The mountain birch tree, where Amy and I began to meet at night.

The swimming pool, where Carter and I would go to talk when either of us wanted to say something private.

The theaters in Margaretville and Fleischmanns.

The base of Belleayre ski lift.

Woodstock. Big Indian. Shandaken.

In every place, there is something to remember.

And Amy Lourie is everywhere. Everywhere.

I have never been able to tell Carolyn about the ghosts. It is the reason I never wanted her with me when I visited Avrum. I think if Carolyn had been there, the ghosts would not have come out.

To Carolyn, ghosts would have been illusions, a dreamer’s waste of time.

CHAPTER

8
 

CARTER FIELDING IS AN ATTORNEY, WITH OFFICES IN PHOENICIA. He has been twice married and twice divorced, and the political career he wanted as a busboy at the Pine Hill Inn has been sacrificed to what he refers to as “hard-earned scandal.”

He is philosophic about it: “Damn it to hell, Bobo, I love love and I wouldn’t give it up to spend the rest of my days in the White House, or to be crowned king of England.”

Over the years, while visiting in the Catskills, we have always had dinner, and he has always told whichever companion he was with at the time about our summer of working together.

“There was this girl,” he would begin.

And I would have to suffer the story of Amy Lourie— not as I knew it, but as Carter had elected to remember it.

In Carter’s version, he was heroic. Depending on his consumption of alcohol, he had either prevented me from committing suicide or had persuaded me that a love relationship and possible marriage to a Jewish girl in the fifties—”the tight-assed fifties,” as he called them—would have been a disaster.

“She was beautiful,” Carter would say. “God, she was that.”

I have never corrected Carter, even when his story was absurd, as it was the night he declared to a striking blonde named Billie that he had watched as I made love to Amy under the hemlock at the base of Belleayre ski lift.

“I didn’t know you were there,” I said. “That embarrasses me.”

He had been expecting my call, Carter told me, after reading about Avrum’s death.

“I came in yesterday, but things got crowded,” I said.

“No sweat; I knew you’d call,” he replied. Then: “I thought he was going to outlive God.”

“He gave it a try,” I said.

“Well, sorry about it, Bobo. I know you were fond of him. So was I, even if I thought he needed to sleep in a straitjacket. We’re going to have dinner while you’re here, aren’t we? You’re not on a pop-in, pop-out schedule, I hope.”

“No, I’ll be staying a week at least. And dinner’s at your convenience, but, actually, I need to do some business with you.”