I'm playing this song very loudly over and over again and smoking Camels like they give life and banging on the keyboard while the clock runs down and hoping to get it right like the songwriter got it right. Because sometimes all that matters is to put your finger on the pain and press hard against the source.

When you're back in your old neighborhood, the cigarettes taste so good. But you're so misunderstood. You're so misunderstood... I'd like to thank you all for nothing. I'd like to thank you all for nothing at all...

The song is taking me back to my old neighborhood, Mount Lebanon, Pennsylvania, where the cigarettes sure did taste good. Not just because they were stolen on junior high playgrounds with Nan, but she definitely added some flavor. I know not everyone has had the fortune of having a Nan in his life, but I did, so I'm going to tell you about it, because this is what matters today.

Nan was 25 when I was 13. At least that's how it seemed to me then, and it's why I have little trouble conjuring up images of her now, almost 20 years after we "went together." In truth, she was only a year older than me, but to an unsure, 13-year-old with nothing cooler going on than a hand-painted Blue Oyster Cult denim jacket, she seemed to hold the key to the universe. She even dug the jacket.

Why does Nan matter? For the same reason she's always mattered, but one I hadn't thought of in a long time: Because she liked me. She was the first to like me in that way when it was really important for someone kind and understanding to like someone whose knees were too pointy and whose limbs outran his motor skills and whose hair was too long and disheveled for his face and whose years of Catholic schools had already nearly beaten him into fearful submission. I'm sure God put Jewish girls on Earth to save Irish Catholic boys from themselves.

I'm thinking of how much Nan mattered to me because today, almost 20 years after we went together, I learned she was murdered. "Brutally slain" is the way the newspapers described it. A day of training in Chicago for a new job, a trip to a gym, a stop at a grocery store for some wine and cheese, and in the morning, the hotel maid finds her with a stocking around her neck and a phone cord around her ankles.

I don't know how it got to that point. I don't know who else she left behind. I don't know much and I don't care.

When I first heard the news, through a mutual friend, all I could say was, "God, that's weird." I sat there for a minute, trying to make it register. I had this dumb thought that the law of averages finally caught up. You know, at 20,000-plus per year, if you live in America, sooner or later someone you're close to, or were, is going to get murdered. After all, it had been a long time.

   
artwork: louise roach