“Just upstairs,” the man from San Francisco repeated, as if a further meaning might be decoded epistrophically.

Actually, Nicholas had not “sprung to life” seventeen years before at the Hassler, “just upstairs.” He had not “sprung to life” anywhere seventeen years before, not in any hotel, not anywhere in Rome, nor for that matter anywhere in Europe. Nicholas, I expect to his displeasure, had not been conceived “abroad.” Twenty-two years before, Nicholas had been conceived in a large Victorian house, most likely on a large Victorian bed, possibly in the large Victorian bed, possibly under the covers, on Russian Hill, on Francisco Street, in the 800 block, where from our mother and father’s large Victorian bed, as from all the rooms in front, there was a somewhat banal, postcard view of Alcatraz, which, when he was five, Nicholas found an affront and asked our father to have moved. I go into these details only to suggest that there was nothing unbecoming about the truth, about the actual site of my brother’s conception. In other words, Nicholas “sprang to life” at a suitable address, but not suitable enough for Nicholas, not that night in Rome with the man from San Francisco, and since the notion of springing to life in the Hassler was a notion that pleased him, he embellished his biography to entertain the man.

He entertained himself, too, and that night with the man from San Francisco my brother began what became a tradition of attributing his conception to the leading hotels of the world.

He sprang to life at the Cipriani.

He sprang to life at the San Domenico Palace.

He sprang to life at the Royal Hawaiian.

As for the matter of chronology—the truncation of five years from his life, which he could get away with that year—Nicholas frequently remarked that there is no point in telling a lie that is only part untrue.

When people ask, I think I will say that my brother came to a bad end at the Crillon.

At Dukes.

The Ritz.

He would like that—coming to a bad end at a suitable address.

Even if it is a lie that is only part untrue.

“You should know that I never buy my second drink,” my brother told the man from San Francisco.

It had come out that the man and woman were brother and sister instead of husband and wife.

The man bought Nicholas a drink. He bought me a drink and his sister a drink, and he bought himself one, too.

“Aren’t we lucky,” Nicholas said to the sister, “that we’re stunning enough to get men to buy us drinks?”

By addressing this to the woman, Nicholas was, of course, addressing the man. It was the man who had been meant to hear it, and had. The woman, the sister, in her appearance, was unfortunate. The man was about my age, somewhat robust, built a little wide for double-breasted. I thought I might have seen him, here or there, before.