“I did,” Hudson answered. “Once.”

“He wasn’t as romantic, eh?” Ben remarked, removing the bread from the top of his roast beef sandwich and squeezing mustard from a plastic pack onto the meat.

“He died,” said Hudson.

Ben looked up. “I guess it’s my turn to say I’m sorry,” he said.

“It’s okay,” Hudson told him. “To answer your question, no, he wasn’t exactly the romantic type. He was more like you. Methodical. Logical. Reliable.”

“You sound like you’re describing a car,” said Ben.

Hudson took a bite of his sandwich. The turkey was dry, he noticed. He wished he’d taken more mustard packets. But the tomato was good, and the lettuce wasn’t at all soggy. He chewed slowly, thinking about Ben’s comment.

“Paul was the kid at school you always wanted to be like,” he said. “Smart, handsome, totally charming. He could get people to do just about anything he wanted.” He took a sip of 7UP and set the bottle on the edge of the sandwich wrapper to keep it from blowing away. “I take that back,” he said. “Paul never had to get people to do anything. They wanted to. He had this thing about him where people wanted to take care of him, almost as if he were a child. I don’t think he even realized it.”

“Did you?” asked Ben. “Want to take care of him, I mean.”

Hudson wiped a bit of mustard from his lip. “Yes,” he said. “And I did. At least until the end.”

Ben was breaking up a piece of bread, which he tossed to the small group of tiny birds that had been watching them from a few feet away. They descended on the crumbs, snatching them up and looking at him expectantly. “How did he die?” Ben asked, wiping his hands together to get rid of the last bits of bread.

“Cancer,” Hudson said quickly. “It happened really quickly. He was diagnosed in June and died in September.”

“How long ago?” asked Ben.

“Two years,” Hudson answered. “Almost, anyway. That’s how long we were together, too. He’s been dead almost as long as I knew him. I hadn’t thought of that until now.”

“I’m sorry to have brought it up,” said Ben.

Hudson picked up the second half of his sandwich. Although Ben was already finished with his, Hudson ate slowly. “No,” he said between bites. “It’s good to think about him. I tried not to at first. I thought it would help me move on. I was wrong.”

“There’s been nobody since him?” Ben asked.

Hudson shook his head. “Nobody that stuck around longer than a night,” he said. “Sorry if that was too much information.”