With my sushi pinched between the tips of my chopsticks and the utensils dangling loosely from my fingers, I stared back at Briggs with an open mouth.

“You’re kidding me?” I gawked. “There’s two pieces? And they split apart?”

He chuckled. “I thought you said you watched cop shows on television.”

“I do,” I said. “But I always thought when they said ‘bullet’ that it meant the entire thing. I guess I didn’t realize part of it was spit out on the floor and the other part ended up in the victim’s brain. I thought the whole thing went in the victim’s brain.”

He shook his head. “The brass part is the shell casing. The lead part—of the tip of the bullet—is the projectile. Inside the shell casing is the gunpowder. At the back of the shell casing is a primer. The primer is a very small explosive device. When the trigger is pulled, the weapon’s firing pin contacts the primer, and it explodes. That small explosion causes the gunpowder to explode, which does two things. One, it sends the projectile—or bullet—out the end of the barrel, toward the target. Secondly, the weapon’s slide is blasted back from the explosion, which extracts the empty shell casing and tosses it aside. A spring causes the slide to slam closed, which automatically loads the next round. If you pull the trigger again, the entire process repeats itself. So, on television when you see them grab the slide and load the weapon? That’s bullshit. The weapon is carried with a round in the chamber, and it reloads itself when you fire it, automatically.”

“So, that whole click-clack thing they do when they’re getting ready to kick in the perp’s door is fake?”

“Completely,” he said. “It’s theatrics, and nothing more.”

Without taking my eyes off him, I poked a piece of raw tuna in my mouth.

I hadn’t forgotten about what happened over the course of the day and doubted I ever would. I’d reached a point, however, where the death of my two coworkers was no longer at the forefront of my thoughts.

Vincent’s simple existence was consuming me.

“Do you listen to music?” I asked.

“All day, every day,” he said. “Any time I’m driving, of course. And, if I’m in my home, it’s playing. Always.”

“Me, too. I love music. I play it to fall asleep. I’ve got one of those programmable things beside my bed, and I can listen for an hour or whatever, and then it shuts off.”

“I leave mine playing all night,” he said.

“Do you read?”

“Technical stuff,” he said, “but not books. I don’t like fiction.”

“Any of it?”

“Nope.”

“Besides exercising and work, what do you do with your time?” I asked.

“Don’t laugh,” he said.

“I’d never laugh. I’d just like to know.”

“I save all my change. Even if I can make exact change for something, I don’t. I even find myself buying something because I know it’s going to be $1.03, just so I can get the change. Then, a few times a month, I sort it all by denomination and year, in little stacks.”

“That sounds like a tedious task. Do you cash it in?”

“Once a year, right before Christmas. Until that point, I just count it, and recount it.”

“Wait. You’ll recount this month what you’ve already counted from last month?”

In the midst of dipping his sushi in soy sauce, he paused. “I sure do.”

“Holy cow. So, when December rolls around, you’ve got a ton of change, huh?”

“Not as much as you’d think. About a thousand bucks.”

“How long does it take you to count it all, when you’re close to the end of the year?”

“An entire weekend.”

“How long have you had this ritual?”

“Since I was a kid,” he said. “I used to save my change, and I’d sort it to make it easier to count. I separated it by year, just because it took more time, and I had plenty of time to waste back then.”

I envisioned a child saving his money and dreaming of a new life. It saddened me to think he grew up in an atmosphere where counting his coins and contemplating a better life was enough of a common occurrence that he carried that tradition on into his adult life.

“So, what do you think?” he asked.

I realized I’d drifted off in my thoughts.

“About what?” I asked.

“About my ritual? From a psychological standpoint?”

“Oh.” I set my chopsticks down and acted as if I was thinking, even though I really didn’t need to. “It started as a way you could see yourself being in control of something because you felt that you were incapable of controlling your life, I suppose. At least as a child. Now? Now it’s more of a ritual than anything else.”

He aimlessly poked at his sushi. “That’s pretty much what I figured. My childhood was a disaster.”

“What were you going to do with your money? In your mind, what were you saving for?”

The corners of his mouth lifted a little. Just enough that I sensed pride. “A house.”

My heart palpitated upon hearing his response. A homeless child saving to buy his mother a place to live. To take her away from the harm he felt the streets provided. As I suspected, he was dreaming of a better life, and hoped to provide it for someone he cared for.

Vincent had been a protector since he was a child.

“The last thing we want to do when we love someone is to see them in pain,” I explained. “You were saving money in the hope of ending your mother’s pain. To save her from any more harm.”

“I saved everything I could.” He lifted his brows and looked away. “It wasn’t enough.”

“Her destiny was out of your control,” I said. “No amount of money could change that.”

