“I drove him to the hospital and I helped him check in: somehow his name and his date of birth and his insurance number all seemed part of his death. I shared some of what he went through, but it was only a fraction of what he suffered. He could not believe that he was going to die. He kept saying that he had moments when he was sure that this was something he had imagined. He dreaded getting into bed in the AIDS ward, everybody looking at him, knowing that he was doomed. I saw him twice a day. I ran the business. And then he came home and he was well for a while. The next year was a nightmare that you could never wake up from. It was like he was being tortured and punished, blow after blow coming down with nothing at the end except extinction.”

“Richard, can you hold me?” Pablo leaned toward me and put his arms around me. I had never felt so close to him. “I can’t tell you any more just now,” he said. “Will you hold me, please, and maybe we can sleep? I can’t tell the rest. Just let’s say he died and I came back here.”

“I’m glad I know all of this. I’m glad you told me.”

He began to cry uncontrollably. I knew that Jack and Mart could hear him in the next room. I held him. I patted his head as though he were a child. I felt as I lay beside him that I should have guessed all this, or he should have told me before.

I DROPPED JACK and Mart in the city center in the morning and left Pablo outside his father’s office.

“Why don’t you invite Jack and Mart out to your parents’ house?” I asked. “It would give your parents something to think about, and the boys would enjoy the swimming pool. They would probably love your mother.”

Pablo shook his head and knitted his brow and looked at me. He turned and got out of the car.