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and I guess that made him seem youthful at first. But a closer look revealed how not-young he had become. As he inhaled, he squinted and his face revealed every frown and grimace he had ever made, every cigarette he had ever smoked. He hunched in his black T-shirt and his thin body humped at his belly. It looked as though a tight wedge of flesh had been appended to his middle. He still had muscle tone in his skinny-guy arms, but his sloped posture, which in the past gave him a blasé and phlegmatic glamour, now simply accentuated his paunch. He did not care, or seemed not to care, about his drinking belly or his general, considerable decay. He did not care that his hands shook when he lit his cigarette. He did not care when his conversation was brought to a halt by a coughing fit. He pursued a lifetime of abuse that could only come from a warped relationship with the future. Although I can’t say my brother didn’t believe in the future, I know he was never concerned with it. But for me sitting there, watching and thinking—now I remember—of my earlier visit to our mother, I didn’t like it one bit. It was not pleasant New Year’s contemplation for me. I was irritated by it, by him, and by the fact that the bar was wet and messy. I took the remnant of the napkin and sopped it around. He picked up a bar towel and wiped in front of me, an automatic and long-engrained bartender gesture. The bar towel smelled strongly of bleach and beer.
    “I have to call Ada,” I said, and got up from the bar. “Tell her—”
    “Yeah, I will.”
    I went to the side door of the bar and stepped into the sudden quiet—the almost ringing quiet—of the alley.
    I’d missed a call from Jay. It was eight a.m. in England. Very, very sweet. I didn’t listen to his message. I called Ada instead.
    “Hey, Ma.”
    “It’s Mom.” I couldn’t get used to people knowing who I am when I call.
    “Yes—”
    “Happy New Year, angel.”
    January first continued after I slept for a while; I got up by six-thirty, as it seemed indecent to sleep late on the very first day of a new year. I drank a full deep cup of coffee and then cleaned the house, easy enough to remember because I always spend New Year’s Day cleaning the house. But again, habits and patterns also make this New Year’s Day hard to distinguish from other New Year’s Days, which were also spent cleaning, at least going back as far as when Will left. And even then it was the same, a deep day of cleaning, except Will would be there, so it would be a very different memory and not easily confused with these later, solitary New Year’s Days.
    The cleaning was pleasant and ruthless: I emptied the refrigerator of every object, the jar of butter-flecked jelly, the container of capers floating in leaky brine, the optimistic bottle of multivitamins now in a moist, smelly clump, even a not very old bottle of expensive flaxseed oil. All must go, and so it was easy, just dumping without having to smell or decideanything. I did the same thing in the bathroom, though not quite as ruthlessly. Any really recent and expensive cosmetic or cream was spared, but most of the stuff also went. Then the scrubbing and washing: the grout, the shower curtain, the back step, the under eaves on the porch. I moved from there to the recycling. No magazine and no newspaper lived to see the New Year, no exceptions. If it wasn’t read by that date, it didn’t make it. I got it all out. Finally, I did my clothes. This was the most difficult task, but I usually started this in advance. Everything I hadn’t worn in the last year would be given to Goodwill. I continued in this manner to my desk, and by the evening I felt my space—modest though it is—was airy and open to the future. I felt liberated and purged and deeply in control. I have to admit that my rigor was not completely laudable. It existed in tandem and could only exist because of a twinning rigor on the other side of the Santa Monica Mountains. As I