Henry stopped and said, “What’s this you? ”

Franky squinted and dropped me. I told them it was a pic of me when I was a baby. They looked at each other and shook their heads. They weren’t mad. They were just, well . . . I don’t know.

They let me go and threw my money back at me. “Go home, Richard,” they said. “You’re not a man anymore.”

“I’m trying to be!” I yelled and walked home, rubbing my jaw, stuffing my pockets back in. I’m trying to be . . .

Two days later I was walking around looking for smokes when they came up to me with goofy grins on their faces and then Franky and Henry showed me theirs. They did what I did and had bivouacked saint necklaces to show their baby pictures. Oh they were ugly babies. Maybe this was why they turned out to be such arseholes, but I showed them mine again and we were just so happy to see each other like that.

“Sorry for the other night,” Franky said. “It’s okay,” I said.

You were ugly babies, I thought, and we shook hands.

Then Harvey and his wife came up to us and said, “Hey what you’re doing? ”

And we all turned and showed them our baby pics and grinned.

“How cute!” Cynthia said. “Is that you? ”