“Everything’s fine,” Desmond said.

This comment provoked a disconcerting laugh from Henry. Henry chuckled at almost everything Desmond said, as if he didn’t believe a word out of his mouth, including banalities such as “hello.” He was a jowly black man, obviously a few years older than Loretta, who always wore a pair of thick black eyeglasses on top of his bald head. Desmond had seen Henry reading the newspaper, watching television, and rewiring an outlet in the hall, never once using the glasses to help him see. Gossip among the boarders claimed: Loretta and Henry had to keep their relationship secret for fear of losing possession of the house due to a race provision in the will; he had been her lawyer twenty years earlier; he had a family stashed away somewhere on the other side of the city.

“Mr. Gutterson isn’t bothering you?” Loretta asked.

“Not at all.”

Mr. Gutterson was an ill-tempered Yorkshire terrier who lived with a retired schoolteacher at the end of the hall. No one ever mentioned the owner’s name, and the one time Desmond had tried to coax it out of the woman herself, she’d said, “I’m Mr. Gutterson’s mommy,” in such a disturbing tone of voice, he’d dropped the subject.

“My music hasn’t been bothering you, has it?” Desmond asked.

“We love music,” Loretta said. “As long as it isn’t opera.”

“We hate opera,” Henry said. “Gets you all riled up for nothing.”

“It isn’t opera.” Desmond began backing toward the door. “I should get going. I have to make a phone call.” Soon he’d be reporting his bathroom habits and estimated tax payments.

“You can always use ours,” Loretta said.

“Thank you,” Desmond said. “I need the air.” Despite two weeks of frantic calls, the phone company still hadn’t installed his line. As a result, all of his calls to Russell had been made from a bank of public phones on a noisy corner two blocks away or from his office at Deerforth with students and colleagues serving as background music.

The night air was heavy with humidity and saturated with light. The smell of the river and the ocean, the rows of stately brick houses, and the reserved, conservatively dressed people who lived in his neighborhood had already become familiar to him. He couldn’t decide if it was a good thing or a tragedy that people were so instantly adaptable. There had been moments during the past two weeks when he’d tried to conjure up the New York block he’d lived on for more than a decade and had trouble remembering the exact arrangement of the buildings, as if that whole chunk of his life was fading from his memory. It was a good thing he’d brought along several snapshots of Russell.