ever *your* fault. Is it, Tobias?"
     A C or worse in every subject, even Religious Studies, where--as his fellow students often joked--you could pretty count on a passing grade just for showing up, Bible in hand. But Tobias Beecher hadn't, over and over again--preferring instead to spend his school hours knocking back illegal beers, grousing over familial injustices and smoking weed in bad company (acknowledged teenaged burnouts like Wilson Waverly Fewkes the Third--Will 3, to his friends--and over-indulged international exchange brats like Hong Kong's own Montgomery Hwang), while air-guitaring his way through the entire song-list of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours LP.
     Which is why Toby now found himself spending the summer down in Outer Nowheresville, Connecticut, doing Academic Boot Camp at Miltchard Prep--a fate, if not worse than death, then about as close as one could come to a turn in Limbo while still officially live and kicking.
     His father had brokered the deal, of course; anything to regroup, recoup--to keep Toby safely pinned back down onto the straight and narrow path which led directly past go, past $100, and right on 'till morning at Harvard Law School. Like every other Beecher since time immemorial, world without end, Amen.
     "And have you *learned* anything from this experience?" George Cullen Beecher had demanded, scowling impressively: A prematurely-grey little goateed bulldog of a man, fully half as wide as his mulish, bespectacled son was tall. And Toby had felt himself flush bright red, his emotions as mortifyingly blatant as usual, as they faced off over the big leather desk in George's home office. Thinking: Well, let's see.
     1. Don't get caught;
     2. ...and if you DO get caught, lie;
     3. ...and if you have to lie, lie CONVINCINGLY.
     Just like Uncle Cullen, the arbitrage specialist, had always joked about Uncle George, the defense attorney, to Uncle Tobias, the probate expert: My client wasn't there, your Honor--and if he was, he didn't do it. And if he *did* do it, he was insane at the time.
     And I have the expert witnesses to prove it.
     But: Did it ever occur to you, Dad, Toby had thought, resentfully--for neither the first time or the last--that maybe I'm just not cut OUT to be a lawyer? That maybe, just *maybe*, I'd be better off--happier, healthier, whatever--as...uh...
     ...uhhhh...
     Which is where the fantasy of outright rebellion always ended, time after time. Because Toby never could figure out *what* he wanted to be, frankly--aside from NOT a Beecher.
     Or anything *like* a Beecher.
     Tobias was a Beecher family name, just like George, just like Cullen--and the law had always been a Beecher family profession, from Great-great-Grandfather the Supreme Court judge on down, just like Harvard had always been "their" school. And as a result, Toby often felt as though nothing he'd ever had--or ever WOULD have--could possibly come from anywhere *but* the family, or exist anywhere outside this incestuous world of power, privilege and pretense he'd had the bad luck to be born into.
     (*Bad luck*? Who the hell do you think you're fooling, Toby--you spoiled little parasite?)
     Spoiled, right: Like a dish of milk left out overnight in hot weather, breeding strange diseases--impatience, intolerance. An increasing inability not only to *be* the son George expected, but even to give an adequate IMPRESSION of that composite good, smart, ambitious little blond-haired, blue-eyed boy.
     In any other family, what he'd let happen with his grades might qualify as a cry for help. To Toby's Dad, however, it was nothing more or less than a bad joke--a prank gone wrong. A mistake to be fixed. A mess to clean up after.
     Much, as far as Toby could figure out, like Toby himself.
     A late-life baby, the only son in that particular branch of Beechers, Toby had learned early to put on the happy-face hat whenever the occasion demanded--to rack up points, curry favor wherever possible, and keep himself securely in the spotlight without undue risk to what little he had of a independent interior life. Just as he would resume doing at Miltchard, he'd instinctively cultivated the "right" kind of academic profile from day one: An over-achiever by osmosis, on all the committees, but coasting by by taking the jobs nobody in their right mind would pursue--SEEMING to participate, always the treasurer or the recording secretary, the guy with all the keys. He ran unapposed for positions no one else wanted, and daydreamed his way through life an autopilot;  people trusted him, but only because they simply didn't credit him with enough smarts or drive to be UNtrustworthy.
     He was the first to admit, however, that--as adolescent unrest had cracked his natural defenses--he hadn't exactly dealt as well with the strain as he might have. Which was where his "bad company"...and the alcohol they provided...had come in.
