The train left and I stood watching it slide away from me. They are going one way and I am going another, I thought.

And out of that swimming, dizzying morning of leaving, with Carolyn clinging to me and Mazie Herndon, who taught English and was a chaperone, warning me about the meanness of the street people of New York, it has always been Coy Helms I remember most clearly.

It was a few minutes after ten when I arrived at the Highmount Home for Retired Citizens. The name was a polite sham. Avrum had called it, cynically, the High-mount Hilton. It was a converted resort hotel and from the outside had the appearance of being large, but, inside, it was not. Inside it was crowded and always in need of repair. The rooms were too small and never thoroughly cleaned. There was a smell of medicine and urine mixed with the damp, cool odor of death. It was not, as its brochure advertised, “a community of senior citizens engaged in the common joys of life.” It was a holding place for people who had no other home. They had been left there by their families, like children who are left overnight with a baby-sitter and a promise: “We’ll see you in the morning.” At the Highmount Home for Retired Citizens, morning never arrived. “Old Jews,” Avrum had muttered. “Who wants us?” For years I tried to persuade him to move, but he would not. He was near Sul Monte, the summer home that Amelita Galli-Curci had occupied.

The receptionist guided me into Sol Walkman’s office. A small man with a pinched, pale face, Sol tried to be professional, but I knew he wanted to be finished with the business of Avrum Feldman, the eccentric.

He invited me to sit in a worn leather chair in front of his desk.

“Let’s see now, Mr. Feldman’s file. I have it here,” he said, leafing through some papers on his desk. He looked up at me. “I’m sorry. You are… ?”

“Lee Murphy.”

He tried a smile. “Oh, yes, here it is.” He pulled a page from a folder. “We handle so many people, and, unfortunately, I’ve never been very good with names. I know we talked yesterday, and I know we’ve met briefly a few times, but I drew a blank.”

“That’s all right,” I told him. “Avrum may have noted my name as Bobo. That’s what he called me.”

A smirk crossed Sol’s face. “Bobo?”

“It was—well, still is to most—my nickname,” I explained.

“I see,” Sol said. He looked at the page. “We have it as Madison Lee Murphy.”

“That’s official.”

“Of course.”

“I assume Avrum’s wishes have been carried out,” I said.

Sol nodded vigorously. “Just as he instructed. His ashes will be available later.”

I did not reply. Sol studied from a sheet of notes he had made.