Say you happen upon a clearing in a city - a small park, for example, with a couple of trees, a couple of ice cream vendors, some children running around, their high-pitched laughter bouncing off the buildings in the distance - and in the center of that clearing you see a man dressed as a clown or a gorilla and that clown or gorilla is reciting poetry (his voice is light, teasing, his voice is deep, rich, as you arrive he is saying "The Child is father of the Man..... ") and at the same time he is riding a unicycle and also juggling such things as oranges, apples, eggs, and when he finishes he twists long, thin balloons into poodles and giraffes and passes them out to the children and pretty girls, well then, stop - even if you don't want a balloon dachshund.

Hang around - buy a rocket pop, lick it before it drips on your new suit, grab a seat on the dark green bench, smell the oozing grass, check out the rubbery tulips, feel the sun on your fingers, listen, because birds may be singing. And watch the juggler. He's a member of a select tribe of the lucky ones. He's got the hands. Most don't. This may be your only chance to catch his act. He, his ilk, move often, move quickly. Sp you're the lucky one.

This man, this juggler, is not my brother. Danny can do all of this. More, even. He has the hands. He practices, practices, the hours stacked end to end form a huge heart, wide as years, long as life. He looks only at the swirling, twirling objects, his tongue pushed to the corner and a bit out of his mouth. The cords of muscles, tendons, veins in his neck and arms are clearly visible, straining the skin, flowing past the marbles that are the bones of his wrists, ending in the polished oak of his hands. Sweat forms on his forehead, rolls. He makes things float, makes them fly, bounces them off walls, ceilings, floors. No one sees. He gets evicted. The people underneath, alongside, do not enjoy the constant pounding, the dull thuds of balls, juggling clubs, fruit, the heavy thumps of bowling balls, do not enjoy having axes and razor-sharp knives split their air, do not shiver in glee at the splat of broken eggs.

He just got kicked out of a new place, one he liked - it was a five-minute walk from the orange and pink Dunkin' Donuts that punctuates the grayness of Route 7 in Troy, N.Y., the Dunkin' Donuts where my brother is the 3 p.m. to midnight fryer and froster. When he got the job he told me he'd be working donuts into his act, the act no one's seen, the act he was perfecting. "I'm almost ready," he told me, not three weeks ago. He likes his job. He likes any job, almost, so long as the hours are good. Before this he was the bean masher in a Mexican restaurant in Santa Fe, New Mexico, before that he painted firecracker stands in Missoula, Montana, but quit due to recurring nightmares of small children blowing off their fingers. Before that, I don't remember. He said his shift at Double D's was good because then he'd spend the hours from midnight to dawn, when the rest of the world is asleep, doing his real work, juggling.

He called today, from a pay phone. His roommate of only one month, a guy named Otto, told him, "Screwing, I can take. Moans, groans, no problem. But one more thud and I'll beat the hell out of you-and I kind of like you. But I'll break your fingers. I swear it." So Danny left. He always goes quietly, leaving a wake of chipped paint behind him. But he usually lasts longer than one month. As he spoke, feeding quarters to the mechanical demand, I wondered whether the world is losing patience with my movie-star handsome brother, whose cheeks flash with dimples when he smiles, and who is pushing 30-years-old and who says he is a damn good fryer and froster, but complains that the grease is starting to get to him, that in his dreams he can see it invading the cells of his lungs, one cell at a time. And then the voice said "Please deposit $2.70," the line went dead, and Danny called a few minutes later, person-to-person collect, from Dunkin' Donuts in Troy, N.Y. to the law firm on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, Illinois, that is the site of my job, my career, my life. "I just thought you should know," he said. "It's over, I'm through with juggling," and he hung up.

So what could I do? I went to the airport and got on a plane headed for Albany, N.Y., neighbor of Troy.

He slipped the noose, flew the coop, cut the ties that bind, dive bombed from the nest early, or maybe he was just different from the start, the words, "It's a phase, it's just a phase he's going through," echoing and reechoing through the halls of our house like a mantra while our parents had his room painted, and repainted, and painted again, to cover the chips. A juggling club, thrown against a wall over and over again, can do considerable damage. Danny's bedroom was on the third floor of the house, the converted attic, and when he practiced, bouncing things off walls for the fun of it, dropping them to the floor when he was done with that particular trick, the vibrations trembled down through the house. The thuds and shudders were like white noise, the hum of an air conditioner. Every now and then that hum was broken by a truly majestic crash or thud, one that always made me feel like laughing as I wondered what trick he was trying to master. In later years, when I became aware of such things, I wondered whether Danny's juggling affected our parents' sex life if, indeed, they had one. Was it disconcerting, at certain crucial moments, to have one's concentration and, by extension, rhythm, broken by a sudden noise from above? Or a shatter? Once in a while, not too often, he broke a window.

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