“Those’re starting points,” he said.

We were perched on the front stoop at his house, which was close to the Astrodome. He’d given me a can of lukewarm Lone Star beer.

We could hear Raf, skimming around inside Davey’s dim parlor.

The sky was pink this evening and fuzzy with lights from the stadium. Gleaming cars, as if sweating in the sheen of dusk, filed off from an Astros game.

Raf appeared at last, dragging a square unpadded chair. He wrestled it out onto the porch stoop. “You despise comfort,” he said to Davey.

“You bratty bastard. You’ve always had it too easy,” said Davey.

“That’s not true,” I said, and I stuck up for Raf. I said he’d got into Princeton all on his own. That most of his high school classmates were truckers now or they worked for the local factory farm. That getting a Rhodes wasn’t on just luck. “And since then, for nearly twenty years,” I said, “he’s taken the hardest jobs for the meanest pay. He could’ve chosen any of the twelve things he has a talent for, laid into that, and stacked up dough. Plenty of bosses’ daughters have suggested the alternative. Sit still for money until Daddy dies; live in the Connecticut house they got as a wedding present; produce a couple kids; wear the suit; go golfing. And that’s not even mentioning how now the divorcees are coming at him. . . .”

“You’re no good for anything either,” Davey said.

Raf said, “Of the many passers-by this hot evening, many have smiled at Paige. They enjoy seeing a pretty woman drinking beer on a Friday night.”

I said, “One afternoon, a man phoned from New York. You know what he thinks I’m good for?”

“Worm dirt,” Davey said.

“Nope, no. He said I’m good for twenty-five thousand tax-free dollars. An arts grant from a reputable foundation.”

Davey’s shirt had no sleeves and as he punched chords on a portable keyboard veiny striations rose on his arms.

“Is this fact?” he asked.

“Twenty-five thousand. No strings,” Raf said. “She don’t even have to shred documents.”

“That pisses me off,” Davey said, resting the keyboard. “That makes me feel like vermin. With a fraction of that I could live well. I could buy an a.c., go to restaurants. Pay my rent and the light bill. I could put some down on a Yamaha synth or a four-track reel to reel. But I’m happy for you, Paige. I’m genuinely proud and happy. No I’m not.”

“For no money, I could take a skillet to your skinny head,” I told him.

Raf had the keyboard. He plunked around with it on his lap and now and then eased into intense musical scores.

“I never knew you could play,” I said.

“Choir,” Davey said dismissively.

“You are the mystery man,” I said to Raf.