“Well, I was just a kid. Just a dumb kid looking for something I didn’t understand. I thought I’d just found it, I guess. Thomas Randolph. Tommy, to his pals. He was staying at a cheap hotel on the West Side, because—as I discovered later—he was the black sheep of a very distinguished family, and they’d had enough of him coming into town for a bender and asking for money. Anyway, I followed him to his cheap hotel like a little virgin lamb, bathroom down the hall, and we got to kissing, and the next thing I remembered, I was waking up in his bed at nine o’clock in the morning. Long story short, they kicked me out of college for that. My father was furious. Maybe I was trying to get his attention, I don’t know. It turned out, I got his attention all right. He cut me off, and Tommy said, So let’s elope, two black sheep like us, and I thought that sounded like a really nice adventure.”

My voice started to splinter, so I rose from the crate and went to the picnic basket to find a cigarette. There followed some considerable effort to light the thing, given the trembling in my hands, but eventually I got the job done, sucked in a little blessed smoke, and turned to face Thorpe again, composure restored.

“Where was I?”

“You eloped with the bastard.”

“Yes. Indeed, we did. Ran off to Niagara, as was customary. We fucked ourselves silly for a week or so, to be perfectly frank, had a really swell time. The scenery was spectacular, no doubt about that. And then it all started to crack up. His wicked ways and all that. I mean, the old story. Black and blue in all the wrong places. Drank whatever money came our way. Not for nothing had the Randolphs washed their hands of him, I guess, and now I was stuck with him, because I was too ashamed to crawl home, too broke, and anyway he said he would kill me if I tried.”

Thorpe started to interject, but I waved him off.