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He took her for a ride in his GTO one night when they were falling in love.

Z:

He did?

J.R.:

Yeah.

Z:

Romantic bastard, isn’t he.

We drive along the road, or it could have been the galaxy, and though I can’t see the turns and hills, I know he can. The metaphor for life is unavoidable: Each of us in the seat of our destiny, driven along a road we cannot see, by someone who can.

J.R.:

You’re taking us somewhere.

Z:

(laughs softly) Oh, really.

J.R.:

You aren’t the type to just drive.

Z:

Maybe I’ve turned over a new leaf.

J.R.:

No. It’s your nature, and not something that needs fixing.

Z:

(looking over at me) And where do you think I’m going?

J.R.:

Doesn’t matter to me. I know you’ll get us there and back safely and that it’ll be worth the trip.

Z:

Let’s hope it is.

We drive in silence, and I’m not surprised. You don’t interview Z. You sit and open up a space and maybe he fills it, maybe he doesn’t.

The next biggish city from Caldwell is a good thirty minutes from the bridges downtown but only about twelve minutes from the Brotherhood’s compound. As we roll into its fringes, Z turns on the headlights to be legal. We pass by an Exxon gas station and a Stewart’s ice-cream shop and a McDonald’s and a host of nonchains like The Choppe Shoppe hair salon and Browning’s Printing and Graphics and Luigi’s Pizzeria. The parking lots are lit like something out of an Edward Hopper painting, pools of light congealing around parked cars and ice machines and Dumpsters. I’m struck by how many wires are suspended from telephone pole to telephone pole and the way the traffic lights dangle above the intersections. It’s the neuropathways of the city’s brain, I think to myself.

The silence is not awkward. We end up at Target.

Z pulls into the parking lot and heads to a secluded space away from the six parked cars clustered around the bank of doors in the front. As we approach the spot he picks, the massive light over us goes dark—probably because he willed it off.

We get out, and while we walk to the toffee-colored building with its red bull’s-eye, Z gets closer to me than he ever has. He’s about two feet behind me on my right, and it feels, because of his size, like he’s on top of me. He’s doing his guard thing, and I take it as a gesture of kindness, not aggression. Going along, our footsteps over the cold pavement are like two different voices. Mine are Shirley Temple. His are James Earl Jones.

Inside the store, the security guard doesn’t like us. The rent-a-cop straightens up from the partition demarcating the food section and puts his hand on his pepper spray. Z ignores him. Or at least, I assume Z does. The Brother is still walking behind me, so I can’t see his face.

J.R.:

Which section?

Z:

Over to the left. Wait, I want a cart.

After he gets one, we head for . . . the baby department. When we get to the displays of onesies and tiny socks, Z steps ahead of me. He handles the clothes on the racks in the most gentle way, as if they are already on Nalla’s sturdy little body. He fills the cart. He doesn’t ask me what I think of what he’s buying, but that’s no disrespect to me. He knows what he wants. He buys little shirts and ruffled diaper pants in all kinds of colors. Tiny shoes. A pair of mittens that look like they belong on a doll. Then we go to the toy section. Blocks. Books. Soft stuffed animals.

Z:

Automotive next, then music and DVDs. Also books.

He’s in charge of the cart. I follow. He buys Armor All and a bunch of chamois cloths. Then the new Flo-Rida CD. An Ina Garten cookbook. When we pass by the food section, he gets a bag of Tootsie Pops. We pause at the menswear section, and he chooses two Miami Ink baseball caps. In the stationery department he picks up some lovely thick white paper and a set of colored pencils. He takes a deep red knitted scarf from ladies’ accessories, and then pauses by a display of silver chains that have charms dangling off of them. He picks one out that has a small quartz heart hanging from the chain and is