“Thanks. I probably won’t need them. I have all my own notes. I left them with Coralee when I went to Paris, and she saved them for me.”

“I have your Royal,” I said, hoping that I could hold the typewriter hostage.

“I have a new one. Keep it. Maybe you’ll finally learn how to type.”

The cemetery gates loomed as the cars in front of us entered, and the MG idled in line. We did not look at each other. I longed for the gifts of a real Cyrano de Bergerac, to be able to speak deathless dialogue, or the gifts of an Ira Gershwin, immortal lyrics that would tell Terrence how much I loved him, how my life had emptied of joy, of meaning when he left me. Now he was back and I felt like Joan Fontaine when she returns to Thornfield and sees Orson Welles sitting alone on the bench and Bernard Herrmann’s music swells over them, but I had no music, no words, only the exhaust from other cars that soiled the air around us as the MG followed the cortege slowly winding along the road to Clarence’s final resting place. The sun bore down, and the heat needle wobbled up toward the red zone.

“They’ll bury Clarence not too far from my mother and my grandparents,” Terrence mused, “and a lot of other family, Bowers and Prescotts, and Goodalls. I wonder if they’ll bury me here too. If all our lives just end up in the same place, and in the same way, no matter what or how much we try to do.”

I swallowed a great wad of unwilling emotion, not trusting myself to speak, wishing that a huge deer would leap out of the headstones, fly over us, antlers and all, and that we would clutch at each other reflexively and rekindle the flame we had so carefully guarded from everyone who would have blown it out. I parked behind the big cars and turned off the motor.

“Thanks. For the ride. Goodbye, Roxanne,” he said as he got out and folded the seat forward to protect the leather from the sun. He paused there, momentarily, before he turned and walked away. “Here’s looking at you, kid.”