“Noreen,” I said. “I think Joey’s killed himself. We’ll only find out for sure when I draw the curtains and read that note. Maybe you’re the kind of writer who feels she needs to see everything. Who thinks she has a duty to report everything, unflinchingly. I don’t know. But it’s my opinion that you need to brace yourself or leave the room. I’ve seen enough bodies in my time to know that it’s never—”

“I’ve seen a dead body before, Bernie. I told you about that lynching in Georgia. And my father, he killed himself, with a shotgun. You don’t forget that in a hurry, I can tell you.”

Reflecting that it was interesting how quickly my concern to spare her feelings turned to something like sadism, I yanked the curtains open with no more argument. She wanted to play at being Turgenev, it was all right with me.

Joey Deutsch lay across his bed, still wearing the same clothes I had seen him in earlier. He was half twisted up off the mattress, as if some of the springs had burst out of the material under the small of his back. He was clean-shaven as before—only now it looked as if he were wearing a brown mustache and a small beard. These were corrosive burns and the result of whatever he had swallowed to poison himself. A bottle lay on the floor where he had dropped it, and next to this was a pool of bloody vomit. I picked the bottle up carefully and sniffed at the open neck.

“Lye,” I told her, but she had already turned away and was leaving the room. I followed her into the hallway. “He drank lye. Jesus. What a way to kill yourself.”

Noreen had pressed her face into a corner of the entrance hall like a disobedient child. Her arms were folded defensively across her chest and her eyes were closed. I lit a couple of cigarettes, tapped her on the elbow, and gave her one. I didn’t say anything. Whatever I might have said would have sounded like “I told you so.”

Still smoking, I went back into the living room. On top of a pile of fight magazines was a small leather writing folder. Inside were some envelopes and notepaper that matched the note addressed to me. So did the ink in the Pelikan he’d replaced in the little cylindrical leather sleeve. There was nothing that made me suspect anyone had forced him to write the note. The writing was neat and unhurried. I’d had love letters that were much less legible, although not for a long time. I read it carefully, as if Joey Deutsch had meant something to me. It seemed like the least I could do for a dead man. Then I read it again.