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a ride.” He stabbed at the ice in his glass with his straw. “Ambulance.”
    I sat and waited, my stomach going sour, my beer getting warmer by the minute.
    “I died in Manhattan,” Danny said. “That was the beginning of the end, so to speak.”
    I leaned back against the bench. My hands fell into my lap, nearly pulling the Guinness into it with them. “You died? In Manhattan?”
    This is it, I thought. This is when the worms burst out of Danny’s eyes and the alarm goes off and I wake up sprawled across the mattress at home, exhausted, depressed, and defeated before the day even started.
    “So you’re dead,” I said. “And none of this is really happening.”
    “What?” Danny reached for my Guinness, sniffing it, sipping it, then handing it back to me. “You find an old stash of mine or something? No, I’m not dead.”
    Danny rocked his head from shoulder to shoulder, assembling the story.
    “In Manhattan,” Danny said. “About a year after I last saw you, I died under the East River Bridge. OD. Got brought back in the ER.”
    “What the fuck were you doing under the bridge?”
    “Living, I think,” Danny said. “I’d been there awhile; I don’t know how long. A week? Maybe more.” He ate more ice. “It’s a big junkie hangout over there. It’s where I ended up. Junkies are like carnival freaks. Or cops. Or crooks. We prefer our own kind. Anyway, one night my appetite got too big for my heart. So my heart stopped. Or maybe I got a bad shot. Either way, the result was the same.”
    “How’d you get outta there?”
    “Some guy with a stolen cell called nine-one-one. Then he threw the cell in the river and split.” He grinned, shaking his head. “But not before they took my stash, my works, my wallet, and my shoes. That’s how the EMTs found me, anyway. Stone dead and stripped clean. I suppose I coulda lost my wallet and shoes long before then.”
    Danny stretched his arms across the back of the bench and puffed out his chest, watching a pair of giggling, whispering girls walk by. He was breathing hard, as if telling the story took the wind out of him. In the dim light of the bar, I couldn’t read his eyes.
    “Bumps in the bathroom,” he said. “I remember it well.”
    I did, too. The two of us jammed into a filthy stall in another bar. Another life.
    My hands went sweaty. “Jesus fucking Christ, Danny.”
    “Not where I was,” he said. “I didn’t see Him, no host of angels, no blinding light, nothing. The EMTs brought me back but they lost me again as they loaded me off. I got brought back for good in the emergency room.” He fished the lime from his glass and popped it in his mouth, chewing it without so much as a wince. “I remember noticing I was sitting in piss and pigeon shit while I stuck the needle in, then bam , these thick glasses and this big nose right in my face. I don’t know who was more surprised when my eyes popped open, me or the doc. I puked all over both of us.
    “That’s about all I remember, his goofy fucking face. That and this weird snap in my spine, like a running dog hitting the end of his leash.” He shrugged. “Then I wondered where my stash was and when I could shoot up again.”
    “Did you?”
    “I never got the chance. I spent some time in ICU and then got moved to the detox ward. I can’t remember how long I was anywhere. It beat detoxing at the folks’ house, but it still wasn’t no picnic. Better drugs and worse food.”
    “But you went back. To the heroin.”
    “Yeah, I went back. Not to the bridge, thank God, but to the drugs, yeah. I felt so fucking good when I got out of the hospital. What better to do than get high? So I did a few snorts with an ambulance driver three blocks from the emergency room. God bless America, huh? I didn’t pick up a needle again for six months. Dying was a fresh start. I was back at the beginning and could do it right this time.”
    “You gotta be kidding me,” I said. “You died twice in one night