He narrowed his eyes. “You’re deflecting,” he remarked. “I gather your sponsor doesn’t enforce the policy of no relationships in the first year of sobriety.” When I didn’t immediately respond, he said, “Oh. I see. You haven’t told him.”

“I’m not in love with anyone,” I said. “So, there’s nothing to tell.”

“A very lawyerly answer,” he replied. “Well, if you want to keep things from your sponsor that’s between you and him.” He tapped ash from his cigarette. “Are you working on any interesting cases?”

“I’m doing an insurance investigation,” I said, relieved to be let off the hook. “A death claim. Local guy named Bill Ryan.”

He was suddenly very attentive. “Bill Ryan? I knew him.”

“You did? From where?”

He waved his Sobranie in the direction of the parish hall. “From here. From meetings.”

“Bill Ryan was a member of AA?” I asked, surprised.

Simon raised a doubtful eyebrow. “A member? No. An auditor. Wandered in now and then and you could practically see the little black cloud above his head. But whenever the talk turned to God, he’d bolt. I stopped him once and told him I was an atheist but AA worked for me and it could work for him. We had coffee a couple of times after that but in the end…” Simon shrugged. “Well, as the cliché goes, it’s not a program for people who need it, it’s a program for people who want it.”

“What was he like?”

Simon dropped his cigarette to the ground and crushed it with the tip of his handmade Italian loafer. “The clinical term is decompensating.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Falling apart. His personality, I mean. That was my professional assessment.”

“The booze?”

“That was a symptom, not the cause. Frankly, I never got enough of his story out of him to understand what the pressures were but, whatever they were, they were pulling him apart with centrifugal force.” A bell tinkled from within the parish hall. “The meeting’s starting. Shall we go in?”

“Did Bill ever talk to you about his boyfriend?”

“If he did, I’ve forgotten.” He smiled his fey smile. “Boyfriend woes are the stock in trade around here and after a while they all sound alike. I wonder,” he added, “if yours will be any different.”

I found Adam looking confused on the sidewalk in front of the grand three-story Victorian where I lived. It was not an uncommon response. The address of the house was 143; my address was 143 ¼.

“You live here?” he asked when he saw me.

“In the basement,” I explained.