Zoli looked at him through the fence. Ossie thought he might laugh, or say something mean, and he braced himself for it. But Zoli only nodded, slowly, once, as if Ossie had said something in a language Zoli had grown up speaking.
"Yeah," Zoli said. "Okay."
He walked off down the alley toward Bakewell Street, and Ossie picked up the trash bag and put it in the can, and stood in the dark yard for a while, listening to the Tigers lose.
The next afternoon, at three fifty-two, Zoli Ferko leaned his patched-up Schwinn against the bus sign and sat down on the other end of the bench.
He didn't say anything. Ossie didn't either. They sat there like two strangers at a train station, a whole person's worth of space between them, and when Aunt Yolie came out of the white house in her hat and crossed the street, she looked at the two of them and her face lit up in a way Ossie had not seen yet.
"Zoltán," she said. "Kicsikém. You are waiting too?"
"Yeah, néni," Zoli said. His voice was different with her, lower and gentler, like somebody carrying a full cup. "I'm waiting too."
She sat down between them. She patted Zoli's knee, and then Ossie's, the same way, as if they were two of a pair, and then she looked up Front Street toward the bridge, and they all three waited for the four o'clock bus.
It came at four-oh-five. Pista was not on it.
"He is working late," Aunt Yolie said.
"Yeah," said Zoli. "They work him too hard."