I sat on the floor with my back propped up against the wall with my Eric Clapton poster and spent the next hour trying to get him to tell me how it had happened and why. Chase offered soliloquies and babbling, but no cogent reason other than to take full, regretful responsibility for it. Since he seemed so upset about it and since he seemed to think it was entirely his fault, I asked him why he didn’t try to do something to patch things up between them. All he would say was that he’d ruined things and that the damage he’d done could never be repaired. I briefly considered the possibility that he was putting me on, but he wasn’t kidding this time. Eventually he went into his room and played a Nirvana CD at a volume that suggested that he wanted Iris to hear his anguish all the way across town. That night, he asked me if I wanted to go out with him and some of “his guys.” Though I hadn’t met any of them before, I recognized several from Jim Krieger’s New Year’s party – Chase’s lacrosse teammates who had played their drinking game until they passed out.
