My oldest brother Steven Wolfe is what you'd call a hard bastard. He's successful. He's smart. He's determined.

The thing with Steve is that nothing will ever stop him. It's not only in him. It's on him, around him. You can smell it, sense it. His voice is hard and measured, and everything about him says, "You're not going to get in my way." When he talks to people, he's friendly enough, but the minute they try one on him, forget it. If someone tries to trample him, you'd put your house on it that he'll do twice the job on them. Steve never forgets.

Me on the other hand.

I'm not really like Steve in that way.

I kind of wander around a lot.

That's what I do.

Personally, I think it comes from not having many friends, or in fact, any friends at all, really.

There was a time when I really ached to be a part of a pack of friends. I wanted a bunch of guys I'd be prepared to bleed for. It never happened. When I was younger I had a mate called Greg and he was an okay guy. Actually, we did a lot together. Then we drifted apart. It happens to people all the time, I guess. No big deal. In a way, I'm part of the Wolfe pack, and that's enough. I know without a doubt that I'd bleed for anyone in my family.

Anyplace.

Anytime.

My best mate is Rube.

Steve, on the other hand, has plenty of friends, but he wouldn't bleed for any of them, because he wouldn't trust them to bleed for him. In that way he's just as alone as me.

He's alone.

I'm alone.

There just happen to be people around him, that's all. (People meaning friends, of course.)

Anyway, the point of telling you about all this is that sometimes when I go out wandering at night I'll go up to Steve's apartment, which is about a kilometer from home. It's usually when I can't handle standing outside that girl's house, when the ache of it aches too much.

He's got a nice place, Steve, on the second floor, and he has a girl who lives there as well. Often she's not there because she works in a company that sends her on business trips and all that kind of thing. I always thought she was pretty nice, I s'pose, since she tolerated me when I went up to visit. Her name's Sal and she's got nice legs. That's a fact I can never escape.

"Hey Cam."

"Hey Steve."

That's what we say every time I go up and he's home. It was no different the night after the beer ice block incident. I buzzed from downstairs. He called me up. We said what we always say.

The funny thing is that over time, we've become at least slightly better at talking to each other. The first time, we sat there and had black coffee and said nothing. We just let our eyes swirl into the pools of coffee and let our voices be numb and silent. There was always a thought in me that maybe Steve had a sort of grudge against everyone in the Wolfe family because he seemed to be the only winner, in the world's eyes, anyway. It was like he might have a good cause to be ashamed of us. I never was sure.