Because he had started thinking about how Oprah had belonged to Baltimore once, how Baltimore used to have everything it needed, right here. Not just Baltimore, but Locust Point. The neighborhood was a world complete. His dad had walked to work. Went out the door to Domino’s, was there in five minutes. Said living in Locust Point was like living on an island. Warter all around, warter all around, he had said in his thick Bawlmer accent. Henry was fourteen before he ever went north of Pratt Street. On his own, that is, not riding in the family car, or on a bus for a school trip. Walters Art Museum, those big vases, the shot tower. And they said he was killing his brain cells, but look at everything he could remember. The National Aquarium, eighth grade, he had grabbed Helen Jukowski’s hat and thrown it in the harbor because she had the prettiest hair he had ever seen. Not much of a face-no chin-but white-gold hair, streaming down her back, long and straight when all the other girls were getting those tight perms.

On the television, they were singing a song. An old song, it sounded like an old song, but it had a line about cocaine in there. Funny-you don’t think about cocaine being around in the olden days. Kathie Lee made a face, like she didn’t like having to sing that one word, but she couldn’t think of another one to put there, although lots of things rhymed. Spain, rain. Windowpane, Great Dane. Ridin’ that train.

Cocaine. Now that was a drug. It really fucked you up. The stuff he did, it was legal, how bad could it be? Nothing legal ever killed you all at once, that was for sure. Sometimes the Beacon-Light had stories about how some bad heroin came to town, people keeling over right and left. You never heard of anyone dying from a single cigarette, or a beer. Or a huff. You had to do it a lot, and he didn’t do it that much.

Hardly any at all, honest.

“When did you leave the house?”

Must have been ten or so.