Just to earn the right to live.”

“Maybe so, Walter. I hope not. I wouldn’t like it much.”

“But don’t you feel sometimes, Frank, like you’re living way up on the top of life, and not really living all of it, all the way down deep?”

“No. I never felt that way, Walter. I just always felt like I was living all the life I could.”

“Well, then you’re lucky,” Walter Luckett said bluntly. He tapped his glass on the bar. Evangelis looked around, but Walter waved him off. He let a couple of ice cubes wiggle around in his mouth a moment. “You’ve got a date, don’t you pal?” He tried to smile around the ice cubes and looked stupid.

“I did, anyway.”

“Oh, you’ll be fine,” Walter said. He laid a crisp five-dollar bill out on the bar. He probably had plenty of such bills in his pocket. He adjusted his sweater around his shoulders. “Let’s take a walk, Frank.”

We walked out of the bar, past the fishermen and Evangelis, standing under the TV looking up at the color screen and the game. The fishermen who’d been staring at us still sat staring at the space where we’d been. “Come back, fellas,” Evangelis said, smiling, though we were already out the door.

Awash down the boat channel and the dark Manasquan River, the night air was fresher than I could’ve imagined it, a cool, after-rain airishness, an evening to soothe away human troubles. Over the water, halyards were belling on the metal masts in the dark, a lonely elegiac sound. Lighted condos rose above the far river bank.

“Tell me something, would you.” Walter took a deep breath and let it out. Two young black men holding their own gear and plastic bait-buckets were loitering on the gangplank of the Mantoloking Belle, ready for an all-night adventure. Ben Mouzakis stood in his pilot’s house staring down at them from the dark.

“If I can.” I said.

Walter seemed to be feeling better in spite of himself. “Why’d you quit writing?”

“Oh that’s a long story, Walter.” I crammed my hands in my pockets and weasled away a step or two toward my car.

“I guess so, I guess so. Sure. They’re all long stories, aren’t they?”

“I’ll tell you sometime, since we’re friends, Walter. But not right now.”

“Frank, I’d like that. I really would. Sit down over a drink and hear it all out. We’ve all got our stories, don’t we?”

“Mine’s a pretty simple one.”

“Well, good. I like ’em simple.”

“Take care, Walter. You’ll feel better tomorrow.”

“You take care, Frank.”

Walter started toward his car at the far end of the gravel lot, though when he was twenty yards from me he started running for some reason, and ran until I couldn’t see him anymore, only his white shorts and his thin legs fading in the night.

      Central Jersey dozed in a sweet spring somnolence.