When he was done he brushed off Andre’s neck and took the trimmers to the beard and shaped it close, and then he held up the hand mirror he kept in the lid of the case. Andre looked at himself for a long time.
“There he is,” Leon said.
That afternoon, driving home down the Jones Falls Expressway in the slanting gold light, past the place where Kevin Whitaker had gone down in the rain, Leon pulled over onto the shoulder and called the Tuesday Night Step Group’s contact number, which he had copied off the sign in the basement of Bethel Hope, and told the man who answered that his name was Leon, that he had twenty-eight years, that he had not been to a meeting in eleven, and that he would be there Tuesday at eight.
“Coffee’s terrible,” the man said.
“I know it is,” said Leon. “I’ll bring some.”
*