The food had been so fucking bad he thought it might have been a joke. Seriously. It was hard to comprehend the piece of chicken that had shown up on his plate—poor, poor chicken—stretched out and pounded flat and curled up halfway around a still-frozen shard of butter that had a small piece of red paper stuck to it. As if to compensate for the moisture-less meat, its accompanying puddle of mashed…what was it?…cauliflower had come ringed with a thin, grayish water—sauce? Dish soap? Sweat from a line cook’s greasy forehead? Avery dragged a fork slowly through the mess, amazed. Strange, though, how all these people were chewing and smiling and chatting in ordinary tones over these plates of misery. An urge to burst out laughing bubbled up in him, but Avery contented himself instead with minute examinations of the bleached-out celery salad—what was this herb, for example, tiny flakes of which clung to the wilted vegetable with admirable tenacity even as he tried to scrape some off with a fingernail. Rosemary? No smell whatsoever. An ashy taste, kind of like licking a match head.

But by now at least someone had cleared everything supposedly edible off the table, including the piece of cake that had appeared in front of Avery with one clear thumbprint deeply imprinted on its thick icing. White icing, of course. He realized that the entire meal, from the glass of champagne that sat in front of him, untouched, until its golden showers of bubbles dimmed to a dull stillness, to that entire chicken/dishwater plate to the dessert finale, had been white, or beige, or somewhere in between.

Actually, Avery was glad. Far better for him to encounter all the glorious misery of a truly bad meal, in which he could lose himself, than to suffer through a decent dinner where he would be forced to eat boring bites of unmemorable, unexceptionable food with nothing then to distract him from the country-club chatter that swirled all around his grandfather’s big night. And the food, its excellent awfulness, kept him parked in this same seat all evening, fascinated—kept him, that is, from walking by the bar. Which wasn’t a bar at all, of course, but two long rectangular folding tables set up in a side room just off the dance floor. Earlier, he’d been by just once, just to look—quickly, sidelong—at the rows of square-sided bottles, each slippery now from the harried bartenders’ wet hands, lined up casually next to fanned-out stacks of little cocktail napkins and bowls of pimento olives and those snotty little onions that came three on a stick when you asked for it that way. But this wasn’t a martini crowd—no, the big draw here was white wine, dozens of bottles bobbing in plastic tubs on the floor behind the long table swathed in starchy cream-and-green polyester cloths. Cheap, thick glasses were set out upside down, the way they never should be, gathering condensation inside their bowls and a musty smell. A few men were asking for rocks drinks, in lowballs that had a nice pebbly bottom. In the first hour of the reception, Avery had allowed himself to skate a thumb across one, furtively. Then he’d snatched his hand back.

He’d agreed to go dry, completely, even though drinking had never been the problem—not the main problem, anyway. But here was the truth: he wasn’t sure how long he’d be staying that way. He just hadn’t decided that, yet.

Avery loosened his tie one more centimeter, put a foot up on the abandoned chair next to him, and grinned back at his stepfather, Rich, making his way toward him. Across the empty dance floor, Rich pretended to do a little soft-shoe shuffle. At least he seemed to be enjoying himself, although he usually did, even when Annette was nowhere to be found, as had been the case for much of the reception, now that Avery thought about it. It was a running family joke that Avery took after Rich in that way: easygoing, handy with a joke, as opposed to Annette’s tightly wound energy, or whatever his long-gone “real” father must be like. So this had created a surprising ally for Avery, in the past year and a half, all through Rehab Stint One and then College Take Two and then Live at Home/Look for a Job and then Rehab Redux: This Time We Mean Business. Rich was cool. He’d never tried to bully Avery, or guilt-trip him, or label himself an enabler, or all those other modes Annette cycled through. In fact, it had been Rich who had finally convinced Annette to allow Avery to make this move, last week, from Chicago to New York.

Actually, maybe he should thank Grandad. Without the old man’s crazy, random decision to move here, of all places, Avery knew Rich and Annette would never have considered letting him come to Manhattan.

“Time to blow this joint,” Rich said now, emphasizing his own dorkiness. “You need money for the train?”

“No, I’m good.” Avery actually could have used some cash for the train, but at the moment he was just so thankful that Rich wasn’t bugging him to go back to whatever hotel he and Annette were at, that this alone was worth it. They both paused to watch the band’s drummer, his face flat and tired, lug a beaten black case across the empty dance floor, and whack it against a chair nearby. Rich neatly caught the chair before it toppled over, and the drummer banged his way out a side door, not looking back. Although the bride and groom had left at least an hour ago, more than a few of their geezer friends were still lingering at the tables—out later than you’d expect, Avery thought. What was it now, 8 pm?

