“The book I am reading, Bobo Murphy, is about the great opera star Enrico Caruso,” Avrum said evenly. He kept the book closed in his lap. “He was a man the old son of a bitch Harry Burger knows nothing about, because he knows nothing of music. He can fart better than he can sing. He knows dirty jokes, and that is all.”

“Mein Gott,” Harry exclaimed. “You better go to work on the pool, Bobo. This old fool’s about to let his mouth outrun his mind.”

“Excuse me?” I said.

Harry pushed at me gently. “Go on. I can see Nora looking out to the window. She’ll be out with her meat cleaver in her hand in a minute and she’ll use it on both of us.”

I stood and said to Avrum, “I’m glad to meet you, Mr. Feldman.”

He looked at me and blinked once, slowly. “I will tell you about the great opera singer Enrico Caruso another time, without the old son of a bitch Harry Burger.”

“Yes, sir.”

I walked away. I could hear Harry laughing. He said to Avrum, “Did I ever tell you, Avrum? I used to sleep with Amelita Galli-Curci. What a woman she was.”

And then I heard only their voices in argument, speaking German. Or Yiddish.

That night, Harry confessed to me, “I like that old man, Bobo.”

“I don’t think he liked what I did,” I said.

“Avrum? It was the best part of his day,” Harry insisted. “He’ll be talking about it for weeks.”

When Dee Richardson asked me about Avrum’s passion for Amelita Galli-Curci, I wanted to tell her about Harry’s prank, but I did not. I told her about the night Avrum attended Dinorah. She thought it was a touching love story.

The interview was hurriedly conducted. She began it by looking into the small, glass face of the camera and saying quietly, “Amelita Galli-Curci no longer sings in the Cat-skills.” I would think about her lead-in many times over the next few days. It was the perfect summation of Avrum’s life. When she introduced me, she asked only about Avrum’s fascination with Amelita Galli-Curci. I volunteered the information about the memorial service.

“That’s not a Jewish practice, is it?” she asked.

“I’m not Jewish, but I don’t think it is,” I replied. “But it isn’t a religious occasion, just something that I once told him I would like to do. It was as much a joke as anything. We were discussing death. He later wrote and insisted that I have the service—not because he wanted it, but because he thought I did. It was also in the instructions that he left for me.”

“I understand he was cremated,” Dee said. “That’s not a Jewish custom, either, is it?”

“It’s not supposed to be done, but sometimes it is, I understand.”