Poor Dan. He’s never had a kid. Childish and silly, he would make a great father. The children of his divorce clients hang all over him.

He plays with them as if he is their long-lost brother.

“What’s stopping you?” I egg him on.

“Just get neck id and plop on down there. The country’s looking for some honest-to-God leadership. If poor Bill tried to do it, half the country would say it was just a way to try to get a woman to go to bed with him.”

Dan loosens his tie as he gazes out over the crowded tables of mostly office workers from inside the Layman Building, who, like us, are beginning to show symptoms of cabin fever after a long cold snap. How do people stand the north in the winter? Three weeks in a row of frigid air is all it takes for us to start talking crazy. Dan sips greasy coffee and then nags at me, “Have you thought any more about joining One-on-One?

They’ve got a list of boys a mile long.”

I roll my eyes and pretend to sigh. Dan has been bugging me to get involved in a buddy program for ghetto kids for the last month.

“I know,” I say, thinking of the fact sheet he left in my chair last week.

“Let’s make a deal. If you can keep quiet about it until after this case is over, I’ll sign up, okay?” Despite Dan’s cynicism, he has a bowl of

mush where his heart ought to be. Actually, I’ve been feeling guilty for deciding to desert my old neighborhood. Rosa and I lived in a mixed area for years. Since her death I’ve felt increasingly detached from my black neighbors. At Dan’s urging, I have thought of taking on a kid from one of the projects as a way of keeping a pledge to Rosa that I wouldn’t try to become a Yuppie after her death. Fat chance with my income, but my new neighborhood will be lily-white, and maybe joining One-on-One will keep the guilt at a manageable level.