Serge first practiced his father’s trade in middle school.  Academics had always been a riddle.  Math slipped through his fingers; and in the other classes, even when he tried to pay attention, there were too many interruptions: the shiny hair of the girl sitting in front of him, the red suede Nikes worn by the smirking kid who always sat sideways in his desk, Iron Maiden songs he’d heard on the rock station out of Poughkeepsie.  He was a heavy kid, and his own facial features appeared to have been arranged with little thought, like old furniture in a dark storage room.  There was a brief time that other kids called him “dumb ass” and “potato face.”  They didn’t realize he possessed his father’s large hands and quickness.  After he’d won his first fight, everyone ignored him.  He hated that predicament even more, so he beat up the kid with the red Nikes for no reason at all.  He got a week’s suspension, his first of many.
   Years passed before Serge fought for anyone other than himself.  And that’s how he had met the girl’s mother, Tamara.  She worked as a training manager at the neighborhood RITE AID, a familiar face from all the times he’d been in the store for refills of his mother’s medication.  He’d noticed her watching him as he waited at the pharmacy, had returned her smiles and even told her a little about his mother’s condition when he paid for cigarettes and coffee in the spring.  His face, over the years, had settled.  The mismatched features merely looked strong and worn, an empty barn on an Ontario plain, something to be photographed in black and white.  His deep-set eyes held the exhausted calm of the damaged; a broken blueliner in an Eastern Ontario semi-pro league.  He recognized that same look in Tamara’s eyes.
   His mother had been dead two weeks when he went into the drug store for shampoo.  He picked up four cans of Starbucks Double Shots as an afterthought and carried them to the front counter where Tamara was working.
   “Planning on staying up for a few days?” she asked.
   Serge returned her smile.  “I’m hooked on this stuff.  I thought I’d have more money when I quit drinking.  But now…”  He pointed to the guilty cans.
   She gestured toward the cigarette rack behind her.  “The usual?”
    He wanted to say more, to tell her about his mother’s death.  It had been days since he’d talked to anyone.  Back at the house, the laundry had been washed and folded.  The dishes were clean, the carpet vacuumed, shower scrubbed.  There was gas in the car.  The lawn mower was tuned up and ready, even though the grass hadn’t yet started to grow.  No prescriptions to be filled, no pills to crush and mix into Motts Apple Sauce.  No one to sit with during the six o’clock news and Jeopardy.  He’d done all of those things for three years.  He’d also drunk a lot of coffee.  Now, he felt like frozen water in a dark tunnel.
   “I’d like to move somewhere warm,” he told Tamara.  “I’ve never skipped a northern winter.  I’d like to go somewhere the grass grows year round.”
   Tamara was looking past him, as if she’d just heard the most infuriating thing possible.  “Jesus Christ.”
   Before Serge realized that she hadn’t even heard a thing he’d said, Tamara was running toward the pharmacy counter at the back of the store.  A man in a hooded sweatshirt was holding a knife on the pharmacist, forcing her to fill a white garbage bag with pill bottles.  Tamara grabbed a mop from a shelf on her way to the back and laid it into the guy’s head.  He turned around, shoved Tamara to the floor, then grabbed the trash bag and ran toward the front exit where Serge was standing.
   Serge noticed the robber’s sneakers; gray suede New Balance, nicer than his own shoes.  The guy wasn’t even paying attention to him.  “Head on a swivel.”  That’s what Serge’s mother always said when someone got blindsided during a Sabres game on television.  Serge lined up the guy and shoulder checked him into the newspaper rack.
   “My back.  Oh, God.  My back.”  He was young, pale and skinny.  He went to the floor pleading with Serge.  Copies of the Buffalo News were scattered around them, and Serge was using his hands.  He clenched his fists, tucked his thumbs under the knuckles and kept his wrists straight.
   “Please.  I’m an addict.  I can’t help myself.”
   “I was trying to have a fucking conversation,” Serge said.
   Tamara was grateful.  She brought Serge a can of coffee while he waited to speak to the cops.  He told her about his mother dying.
   “I was wondering,” she said.  “I hadn’t seen you as much lately, but I was afraid to ask.”
   They sat in the chairs by the pharmacy counter, right beside the blood pressure station.  The overhead lights pulsed in his neck.  The usual shadows, along with the regret and guilt that always followed a fight, idled at the edge of things.