at all, although he did seem a good bit more with-it than me.
“Look at me,” he said reasonably. “Yes.” He knew he had me. “Am I raving? Frothing at mouth? No—only being helpful! Here,” he said, tapping some out on the back of his hand, “come on. Let me feed it to you.”
I half expected it was a trick—that I would pass out on the spot and wake up who knew where, maybe in one of the empty houses across the street. But I was too tired to care, and maybe that would have been okay anyway. I leaned forward and allowed him to press one nostril closed with a fingertip. “There!” he said encouragingly. “Like this. Now, sniff.”
Almost instantly, I did feel better. It was like a miracle. “Wow,” I said, pinching my nose against the sharp, pleasant sting.
“Didn’t I tell you?” He was already tapping out some more. “Here, other nose. Don’t breathe out. Okay, now.”
Everything seemed brighter and clearer, including Boris himself.
“What did I tell you?” He was taking more for himself now. “Aren’t you sorry you don’t listen?”
“You’re going to sell this stuff, god,” I said, looking up at the sky. “Why?”
“It’s worth a lot, actually. Few thousand of dollars.”
“That little bit?”
“Not that little! This is a lot of grams—twenty, maybe more. Could make a fortune if I divide up small and sell to girls like K. T. Bearman.”
“You know K. T. Bearman?” Katie Bearman, who was a year ahead of us, had her own car—a black convertible—and was so far removed from our social scale she might as well have been a movie star.
“Sure. Skye, KT, Jessica, all those girls. Anyway—” he offered me the vial again—“I can buy Kotku that keyboard she wants now. No more money worries.”
We went back and forth a few times until I began to feel much more optimistic about the future and things in general. And as we stood rubbing our noses and jabbering in the street, Popper looking up at us curiously, the wonderfulness of New York seemed right on the tip of my tongue, an evanescence possible to convey. “I mean, it’s great,” I said. The words were spiraling and tumbling out of me. “Really, you have to come. We can go to Brighton Beach—that’s where all the Russians hang out. Well, I’ve never been there. But the train goes there—it’s the last stop on the line. There’s a big Russian community, restaurants with smoked fish and sturgeon roe. My mother and I always talked about going out there to eat one day, this jeweler she worked with told her the good places to go, but we never did. It’s supposed to be great. Also, I mean—I have money for school—you can go to my school. No—you totally can. I have a scholarship. Well, I did. But the guy said as long as the money in my fund was used for education—it could be anybody’s education. Not just mine. There’s more than enough for both of us. Though, I mean, public school, the public schools are good in New York, I know people there, public school’s fine with me.”
I was still babbling when Boris said: “Potter.” Before I could answer him he put both hands on my face and kissed me on the mouth. And while I stood blinking—it was over almost before I knew what had happened—he picked up Popper under the forelegs and kissed him too, in midair, smack on the tip of his nose.
Then he handed him to me. “Your car’s over there,” he said, giving him one last ruffle on the head. And—sure enough—when I turned, a town car was creeping up the other side of the street, surveying the addresses.
We stood looking at each other—me breathing hard, completely stunned.
“Good luck,” said Boris. “I won’t forget you.” Then he patted Popper on the head. “Bye, Popchyk. Look after him, will you?” he said to me.
Later—in the cab, and afterward—I would replay that moment, and marvel that I’d waved and walked away quite so casually. Why hadn’t I grabbed his arm and begged him one last time to get in the car, come on, fuck it Boris, just like skipping school, we’ll be eating breakfast over cornfields when the sun comes up? I knew him well enough to know that if you asked him the right way, at the right moment, he would do almost anything; and in the very act of turning away I knew he would have run after me and hopped