“Blame for what?” Daddy’s voice sounded weaker.

“For the way your life fell apart. For marrying that Goddamned woman in there. For the way she stole your balls from you right in front of your eyes. So you could call me a Mama’s boy…”

“You were a Mama’s boy. Still are.” There was a tremor now in the voice. “I know what the two of you were doing an hour ago in the kitchen.”

Barney turned toward him. “That’s right, Daddy. We climaxed together. It was wonderful.”

“Bullshit,” Daddy said. His voice shook. His face was gray.

Barney suddenly began to laugh. “Maybe you can’t believe it.”

“She was frigid. It was the way she was brought up…”

“Bullshit,” Barney said, laughing. “She wasn’t frigid for me, you cowardly son of a bitch.”

Suddenly his father’s face twisted in pain and his pale hand went to his chest, squeezing at the shirt pocket. His lips were blue.

Barney stared at him. “You can’t have a heart attack when you’re dead,” he said.

Daddy choked and fell off the chair onto the deck. He lay there, silently writhing, for several minutes. His hands were white; they clenched into fists and unclenched rhythmically. After a while a kind of foam began to appear on Daddy’s lips; his face was ghastly. His eyes stared upward toward the sky. He made no sound. Then, abruptly, he twitched over on one side, toward where Barney sat. Barney stared at him. His age had not changed but his position was now fetal. Barney remembered a time forty years before when as a small child he had seen his father lying like that in the bed of a cheap California motor court; his body had been pressed into a wet stain on the rumpled sheet. Barney remembered the smell.

“Oh, my God, Daddy,” he said aloud, looking down at his father, “you’re just like she is. You’re a goddamned infant. You always were.”

A blue jay was chattering somewhere beyond the terrace fence. The black cat came softly back outside into the sun and walked toward Daddy. There came a soft, hissing sound from Daddy’s throat and then a hoarse, convulsive shuddering, and then silence. The cat nudged Daddy with his nose and then began to purr. Daddy was clearly dead.

Barney heard footsteps from the French doors and turned to look. Mother was there, as a middle-aged woman in a cheap dress. She spoke through loose false teeth. “It looks as if Allston’s died again,” she said, matter-of-factly.

“How can that be…?” Barney said.

Mother shook her head worriedly. “I don’t know, Barney, but it happens to both of us all the time where we are. The same deaths.”

Barney stared at her. “Then you have to go through lung cancer?”

Mother pursed her lips. “Often,” she said.

“Jesus!” Barney said. “Then maybe it isn’t Limbo at all. Maybe it’s Hell.”

“Best not to know,” Mother said, briskly. “I’ve got to get him back now, and get back myself. Strict rules.” She looked away from him toward the Hotel Pierre and began to shimmer. “My Daddy always stayed at the Pierre,” she said, wistfully. “And there were always flowers in his room.” As her body began to fade, Barney glanced down and saw that Daddy’s dead body was fading too. There was shattered glass on the deck. He felt tears again, just beginning.