That bad night, we drew back from the brink. Michael thanked me for proving his point. I thanked him for accepting mine. Then he said he was ashamed of me, and I told him young hotheads are always ashamed of their parents, and he said most young hotheads didn’t have reason, but he was saddled with a father who was a collaborator. Well, he was right and I was right and we both knew it, I think, but were too alike to find the common ground. There we froze, thank God, held between wounding spite and deep mutual need. I could no more tell him to get out than he could tell me he was leaving. We had friends, both of us, and girlfriends, but in all the world we really had only one another, and we knew it.