Absent Friends by S. J. Rozan

naturalist turn over rocks on a hillside with endless patience until he came on the one concealing the nest of writhing snakes.
    And now Marian was privately boycotting the Tribune.
    She knew it wouldn't matter to the paper, the seventy-five cents a day they could no longer count on from the newsstand by her office. It mattered, though, to the stand's owner, a cheerful Pakistani man trying to raise a family in New York. For three weeks after the towers fell, trucks couldn't cross the perimeter to make deliveries; the newsstands had nothing to sell. Even now, though the papers were getting through, business was down. The cheerful man's name was Muhammad; for some people, that was enough, and they were buying elsewhere. That made Marian furious, and she said as much to Muhammad, who merely shrugged. Still, in her heart she could understand. People, everywhere, wanted to do what was right, to do something that would help. They just didn't know what that was, the thing they should do.
    And now that she wasn't buying the Tribune, now that being named Muhammad was bad for business, Marian asked for a Coke and a Kit Kat bar to go with her Times. Today, handing them to her, Muhammad had wished her a happy Halloween. It was Halloween? She hadn't remembered. The time in the year, she thought with bitterness, when we admit the existence of evil, in order to mock it. We hang silly skeletons and friendly ghosts and congratulate ourselves that we've vanquished demons, conquered wickedness, gone to the very gates of hell and laughed.
    No, the Tribune wouldn't notice her boycott and would not care. But the principle was important to her. Marian did many things because of principle, not allowing the depressing truth of how little effect her gestures sometimes had to give her permission to forgo them.
    As a child, sitting in the sweet-scented darkness of St. Ann's with her father and her three little sisters, holding her baby brother (the baby her mother had left behind for them to love when she went to Heaven), and listening as hard as she could to Father Connor telling them all to be good (though sometimes he said it in grown-up words), Marian had had a vision of what that would mean. What would happen if everyone tried to be good. All those small tries would be like pebbles. Everyone would bring one, a little stone, rough or smooth, and put it down. Some people would go and get another, and another, though some would not. Slowly, the pile would grow, and be a mound, and then a hill, and then a mountain, covered finally with green sheltering forests filled with birdsong.

B OYS ' O WN B OOK
    Chapter 5

    The Man Who Sat by the Door
    September 11, 1978: The Boys (Tom)
    Tom's gone into his father's business, though it doesn't look that way. Tom's job is in construction, his uncle's company (the uncle's clean—at least, he has no sheet). Big arms, good hands, Tom can lay bricks straight and fast, but he's usually elsewhere. Tom's learning the business, the real one his father's in. Well spoken, Tom, and smart; he'll run things one day, they all see that, could even if he weren't who he is, the boss's son.
    The boss, Tom's father: Big Mike Molloy. Mike the Bear.
    Yes, they all can see Tom will be running things, though Tom's different from his old man, his ways are different. Tom thinks far ahead, Tom works things out before he starts. He could confuse you, the way he talks, he could sell ice to you if you were an Eskimo. And make you think it's your lucky day, he's doing you a favor, hauling that iceberg into your backyard.
     
    Eleven years old: it's spring, and the kids want to go to the circus.
    Not the small one, the Spivey Traveling Circus and Midway, that comes to Staten Island every summer with rides and a sideshow, sets up the tents and cotton candy machines in the field by Hylan Boulevard. Spivey's is great, and the kids always go. They have flashing lights and an elephant, they have sword-swallowers and the bearded lady. (The boys