If I Should Die Before I Die by Peter Israel

him.
    â€œCome on, Midnight Rider,” he called out, “let’s go to Rosebud’s.”
    â€œThat’s closed,” I said. “I’ll get you home.”
    â€œNo home. Let’s go someplace else.”
    â€œNo else,” I think I said. “Sleep.”
    He stopped abruptly, turned, stared at me.
    â€œNot sleep,” he said. “Hey, where’s everybody? Where’s …”
    He said some name I didn’t get. But the panicky look in his eyes, in one of those weird, short snatches of lucidity you get when you’re drunk, reminded me of something else. The Counselor’s Wife’s tapes, the story he’d told about his friend’s insomnia. If I should die before I die .
    His story, all right. Not a friend’s.
    He headed off across the avenue, I behind him. The traffic lights could have been green, red, or blue, but somebody protects drunks from accidents in the middle of the night.
    We somehow got to his block. He careened along the wall of his apartment house. I remember one end of the white scarf now trailing behind him.
    He turned toward me right near the entrance, tilting against the brick facade.
    â€œHey, Rider,” he said. “Whatever you want. Want a bunny? Free of charge. Want to beat up on a bunny? Want to …?”
    I got no chance to answer, though. In mid-sentence his body started to slide down the wall. And down he sat, on the pavement, listing to one side, head down and nodding.
    Out like a light. Finally.
    I stood over him for a minute. I remember thinking he looked like one poor excuse for a killer, right then. If he was a killer. If he wasn’t. Either way. I peered in through the locked entrance doors of the building, spotting a black man in a cardigan sweater nodding on a straight chair just inside. I remember he had a newspaper on his lap. Maybe it was the super Bobby Derr had greased, maybe not. I rang the night bell and watched him jerk awake.
    He came to his side of the door without opening it, and I pointed McCloy’s body out to him. Then he unlocked, and together we loaded McCloy into the little vestibule where I held him while the black man opened the inner door.
    â€œI’ll take him up for you,” I said to the black man.
    â€œNever mind,” he answered. “I’m used to it. They always come home like this, one or the other.”
    â€œI want to make sure he gets home.”
    â€œNever mind,” he repeated. “He’s home now. You’re not.” Then somehow he was standing between McCloy and me, propping McCloy up with one hand and pushing me back out the front door with the other. “You go home now too.”
    I guess I made it as far as the Fiero, but apparently no farther. The next thing I knew, it was 7 A . M ., and I woke up behind the wheel in the East Eighties, and a blinding sun was staring right at me with its fingers in my eyes.

PART TWO

CHAPTER
    6
    I’ve probably given the wrong impression of the Counselor. Dour, cold, unfeeling, implacable—I’ve seen or heard all those words used to describe him, and a lot worse too, usually by people who’ve tangled with him professionally and lost. But he’s also capable of humor, usually with a cutting edge, even of charm, even, on occasion, of warmth. His problem mostly is that he’s a creature of habit. Circumstances which, for whatever reasons, break up his routine usually bring out the worst in him. For instance he’d complained about the Magister lunch ever since the meeting with Barger, and I’d have been willing to bet the house that he’d find a way to duck out.
    And would have lost.
    Maybe the setting contributed to his good mood. And the weather. Also, apparently, our hostess.
    â€œAre you sure you don’t want something a little stronger?” she asked, turning to him.
    The Counselor, I knew, never drank anything stronger at lunch than Campari and soda, and that’s