Excerpt from Charming Billy

Charming Billy, by Alice McDermott. . Here we get a glimpse of Billy Lynch as a young man – running into his cousin Dennis on the subway.

It would take an act of will to picture him now as he was then: to put aside every image that had come in between, including that dark, stiffly bloated remnant of his face that was Billy in death, and remember him clearly: thin and handsome in those days, the dipped brim of his fedora over the blue eyes and the rimless glasses, a nick of dried blood on his smooth cheek, a red blush from the cold. A lingering scent of the church he had just come from on his overcoat, and a taste of the Eucharist still on his breath as they stood together in the crowded subway car, hand over hand on the same white pole, exchanging shouted bits of news or falling into silence as the train rattled and screeched and tried to knock them off their feet. As glad for each other’s company as if they’d long been deprived of it.