“I’d like to have that one blown up and put in the exercise room,” Sol said. “In fact, I’d like to call it the Avrum Feldman Room, if you don’t object.”

I wondered if Carter had negotiated the idea despite my disapproval. Probably. Carter had liked Avrum and Carter liked such touches. It was his practice of quid pro quo.

“I don’t mind,” I told Sol.

He saw me looking at the picture of an old and shriveled man in a wheelchair, his head bent permanently forward over his chest. A young woman was kneeling beside him, preening into the camera. It was the judge’s wife, the stockbroker’s lover.

“Do you know her?” Sol asked suspiciously.

“I met her briefly at the Inn, earlier this week,” I said.

“I suppose you know the story, then? About her lover.”

“I think everybody up here knows,” I answered. “Lila, Sammy, Dan Wilder, Carter, the woman in the flower shop in Phoenicia, you, and, somewhere, somebody in a wine shop. It must be the most celebrated and open affair in America.”

Sol laughed easily. “Could be, but she won’t have her excuse much longer. Her uncle is in his last weeks, the doctors tell us.”

“If she needs an excuse, why don’t you take advantage of it?” I suggested.

“How?”

“Make her the chairlady of something—maybe the Pledge Committee.”

Sol’s eyes narrowed in a pleased thought. “Good idea.”

I stayed with Sol for an hour, listening to him, watching his flashing hands draw images of equipment and space as he enthused about improvements to the Home. He promised to correspond about the work and he invited me, in good humor, to also belong to the Pledge Committee. I thought of Amy and, in good humor, agreed. Before I left, he gave me a small, sealed box that contained Avrum’s ashes. The box had been delivered by the crematory on Friday, he explained.

“I don’t know what you plan to do with these,” he said, “and I don’t think I need to know. I’m sure that was something personal between the two of you.”

“It was,” I told him. “It’s kind of you to understand.”

He shook my hand vigorously at my car and thanked me again for the contribution of Avrum’s estate. I expected him to ask about the kaddish, but he did not. Sol Walkman understood the art of negotiation. He had dispatched Norman Gold, the rabbi, to voice his concern, as Avrum had predicted. The negotiation was finished. He would not risk his gift foolishly.

“You’ve been a godsend,” Sol said gratefully. “A godsend.”

When I drove away, watching him fan the late-afternoon air with his waving, I believed what Sol really meant by his godsend comment was that God had finally tilted things in his favor to compensate for all the years of tolerating Avrum Feldman.