Russell walked into the bedroom, his head cocked as if listening for a cue. He pushed his round yellow glasses against his nose and then, doing a nearly flawless imitation of Anderton, sang along with the record: “Maybe Ta-Youse-Day will be my good Na-Youse day.” He left the room, laughing merrily at his own performance.

Depending on your mood, Russell’s ability to mimic people could be an entertaining party trick or the emotional equivalent of psoriasis. This afternoon, it was a perfect example of why Desmond had to leave New York in order to figure out exactly what was missing from the book he’d been writing and researching for nearly four years. It wasn’t that Russell was unsupportive of Desmond’s project. It was hard to imagine how anyone could be more supportive. Russell owned a secondhand store on the Lower East Side. In scavenging for merchandise at yard sales and thrift shops, he’d unearthed: several records Desmond had given up hope of ever finding; a rare program from one of Anderton’s rare performances at The Sands in the early 1960s; and a scrapbook of clippings kept by some obsessed fan that spanned the entire course of Anderton’s career, from discovery by Walter Winchell to slide into obscurity fifteen years later. He was always willing to discuss Anderton or listen while Desmond trod the same ground over and over, trying to figure out what crucial piece of information or insight he was missing. The problem was that after nearly five years of cohabitation, Desmond was finding it increasingly difficult to make clear distinctions between his own thoughts about Anderton—along with everything else—and Russell’s. Who had been the first to pick up on this grating quirk of pronunciation? He couldn’t say for sure, nor could he say for sure why it mattered to him so much that he know, especially if it turned out he had picked up on it first.

Love was a strange, exhausting bit of human business. Based on the evidence of literature, torch songs, and the tattered fragments of his own experience, Desmond had come to the conclusion that all the beauty and wonder of the thing was wrapped up in the longing for it and the heartbreak after its demise. You couldn’t say the same about much else in life. The pleasures of chocolate, coffee, and gambling, for example, were in the tasting and the doing.

The song was building to its climax, the orchestra swelling in the background. But instead of ending with the display of lung power you might expect, Anderton surprised the listener—here was her genius—by singing the final lines with a wistful, dissipated whisper. “I’m waiting for the man I love.” It was enough to make you weep, assuming you’d had a few drinks and were melancholy with loneliness and longing instead of happily partnered off.