“You like my lady?” he asked. Ordered to, we looked again at the wall’s image, both nodding back down at him. “My name’s Jamal. I kept real real still, didn’t I? My mother gets off soon. She helps sick people. I am going to be in here from now on, but play like you don’t know, okay? Okay.”

And then his brown face retreated into blackness.

We two glanced at each other, shaken but grinning. “Sick people,” he had said as we stood looking at our only form of proof and health.

“Hartley, what are we going to do?” She straightened her bent arm, studying the cotton’s sample of her own blood. Head tilting, eyes going in and out of focus, the painter gauged, “Not half bad, this color, hunh? Dried like this especially. Take a little Mars Red. Use Permanent Green to cut the sharpness, really take it down toward flat, almost to khaki-ish. If,” Alabama said, “if … if he … or you … if I …—Hart, maybe you’re contagious, ever thought of that? Maybe I caught your Wannabe Happy bug. Maybe all along, I’ve been closet-case Happy? I mean, hey, I’ve finally got a Fifty-seventh Street gallery that puts my name onto its second-floor window in letters as tall as … that fort with no boy in it. I’m just beginning to like it here … My twenties were Jaws, my thirties chewed every mouthful of me a hundred times. Who knows how custardy and nice my forties might feel?—Honey, if it gets us, what are we going to do?”

We stood here, looking at her art for lack of any vista finer. “Best we can. At least, there are several of us. It’ll just have to play itself out.”

“If only we could’ve fallen for a nice dull clean little four-inch CPA …”

“Ysch, I’d rather be …” Then I changed the last word … “I’d rather be us.”

Robert, home, glad for that, vowed to never pack another bag. His second night back, he nearly stood us up for a dinner at Rocco’s. He was rarely late. She and I were splitting our zabaglione, table still littered with mussel shells, when he wandered past and chanced to see us. Robert came rushing in, turned his chair around, settled there, his head at rest on his crossed arms. Staring at us, silent. He did not appear talkative.

“Uh … dearie?” she started. “Welcome home to you, too. You hate my always being late, so what good are you? You had an appointment with us.”

“Did not.”

“Did friggin’ so.”

“Sorry—did? Forgot.”

“Forgot! So,” she gave him a chance, “what did you learn on tour?”

“‘Earn’?” he asked.

“‘Learn.’ You taught us that.”