Past Lives: Part Two

8BC, January 6, 1984

8BC on a Friday night is usually full of people. Tonight is an exception—there are maybe a quarter of the people CB expected, and he’s not sure how long they’re going to stay. It’s empty enough that CB has a table all to himself. He drinks, he smokes, he pretends to listen to the band; more fundamentally than that, he tries, unsuccessfully, to ignore the world around him.

A few years ago CB, Sin and Billy wound up playing pool with a bona-fide pool shark named Ray—a friendl...