“Mom in the car or something?”

“Ah. Well, your mom cut out a little early. She’s over at the hotel now. She wanted me to see if you’ve changed your mind about staying the night…there’s that brunch thing—and we don’t fly out until three.”

“That’s okay.”

“Well, consider my duty discharged,” Rich said, with a little salute. Avery was so grateful for this, his stepfather’s implicit trust. For not pushing it, or grilling him on—who? where? what next?—the exact circumstances of his patched-together New York life, which would be one week old tomorrow. It must be a guy thing, Avery thought. Or maybe Rich just knew the truth: that Avery himself didn’t know much yet about how it all would go down, this move. Apartment, job, all that.

“So what’s the deal with the husband? Cancer, or something?” Avery nodded at Bob Brigham, over by the foyer, talking loudly to a few of those older guys whose wives stood by, holding coats over their arms. Bob had his back to where he and Rich were sitting, and his cue-ball-smooth bald head was almost as wild as that twisting helix of a scar, pink and raised and lumpy, that ran down the back of his head and disappeared under his collar.

“Nope—took a bad fall, is what I heard. Guy’s lucky, that’s for sure.” Rich jingled coins in his pocket but made no move to leave. Avery wondered if he was, in fact, in for a speech about safety and the bottom line.

“Jesus.”

“That one daughter he has is a looker, huh?”

“Really?” Avery wrinkled his face. That irritating kid who’d latched on to him earlier, bugging him with questions about the tattoo on the back of his hand? What was it of? (Chinese dragon.) Did it hurt? Did they use a big needle? Was his mom mad? (No, yes, who knows?)

“You don’t think? Well, I don’t envy him. Going to be tough once all those boys start coming around.”

Then Avery saw who Rich was talking about. Not the younger girl, her older sister. Avery saw both of them, trailing their mom, each with an armful of flower baskets culled from the tabletops. And yes, that taller one—with her waterfall of blonde hair and that skin, golden-tan and smooth as anything. He could see what Rich meant. How old was she? Sixteen? His new—what? Cousin. Step-cousin? Thinking along these lines made Avery feel perverted.

“So, listen. I don’t want you to worry about her.”

“Who?”

“Your mother. She’ll get used to this—” Here Rich waved his hand vaguely at the dance floor, the Brigham family, the few remaining white-haired guests. “Stranger things have happened, in families.”

“She’s flipping out, huh?”

“Well. She has worked up quite a lather, but…let’s all give it time. Settle into things. There were quite a few folks unhappy when I burst on the scene, if you recall.”

“Nah,” Avery said.

“In any case, I wanted to give you a heads-up about something.” Here it comes, Avery thought. “This deal you made with your mom in order to move here, all the talks we’ve had—”

“I know, Rich.” AA or NA, weekly calls to old shrink, careful transfer to new shrink, constant contact with home. One screwup and it was back to Chicago. Or worse.

“Yeah. So, about your grandfather—”

Avery got real quiet and stayed that way when Rich paused for his response.

“Now that you’re both here in New York—I know, I know, it’s the suburbs—and you’re in the city, fine.” Rich hustled to cut off Avery’s first objection. “We think it’s best if you train out for regular visits with Jerry. Check in on him—you know. And it’ll be quality time for you guys. He won’t be getting any younger.”

“I already said I would. Every once in a while.”

Rich shook his head pleasantly. “Regular visits. Meaning once a week.”

“Once a week?” Avery almost fell off his chair. “So what happens if I can’t?” If I don’t, is what he thought, but he already knew the answer. They had him. He was out of that house, finally, but they still had him—and they knew it.

“Let me put it this way,” Rich said, with a wry smile. “It would behoove you to follow through on this, for your sake. And your mom’s. She’ll talk to you more about it.”

“Uh-huh.” Avery couldn’t help it: his inward, unreasonable reaction was a fierce, childish disappointment. Here he was, at last on his own, in New York City, and he was being forced to punch a time card with his grandfather.

“Oh, come on. That’s not so much, is it? Bud?”

“Grandad’s not going to know if I’m using, you know,” Avery said flatly. “I mean, I doubt he’d even be able to tell if I was high. So if this is the grand plan to keep tabs on me—well, then you’re fucked. And so is Mom.”

Rich didn’t answer for a minute. “Avery,” he said, finally, and shook his head. Then his stepfather stood to go, and briefly rested a hand on the top of Avery’s head. “Give a call soon.”

