Here's the thing, though. Tony got drunk at the Halloween dance, and he got shoveled off to Obie's the week after. Which means that at this point, he's been hanging out with Obadiah twice a week, sometimes more, a week for the past five months. Hours sometimes. Tony is pretty sure, too, that his dad signed off on the going-to-see-the-guidance-counselor thing. He recalls some kind of half-conversation about it over chicken with green beans and the middle of the A-section of the Financial Times.

Thick as Howard Stark's skin is, he can't quite get over the shock of hearing that name -- in particular, the diminutive -- pop out of his seveteen year old son's mouth like that.

Next morning, Obadiah comes out of the teacher's lounge for a little fresh air and to smoke a cigarette in the fine March morning. There's a chauffeured black Benz with tinted windows waiting in the teacher's parking lot.