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in the proper way, meaning with alcohol. In my experience—as an adult—wakes and funerals provide an opportunity for reunions, and despite the depressing premise for the occasion, people are generally happy to reconnect with old friends.
    The back room is all brick, with televisions in the corners, well lit, full of maybe fifty or sixty people, with music from the ’90s—a rap song, then a dance song—playing overhead. Almost everyone in here is the same age. They are, presumably, members of the class of ’95 from Edgewood High School of the Sacred Heart, or their significant others.
    I love that PC term “significant other.” It means you’re someone special—you’re significant!—but either you can’t get married because you’re gay, which nowadays is only true in some states, or you’re unmarried and for some reason object to the word boyfriend or girlfriend . The next time the person you’re with says, “I love you,” respond by saying, “You’re very, very significant to me.”
    I slip between some people and head toward the bar when I hear someone say, “That’s the guy who worked with Diana at the PR firm.” I turn to a group of people looking my way, including Emma and Randy, sitting on a bar stool in the center of the pack.
    “Is that right?” Randy says too loudly. He’s had more than his share already tonight. “Hey, Mike—”
    Ben. My name’s Ben.
    “—what was the name of that PR firm again?”
    In Spy Game , Robert Redford taught Brad Pitt the fine points of espionage, including how to recruit foreigners to be undercover spies for the United States. Don’t lie to them, he advised Brad, because from that point on, that lie will have to be true.
    I wave a hand. “I don’t want to talk business.”
    “I don’t wanna talk business, either, Mike. I just wanna know the name of that PR firm you worked at with my sister.”
    I prefer some of Pitt’s earlier roles—the felon in Thelma & Louise and the stoner in True Romance . He was great in Seven , too.
    I move to the bar. Randy calls after me, “Hey, Mike,” and I hear Emma say, “I thought his name was Ben,” and then Randy calls, “Hey, Ben!”
    I order a vodka and pay too much for it. Then I head back, trying to decide if I should talk to Randy or not. That is, in fact, my primary reason for sticking around Madison tonight. I’m a reporter, after all, and if I’m looking for the skinny on someone, the chance to talk to that someone’s brother is irresistible.
    “There he is—Mike-or-Ben.” Randy salutes me by raising his pint. He’s goading me. But I’m not in the mood.
    “I prefer Ben-or-Mike,” I answer. A couple of ladies in the group like that. Randy doesn’t, but that’s too bad for Randy. It’s my parting shot, so I part.
    I see the lady in the black suit nursing a Bud Light at a corner table, fending off a couple of boozers who think she’s the cat’s meow.
    I stop dead. Cinnamon. Who’s taking care of Diana’s cat?
    The lady in black senses a hitch in my giddyap. She doesn’t know why, but it interests her. She’s pretty good, but not as good as Detective LaTaglia thirty years ago.
    Tell me what happened, Ben, and your mother’s soul can go to heaven.
    Now, Robert Redford, as much as I loved The Sting and Butch Cassidy and The Natural —actually I thought The Natural was boring, but everyone else raved about it so I went along—to me his most amazing work was behind the camera on Quiz Show and especially Ordinary People .
    I find a table not far from black-suit lady and watch her and everybody else for a long hour. Luckily the music is decent, and, even more important, there’s a waitress walking around (my “significant other”), so I’m four drinks in when I see Diana’s brother part the crowd and sit next to me.
    “Please have a seat,” I say after he already did.
    He whacks my arm with the back of his hand. “Hey, man, didn’t mean to come on so strong. I was just—Diana didn’t