     Partying with the party animals had been a wonderful opportunity to get plastered, lose control, have APPROVAL to act the way he "really was": Weave around with his hair sticking straight up, tie knotted around his head, and draw appreciative laughter rather than cool disapproval. It was a way to be accepted. To be *seen*, for once, as more than a bore or a teacher's pet--a mascot, almost.
     Sober, he was laughable in a BAD way; drunk, as Hwang often hooted, he was "a bloody card". Life of the night-life. Comedic relief.
     Better than nothing.
     And nothing was what he'd been left with, from here on in.
     "'Cause everyboby else at school thinks I'm an ass-kissing geek, Mom," he'd all but snarled at his mother, when she'd inquired--timidly, as ever--why he couldn't switch over to hanging with a slightly "nicer" class of friends. "And you know what? They're *right*."
     (Hadn't said *ass-kissing*, of course. Not quite THAT bold, even in extremity.)
     Brown-nosing geek.
     Pencil-pushing geek.
     Number-crunching geek.
     ...geek.
     One of these days, Toby often thought to himself, darkly, I'll run wild, like a mad dog. They'll have to *put me down*.
     At 15, he'd spent his whole life rocketing a year ahead through every given experience but one--always the kid amongst "young adults". His skin had cleared up--finally--and he'd somehow managed to avoid the orthodontic problems most of his peers still struggled with, but girls remained unknown territory, barring pornography, Mom, the Virgin Mary and a gaggle of saints--St Eulalia, for example, titiliating mainly because her martyrdom involved *touching her own breasts*...'course, they WERE cut off and lying on a plate at the time.
     As for sex itself--closest he'd come to THAT was either (pick one): Impulsively locking glasses with a girl at a party, only to find her even drunker than he was--not only too drunk to fuck but way too drunk to KISS, without having to stop and hurl halfway through--or humping frantically up against his yearbook co-editor Glenn Mizener's surprisingly cushy ass in a darkened house-party bathroom, only to discover his mistake in embarassingly public style when the host's Stepdad flipped the light on, a mere split-second later.
     And since Toby *knew* he'd basically always choose the heterosexual one over the homosexual other, no matter HOW much more venally satisfying the latter experience might have seemed at the time--or how persuasively Glenn might have argued afterward, trying to convince him to change his mind/orientation--the fact that every school he'd attended from kindergarten on had been a private, Catholic, sexually-segregated one *had* tended to limit his catch-up opportunities somewhat.
     So the prospect of sex--"de-virginizing" himself, as Will 3 would call it--had faded into the background, a teasing improbability, and remained there. Narrowing, but never fading: A constant, flexing ache, unslaked by fantasy OR masturbation (his two most regular extracurricular activities).
     Sometime he wondered if it showed. Creeping up under his traitorously transparent skin like a rash, for everybody to see and take note: Sure, he *looks* all Ken doll on the outside, but get a load of what he was dreaming up last night!
     Call the thought police, man. Have me LOCKED AWAY.
     But: Everybody was equally guilty, when judged by *those* standards--both back at Toby's old school, and here at Miltchard Prep. Everybody led a double life--and a triple, and a quadruple. Having a set of keys which, he'd soon found out, fit ALL the school's locks had taught him that: Access all hours, to every hidden thing--those dirty little secrets his immediate adult role models hid away from their students, from each other, from themselves.
     --Father Mackilvanny's secret stash of atheist texts.
     --Nurse Greyson's "diet pills"--remarkably similar, on examination, to both Toby's mother's prescription antidepressants and the 'ludes Will 3's main squeeze Carla had been passing around at that last, pre-"Busted!" get-together.
     --Dean Cole's *extensive* collection of on-the-job porno--kept in his lower right-hand desk drawer, along with a fifth of good Scotch and a half-empty bottle of crappy Bourbon...neither of which ever seemed to get replaced, no matter how many little nips Toby allowed himself in the wee, small hours after his fellow scholastic exiles were supposedly safe in bed.
     Because maybe things had changed at Miltchard since his Dad had seen it last, but the place was not exactly the Citadel. Security frankly sucked; the teachers all had their own problems to deal with, and as for his classmates...well, Toby was the only out-of-state sinner in the lot. The rest were all off-semester boarders, broke scholarship brats, his "friends" mainly on the basis of him feeling so guilty over being genuinely *well off* that he usually ended up bankrolling all their consumer needs out of his own allowance--under-the-counter beers, grass bought from truckers passing through, the occasional secret excursion to town for live music, bar time and the bare possibility of some hurried parking-lot whoopie with some sloshed big-hair local slut.
