How often could one say that one had walked—actually walked—in someone else’s footsteps? If this did not bring me closer to some understanding of my father’s death, what would?

We had reached the elevator, the doors slid open, and we entered. I was surprised to see that the numbers on the buttons went all the way up to 5.

“Five floors?” I said aloud. “It’s much taller than it looks from the outside.”

Whether the guest lecturer heard me or not, I couldn’t have said—she was engaged in a careful inspection of her own face in the mirrored back wall of the elevator. At one point she pulled back her lips in what I at first thought was an especially menacing smile, until I realized that she was trying to see if there was anything stuck in her teeth. I cleared my throat loudly to remind her of my presence, but she paid me no attention whatsoever until we had entered her hotel room, Room 409, where, after rummaging in her handbag for the key, and then opening the door, she made a beeline for the bed, seated herself heavily on the edge, and kicked off her shoes with an air of satisfaction. Beneath her considerable bosom the lavender suit jacket strained at the buttons.

The room, like the lobby, was utterly devoid of any distinguishing characteristics. Everything you’d expect in the way of hotel furnishing was there, and nothing more: a bed, a desk, a cabinet with a television, and a wall of windows obscured by a heavy ocher curtain.

The guest lecturer cocked her head to one side and regarded me with feigned criticism. “What are you doing all the way over there?” she said. “You’re so far away.”

I could, I wanted to say, hardly be described as far away. I was standing in front of the television and could have grazed her knee with one fingertip if I’d reached out, but instead I made an attempt at laughter and said that I had been promised a drink, and made a show of looking around me as if one might appear.

The guest lecturer raised her hands up in a gesture of defeat, and then brought them down rapidly so that they slapped against her thighs. She liked this so much, apparently, that she did it again: flinging her arms up and then slapping them down again with gusto.

“There’s gin in the cabinet,” she said thickly, gesturing toward the wall, a wall where, as far as I could see, there was nothing in the way of furniture.

“I think you have a message,” I said, because I had come across the room to the desk, where a many-buttoned telephone sat, the red light blinking next to an image of an envelope.

“Humph,” said the guest lecturer indistinctly. “Probably my kids.”