He forgot. That was how it started.

He took a wrong turn somewhere -- never did find out where -- on a route he had driven three times a month for five years. Three times a month from his home in Bowie, up to Shucky's, a restaurant and bar in Fell's Point, a couple miles and a world away from the tourist traps of the Inner Harbor. Three times a month to sit in with the band, noodle some jazz standards, maybe sing some of the old hits if somebody in the crowd called out for them and he was in a good enough mood. (Somebody always called out and he was always in a good enough mood.) Three times a month.

Until that day, when he forgot. Until he took a wrong turn on a route he had driven over a hundred times and found himself on a street of boarded-up row houses, night shadows slanting ominously, corner boys glancing menace as the big, black Escalade rolled slow and shiny down the street, looking for Shucky's. Looking for something he recognized. Something that fit into the neat and orderly pattern of his life. Finding only corner boys who straightened up now from crouched positions, adjusted pants whose crotches rode somewhere below their knees, making ready to come see who this buster was rolling up in here all slow and s---.

He pressed the accelerator. Got out of there.

When he got to Shucky's it was a few minutes after the hour. He could hear his old pianist, Mario Gaines, playing with his quartet as he came through the door. He could not remember ever being more embarrassed.

Mario gave him a look, nodded. There was something sad in the look. Like somebody had died. Mo was smiling, about to make his way up to the bandstand, his mind already cooking up a one-liner to cover his late arrival, when a hand hooked his elbow. It was the manager, spindly little old white woman named Sophie. He had always liked Sophie. She smoked like a fire and had a croaking voice you could hear all the way out to the alley in the back.

She led him back to her office, a cluttered room the size of a walk-in closet. She motioned to a chair and he sat. ``What happened to you?'' she said, sitting on the edge of her desk.

He couldn't think of a lie quickly enough, so he told her the truth. Told her he had missed a turn and gotten lost. The big voice turned softer than he'd ever heard. ``You've been forgetting a lot of things lately, Mo,'' she said.

That pissed him off for some reason and he asked what the hell she was talking about.

Her voice was still gentle, so damn gentle, he felt like slapping her. She told him people had been talking. They said he sometimes asked the same question two and three times. They said sometimes he seemed to have trouble following the conversation and couldn't remember simple things. They said he was moody.

He told her she was full of s---, so she took his hand, actually grabbed it the way you would a recalcitrant child, and led him around the restaurant. He had to stand there and listen to them all, the busboys, the cashier, the waiter, their voices soft like hers as they told him she wasn't exaggerating. As they told him he had a problem.

He said they were all full of s---. And that's when the gentleness finally went out of Sophie's voice.

``Moses,'' she said, ``you've got to go get yourself tested.''

He told her there was no need. She said he should consider himself fired until he did. He told her they could all f--- themselves. He said it loudly and customers looked up. Everyone except Mario, who kept his head down, concentrating on That's Life.

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