“I won’t argue that,” he said. “Saving her from the clutch of death would have been impossible. Not saving her got me here. In the end, I guess I ended up right where I needed to be. I hope she’s proud of me.”

“I’m sure she is,” I said with a smile.

“Do you think she’s up there looking down here right now?” he asked. “Do you believe in all that?”

“I like thinking that way,” I said. “About my parents, at least.”

“I do, too. Ever since I was a kid, all I wanted to do was have her be proud of me.”

I felt awful about what he’d been through as a child. I decided to steer the conversation in a different direction—one that would resurrect good memories, not bad ones.

“What’s your fondest memory of it?” I asked. “Your childhood, that is?”

He looked right at me and grinned. “An ice cream cone.”

“What was special about it?”

He coughed out a laugh. “It was ice cream. At that point in my life, ice cream was a pretty big deal.”

“Why’s that?”

I no more than asked and regretted it. It was easy to forget that Vincent’s childhood was nothing short of a disaster. Ice cream was probably something he was rarely able to enjoy.

He balanced his chopsticks over the edge of his plate. His eyes remained fixed on the ornate utensils. “We were living beneath this stairway at a shitty motel in the seedy part of Miami. In the summer it would be over 90 degrees and nearly 100 percent humidity. The air was so thick and hot it was tough to breathe.”

I didn’t want to comment about him living on the streets, so I mentioned the excessive heat. “The heat sounds brutal.”

“It is in the summertime.” He shook his head. “I remember trying to fall asleep and being drenched in sweat. When I’d wake up, I’d still be soaked. There was nothing about that place I liked.”

“How long did you live there?”

“At the motel?” He shrugged one shoulder. “Quite a while. A few years. Two and a half, I think. We left there when I was in fourth grade.”

His gaze drifted away. I was at a loss for what to say. No child should have to live in such terrible conditions. I balled my fists in anger but tried to wear a look of indifference.

After a moment, he looked at me.

His eyes were smiling. “Anyway, there was this ice cream place across the street. The wall that faced the motel had a mural painted on it. It was bright.” He outstretched his arms and waved his hands toward the imaginary building. “Oranges and greens and blues with a pink background. Melting ice cream cones dripping their inaccurate pastel colors along that brick wall. I’d watch the people go in and out of that place every day and wish I was one of them. So, this guy came to see my mom one summer afternoon, but she was gone. He sat on the bottom step and smoked half a pack of cigarettes while he waited for her. In hindsight, I think she probably owed him money.” He shrugged and then continued. “I was eyeing these kids coming out of the ice cream shop when he realized he’d smoked his last cigarette. He glanced over his shoulder and said he was going to the 7-Eleven for cigarettes and asked if I wanted to get a cone. I said ‘No, thank you’, because I knew I couldn’t afford one. I was saving my money to get a house, remember? So, this guy, George was his name, he said, ‘Come on, let’s go get a cone, my treat.’ I couldn’t resist. It was my first ice cream cone. They had a huge display with dozens of flavors, but I already knew what I wanted. Chocolate. I’d been dreaming about it for years at the time. When I got ready to order, George said, ‘Give him a double dip.’ I didn’t even know there was such a thing. I ordered chocolate and strawberry, with the chocolate on bottom, so I could eat it last. It was the best day of my life, at that point.”

I wanted to cry. “How uhhm. How old were you?”

He shrugged. “Ten or eleven.”

At ten years old, he should have already had dozens of ice cream cones. My heart was broken at the thought of how difficult his childhood must have been. Seeing the smile on his face as he told the story was a testament to the man he’d become.

I swallowed my sorrow and forced a smile. “That’s a great story.”

“What’s your best memory as a kid?” he asked.

I smiled, this time for real. “My dad carrying me on his shoulders.”

“To where?”

“Everywhere. He used to hoist me up there and just carry me around. I felt invincible. It was great.”

“When did he stop doing it?”

“He didn’t.” I smiled at the memories of him that surfaced. “He used to do it just to prove he still could. Even when I was in high school.”

“He sounds like a great guy.”

“He was.”

He gazed at his sushi. “Life’s strange, you know it?”

“How so?”

“One kid lives under a motel stairway and washes his clothes in the bathroom with bar soap scraps while the maid is cleaning a stranger’s room. Simultaneously, at the other end of the nation, another kid lives at home with two loving parents. Although they take two separate paths, in the end they sit across from one another at a sushi restaurant, equal.”

I studied him as he stared blankly at his plate.

After a moment, he looked up. “Will you do something for me?”

“I’ll try.”

“Call me Vincent?”

Just like that, he lowered his armor. Aware of the significance of him letting me call him by his first name, I smiled on the inside. I held his gaze and leaned forward. “Do you want to go for ice cream, Vincent?”

His eyes lit up. “Chocolate and strawberry?”

“Only if you get the chocolate on the bottom.”