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involved collisions with parked cars, led to long periods of what Greg liked to call meditation and reflection but which largely consisted of chasing painkillers with bottle after bottle of Bud Light. When he wasn’t busy hitting on my wife, he was, in his words, gathering strength for his next big move.
    “What’s he been up to lately?” I asked, almost afraid to hear the answer but knowing in a guilty way that it would make me feel better about my own life. “Aside from pining away for Karen.”
    “Nothing good,” Neil said. “Failed the bar exam again, defaulted on his student loans, still fighting with his mother over whatever the hell they fight about.”
    “Is he at least good for a donation?”
    “Sure,” Neil said. “As long as I write the check. Sullivan’s pushing for an intervention, by the way, and Dwayne wants to lure him into the city for a forcible commitment.”
    “He can do that?” I asked.
    “In Philly? Please. The guy’s a cop. It’s the paperwork he’s dreading.”
    We stood by Neil’s car for a minute, not saying anything. When I caught my reflection in his windshield, I looked away. Dressed as a giant dollar sign, I looked like an idiot.
    “So why do you think he did it?” Neil asked, keys in his hand. “Billy, I mean. Why?”
    “I don’t know,” I said. “But I don’t think he was like us.”
    “No,” Neil said. “I guess not.”
    “He wasn’t an asshole is what I mean. Not that we’re assholes, exactly, but think about guys like Frank Dearborn. People like us, we knew how to deal with him—or we figured it out, anyway. People like Billy, though? He took things too personally. The Academy was sink or swim, and Billy could barely keep his head above water when guys like Frank were around. And that was just high school. Imagine being Billy in the real world. Imagine dealing with assholes every day and taking everything they did personally. Imagine how lonely he must have felt. How disconnected.”
    “He was in a bad place,” Neil said.
    “Yeah,” I said. “He was in a bad place.”
    Neil opened his door and slid behind the wheel of his car. I gave him a wave as he pulled out of the parking lot, but his eyes were on the road ahead of him. As the sound of his engine faded into the hum of traffic on Route 202, I tramped out to my post and finished my shift on the muddy wet grass that stretched between the bank and the highway.

  CHAPTER FOUR  
    I n the years following my graduation from the Academy, Phil Ennis gave up on watching his students mutilate dead cats in the name of science and migrated instead to the world of administration—first serving as Chair of Admissions, then as Vice President for Student Life, and finally as Director of Alumni Relations and Giving. It was in this final capacity that the man flourished. Unfettered from the constraints of dealing with pimply teens on a daily basis, he could spend the majority of his time composing longwinded pleas for cash, stock, real estate, and other gifts without ever having to worry about some misguided youth finding a cache of dead kittens in what he thought was a scrotal sack. What Ennis did have to worry about, however, was fielding calls from alums who expected him to remember their names despite the passage of time and the fact that they had yet to make a sizable donation to the school. Or, in my case, any donation whatsoever.
    “Schwartz,” Ennis said when I called from inside my dollar sign the day after my lunch with Neil. In the background, I could hear my former biology teacher tapping at a keyboard. After a brief pause, he pretended to retrieve my name from the soupy haze of his memory. “Class of ’ninety-one?”
    “Yes,” I said, playing along. “I’m flattered.”
    “We’re a family, Schwartz. You know that. But as I recall, we haven’t really heard from you lately.”
    “Sorry,” I said. “I’ve been meaning to get in touch.”
    “A small consideration is all we ask. Pecuniary