He gets out of bed, reaches for the pants and shirt he left draped on the bench. “Then come with me. I need you to do this. Please come with me, I want to go outside.”

I push back the covers, head for the closet.

• • •

“Good evening,” the doorman says, as we go out the front door of the hotel. “Good morning” would be more appropriate. We go across the street, hand in hand, and sit on a park bench opposite a fountain. Overhead, a dark shape flies by.

“What was that?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” Chip says. “A bat? Are there bats out here?”

“I don’t think it was a bat. It was too big.”

“Maybe it was a falcon.”

“It definitely wasn’t that.”

“Well, let’s say it was. We didn’t really see it, and I like falcons.”

I look at him, at his fine profile in this dim light. “Why?” I say.

“What?”

“Why do you like falcons?”

“Don’t know, really. I have since I was a little kid. I used to call myself ‘Falcon,’ in fact. My best friend Timmy O’Conner—remember him?—he was ‘Eagle.’”

I smile. “How old were you then?”

He leans back against the bench. “Oh, let’s see. About thirty-seven, thirty-eight.”

I laugh, and he says, “Ten. Ten years old. Falcon Reardon, that was me.”

“It does have a nice ring.”

“Do you know what falcons do when they court each other?”

“No, what?”

“First, they fly around in the sky together, to determine a certain kind of compatibility. Then they lock talons, and plunge toward the earth.”

“Wow,” I say. “I assume at some point they reverse the direction.”

“Yeah. Just before they crash.”

“Where did you read that?’

“I heard it on the radio.”