“He pays someone to do that for him. Jamie just shows up whenever he likes and holds court.”

“I guess he’s still boozing pretty hard, then.”

“He’s cooled out a little since his son was born.”

“Jamie has a son?”

“Yep. Name’s Isaac. Three years old. Real sweet kid. The mom’s a little rough around the edges. Crystal was a cocktail waitress at the restaurant. I warned Jamie it was a bad idea to sleep with the waitresses. ‘Don’t shit where you eat,’ I said. But when did Jamie ever take advice? Anyway, when the girl told him she was pregnant, he insisted on a paternity test. Once he was sure it was his, he accused her of getting pregnant on purpose. So they didn’t exactly get off on the right foot.”

“Your mother-in-law must be thrilled to have another cocktail waitress in the family. Especially one named Crystal.”

“Don’t be a snob.”

“I’m not,” I said. “But the former Mrs. Haltom is.”

“Fair enough.”

“How happy is Aunt Cici to be a grandmother?”

“I think she’s seen Isaac maybe twice. Won’t even be in the same room with Crystal. Aunt Cici and Jamie don’t cross paths much anyway. She spends most of the year down in Florida now. Found herself this French Canadian guy. Kind of her ‘kept man.’ When she’s home, she stays in this little town house she bought out near Cheekwood.”

“Who bought the house?”

Arch scratched the back of his neck.

“Actually,” he said, “we live there now. Vanessa and I. Aunt Cici offered it to us. Made a big pitch about not giving up the family home and so forth. Signed over the deed and everything.”

“What about Jamie?” I said. “Isn’t he entitled to half of it?”

“Aunt Cici wrote him out of her will after Crystal,” he said. “Don’t worry about Jamie. His tastes are too unimaginative to run through his trust fund for at least another ten years.”

The food arrived. The bells from the Parroquia pealed. Nine o’clock. It felt earlier.

We talked about Nashville, and painting, and the Yeatman people Arch kept up with. He’d joined the Young Alumni Board. Kip Dodd had retired. They’d had a bust made of him to be displayed in a glass case in the library. Walker Varnadoe had died, of pancreatic cancer.

“Varnadoe gone,” I said.

I thought of the last time I saw him, reciting El Brocense in the art room. For a moment, sadness overcame me, as if all the truths in Varnadoe’s Latin aphorisms had died with him.

“He’d been sick for a long time,” Arch said. “He was already dying when you were still in school.”

“Is that another thing you knew but thought better of telling me?”

“No,” Arch said. “No one knew. Not even Dodd.”