He’s quite fat now. He dresses well. He doesn’t pull at his crotch anymore since his suits are cut for him. He’s rich. It seems he deals in fabrics of the lusher variety, a wholesale source of the finest silk and brocade, the heaviest satin, the thickest velvet, the softest wools that a designer can ask for. But he still wonders about me, even though he’s discovered over the years all the lies I’ve told him. He knows now that I was not suckled by a she-panda nor raised by pirates off the coast of China, and do not speak eleven Asian languages or commune with the spirits of Genghis and Attila during my morning meditations, but he still finds, in the pure lunacy of his innocence, room to wonder and hypothesize, to postulate and criticize, to renounce and encourage me.

Every last Friday of every month he flies out from New York and spends the afternoon and the following morning nosing into the activities of his branch hirelings, and every last Saturday afternoon he pulls up in front of my house with the characteristic squeal of rented brakes and comes up the path with the same look of curiosity on his patented mug.

For years I have given him tea and hermits at the kitchen table. He is a hermit addict, that heavy flat cake loaded with dark fruits. He eats them unconsciously, with a deep physical relish, and I have known him to go through two batches between lunch and dinner.

He is very odd now, I think. He lives alone in four white rooms near the top of a high building. His walls, so he tells me, are hung with climbing vines and tropical scrubs. A potted palm, so I understand, arches over each side of his bed, and he ministers to all these greens with what I imagine to be rude affection.

He swims daily at a local gymnasium in the company of a divorced male cousin. It’s true, too, that his bulk is sleek and functional, not at all soft. He is still too conscious of his ass, but I have grown more tolerant since he lost his Greek proportions. He spends a piece of each day at an expensive office, lunches for business, and dines in the zealous investigation of, I do not doubt, attractive women. He takes a great interest in his friends and has several. Why do I think all that odd?

On our Saturdays he always leaves at suppertime. I announce that it’s 6:00 p.m. and he must have a date. He bridles politely and then leaves. I watch him down the walk and listen to his car take off. He spends that night in his usual hotel, visits other friends on Sunday, and flies back Sunday night in his third impeccable suit of the weekend.