I sipped my coffee and gloomily contemplated the pile of papers. I had been meaning to organize them for lo these many years.

Somehow I wasn’t at all surprised when the first paper I plucked out of the pile turned out to be the bill from that funny little hotel in Trastevere. A bill for one night…and I had spent the first few hours of that night repairing the damages John had sustained during what someone—not me, I assure you—might refer to as the Roman caper. The bruises, cuts, and bullet holes had not impaired what he quaintly referred to as his vital functions.

I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror across the room, and even though nobody could see me but Caesar, I hastily wiped the foolish smile off my face. Damn the man, why couldn’t I stay mad at him? And why had I kept the hotel bill? I had been on an expense account, but I had not submitted that bill because I’d have had to explain to Schmidt why it was for a double room and a quite excessive amount of room service…. Actually, I had planned to present the bill to John. He had left it for me to pay—the first time, but not the last, he had pulled that stunt.

“Bastard,” I said halfheartedly.

“Grrrr,” said Caesar.

I threw the hotel bill in the wastebasket. Next to go were a few crumpled travel brochures from Rothenburg, the delicious little medieval town in Bavaria where Tony and I had spent one summer tracking down the Riemenschneider reliquary. More fond memories evoked—the grim black tower and the grisly crypt at midnight, the mummified face of a long-dead count of Drachenburg glaring up at us from the coffin we had violated, Tony bleeding all over my best nightgown after being stabbed by a walking suit of armor…. The men in my life didn’t have an easy time of it. One could not help wondering why they kept coming back for more.

Tony really had not sounded like himself. Had that worm finally turned? If the data for which I was presently searching substantiated my half-formed hypothesis, the question might have a new and poignant meaning.

The next lot of papers was quickly sorted—family letters, pictures of nieces and nephews, postcards, more travel folders. Among them was a letter from my friend Gustav in Sweden, enclosing a snapshot of the famous memorial to John. It was even worse than I had remembered. Weeping cupids, a lugubrious life-sized angel with ragged wings draped unbecomingly over her bowed head, scrolls and drooping flowers and banners hanging limp at half-mast, and, as a crowning touch, two huge lions, modeled after the one at Lucerne, with muzzles resting on their outsized paws.

I fished the hotel bill out of the wastebasket and put it in an envelope with the snapshot and a few other odds and ends—every scrap in my possession that had reference to John Smythe, Esquire, alias Johann Schmidt, alias Al Monkshood, etcetera, etcetera, ad infinitum. Mark it “Bygone follies of my youth” and file it…in the fire.