Stark had taught a jazz theory seminar in alternate semesters at the Yale School of Music, and when he died, in May—unaware of George’s attempt to create a work of music inspired by the insidious disease that killed him—the memorial service, at which only Brahms and some Beatles songs were played, by an ensemble of Stark’s students, was held in Battell Chapel, on the Yale campus.

At the sad little reception afterward, across Elm Street in the Calhoun College master’s house, where Stark had been a fellow, George sat down at the piano and idly, unthinkingly, began to play through a few doomy bars of the unfinished sonata. The effect was instantaneous. A dropped glass shattered. Everyone stopped eating, cookies suspended halfway to open mouths, teacups poised. Conversation faltered and died out. George, oblivious, stopped and started again. As he played, a palpable gloom rolled out like a fog, curling into corners. Everyone felt it. The department registrar began to sob quietly as she swept up the pieces of broken glass. Students began edging toward the doors. The Calhoun master’s wife, an ordinarily demure and proper writing tutor from Alabama, could be heard distinctly to say, “What the fuck just happened?”

Rebecca abandoned a conversation with Andy Manzer (an old boyfriend of Stark’s she had heard about but had never met before, who had become something of a success as a casting director in New York these days), whose face had contorted in sudden grief as the clammy black notes of George’s music rained down on them, to rush over and drag George away from the piano.

“What were you thinking?” she hissed at him, pulling him off the bench and slamming down the keyboard cover, as if sealing the piano would help contain the toxic music from seeping further into the atmosphere. They made their way toward some of the remaining students predictably clustered near the tea and cookies in the dining room.

“Sorry. I just wasn’t thinking. It came to mind.”

“No kidding you weren’t thinking. How could you do that?”

“Sorry.”

They looked at each other for a long moment, and Rebecca felt her tears welling up yet again as another wave of grief swept over her. George put his arm around her while reaching with his other hand for an oatmeal cookie. The feeling of the gathering brightened again. He took a big bite of his cookie, like a little boy; someone laughed out in the kitchen, and ordinary conversation slowly resumed. Rebecca looked around for Andy, but he was occupied now, chatting with animation among some eager theater studies students. Stark had admired a great deal about Andy, she recalled, including his ability to seduce sexually confused students of either gender (which tended to leave them only more confused). She wondered which one he would choose.

Stark’s mother was in conversation with Oswald Simon, a tedious pianist and professor at the School of Music, who was just finishing his declaration of deep appreciation for Stark. In fact, Rebecca knew Ozzie had campaigned vigorously against the department decision to reappoint Stark for another term, and had spread some AIDS rumors. (He himself was deeply in the closet, waxed mustache and all.) They moved across the room to her side, and Edwina Whitely reached out and took George’s arm, to reserve him for the next conversation momentarily, without turning away from Ozzie, whose absurd shoulder-length white hair Rebecca studied while recalling Stark’s description of the last Oswald Simon piano recital in Sprague Hall.