I followed his gaze to a shadowy corner at the far edge of the crowd from where a tall thin old man surveyed the chaos from behind a pair of dark glasses.
“John Smith,” I said. “I hadn’t noticed him at the church.”
“He wasn’t in attendance,” Grant said. The old man slipped away. “One titan buries another,” Grant remarked.
“Cut from the same cloth?”
“God, no,” Grant said. “Robert Paris was so vulgar he had buildings named in his honor while he was still alive. The only thing for which Smith has permitted use of his name is a rose.”
“A rose?”
“He’s an amateur horticulturist,” Grant said. “Incidentally, what are you doing here?”
“I wanted to make sure he was dead.”
He picked a fragment of bark from my shoulder and said, “It was open casket. He’s dead.”
“Open casket? That was vulgar.”
“Robert Paris never did anything tastefully except die in his sleep. As for me, when I die I’ll direct my family to bury me without fanfare.”
I smiled. “When you die, Grant, the tailors and barbers will declare a day of national mourning.”
“And when you die,” he said, not quite as lightly, “I’ll miss you.” We began walking. “In fact, I’ve missed you the past four years.”
I said nothing, feeling the sun on my neck, thinking of the funeral, thinking of Hugh, thinking as usual of too many things.
Grant said, “I’ve changed.”
“Only very young people believe that change is always for the better,” I said. “I’m mostly interested in holding the line, which is, I guess, the difference between thirty and thirty-four.”
“Am I being rejected? Again?”
“No.”
We had reached his car. He leaned against it and we looked at each other.
“I feel very old today,” I said, “as though I’ve dissipated my promise and my capacity to love. I’ve felt that way since Hugh died. I don’t know what there is left of me to offer.”
“Let me decide that.”
I nodded. “I’ll drive up this weekend.”
“Good, I’ll see you then.”
I walked back to my car and got in. I loosened my tie and rolled up my sleeves, tossing my jacket into the back seat. On the front seat was a book I’d bought that morning, The Poems of C.P. Cavafy, the poet Hugh had mentioned to me that distant summer evening in San Francisco. I glanced at my watch. It was almost one, time to drive to the restaurant where I was meeting Terry Ormes for lunch. I picked up the book. Flipping through it at the bookstore I’d marked a page with the little poem that I now read aloud:
The surroundings of the house, centers, neighborhoods which I see and where I walk; for years and years.
I have created you in joy and in sorrows: out of so many circumstances, out of so many things.
You have become all feeling for me.
The words had a liturgical cadence, almost a prayer. You have become all feeling for me. I had not come to see Robert Paris buried, but to bury Hugh. And still I was dissatisfied. I put the book down and started up the car.
Terry ran her fingertip around the rim of her glass of wine as I ordered another bourbon and water. The lunchtime crowd at Barney’s had thinned considerably since we’d been seated an hour earlier. The plate of pasta in front of me was mostly uneaten, but I’d refused the waiter’s attempts to clear it away. The presence of food helped me justify the amount of bourbon I was drinking.
Terry wore a satiny cotton dress, white with thin red and blue vertical stripes. A diamond pendant hung from her slim neck. Looking at her I wondered if she had a lover. I didn’t imagine many men could accept her calm self- possession and luminous intelligence without feeling threatened. And, just now, she also looked beautiful to me.
“I should be getting back to work,” she said, making no effort to move. Instead she poured the last of the wine from the bottle into her glass. Continuing our conversation, she asked, “What is it you can’t accept?”
I shrugged. “Robert Paris’s death, I guess. I wanted a confrontation and he ups and dies on me.”
“But you don’t think he was killed?”
“No. Apparently he’s been in bad health for years and he died of natural causes.”
“Then let it rest,” she said. She sipped her wine. “What are you going to do with yourself now?”
“I don’t know. I’m completely unprepared for anything other than the practice of law.”
“That sounds like a good reason to do something else.”
“I agree, but the details of my new life are — elusive.”
The waiter deposited my drink in front of me and made another play for my plate. This time I let him take it.
“Just watch the whiskey intake,” she said.
“I have to get my calories somewhere.”
“You might come to my house for dinner some night.”
“I’d like that.”
We looked at each other.
“I’m offering as a friend,” she said.
“I know. I accept.”
I saw her look away. What did she see when she looked at me, I wondered. An alien or just a lonely man? The latter, I thought. Her dinner invitation came out of compassion, not curiosity.
“We’re both different, Terry. We play against expectation and we’re good at what we do. It’s our competence that makes us outsiders, not the fact that you’re a woman cop or I’m a gay lawyer.”
She nodded, slightly, and made a movement to leave. I rose with her.
“Take care of yourself, Henry. Go away for a few days, meet someone new, and when you get back, call me.”
“I promise,” I said and watched her go.
I should have gone, too, but instead I stayed another hour at the bar. Finally, when the first wave of the office workers from the surrounding business washed in, I asked for the check, paid it and left.
I put the key into the lock, turned it, pushed the door and nothing happened. The dead-bolt was bolted. I fumbled on my key chain for the dead-bolt key and jammed it into the lock. I leaned my shoulder against the door and pushed. It opened. I stood for a moment staring at the door. I didn’t remember bolting it. In fact, I never did.
Stepping into my apartment I suddenly stopped. There was something wrong. I looked around. Everything appeared as it had been when I set off for the university that morning, but was it? Had I closed the book lying on the coffee table? I walked around the room.
The dead-bolt. I knew I hadn’t bolted the door. There was no point. There were so many other ways to break into my apartment that it never occurred to me that someone might try using the front door. But someone had, and he had very carefully turned both locks when he left.
Slowly, starting with my bedroom, I methodically went through every room of the apartment, taking inventory. It took more than an hour to make the search. In the bedroom, I lifted from the wall my framed law school diploma. I opened the wall safe beneath. There I found intact my grandfather’s pocket watch, my birth certificate, my passport, my parents’ wedding rings — optimistically bequeathed to me — and five thousand dollars cash, some of the bills twenty years old, the sum of my father’s estate. Everything was accounted for.
It was the same in the bathroom and the kitchen and in the hall closet. I sat down at my desk and began going through the drawers. Then I discovered what was missing: Hugh’s letters to his grandfather, which Aaron Gold had given me.
