Dusk is approaching as Terry emerges from the steps of the Sixth Avenue subway line at Third Street. A hot, gritty summer gust of wind coming down the avenue lifts up his tie and carries it over his shoulder. Terry stops for a moment to get his sense of direction straight and then continues up the street past the small playground where a marathon basketball tournament has been played for the past ten years. Players, some in sneakers, some in shoes, some in boots, linger around the fence observing the game they have just left or the game they are about to enter. Further on up the street are some artists sitting in lawn chairs behind easels, drawing portraits for tourists. "Keep on keeping on," Terry says to himself. He walks on up the block, passing his briefcase to his other hand, and turns the corner on to West Fourth Street. To his right, in a brownstone basement, is a French-Vietnamese restaurant next to a record shop. He pauses for a moment while he looks at his watch. He has time. He walks down the steps into the record shop. As he steps into the shop, he smells the fragrance of burnt sandalwood and realizes they just might have it. He looks through the records on the rack first for some Bob Marley bootlegs. The shopkeeper, a man in his early thirties with a pony tail and a handlebar mustache tells him they are all gone. No they won't be getting anymore.

Terry returns to the street and continues on down to the park. It has been landscaped since he last saw it. There are now carefully groomed lawns where there used to be dirt and wine bottles. For some reason, the manicured lawns look unnatural in this place. There is a new children's playground with little asphalt hills for skateboards and a curious climbing structure that looks to be made of railroad ties. Around the one block perimeter of the block, New York University students are jogging, fully equipped with their designer sweats, headbands, and personal stereos. Terry thinks, but he can't remember if it is now the "me" generation or the "us" generation. He concludes that the names don't matter anymore. Neither do the faces. Aside from the amount of hair on them, the faces will always look the same: young.

He leaves the park and returns to West Fourth Street. He continues on toward Broadway. There is less activity on this section of the street because the towering granite structures on either side belong to New York University. All the entrances are used as fire exits and are locked from the inside. There is almost no pedestrian traffic here.

Strangely enough, however, there is a street peddler with his wares on a card table tucked inside one of the doorways. Terry glances at the table on the way by. CD players, stereo headphones, some nylon backpacks, ballpoint pens. The usual stuff. When he has taken about twenty steps past the table, he hears someone calling his name as if it were a question. "Terry?"

Terry turns and sees the peddler looking at him. The peddler has long brown hair to his shoulders and a beard. He is wearing cut off jeans and sandals. Terry looks at him carefully, taking a few small steps toward him. With the final recognition, Terry feels his heart sink, which Terry thinks is an unusual occurrence when meeting your old best friend.

"Gary?" Terry asks as he walks up to him.

"That's me, Old Amigo," Gary says, laying out his hand.

Terry self consciously slaps him five, then he lays his hand out and Gary slams him five. It was an old thing that they started in high school together. A contest to see who could slap five the hardest. Gary won this round. It used to be a lot closer in the days when the two of them would take the subway into the village from Queens to smoke in the park and listen to blues in the coffee houses. One night, Gary even got up and played harp with Buddy Guy. Gary was hot on the harp. They played "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" and "Rock Me Baby" with Buddy’s smile lighting up the room. That was twenty years ago.

"How you been, Amigo? I've been meaning to call you. You still living in Queens?"

"No," Terry says, "Randi and I just bought a house in Westchester. We moved in a few months ago." Terry sees Gary's eyes darting up and down, taking in the suit and briefcase. He wants to continue the conversation, but he can't think of anything to say to Gary.

"How long have you been in New York," Terry asks. The last he had heard was that Gary had been living in Austin.

"Five years. I can't wait to get back to LA., though. As soon as I get enough money together I'm going back. I had this band out there. Damn, were we good. A really hot horn section. We broke up, though. You still playing?"

Gary's California revelry catches Terry off guard. His eyes glaze over until he snaps back into the present. Flustered, he says, "Yeah, I'm playing bass."

"What kind of bass you have?"

"I have a few. A Fender Precision, a '67 Rick, a '59 Fender Jazz. The Fender Jazz is fretless." These are instruments Terry once dreamed of. Now, he owns them. "I'm putting together a small studio in the basement."

Gary chuckles and says "Mi Amigo is doing well."

"I guess. Randi is still with IBM, I'm working on Wall Street."

"Oh."

The conversation drops suddenly as a young woman with pink hair and sunglasses approaches Gary's table. She is accompanied by her more plainly dressed girlfriend. She asks Gary how much the cassettes cost. "A dollar twenty-five," he says. She asks how much for four. "Four for five," he answers. Quickly she realizes that Gary drives a hard bargain and that he his not about to cut his rock bottom prices. The young woman pulls out her purse and realizes she only has three dollars. "Will you still be here in about an hour?" Gary casually glances up and down the street to give the impression that he is mulling things over. Then he answers quickly, "Yeah." The woman's girlfriend is looking over the CD players. "Do these play MP3’s?" she asks, holding one up. Gary shakes his head no. "Why not?" she asks. "Because I don't," he snaps.

Terry looks over Gary's merchandise while this is going on and notices the paltriness of it. The cassettes are name brand, but bottom of the line. The CD players have no name at all.

The two women walk away as Gary turns back to Terry. "New Yorkers," he says.

Terry suddenly wants to get away. "Well, I have to be going. I'm meeting Randi over at El Coyote for dinner." A wave of guilt makes him, for just a moment, consider inviting Gary. There would be too many problems. His table of wares for one thing. What would they do with it? The main problem, though, is Randi. In the seven years that they have been married, she has never said a bad word about any of Terry's old friends, but he knows she never liked Gary. Since Gary has been out of their lives, Terry hasn’t had any lost weekends. At one time Terry didn't care; he would have invited him anyway. Priorities are different now.

He still feels guilty enough to say, "let me have your phone number. Maybe you can come up for a weekend and jam."

"Well," Gary says reluctantly, "I don't have a phone yet." He reaches down underneath the table and tears a piece of paper off a bag containing merchandise. "Give me your number and I'll call you." Terry takes the paper and then searches his shirt pockets for a pen. He is always losing his pens. Gary opens the box of ballpoint pens on his table and hands a brand new pen to Terry.

"Here's my number, and don't forget to call me. Don't wait another five years," he adds in an attempt to share some guilt. He tries to hand the pen back to Gary so he can sell it, but Gary shrugs and says, "keep the pen, Old Amigo. It's a present." Terry now wants to leave five minutes ago. "I'll be seeing you. On our way back to the train station, we'll come by here."

Although Terry has just said that he will see him in an hour or so they shake hands and slap each other's backs before Terry continues on his way.

He is shaking as he walks the next three blocks to the restaurant. They'll eat real slowly, so he can say that they came by after dinner and he was gone. To play it safe, they'll walk a different route back to the train. He is also certain that Gary will never call him. At least as certain as he is about anything else.

As he pulls open the door of the restaurant and steps inside, a wave of frigid air from inside stuns him and he shivers. Back there, in the cool darkness beyond the bar, sits his wife. He will not even tell her who he met on the way. Guilt is gone, along with the sparkling summer nights when a blues harp wailed on "Rock Me Baby."