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Lincoln Center or something, I’d have gone. I wouldn’t have come here.“
    ”Sure,“ I said. My glass was empty. I went and got the bottle and poured some more. I filled it before I remembered the ice. Too late. I sipped some neatly. Paul was watching me. A grown face, not a kid. Older maybe than eighteen because of the psychological experience he’d had and overcome.
    ”You went off to Europe without her in 1976.“
    ”Yes.“ My voice was hoarse. More whiskey, relax the larynx. Good thing I hadn’t used ice. Throat needed to be warmed.
    ”It’s killing you, isn’t it?“
    ”I want her with me,“ I said, ”and more than that, I want her to want to be with me.“
    Paul got up and walked over and stood beside me at the window and looked out. ”Empty,“ he said.
    I nodded.
    He said, ”We both know where I was when you found me, and we know what you did. It gives me rights that other people don’t have.“
    I nodded.
    ”I’m going to hurt you too,“ he said. ”We’re the only ones that can, me and Susan. And inevitably I’ll do it too.“
    ”Can’t be helped,“ I said.
    ”No.“ Paul said. ”It can’t. What’s happened to you is that you’ve left Susan inside, and you’ve let me inside. Before us you were invulnerable. You were compassionate but safe, you understand? You could set those standards for your own behavior and if other people didn’t meet those standards it was their loss, but your integrity was…“- he thought for a minute-”… intact. You weren’t disappointed. You didn’t expect much from other people and were content with the Tightness of yourself.“
    I leaned my forehead against the cold window glass. I was drunk.
    ”And now?“ I said.
    ”And now,“ Paul said, ”you’ve fucked it up. You love Susan and you love me.“
    I nodded with my forehead still against the window. ”And the Tightness of myself is no longer enough.“
    ”Yes,“ Paul said. He took a large swallow of whiskey. ”You were complete, and now you’re not. It makes you doubt yourself. It makes you wonder if you were ever right. You’ve operated on instinct and the conviction that your instincts would be right. But if you were wrong, maybe your instincts were wrong. It’s not just missing Susan that’s busting your chops.“
    ” ’Margaret, are you grieving,‘ “ I said, ” ’over Golden-grove unleaving?‘ “
    ”Who’s that?“ Paul said.
    ”Hopkins,“ I said. ”Gerard Manley Hopkins.“
    ”There’s a better one from The Great Gatsby,“ Paul said. ”The part just before he’s shot, about losing the old warm world…“
    ” ’Paid a high price for living too long with a single dream,‘ “ I said.
    ”That’s the one,“ Paul said.

Chapter 14
    It was the Monday after Thanksgiving, Paul was back at Sarah Lawrence College. I was back in my one-room office with a view of the art director on the corner of Berkeley and Boylston. It was 9:15 a.m. and I was reading the Globe and drinking some coffee. Today was the day I would have only two cups. I drank the last of the first one when my office door opened and Vinnie Morris came in. Behind him came a large blank-faced guy with a hairline that started just above his eyebrows.
    Vinnie was my age, a good-looking guy with a thick black mustache and his hair cut sort of longish over the ears. He was wearing a black continental-cut suit and a white shirt with a white tie. His camel’s hair coat was unbelted and hung open and the fringed ends of a white silk scarf showed against the dark suit. He had on black gloves. The big guy behind him wore a plaid overcoat, and a navy watch cap on the back of his head like a yarmulke. His nose was thick, and there was a lot of scar tissue around his eyes.
    ”Vinnie,“ I said.
    Vinnie nodded, took off his gloves, put them together, and placed them on the top of my desk. He sat in my office chair. His large companion stayed by the door.
    ”You got any coffee?“ Vinnie said to me.
    ”Nope, just