     Which was how, in a roundabout way--roundabout as his more-than-half in the bag mind could make it, at any rate--he had ended up right where he was now: Hovering by the bar door, itchy with growing fear, while the Miltchard coalition sneered and hooted. Repeating, hesitant:
     "Look, all I'm *saying* is...y'know...I mean, curfew's over, right?"
     A general snort: "CUR-few!"
     "Thass ol' Toby," one of them--math whiz Josh Ryder--commented, to no one in particular. "Born with a stopwatch up his butt."
     General hilarity ensued; Toby's ears burned. He wrinkled his nose, gritted his teeth. Tried to stay calm.
     "Look, GUYS: We agreed on midnight as the cut-off--"
     "*You* 'greed, T'oh-bee."
     (Uh huh. And *you* all 'GREED to take my money and run...same as ever.)
     "ToBIAS. Yeah! You *biased* 'gainst us, man. 'Cause we know how to have FUN."
     Ryder again: "Wanna go, then GO, dude. We ain't stoppin' ya."
     *Very* magnanimous, Toby thought, his beer-befouled system all flushed and humming. But who's gonna end up with the blame, when you losers come filtering back to base? The person everyone ASSUMES really should give a shit...ie, *me*.
     Well, fuck it: They wanted to stay here, keep listening to this piss-ass bunch of Lynyrd Skynyrd imitators and drink 'till they passed out, then fine. He'd just lie his way out of it, *convincingly*--wasn't too drunk to do THAT.
     (Never had been yet, if he cared to exercise the option.)
     "I AM going," Toby told Ryder, who waved vaguely in reply--and turned back to the primary task at hand: Goggling down at the barely-restrained boobs of the girl standing next to him. She was one of a similarly-inclined coalition from Lady (dis)Grace, the Miltchard sister school across the lake--founded in tandem, about 1895, and still loosely enough linked that Ryder obviously thought he was going to score just on school spirit alone, if he only stuck around long enough. More fuckin' fool him.
     (And more fool YOU, for not even trying.)
     He called a cab from the payphone outside, stood shivering in the late-night mist, arms hugged close around himself. The mixture of alcohol and anger was making him moist all over--sweaty, feverish. His stomach had started to roil a bit; one could only hope he'd be able to keep his cookies from tossing themselves *before* he was safely back within Miltchard's hallowed walls.
       "Hey," a voice called, from behind him. "Toby, right?"
       Another Lady Grace girl: Roberta Roos-Hollensteen, she'd said her name was--"but Bobbie, okay?"--dark-haired and Anorexic-slim, with an Upper East Side New York accent and a haughty Semitic profile, one eyebrow constantly cocked in skeptical assessment. They'd bumped into each other while heading for the john, she already halfway through lighting up (a "normal" cigarette), and exchanged words about her school having to go co-ed or shut down--a prospect Bobbie found ludicrous, not to mention insulting.
     "You think I want some hormone-crazed *male* pulling down my hard-earned curve?" She'd demanded. "Puh-leeze. Boys are good for one thing, basically--and it's NOT studying, or snapping my bra-straps."
     "...no?"
     She'd given him a narrow glance, appraising. Her mouth--as thin as the rest of her scant moments ago, now wickedly supple--stretching into a sidelong grin. And drawled:
     "Well...not like that doesn't have its charms. On occasion."
     Almond-shaped grey eyes on dazed blue, sparking: A dizzy little jolt, as he suddenly noticed that most of his blood seemed to be suddenly collecting below the belt. The flare of her lighter, snapped on and off. And she'd brushed by him, exhaling smoke, so close he could taste it. Murmuring:
     "Oh, and when *I* go out, stud? I tend to leave MY specs at *home*."
     Now the cab was rolling up, and Bobbie had already laid her bird-thin little hand on his --her nails painted incongruous glam-rock silver, fingertips scented with nicotine.
     "This was getting dead anyway. Drop me back at school?"
     "Uh..."
     Sharper: "NEAR school?"
     (If it's not too much *trouble*.)
     The taxi driver leaned on his horn: You comin', kid, or what? And Bobbie just waited, half-balanced on one too-high heel. Foot not QUITE tapping.
     Waiting. And watching--to see what he was going to do.
