“I’m sure he was happy to see you.”

“Not at first. No, he was still real angry with me for taking up with you. Bone-marrow-deep angry. I had to ask his forgiveness.”

“And did you?”

“I did. You don’t split hairs or bluster, or make excuses for yourself, with a dying man.”

“He loved you and Booker. I’m sure of that,” I said, remembering Clarence’s passion on behalf of his nephews in that last terrible exchange I had with him. I heard Terrence gulp, but only the engine murmured in the silence between us.

“I met Sidney Bechet while I was in Paris,” he said at last. “I went with Jerrold and Annette a few times to hear him in one of those little boîtes. Seeing him play, being right there—how could I have thought he was anything but brilliant? I brought some records back with me, and I made Booker listen.”

“And?”

“Booker’s a West Coast Cool man. But I’m a Bechet convert. I guess I’m a convert to the Church of Rick and Ilsa too. I learned a lot from working with Jerrold on The Oubliette.” He shook his head, and a tiny, audible scoff escaped his lips. “Pretty damned weird, my working on a film about an African man who falls in love with a white girl and tries to forget her.”

“If you had put your address on the aerogramme, I would have written back to you.”

“I didn’t want you to write back. I didn’t want to hear from you. I didn’t want to think about you. I just wanted you to know I was sorry about your agency.”

“I appreciated your note.”

Like acquaintances, we offered pale inanities to each other, including the weather. Saying nothing of our shared past, Terrence and I seemed to be testing each other the way you would gingerly test a bruise. Does it hurt more? Does it hurt less? He was considerably less exuberant than he used to be; perhaps living in a foreign country had subdued him. But then, experience had subdued me too, and I hadn’t been anywhere at all.

“How is Thelma?” he asked after we’d agreed the weather was unusually hot for September.

I rattled on a bit about our working life at Paragon, and he nodded. He asked after Max and I said he was in England, and at least he was working.

“And Jonathan. What’s he doing?”

“I only know what I read about him in the papers. He’s a big star now. He never calls or comes over. He stays away from scandal.”

“Well, he isn’t much of a loss to you. Just my opinion. You probably don’t need him anyway, not to go out dancing, or play tennis. You probably have a new flame.”