When I thought of Fern Weisel, I could see her clearly in the photograph that could easily have been Amelita Galli-Curci, and I could imagine Avrum urging her to dress as Violette from La Traviata or Gilda from Rigoletto or Lucia from Lucia di Lammermoor or, of course, Dinorah from Dinorah. There would have been nothing perverted about his behavior, regardless of how it might have appeared to Fern Weisel, or to anyone. Avrum’s longing was obsessive, but not dangerous. Still, sometimes I wondered if that was why he quarreled with God: he could not, himself, be God.

Fortunately, I did not suffer an inquisition from Lila about another late night away from the Inn and I did not have to follow Sammy to his shop to judge his late-night work on the bust of Amy. They were busy with thirty guests from a Dutch Reformed church in New York, away on a weekend retreat intended to revive the passions of their marriages. The only thing Lila said to me from behind the registration desk was a whispered, “All they need is a good roll in the sheets.” Then she smiled and winked and added, “Maybe you could testify for them, Bobo.”

I slept for a short time, then showered and dressed and drove to the Highmount Home for Retired Citizens. Because I wanted to be with Amy, I thought it would be my last opportunity to visit Sol Walkman, and, too, there was a tug of guilt about Avrum, that in being with Amy I had compromised the mourning of his death, even if his philosophy had been a blunt “Dead is dead.”

Sol greeted me enthusiastically. He had been working on new financial projections that included the gift of Avrum’s estate, and he jabbered about plans to add an exercise room and indoor walking track. “It’ll give most of our people something to do other than watch television and play board games,” he explained, “and that’s what they need—to know they can still do things. Otherwise, all they’re doing is putting in their time before they die.”

He asked my advice on being more aggressive about securing donations from families whose relatives had spent their last years at the Home, but fretted that he knew the response.

“They’ll think they’ve already paid enough,” he reasoned. “It’s sad. It’s damn sad, but a lot of them can’t wait to tear open the will and find out what they’ve been left, and they’re not about to give any of it back to the Home.”

He wanted to show me where the exercise facility would be, and I followed him down a corridor that had fading snapshots of residents and their visitors thumb-tacked to a corkboard wall. I paused before a photograph of me with Avrum, taken perhaps ten years earlier by one of the orderlies. Avrum was smiling a crooked, silly smile.