It might have ended. Then Calvin Schmitter brought up Theda Rothstein at a closed meeting at the State School. Theda had been neglecting her weekly column in the party paper, he said. It was clear to anyone who kept a careful eye on these matters that Theda was drifting. He had heard she was writing a book. A book about herself and Simon Concannon. She should have gotten over Simon’s death, by now, Calvin said. It was getting to be six years since the painter had been killed in Spain. Furthermore, he’d only been an ambulance driver. She was behaving in an obstinate, improper way. Theda was morbid. Her grief increased with time instead of decreasing—in the correct way. She had walked out of an editorial meeting in a rude manner. Although he felt nothing personal about it, he’d heard she’d referred to him as “that missionary.” As a functionary, he represented the party. If Theda was offensive to him, she was being offensive to the party.

Listening to Calvin raging, Max had wondered if, after the revolution, the world wouldn’t be largely composed of Calvins. Unless one were permitted to shoot both forward and backward at the barricades.

Unhappily, Calvin had designated Max to go and see Theda and talk matters over in a comradely way. Find out. Report back.

So he’d gone to see her. The door to her apartment was open. Directly across from the door, the leaves of a eucalyptus tree flickered against the window. A table was drawn up against the sill. On it stood a candle in a wine bottle covered with melted wax. There were several newspapers on the table and a mug. Theda was sitting on a bench looking at her fingers. She looked up as Max walked in, then motioned him to silence. “Sixty-three, sixtyfour,” she said aloud, counting out the numbers on her fingers.

He smiled at her. She looked at him distractedly. Then, without taking her eyes from his face, she pushed a stack of books to the edge of the table, and watched them topple to the floor.

“Mr. Irving Blond was eighty-four when he died,” she said. “A French Jew, you think? But he was only sixty when the picture was taken.”

When he stood next to her at the table, he saw she was looking down at the obituary page in a Los Angeles newspaper. There was a picture of Mr. Blond taken in 1926.

“Did you know him?”

“No. I don’t know any of them.” She waved toward the page. “I’m interested in life spans.”