New York so far had proved an immense disappointment, if Avery was willing to admit that to anyone. Or himself. He’d spent the past six days riding the subway, all the way up and down the 6 and 2 lines. If a stop looked appealing—Astor Place, for example, with its funky mosaic sign and the packs of skater-punk kids exiting en masse, plugged into iPods and jittering with energy—Avery would get off too, ready to roam. But then up from underground the first thing that he’d see would be some huge Starbucks. Or a Barnes and Noble. Or a Kmart—no shit! Astor Place had all three on one corner, and it all proved too much for Avery, skater kids notwithstanding. He’d turned right around and glumly re-descended. He hadn’t come to New York-fucking-City for Kmart.

Central Park was okay. Loaded with hot moms pushing double strollers that were bigger than the crappy Honda he’d sold before coming out here. But the hot moms were too busy with the stroller occupants to pay any attention to Avery, wandering here and there, checking it all out, the passing scene. One afternoon some loud-talking woman stopped dead in her stilettos to size him up, and then went on to ask a series of questions he’d heard before and wasn’t particularly interested in. She’d handed him a card—VIP TalentBooking something something—and strode away. Avery flipped the card around for a while and then stuck it, with a handful of change, into a raggedy coffee cup loosely held by the nodded-off bum sitting next to him on the bench. (Last time this happened he’d been waiting on line outside Schuba’s Tavern, on Southport, and his friends’ reactions had been ferocious and unremitting. They’d howled and yanked away the business card, everyone calling the agent’s cell again and again, in between shots of whiskey, over the course of a long night. Poor guy. Yeah, hi, this is Avery Trevis? I’d like to model your smallest nut huggers? And I’d like to shave my—Give it back, Smitty! It’s still my turn!)

Museums were another way to go, but after an hour or so in the new MoMA, Avery was still thinking about the twenty bucks it had cost to get in.

One afternoon he had joined the long lines to view where the World Trade Center had stood. People stood on a platform and shuffled respectfully past that canyon. There were long lists of names, boards with reprinted photos, flowers and notes twisted through the wire fence. There were vendors with makeshift carts full of merchandise—pins and baseball caps that said, 9/11, always in our hearts, under logos of flags or eagles. So many men were wearing official-looking NYPD or Fire Department T-shirts that at first Avery was moved, thinking they had all come to mourn lost comrades. But then he realized that these shirts, hats, were also for sale. He hadn’t known it was—what?—legitimate to dress like a police officer if you weren’t one.

He avoided the indie culture. He stayed clear of Tompkins Square Park, Avenues A through D, Orchard Street—anywhere he’d heard was DIY, was punk, was cool. He couldn’t afford cool. He couldn’t afford to start longing for that scene, the loners and artists and hackers and freaks that he’d torn himself away from in Wicker Park. He was exiled from cool, an alt-dot fugitive, at twenty years old. Avery knew it was a rehab cliché, and he wasn’t even sure how entirely he bought it, that whole “change your friends” rule. But as of now, he was staying clear of the whole scene, just in case.

Only once had he broken this self-imposed restriction, and it had been yesterday afternoon. The memory goosed a shot of pure adrenaline through Avery now, still sitting alone at a table in the Waugatuck Tennis Club.

Thompson Street, below Houston. The screeching music drew his attention first, speakers blaring that Japanese girl group who covered “Freebird” in wild, broken English and thundering bass lines. silkworm, read the sign, set askew over the open door in a tiny storefront. Boutique shoe store, was Avery’s first guess. But then he saw the Ramones poster, and the retro-style barber chairs, three of them, jammed tight in one line. Three or four pale, skinny dudes clustered inside, talking loudly over the music, ignoring Avery, who was now just inside the door. They all had Mohawks of varying lengths and color, and tattoos up and down each arm. One was sweeping clumps of hair in slow circles around the floor.

“Yeah?” Guy on a stool looked up from a tiny computer he was balancing on one knee.

“How much for a haircut?”

The manager—if that was who he was—looked over Avery’s head. “First time here?”

Avery nodded.

“Forty,” the guy said, turning back to the screen.

“Any one of these?” Avery looked at the three empty chairs. Not one of the tattooed kids made a move. No sign of whether they worked there or were just hanging out.

“NONA,” the manager yelled. Nothing happened. The guy with the broom hoisted it and whapped the handle against a back door. A woman stuck her head out, angrily.

“I’m on the goddamn phone,” she said. “You take him, Trevor.”

“On break,” Trevor said, and brandished a pack of cigarettes for proof.

“Jesus fuck,” the woman said, and disappeared. Avery made himself comfortable in the chair closest to the window. The mirror he faced was scratched and cloudy, and covered on all sides with stickers, taped-up photos, and Magic Marker graffiti.