     (Looks like another potential LEARNING experience, Tobias.)
     "...sure," he said, finally. And opened the cab door for her.

An hour of driving, 'till his cash reserves finally ran out--
     "Don't suppose you take credit," he asked the driver, doubt rendering the question-mark invisible. And the driver, Connecticut-stolid:
     "You're jokin', right?"
     --and then they were hiking up the (ha, ha) highway, arm-in-arm in the dark, less from inclination than necessity. Toby sniffing, Bobbie shivering and wavering on those stupid platforms of hers, her fragile shoulders fairly vibrating with cold: Jesus, if this was *summer*, they'd have to drag him to court to get him back here in WINTER.
     (VERY smooth, Beecher.)
     But: The weight of her against his hip, intentional or not, sweeping over him in waves...stirring him from the inside out, a completed circuit, making his cock lift and jerk, his skin prickle and blaze...
     ...his stomach...HEAVE.
     And there he was, down in the weeds by the side of the road, doing the full-body retch  --as Bobbie stood by, frozen, too disgusted (probably) even to offer to hold his hair back for him.
     "...sorry," he gasped out, liquid, when the flood had stemmed enough to let him breathe. Waiting in vain for her answer--then glancing back, fearing the worst--
     --to see her with a hand over her mouth, masking that wicked smile again.
     (Trying not to make him *feel* bad.)
     Which was good, right? Right?
     He spat in his hand, discreetly--okay, *semi*-discreetly--and wiped in on a clump of grass. Tried not to notice Bobbie's smile stretching wider. Her voice, heavy with amusement, as she commented:
     "I'd, uh, offer to help you up, stud, but--"
     "--I understand."
     Looking at his smeary face, his skewed glasses, his on-end hair: "You REALLY need a bathroom trip, right about now. Or something."
     "Think Miltchard's...right up around that bend."
     (Just like Creedence song.)
     "Then I guess that's where we're going. Right?"
     "I guess..."
     And thinking, head and heart reeling--the rest of his limp body perking up all at once, amazed, mystified--
     (WE?)

"Breaking and entering," Bobbie mused, a half-hour or so later. "That'd be an expulsion-level offense, wouldn't it, Mr Beecher?"
     "I'd--have to check the school Conduct Code on that one," Toby said, faintly. Seeing the exact paragraph even as he spoke.
     (No student shall engage in, or condone, illegal activity of any kind...)
     ...up to and including underaged drinking, trespass, reading the Dean's porno while in the company of a *girl*...
     Bobbie chuckled.
     "You've never had to check any Code in your life, Beecher. I bet apple-sauce to apple pie, everywhere you end up, you got THAT puppy *memorized*."
     He blushed again--his first response to every-fucking-thing, as he was becoming painfully aware.
     But at least she had her sense of humor back about the whole thing. Because when he'd let them in, thinking it would help him regain the points he'd lost by vomiting in front of her--give her the "secret tour" of Miltchard Prep's rotten underbelly, porno and booze included--he'd quickly found her less charmed than *truly* disgusted: Live white male privilege in action, apparently, not really being one of Bobbie's big turn-ons.
     "Hey, abuse of power in pursuit of nooky! VERY impressive." That narrow glance: "'Cause it *was* nooky you were after, right?"
     "Um..."
     (ARE after?)
     Not that that seemed *likely*, exactly. Anymore.
     And now, leafing through Dean Cole's greatest hits (or was that *tits*? Given the Dean's obvious preference for large-size ladies): "Ho, WOW." Bobbie held up a page, pointed. "You done this? *This*?" At his embarassed double headshake: "No? Baby, what HAVE you done?"
     "...nothing."
     "Nev-er? Or is that--hardly ever?"
     Quiet: "The first one."
     "Not even fooled around?"
     "Who with? This place isn't exactly Petticoat Junction."
     "Well, uh--Shere Hite says most guys...experiment."
     Toby got a brief flash of frenching Josh Ryder, and felt his nausea return. "Please," he said. "I've already puked once tonight."
     "So that's out, totally."
     "With THESE guys." Then, connecting the dots: "Wait, though--you mean...uh, *I* mean--*you*...?"
     Bobbie met his eyes, face kept deliberately unreadable. "Not much else to do, out here. After homework."
     (And I'll bet that image gets YOUR motor runnin', don't it? STUD.)
     Well...yeah.
