Sammy looked at me thoughtfully. “Let me tell you something about Lila,” he said, “something very few people know. She’s a basket case waiting for the fruit to fall out. Has this phobia about being alone. She’s all right if I’m close by, or if somebody else is around, but if she thinks she’s completely by herself, she’s as wacky as Daffy Duck.” He laughed wearily. “I tell everybody we moved up here so I would have the peace and quiet to work on my art, but that’s just a bullshit line. I could do what I do in a goddamn alley in Brooklyn in the middle of a mugging—in fact, it might improve things having a few bullet nicks to work with. You and I both know that. No, Bobo, we came here because of Lila. It’s why we run the Inn. We thought there’d be people around all the time.”

“I didn’t know,” I replied. “I’m sorry, Sammy. That’s got to be pressure.”

He stretched his arms above his head like a man waking from sleep, then he rubbed his eyes with his fingers. “It’s not bad. She came from real blue blood. Queen of the ball. The son of a bitch she used to be married to could buy and sell third-world countries out of his change pocket. She took it as long as she could and then she snapped, and she’s been just the opposite ever since.” He paused, laced his hands behind his head, and looked at me. “She dresses l’ke a whore most of the time now,” he added easily. “Acts like one, too, I guess. But she used to look like a Vogue model and she could have had tea with Alistair Cooke and made him feel like one of the Three Stooges. You heard her speaking French, didn’t you? You saw her that night. That was a glimpse of the old Lila.”

“What happened?” I asked.

Sammy did not reply for a long moment. He gazed at me sorrowfully, then he said, “She got pregnant and her ex-husband made her have an abortion. He didn’t want kids. It almost killed her. She was hospitalized for a month and then institutionalized for another year. That’s where we met. I was working in the institution as an orderly and going to school at night.”

He smiled and shrugged.

“I’m glad you told me, Sammy,” I said. “I’m glad you think that much of me.”

He stood, unfolding himself from the sofa like an old man. “I wanted you to know. I want you to come back. You make Lila feel special, the way you treat her. Like a gentleman, I mean. You make her remember the good part of her life.”

“She is special to me,” I told him. “Both of you are.”

“Can I ask you something, Bobo?”

“Of course.”