I cannot say that I am sure he ever stopped doing it.

I cannot say for certain that he did not know he was being watched.

I cannot even say that my brother did not know I was the one who was watching.

There might be another way. Maybe I could pay to get this done, pay someone to pack up and empty this place out. There must be companies you can call, the way you do when you move, companies that come with cartons, with padded wrap, and do it for you.

There must be a way to get it done, without doing it yourself.

There must be a way to get it all behind you.

If not, someone has not been smart, someone has not been on the ball. Someone has overlooked a need, missed a calling, lost a chance, because doing this could be an industry.

Doing this could be a life.

But I do nothing that a company would do. I stay here, sitting on the cashmere blanket with the cigarette burn in it, looking at objects around the room, my little brother’s things as he left them.

Of course, I have looked a bit in other rooms, but I have chosen this room—if chosen it is what I’ve done—because this is the room with the best objects.

I do not mean “best” in the sense of necessarily to my taste, though I am thinking that I may take the lacquer table by the bed.

I can see myself in it.

Nicholas once told me the name for this kind of antique lacquer, for the old Japanese process that, over time, makes the black base show through in random patches under the red layers laid over it. The red is actually an orange-red, what is sometimes called Chinese red, but the name that Nicholas told me sounded Italian, not Japanese, not even Oriental, and it may have been that Nicholas did not know the real name.

Nicholas may have called it a name that the men who made it never called it.

I am wondering if Nicholas knew the name that the lacquer is called among the artisans. I am wondering if he ever got around to learning Japanese, as he used to threaten that he would one day, because he expected it would be fun to flirt with what he called little Japanese houseboys, what he called little Japanese comestibles.

Nicholas called most men little.

It was nothing against the Japanese.

Nicholas liked beautiful things. But he did not keep

them beautiful. The lacquer is water-ringed from drinks he drank in bed.

I mean “best” in another sense.

I mean “best” in the sense that objects, particulars, things like cigarette burns in cashmere blankets and water rings on antique lacquer, can be said to cast a verdict on a life.

I am not saying they do.

I am saying they can be said to.