     Running, revving, *roaring*--him up and ready, MORE than ready. And her just standing there, eyes still on the glossy spread of naked chicks between them. Cool and unreachable.
     Toby wanted to do something about it--ached to. But inexperience, combined with a creeping sense of sobreity, held him back: The booze had been draining steadily out of him ever since he'd puked, and he needed more than vague instinct to go. He needed to put on that patented Beecher false face--the happy-hat face, the "'course I know what I'm doing" face. The *fuckable* face.
     He took a slug of the Dean's Wild Turkey, and felt his true self--the think-too-much self, the question-everything self--start to boil away. As she kept flipping, whistling through her teeth: Half-startled, half-horrified. Murmuring, half to herself:
     "Man. I just can NOT compete."
     (Now or never, Toby. Sink or swim.)
     Oh, fuck--just DO it, dipshit.
     Dry: "Bobbie."
     "*To*by."
     "Can I touch you?"
     "I dunno. Can you?"
     Reflexes slowed by booze, he could see the hair on the back of his hand catch the light, shining pale, gold against her slightly darker skin--
     (olive)
     --but why OLIVE? How much sense did that make? Wouldn't *olive* skin look green, not pale and creamy-smooth...?
     (...or greasy black and wrinkled, if it was a Kalamata olive...)
     Oh Lord. Oh Christ--oh, man oh *man*.
     Running his hand down her cheek, down the curve of her neck, to that winking, teasing snippet of cleavage flashing out at him between the lapels of her Lady Grace uniform shirt. And further. The soft round of her breast; the hard--FEELably hard--little point of what must surely be her nipple...
     He felt his own fingers close over it, soft but exact. Felt the shiver that went through her at his touch--the one she was...*letting* him...feel.
     A tiny sigh, escaping from those crooked, parted lips. And Toby realized, finally:
     (She *wants* this.)
     Wants--me.
     A shock up the spine: Electric halo, head and groin instantly on fire. He leaned in, a coiled spring unsprung, stopped her mouth with his and caught the next sigh between his teeth. Sweet burn of Bourbon, turning his thoughts to fumes.
     Their tongues touched, jostled. Locked. Until *she* pulled away, gasping.
     "You're gonna have to pull out," she told him.
     "Uh--whuh?"
     "Birth control? I'm not on the pill, and I'm NOT going home pregnant. So pull out when I tell you, or this stops right here and now."
     Pull out, Toby's mind babbled. Pull out, pull out. Meaning--couldn't mean anything *but*, really--
     (--she's going to let you INSIDE.)
     Oh. My. Good. *God*.
     "I'll pull out," he promised, hoarsely. Knowing he was probably promising what he couldn't deliver, but believing it--fervently--anyway.
     Like all the best lies.
     Falling to the floor, buttons unpopping, zipper unzipping. Her astride him on the Dean's ugly Persian, dust in his mouth and eyes, and the feel of her softness suddenly all along his HARDNESS, moist and hot even on the surface--his full length popping up through the fly of his Y-fronts to knock against her hip, leaving a juicy smear. And Bobbie, drooping over him, her hair enclosing his face like a scented, silken tent. Telling him, with a musing kind of sorrow--
     "Really think you got me fooled, don'tcha?"
     Think? Well--
     (HOPE, maybe.)
     "You're everything I most despise, Tobe B. Miltchard boy--no shortage of money for YOUR damn school. Even if you gave away every cent your family has, you'd still think you can buy--or lie--your way outta anything. Just can't help it; 's in your blood. But let me tell you this right now, okay? One of these days, there IS gonna be something you get into that's gonna kick you right in your cute, blond, upper-middle-class goy--*ass*."
     Punctuating this last word with a slick jerk upward on the root cause of all his current suffering, gripping the flange of his head the same way he'd gripped her nipple--and barely restraining him from spasming over into instant climax. Toby thrashed, helpless, beneath her touch; head knocking back, glasses flipping up over his temples, flying OFF to skitter away beneath the desk.
     His cry of sweet, hot pain muffled by "her* mouth, this time, as she swooped down and kissed him hard, worrying his bottom lip like the world's prettiest dog.
     (Ooh, *that*'s gonna leave a mark.)
     "Does this mean you *don't* want to have sex with me?" He blurted, amazed by the words even as they flopped out.
     And she...just grinned.

