but. Marie. His old lady was coming down hard on Albert these days. That scared him. The kid had a constitution like a dandelion. If he wasn't careful he'd get loved to death.

A few miles into New Jersey Tommy swung the car into a cemetery driveway and drove up the narrow, steep lane for a quarter of a mile until he came to crosshatched blocks of graves. He stopped the car and took a scrap of paper out of his jacket.

Marie turned white. Afternoon sun glinted off the cellophane strips keeping the lacquered black curls in place by her ears.

"Tommy..." She pressed her fingers to her lips. Her eyes were wide. "This ain't funny."

Stony sat up and stared in puzzlement at the endless tombstones. Tommy read directions from the paper and continued driving, making sharp rights and lefts for a mile more through the heart and into the outer regions of the cemetery that were more sparsely populated. He drove with his head out the window reading names on headstones.

Marie lit another cigarette. Her hands were shaking so bad she had to use the car lighter instead of a match.

"Lucca!" Tommy shouted, and slammed on the brakes. "Everybody out!" He jumped out of the car, studied the paper again and walked to a grassy headstoneless twenty-by-twenty plot slightly uphill from a headstone marked Lucca. Tommy turned around and waved impatiently for his family to join him.

"What the hell is goin' on, Tommy?" Marie fumbled in her purse for a yellow pill. "Shit," she winced. She couldn't take pills without water.

"This is weird." Stony gawked. "Whatta we doin' here?"

"Well how d'ya like it?" Tommy beamed.

"What?"

Tommy extended his arms over the patch of grassy earth. "That's ours."

"What're you talkin' about?" Marie frowned.

"I bought it through the union. It's a benefit. I figure we gonna all die some day, right? So we need a place. You know, so we can stay together. The union got this burial committee. Frankie Jacobs is on the board so I ast him to get me a good deal."

Nobody said anything. Albert looked worried. Tommy walked onto the center of the plot and stared at the ground around him. "I figure I'll be here. Marie, you'll be next to me. Then Stony right under me and Albert next to him under you, over there."

"I wanna be next to Stony," said Albert.

Tommy lay down on the ground, put his hands behind his head and crossed his legs. "Not bad," he laughed.