And the whole time I say the same thing to myself over and over.

This is for you Mom and Dad. This is for you.

Then Branko comes in, nods once at my handiwork and tells me to go wait in the car while he cleans up.

THIS IS HOW you lose your life.

You’re a kid, you play baseball. You are better at baseball than a human being has a right to be at anything. You’re going to the pros, everybody knows it. But before it can become a reality, you hurt yourself, bad.

Things happen.

You wallow in your own misery and start hanging with the crowd of kids you would have nothing to do with before you shattered your leg. You do some drugs, break into some houses, get caught.

Things happen.

You trade baseball and petty crime for hot rods. You’re a big fucking show-off. You crash your Mustang and your best friend is in the car and he sails through the windshield and you get to see what it looks like when a teenager’s head explodes against a tree.

Things happen.

You go to college. You learn things, lots of things. You learn how things work, you learn some first aid, you learn some history and some books and some politics. All the things you didn’t have time for when there was baseball. You meet a girl and move to New York City to be with her. She dumps you.

Things happen.

You learn to drink. You tend bar, you develop a drinking problem that’s like the rest of your life: nothing special. Years pass. Blah, blah, blah. Boo, hoo, hoo.

Nothing happens.

Then everything happens at once.

A friend leaves something in your care, a cat. That is, you think it’s a cat he leaves with you, but it’s not. It’s a key, a key at the bottom of the cat’s cage. The key opens a door and behind the door is a prize, and lots of people want the prize. Who wouldn’t want the prize when it’s over 4 million clean, untraceable dollars? People come for the key. People threaten you and push you around and hurt you bad and try to kill you, and finally, they kill people you care about. Someone you love. And you kill back.