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perhaps sensing I didn't know the first thing about Adam. She was right and wrong, of course.
    “I'm just the friendly neighbor,” I said. I considered how the word
friendly
could mean
not an actual friend
—like friendish, or friendlike. “Is this a whole, ah, Columbia group, upstairs?” I wondered what the man who'd been the Vision would teach: Android identity politics?
    “Just that guy Barth who got killed. The rest I don't know. Adam and Roberta seem to collect people from all over the place.”
    “They're not big on introductions, are they? They prefer keeping everyone in the dark, and dependent on them.”
    “Maybe they figure we're grown-ups and can take care of ourselves.”
    I'd touched the limits of Doe's disloyalty, and been admonished. I rather liked it. “Yes, of course,” I agreed. “The way we are, now, for instance. You and I, I mean. Taking care of ourselves.”
    Doe only blinked, as when, in the circle upstairs, I'd probed her mafia status.
    There commenced a clunking and scraping of chairs above our heads. The village had shrunk, or dissolved. I stepped forward and took Doe's hand, thinking I only had a minute. I had less, as it happened. For a giantess Roberta Jar moved silently, and now she was in the doorway. Doe's hand slipped from mine as a newt darts from view on a forest path.
    “Game over?” I asked.
    “Yes,” said Roberta, cat-ate-canaryishly. “The mafia won.”
    “The mafia always wins,” said Doe, a little petulantly, I thought, given her own affiliation.
    “Not really,” said Roberta. “But they have had their way recently, it's true.”
    “They did fine without
my
help,” mused Doe. This accounted for her bitterness: she'd wanted to prove essential.
    We returned upstairs on a quest for more beer. The smokers had returned from the stoop, and villagers and mafia alike mingled in excited dissection of the game's plot:
I told you so
was the general thrust. There was hopeful talk of another game, but Val and Irene, a couple with babysitter problems, had to go. A few more defections followed, and suddenly we didn't have numbers enough for a village. “Don't everybody go,” said Adam, as one after another made their excuses. “The night is young.”
    Seven of us remained. Happily, this included Doe. There were also two younger men vying for the attention of an Asian woman named Flour. Perhaps predictably, it was singles who'd stayed—us with nothing to rush home to. We sat in the sea of empty bottles and abandoned chairs, a ghost village. But Adam Cressner and Roberta Jar seemed glad to have us. He went downstairs and soon Chet Baker emanated from speakers in the parlor's corners. Roberta lowered the lights.
    “I know a game,” I said.
    “Yes?” said Roberta.
    “It's called I Never. It's a drinking game, though. We all have to have an alcoholic beverage in our hands.”
    Adam plopped two fresh sixes of Pale Ale at our feet. I explained the rules: Each of us in turn made a statement—a true statement—beginning with the words
I never
. Those in the circle who'd done the things the speaker hadn't were required to confess their experience, by sipping their beer. Thus the worldly among us were made to grow embarrassed, and intoxicated, and thus secrets were flushed into the open.
    “For example, I'll start,” I said. “I've never had sex on an airplane.”
    Adam and Roberta smiled at one another and tipped their bottles. Flour also wet her lips, and one of her suitors as well. Doe and the second of Flour's men were in my more innocent camp.
    “Excellent,” I said. “The rest is just a matter of thinking of good questions.” I felt now an unexpectedly sharp appetite for this game—I wanted Adam and Roberta, and Doe too, to see how false the drama of Mafia was compared to our real lives. Of course, after my example we first had to endure a tentative round of inquiries into sex on trains, in restaurant coatrooms, in film projection booths, etc. When my turn came