“You’re bluffing,” I said. “Danny, oh Danny.” The miserable fucker had the balls to smile at me. “You know I never bluff.” It was summer. Some places in the city, summer’s nice. You get out by the water, maybe Orchard Beach or Coney Island, or even the Seaport if it’s not too crowded, and the salt air and breeze touches your skin and you’re seventeen again. And the Green, what humans called Central Park, was a blessed respite, even on the worst days. But inside the city itself, locked within the henge of buildings that reflected heat and cast it back to the pavement which in turn shoved it up into living tissue, summer was miserable. I wanted to be somewhere with clean air, cold water, and a colder beer. Instead, I was stuck on a park bench in midtown Manhattan, watching tourists pile on and off those damn tourist buses. The last round had been a mistake, last night. So had the first round.