Later, he would remember thinking--with all the drunken exactitude of some demented sex-ed film: This is my--penis. Entering her--vagina.
      (Entering. And re-entering. And entering. And re--ugh, uhhh, aaaAAAGH--)
      And she, thank God, retaining enough presence of mind--veteran of such engagements that she was--to keep her eyes open throughout. Seeing his mouth twist, his features squeeze together in anticipated ecstasy--and thrusting herself up off him, with a grunt, just as he spurted over both their bellies: A gelid white fountain, bleachy-thick. Capturing his paralyzed fingers, even as the whisbone arc of his back began to unlock, and cramming them between her thighs: Into the melting pot, the fluid pit of mystery.
     "Now me," she ordered, breathless. And showed him how.

Wrung out, restless--body slaked, mind ticking a mile a minute, now that the slender secondary high he'd been riding (while Bobbie rode *him*) had all but evaporated. And alone once more, now that Bobbie had faded back into the night--sponged off, rebuttoned, bound for that so-called highway and whatever ride she could flag down before morning. He'd offered to brave the dorm, pay for another cab, but she'd snorted through her gorgeous nose: You think you're the only one with pocket funds, rich kid?
     "Will I see you again?" He'd asked, squinting shyly through his retrieved--and, thankfully, undamaged--glasses. Only to see her shrug, and answer:
     "Not likely."
     A means to an end. The right guy at the right time. A memory in the making: Not even that, maybe.
     He watched her ease across the front lawn, through the Dean's office window--just one more shadow in a flat, black-on-black world of shadows. Watched her reach the gate, slip through, and disappear without even a glance backward.
     Thinking: Well. At least I really did get something out of this whole fiasco, considering how much Dad spent to *send* me here in the first place.
     Toby folded the Dean's magazines, restacked them, locked them away. Knowing that when the sun rose, he'd pretend he'd never even been here. That nothing had ever happened--none of it. Not the trip, if Ryder and his bunch had blown sneaking back; not the cab-ride, or the hurl-fest that'd followed. And certainly not his first real-life sexual experience, that perfect, beautiful moment of giving and taking, exhilarating as the truth behind the dare--giving himself to Bobbie, and taking what she offered in return, orgasm ripping through him like a double-headed spear piercing them both together, fusing them at the groin and branding him with her smell, and taste, and touch forever.
     Live the lie, like he'd do the whole damn rest of his life: Find it, fake it, move on.
     But before he turned the key that last time, he drained *both* the Dean's bottles dry: Knowing that for repercussions to ensue, the Dean's own lies would have to be revealed. And knowing--proof positive, for good and all--that if the lie were so *palpably* more important than the truth, in any given situation, then he had NOTHING to worry about.
     (So if I'm gonna be stuck wearing this false face for the rest of my life, there BETTER be some nice side benefits.)
     And: Oh, look! I'm cutting myself a deal.
     (Practically a lawyer already.)
     He closed the Dean's door, carefully. Locked it. Thinking: Once won't matter. They never look. They'll never notice. Not my business. Not my fault.
     ('Cause...nothing is.)
     Down in the bathroom, Toby splashed some water on his face. Looked at himself in the mirror, studying his eyes for tell-tale traces of red behind the frank and open blue. Saw none. And gave himself a practiced smile--easy, noncommittal.
     "Sir," he said, aloud. "Dad. As I think my grades will show, I've reconsidered. I AM going to be going to Harvard."
     Thinking: Well, *I* believe me.
     (But then, *I*'m drunk.)

At the same time, down in San Francisco, Rachel Renton lay in bed smoking her mom's dope, re-reading her dad's (store-bought) copy of STEAL THIS BOOK and listening to Warren Zevon sing the sad ballad of Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner. Miles to the north, meanwhile, Vern Schillinger--fed up with doing straight time--was just about to pick the fight which would land him in Lardner. In an alley on the other side of town, Chris Keller stood shivering against the back wall, hands braced on the shoulders of the business-suited man who knelt before him--while Ryan and Cyril O'Reilly sat on the roof of their building, watching the window of apartment 210 across the way and waiting for its occupant to leave for work, so that they could break in, rob and vandalize his place undisturbed.
     And Kathy Rockwell, whose body would one day break with a sick thump across the the windshield of Tobias Beecher's car? She hadn't even been born yet; wouldn't be, for years. Not even thought of.
     By Toby himself, least of all.
THE END