I don’t even know when it happened. Recently, I think. My father told me tonight during dinner. I had complained that we never have anything good to eat anymore. My dad mentioned that there were plenty of people in the world who would kill for pork chops like ours. “Like who?” I snapped. (Or is it whom?) “Well, that homeless man at the Clark Street subway station,” he said. I said, “Fine, then, I have a good mind to march over there in the cold and give them [the pork chops] to him.” That was when my father told me that a homeless man had frozen to death in the Heights.

Apparently, the janitor of the church was shoveling snow when he found the man curled up like a baby, stiff as a board. It’s so sad.

It reminds me of the lecture you gave about how everybody has a history. And how most histories go unrecorded. Generally, I believe, people do the best they can, and if they don’t do well, they don’t do well for very good reasons.

I’m left with so many questions. Who was he? How did he get lost? If it’s true what you taught us, that each of us is capable of doing anything, then you or I or anyone, for that matter, could end up homeless, on the street, buried under a ton of snow, having frozen to death.

If I’m so sad, Mr. Welch, I can only imagine how you feel. Please reach out to me if you need comfort.

P.P.S. I never told Mrs. Ashworth you called all those times. Your secret is safe with me.

TIM

TIM

HINDSIGHT IS, SADLY, AFTER ALL, ONLY HINDSIGHT. STILL, IF PHILIP ASHWORTH had been home to accompany his wife, and if Anna hadn’t invited Kate and me in his place, and if we hadn’t said yes, and, furthermore, if the lightbulb in our closet hadn’t burned out, then what happened the night of the Yuletide Ball might never have happened.

On a night when there was so much to be bothered by, what would I claim bothered me most? Not the excess of food and drink before me; not the ornate chandelier hanging overhead, the numerous candles, the fires blazing in the matching marble fireplaces; not the din of smug chatter from the hedge-fund-rich or the mixing of so much cologne with so many perfumes or the threat of cigars; and not even the unspoken but well-known fact that soon there would be dancing in a building a few blocks from where a homeless man—and not just any homeless man but my homeless man—had frozen to death two days earlier. No, what would I say bothered me most?

The collar on my rented tuxedo shirt felt too tight.