the exit, no traffic either way, he floored it through the stop sign, swerved a sharp right, ripped along a two-lane road, whizzed past houses of sleeping citizens. He spotted a high school on the left, jumped off the road, bounced a curb, landed in the school parking lot, coasted to a stop behind the main building. About 20 seconds later they heard the trooper wail past.

Safe.

And with that, Jack rested his head on the steering wheel and commenced snoring very loudly, preventing Red from getting any real sleep that night.

At dawn, Red got out, walked around the parking lot, and out to the road, along the sidewalk. In the fresh air he realized how much he reeked of Jack's cigarettes. Workaday traffic hadn't started. Afraid of attractingattention, afraid of being thought a burglar or a pervert, he trotted back to the car, woke Jack up to a vicious hangover. Breakfast and clean-up at a McDonald's, the two sat in a booth, saying little. Red called, collect, to let his mom know he was okay: Jack just had a little too much to drink, that they'd spent the night on the living room floor at Patti's. "I, uh, tried to call last night but, uh, for some reason, her phone wasn't working. Yuh, her bill is paid, but you know, the phone company."

Red and Jack had been friends for a long time, since kindergarten. And now here they were in December of 1986, on the road, pointed west, a long ride. In Buffalo, at a