“The big-deal, World War One Zimmermann,” the snowshoer had called the general.

“Dear Team,” the letter from my Exeter wrestling teammate in the military began, because he was writing to me and the rest of Zim’s teammates. He explained to us that it was customary to wait several weeks or months for a funeral service at Arlington; however, in Zimmer’s case, the scheduling was “expedited,” our teammate told us. (There was the World War II Zimmermann, the colonel, to consider; Zim’s grandfather wasn’t the only big deal.) Our teammate mentioned the “military chaplain” and a “chapel service”—the “Caisson Platoon” was cited, but I never knew how Zim felt about horses. There’d been a “procession” and a “military band,” even a “firing party” and a “rifle volley.” I’m guessing it was at Zim’s graveside, at Arlington, where a bugler played taps.

Of course they gave Zim a medal; it had been pinned to the flag, which was folded in a certain way (with the medal on top) and then presented to Zim’s mother. Our teammate in the military took pains to tell us all this, and he told us there would probably be a “memorial service of some kind—at a later date, in New York.”

I’d never met Colonel and Mrs. Zimmermann—only Elmira, the dutiful housekeeper. The memorial, I imagined, was for Zim’s New York and New Haven friends—it was also, of course, for friends of the Zimmermann family. So I was more than a little surprised when I was invited, but not at all surprised that the invitation was mailed to me in care of Mr. Barlow at the little English teacher’s Exeter address.

Before Zim left for Vietnam, he knew I’d already finished my two years at the Writers’ Workshop in Iowa City. I was able to live off the small advance I’d been paid for my first novel—I was still writing the last third of it—because I was living rent-free. Between the snowshoer’s faculty apartment in Amen Hall and the oh-so-familiar futon in the TV room of the house my mother shared with Molly, I always had a place to stay—I could, and did, write anywhere.

I could even write in Nora and Em’s rat’s-ass apartment in New York. If you were walking, it was equidistant from Columbus Circle and Carnegie Hall—in the northeast corner of Hell’s Kitchen, near Ninth Avenue and West Fifty-fifth Street. I was welcome to sleep on Nora and Em’s couch; I could write on their kitchen table. It was a walk-up apartment, over a bad restaurant that kept changing. It was a bad Greek place when I was finishing my first novel, but it would continue to evolve—it always got worse.