Then she was there, standing behind him. Nona. She finished tying on an apron and pushed at his head, this way and that, roughly.

“Maybe shorter on the sides and—” Avery began. The music changed to that song by the Killers that had been everywhere last summer.

“Yeah, I’ll take it from here,” Nona said, not meeting his eyes in the mirror. Avery grinned and shut up. He watched her razor up the back of his neck and scissor-snip the top into a wild, spiky tangle. She worked her mouth as she bent to check how even things were on the sides, and muttered something to herself, her warm breath puffing against his earlobe.

Avery checked her style—the beat-up, half-laced work boots, a cheap silver snake thing clamped around her upper arm—and recognized it, of course. She was one of his kind. But there was something else: Nona’s face, pale, and faint lines on her forehead. Purple skin under her eyes. Her hair, a mess of twisted black dreadlocks, had streaks of gray growing out from the roots. Why did that set his heart humming? Avery wondered. The way her strong bare arms did, and the heavy softness of her breasts under the apron front.

The whole cut took less than ten minutes. He thanked her, and she nodded, wiping her hands on a small towel after flicking it down his shoulders.

Avery paid the guy on the stool his forty bucks and checked his wallet for a tip. All he had was another twenty. “I don’t have any change,” the manager said, shrugging. He slipped an earpiece in, unconcerned.

Avery turned to Nona. “Just my luck,” she said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“This you?” he asked, reaching over to touch a battered postcard stuck in one corner of her mirror. He’d been staring at it during the haircut, a grainy black-and-white image of a woman bent forward and howling into a microphone. He pulled it out. Dates and clubs were printed on the back.

Nona looked up into his face as he studied the card. “It’s my last one.”

He handed her the twenty. “I’ll take this as change.” One of the Mohawk dudes snorted, a hooting laugh that both Nona and Avery ignored. One half-turning-up of her mouth, that’s all Avery allowed himself to savor, standing there, one beat of perfection passing between them. Then he pushed back out onto Thompson with the postcard stuck in his pocket, hands shaking in a powerful kind of jones, grinning at everyone and no one, just like your basic village idiot.

Enough of Hartfield, already. Somewhere in the dark tangle of streets in this little town was the train station that could get him back to Manhattan. But where exactly, and how would he get there? What time did the trains run? Avery had none of the answers, but he wasn’t too fazed. He’d figure it out. On his way to the door, though, he was stopped by a commotion in the country-club foyer.

A cluster of people, some kneeling, were gathered around an old woman lying on the floor. Don’t move her, the people were saying to themselves. Give her some air. Avery edged closer and saw a thin line of blood running from the woman’s nostril. Her eyes were closed, but she was breathing, hard, through her open mouth. He didn’t recognize her, although that didn’t mean anything. She must be a guest, maybe a friend of Grandad or his new wife, just one of the many old people in attendance. It was revolting to see an old lady lying like that, he thought, flat on her back on the hard carpet of the entranceway. Why didn’t someone cover her legs, at least? They shouldn’t be out in the open like that, all bony and ridged with veins. Avery stared at the shiny new sneakers on her feet, unable to look away. He owned the same brand, same style.

“Coming through,” someone said, and Avery allowed himself to be pushed aside by the EMS guys and their wheeled stretcher.

Not sure where to go, he wandered slowly outside. The soft suburban night air was filled with crickets or cicadas; a bat looped underneath the awning over the door. A feeling he’d had earlier in the day, at the church, flashed back to him—a horrible feeling, like a nightmare…There was everything in place for a wedding: the altar, the minister, the flowers. The bride’s white dress, the groom in a suit, everything normal until you looked in the smiling faces of the marrying couple and saw how old they were, how gray and wrinkled and stooped. A warp-speed fast-forwarded life. Twilight Zone stuff.

Now suddenly all the parts of his grandfather’s big day curdled inside Avery. He pulled his tie over his head and stuffed it in a pocket. What was the point? Sure, it was great how the old man had found someone again, this close to the end of his life. Everyone was saying so. But now it hit Avery just how insubstantial it all was—love, marriage—compared to the hard physical reality of the world. The old lady on the floor in her neon sneakers; her bloody nose. This was coming soon for Grandad, whether he knew it or not. Wasn’t it ridiculous for everyone to get all dressed up and pretend otherwise?

Avery watched as one of the valet attendants tossed a pair of keys high into the dark air and then caught them behind his back, one-handed. Nice. Then he stepped off the porch and walked slowly into the lush night streets of Hartfield. He’d find his way to the train eventually.