oks at me and my short haircut and scratches his own bald egg.
"Where'd I see you?" he asks suspiciously.

"Oh--Cat and I, we get around," I say.

3

[Illustration: Dave, Cat, and Nick running on the beach.]

CAT AND CONEY

Nick and I have been friends pretty much since I can remember. Our mothers
used to trade turns fetching us from kindergarten. Nick lives around the
corner on Third Avenue, upstairs over the grocery store his old man runs.
If anyone asked me _how come_ we're friends, I couldn't exactly say. We're
just together most of the time.

Neither of us is a real whiz at sports, but we used to roller-skate and
play a little king and stickball and ride our bikes around exploring. One
time when we were about ten, we rode way over to Twelfth Avenue at the
Hudson River, where the _Queen Mary_ docks. This is about the only time I
remember my mom getting really angry. She said Pop ought to take my bike
away from me, and he did, but only for about a week. Nick and I still ride
bikes a lot. Otherwise we sit and do our homework or play chess and listen
to records.

Another reason we're friends is because of this creepy little kid who
lived down toward the corner, between me and Nick. He always tagged along,
wanting to play with us, and of course in the end he always fouled up the
game or fell down and started to cry. Then his big brother came rushing
out, usually with another big guy along, and they figured they were
entitled to beat us up for hurting little Joey.

After a while it looked to me as if Joey just worked as a lookout, and the
minute me or Nick showed up on the block, one of the big guys came to run
us off. They did little things like throwing sticks into our bike spokes
and pretending it was just a joke. Nick and I used to plot all kinds of
ways to get even with them, but in the end we mostly decided it was easier
to walk around the block the long way to get to each other's houses. I'm
not much on fighting, and neither is Nick--'specially not with guys bigger
than us.

Summers, up in the country, the kids seem to be all the time wrestling and
punching, half for fun and half not. If I walk past some strange kid my
age up there, he almost always tries to get me into a fight. I don't get
it. Maybe it's because sidewalks are uncomfortable for figh