“The only thing that’s over is the summer. I may never see you again, Bobo, but we’re not over. Not us.”

She kissed me again, tenderly, and then she reached into the pocket of her skirt and took out two small, blue stones shaped in ovals.

“They’re love stones,” she said. “Cut from the same piece. Put them together and they fit perfectly.” She pressed one of the stones into my hand. “One is for you, the other for me.” She touched my face lightly with her fingers. “I do love you, Bobo Murphy,” she whispered. “I do.” Her fingers brushed against my lips and then she turned and left the room.

I watched from the window in Avrum’s room as Amy got into the car with Adam. I watched them wave to her parents as the car pulled into the street. I thought I saw her face turn to the window where I was standing. It was like a stroke of light. The ache of her leaving cut into me with its sharp, killing blade and I began to weep.

Beside the swimming pool, in a puff of afternoon heat that had driven the older people inside, Carolyn said, “You’ve changed. I don’t know why, but you’ve changed.” Her voice was bitter and accusing.

“Everybody changes,” I replied weakly.

“I don’t believe that,” Carolyn argued. “It’s being up here that’s done it. It’s almost like you think you belong up here, not back home.”

A dream-blink and Carolyn was gone.

Amelita Galli-Curci looked down on Avrum from her porch at Sul Monte. He was offering the bouquet of red roses to her as hundreds of people, dressed for the opera, cheered wildly. She took the roses and angrily tore at the petals and flung them into the air. The petals rained down over Avrum like splattered blood.

Another dream-blink.

Amy gazed at me from Jean Archer’s painting in Jean Archer’s bedroom. A sunspot from the skylight, brilliantly hot, crawled in slow motion across her face and down to the bed. Amy was on the bed, nude, her remarkable body relaxed in slumber under the sunspot. Jean Archer was standing beside the bed, in front of an easel that held an empty canvas. She was painting furiously with brushes that grew from her fingertips, but nothing appeared on the canvas. Amy moved in her sleep and Jean Archer stopped painting and stood gazing at her. The sound of a heartbeat echoed in the room.

I awoke perspiring. Outside, I could hear the skipping rope of the young girl. Each slap of the rope on the sidewalk throbbed in my chest.

I rolled from the bed and removed Avrum’s envelope of instruction from my briefcase, and I read: Avrum Feldman’s kaddish. To be opened six days after his death. A.F. I wondered what surprise the envelope contained.

CHAPTER

18