“Holy shit.” Josh’s blue eyes widened, and he looked at Tony with what might be respect. “Did he have a piece?”

“He said he did.”

“What kind?”

“Our discussion didn’t go into that kind of detail. I got him to take it into another room.”

“So, did you convince him that life was worth living?”

Tony hesitated. That was the question he had been asking himself all the way home. “I…I’m not sure.”

“You mean, at this very moment he might be lying on the floor with his fucking brains scattered all over the room?”

A gruesome picture flashed into Tony’s head. He said, slowly, “At this very moment he might be lying on the floor with his fucking brains scattered all over the room.” He couldn’t look at Josh. He knew Josh was staring at him, with the freckles covering his face changing color, as they did when he felt emotion.

“Noodles, you need another beer.”

Josh tossed this one across his body, and it spattered Tony and the sofa with cold water. Beer was Josh’s answer to all the world’s problems. Maybe Josh was right. By the time he went to bed, Tony had drunk at least a six-pack.

CHAPTER 3

It was Friday evening, August 30, two weeks after his first mentoring session. Tony walked into the building where the Hotline was located. Once again he smelled the odor he had come to associate with it. Perhaps it was some sort of cleaning compound.

Instead of riding the elevator, he went up the stairs, taking them two at a time, all the way to the third floor. He was glad there was nobody at the top to see him puffing-to see how out of shape he was.

He had also taken the stairs at his second and third Hotline sessions with a mentor, eschewing the elevator. Why? He could barely admit it to himself, but the reason apparently had to do with the fact that he wanted to get into better shape, lose those extra pounds that pushed his belt out. Why? It was ridiculous to think that he would do something he had never done in his life, at least for a woman-any woman, let alone for a seventeen-year-old. Someone who was legally jailbait.