I had been here before on many such late spring nights when I was a kid. Back then, in ancient times, before shopping malls, iPhones, or texting, it was a place to meet friends or girls or to go on tentative first dates. A lot, maybe too much, about the world had changed to suit me, but there was something comforting in seeing the faces I saw there that night. Kids might dress differently than they did when I was young, but all the technology in the world couldn’t beat the awkwardness and hormone-fueled behavior out of them. Girls still whispered in each other’s ears and giggled. Boys still strutted about trying to get noticed. I thought of Pam and ached, not because I missed her, but because I didn’t. I hadn’t really thought about her in days. Carmella had done that to me. That was her particular brand of magic, or her curse. She had done it to me the first time I saw her in the lobby of the Six-O precinct over twenty years ago. The immediacy of attraction wasn’t mutual. I think the first thing Carmella ever said to me was, “Yo, you got a problem?”
