J. seemed to be occupying more of the sidewalk than a normal human being, a giant joint between his fingers. It had been years. Two, three, four maybe. Our conversation was brief and manic. He introduced me to his friend A., all quiet and smiling. I couldn’t tell if he was amused. Or what he was thinking. He was the officiant, J. said, as if no other information were needed. And none was. The officiant. At the wedding. In the Catskills! Wherever the fuck, said J. As if the location, the date, the occasion, none of it mattered.

In the bathroom of the bar the pictures on the wall, small in nice frames like it’s someone’s parents’ house. The haphazard variety. But all dated, black and white. An ancient view of Yankee Stadium from a balcony in the Bronx, the occupants waving and cheering some historic event. Fred Astaire grinning in his top hat. A view of a classroom of insolent grade-school boys. And that picture of people in a theater wearing 3-D glasses, uniform and impassive.

Crystal Palace 1, Liverpool 0.

We walked past the corner with the sidewalk wet with rain and the bitter perfume of cheap bodega flowers hit me and brought me back in time to every instant this has ever happened, three or four times a year maybe for twenty five years, always the same, a perennial odor of the City.

The moon’s a crescent, shadowed by the earth this time, but isn’t that just as remarkable when you think about it, though it happens every month not every twenty years?

I noticed the peculiar spaces of the theater, the way the steps down the side of the balcony end in a purposeless, oblique space, the haphazard old posters along the rounded walls. Twice I nearly fell in the dark, getting to my seat a minute after the lights went down. It’s no wonder people keep coming to plays. It’s to be in a space like no other as much as anything else.

Adam pointed out the backyard used to be gravel, and I remembered it was, but still I said, oh yeah, huh. Used to be gravel, before Vinny put down the boards. We used to throw pebbles into the cigarette spittoons for luck, or fun. Or competition. I didn’t. He said we did. Whoever we was, it wasn’t me. And here we are stretching the morning into a day, pretty day, after two all against Man U.