A gray-haired man approached me on the sidewalk. It took me a moment to recognize him, he had aged so visibly since the last time I saw him. It was Senator James Abelard. I could not imagine that he would want to talk to me, after what had happened, but he was walking directly toward me. He reached out his hand.

“You spoke well,” he said. “You all spoke well.”

“We all loved Arthur,” I answered.

“I know you did. So did I. He was an unusual man.”

I looked at his face. He had spent a season in hell since I saw him in his office in the Capitol. I needed to say something to him, to tell him that I was not the same brash young man he had met.

“I’m sorry for what happened between us, Senator. I’ve thought a lot about it since then. I’m not sure it would happen the same way again.”

He didn’t answer. He shook my hand again, and walked away.

A reception was beginning at the Athenian Club, a few blocks away, where official Washington was gathering to assert its claim on Arthur with more speeches and testimonials. Arthur was one of those people who had helped define a social circle: journalists, members of Congress, foreign service officers, professors. Arthur had given this unwieldy group an identity over the years—they were all his friends—and they must have wondered how they would survive collectively now that he was dead. Without Arthur’s charm to animate their proceedings, they were a group of rich, well-educated windbags.

The church had almost emptied now. A few mourners who had been sitting in the upper balconies were still trickling out, but the show had ended. A feeling of loneliness came over me. I hadn’t loved, or even liked, Arthur until near the end, but now I felt devastated by losing him. I had joined the long list of people whose secrets Arthur knew, and kept. I wasn’t sure I could share them with another human being. Indeed, I wasn’t sure where my future led, on the road away from that church.

I was trying to decide whether to go to the reception at the Athenian Club when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around and saw Tom Rubino. He was dressed in the funeral outfit: blue suit, white shirt, blue tie. Unlike the other sad-eyed mourners, he looked radiant. He shook my hand firmly.

“We need to talk,” Rubino said. He handed me a slip of paper with a date, time and address written on it.

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