The most unfortunate aspect of the arrangement was the peculiar setup of the house. Loretta Neal lived on the first two floors, and because the place had never been properly divided into apartments, the top-floor boarders had to walk up a magnificently curved mahogany staircase that formed the core of her residence. The doors to her parlor were always partly open. At first, Desmond was charmed by her affability, her Boston accent, even her puckish penchant for having him repeat things he’d already said in a perfectly clear voice. But after answering her what’s-in-the-bag inquiry for the tenth time, he began creeping up the staircase, hoping she wouldn’t see him.

She called him in out of the hall, as if she were encouraging an old friend to pay a visit. The parlor was a vast oval room with dark paneling, ceiling medallions, and long curved windows looking out to the upper branches of the trees lining the street. The windows didn’t open, or at least never were opened, and the room had the musty smell of an underused library. Loretta and Henry’s vinyl recliners were plopped in the middle of the floor, distinctly out of place among the antique tables, lamps, and fainting couches pressed against the walls. The television, an immense thing with a whole sci-fi colony of cables worming out of the back, was tuned to an infomercial about a skin care product that eliminated what the spokesperson referred to as “faux wrinkles.” As far as he could tell, Loretta and Henry watched nothing but infomercials, and watched them as if they were dramatic programming.

“You’re always walking up and down,” Loretta said. “This must be the sixth time today, isn’t it?”

He attempted a grin. Did she keep a record? “I haven’t been counting.”

“Me neither. I was guesstimating. Anything you need help with? Henry’s just getting ready to leave.”

Henry was always getting ready to leave, even late last night when Desmond bumped into him on the staircase dressed in his bathrobe and slippers. He found the attempts to pass Henry off as the building’s superintendent insulting. Did they think he would care that he and Loretta were lovers? Desmond guessed Loretta was in her early sixties, a hollowed-out woman with starched too-red hair and the long thin face and spindly legs of a tough, ruined Irish beauty. He’d heard from one of the other boarders that in her youth she’d been the governess for an old Boston banking family and had become the grandfather’s mistress. According to the old man’s will, Loretta could live in the building until her death, provided she didn’t marry. She was given a small income for upkeep of the building, but couldn’t make any structural changes. Desmond wasn’t convinced there was much truth to the story, but he loved it anyway; it seemed so Bostonian, in a John P. Marquand sort of way.