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Was bigger than all of them—Nick was mistaken to try and find him. For what, and who would he find? And do what? And how would he convince something that had sailed away so long ago to come back over the bridge? To his own destruction? The cop even told him so.
    He shook his head at how, just hours ago, he was praying to find him—a short while ago he breathed with relief that a cop might be able to help him. Now he couldn’t imagine a worse fate, and wasn’t that how the world he lived in really was? Always having to wait for a bad thing to happen so it makes way for something potentially good?
    He pulled into his driveway and idled there. The heat was still on. Light bled white and silver onto the frost-speckled lawn when his mother pulled the front door open. He watched her peer through the reflection of their glass door, shield her eyes, and press her face against the glass.
    She focused on Nick. The exhaust pulsed—spat clouds of mist around his car. Nick watched her and then looked over at the empty passenger’s seat where he knew his mother was hoping to see her other son. He looked at the seat and half smiled at Jeffrey. Not there, but never before so close.

THY SHINY CAR IN THE NIGHT
    BY N ICK M AMATAS
    Northport
    M y father told me around the time I seriously started reading books as a teenager that he used to know Jack Kerouac. “When I was a young man, he was living right here in Northport,” he said. When we were next on Main Street, he pointed to Gunther’s Tap Room as we passed it and said, “Petey, Kerouac used to play pool in there all the time, and sometimes he’d hold court on whatever subject bubbled up in his writerly brain.” There were even a few photos of Kerouac in the window, and a sign reading KEROUAC DRANK HERE , which I’d never noticed before. I was a kid; I had eyes only for Lic’s Ice Cream, the Sweet Shop, and the little newsstand that carried comic books alongside Newsday and car magazines. But then I started noticing the other Northport, the one day-trippers don’t see.
    That’s about when I figured out what my father did for a living. “Waste management, middle management,” he’d tell me, “boss of all the garbage men on the North Shore.” I’d repeat that line in school, knowing it wasn’t quite the whole story. I knew we were semiconnected, since Uncle Peter, for whom I am named, couldn’t stop talking about it. He was a cliché, central casting for The Sopranos , with a thick-tongued accent my father didn’t have, a penchant for tracksuits, a ridiculous silvery Cadillac, and rings too gaudy for even the Pope to wear.
    I’d be working on my Commodore 64 or have my nose in a book when he’d come over for dinner and say, “That’s right. You do good in school, you hear me, and get a good job. A career .” Career was a three-syllable word to Uncle Peter. “Work to get laid,” he’d say. “Not to get made. It’s no life.” Even I knew what getting made was.
    Uncle Peter said he knew Kerouac too. “That guy? Ha! Jim said he knew him?” Granted, my father was a little man, balding with a bundt cake of hair around the back of his head, and he dressed like an accountant. Not the kind of guy you’d think would be hanging out with the king of the Beats.
    “Yeah,” Uncle Peter continued, all wistful. “Me and this friend of mine, we’d seen Kerouac on TV, then two days later in his garden, wearing coveralls like some kid, then that night wandering down the street like a real stumblebum. The guy was stunad , so I thought we’d give him a shakedown.”
    “Why, Uncle Peter?”
    “Eh, we were just dumb kids. We thought writers had money! Anyway, he was a pretty big dude. A lot of muscle, and he could take a punch. I was waling on him, my friend was holding—”
    “Who? Dad?”
    “Pfft, no way. Nah, you don’t know this guy. He was my friend who died before you were born. Anyway, Kerouac was just standing there. It was like punching a car through a