“Oh, he gave plenty. He said he’d gotten some bad news that put his life in perspective, and that he wasn’t wasting another second being unhappy. How’d you like to be on the tail end of that, huh?”

“You knew about his cancer?”

“Found out about it then, didn’t I? Me, like a fool, told him I’d hang in, help him through. I’m a nurturer. I can’t help myself. That’s when he tells me that won’t be necessary. Just like that. ‘That won’t be necessary.’ He had plans, he said, to travel the world, alone, on his yacht while he still had the time. Alone. His yacht. Here I’m thinking he’s a starving artist like me, and he’s got a yacht? He worked part-time at the arts center down the street, for Pete’s sake, and all the while he’s some rich kid from the North Shore? And he’s painting lighthouses? And he swept out of here owing me six hundred bucks? I’m bouncing off canvases, hoping to make some sales so I can quit my day job, and he’s sitting on all that?” Cantu tossed his head back, grimaced. “It got real fast after that.”

I looked a question.

“I may have tossed some of his clothes down the garbage chute. And I may have threatened to strangle him, though, obviously, I didn’t. And, once he was gone, I may have told everyone we know that he was high-class trash.” Cantu folded his arms across his chest, pouted a little. “He deserved it. I’ve no regrets.”

“So he told you he was dying and then walked out on you.”

“Calm as anything. Only the more I thought about it, the angrier I got, and then all the second-guessing started. You know how it goes. I convinced myself that maybe he didn’t really have cancer and that the whole story was a big lie to cover up the fact that he was sleeping around. He’d cleared most of his things out by then, but the stuff I tossed was still in the Dumpster.