The cardboard cup shook in Waldo’s hand, spilling coffee on his lap. He didn’t notice. “Eddie’s had a bad headache for a couple of days. Bad enough so he called in sick. He never does that. I told him, go see the doctor, but he says, no it’s just a headache and all he needs is aspirin. Then yesterday, he gets a fever and starts throwing up. I thought it was flu but he wakes me up in the middle of the night talking crazy. He didn’t know where he was or who I was. That’s when I called the ambulance and we came here.” He managed to take a sip of coffee. “Meningitis? I don’t even know what that is.”

“Me, either, Waldo, but you know they got a cure for everything now. Eddie’s going to be okay.”

Waldo spent the night with Bill and Nick. In the morning they and Mrs. Donohue drove him to the hospital. When they arrived, Eddie’s ex-wife, Tamara, and their two daughters were in the hall outside the ward where Eddie had been taken the day before. They were holding each other and crying. Yvette, the oldest girl, raised her tear-streaked face and shrieked at Waldo, “Daddy’s dead!”

Nick gasped, Mrs. Donohue crossed herself, and Waldo stumbled, braced himself against a snot-green wall and howled. Bill froze in disbelief. He had seen Eddie last weekend and he had seemed the same as always. How could he be dead?

Tamara ran to Waldo and clawed his chest and face. “You did this!” she screamed. “You and your faggot ways. You killed my Eddie!”

Waldo cowered under the blows. Bill pulled her off him. Nick and Mrs. Donohue dragged Waldo down the hall to the elevators. Bill released Tamara and ran down the hall, arriving just as the elevator doors slid open. They pushed Waldo into the car and went down to the lobby, Waldo muttering, “It wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t my fault…”

The morning of Eddie’s funeral, Bill met Waldo for breakfast at Church Street Station. The restaurant was packed with Castro clones and drag queens hunched over massive plates of grease and carbs, hangover food to absorb the effects of the previous night’s bar hopping. The place smelled and sounded like a bar, smoky and loud and dark. Bill, who had arrived early, watched a waiter sling a tray of Bloody Marys to a boisterous table of six men, all in plaid shirts and Levi button-fly jeans. He could have used a drink himself, but he was trying to get sober again after yet another bad episode with Nick who had gone back home to his mother.