Perhaps this willful inertia, born out of the stubborn refusal to accept that there is only today, only now, only tomorrow, is what separated me from Arch even more than the more obvious differences. When it came to the problem of regret, Arch was like a shark: if he stopped swimming, he would die. He survived by refusing to grieve or worry or look for someone to blame—least of all, himself.

In the third year of Arch’s term, the world became reordered. I was at home, alone, finishing a portrait of a tax attorney’s teenage daughter, when Arch called. It was just after nine in the morning, Tuesday, September 11, 2001.

“Are you watching?” he asked.

“Watching what?”

“Stop whatever you’re doing and turn on the television.”

I’d been to the World Trade Center once, with Arch and the Haltoms on a fall weekend jaunt to New York. We saw the museums and a few plays and a game at Yankee Stadium. We took the elevator to the observation deck at the top of one of the towers—I’m not sure which. I remember only the magnificence of the view and that we rode back down the elevator with a group of college-aged German tourists who kept chanting “Eins, zwei, drei, wooooh!” all the way to the bottom floor.

In the weeks after 9/11, I heard so many stories. One person’s cousin was in the first tower. Another had a brother who had missed the flight that hit the Pentagon. This person and that person, each with a story of a near miss or a tragedy. Everyone scrambling for a piece of the nightmare. Nothing else mattered anymore. It hadn’t mattered before, either; we just didn’t know any better.

Arch and Vanessa were often away over the next few weeks, attending funerals and memorials, in both official and personal capacities. I kept on painting. Art felt like a hollow consolation in those days. At times, it even felt like an insult.

In late January, Arch summoned me to his office.

“I assume you’ve heard the rumors about Thorndike,” he said.

“No,” I said.