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good.”
    The barber made a face.
    “I’m sorry, Brun. I’ve got you on medication, but you need to help yourself, too. If you’d only cut out the whiskey and cigarettes…you smell like an old ashtray. How many packs a day?”
    “Two. Three, tops. But I went offa the Camels, I only smoke filtered now. Newports.”
    The doctor covered his eyes with a hand. “Brun, for crying out loud. Filters, no filters, it doesn’t matter. And you play piano in those nightclubs till all hours. You’re killing yourself.”
    Brun worked his tongue around inside his mouth. “How long you think I got?”
    Dr. Gervais held out both hands, palms up. “There’s no way to tell. You could drop in the street tomorrow, or you could go on a while and die slowly in your bed. But when it happens is partly up to you. Keep on the way you’re going—”
    “Doc, what the hell’re you saying? I should quit smoking, quit drinking, quit playing piano? What am I supposed to do?” He paused, then went on in a softer voice. “Hey, Doc, I can’t even…you know. I used to think that song was pretty funny, ‘My Handyman Ain’t Handy Any More.’ But I ain’t laughing now.”
    The doctor rested a hand on his patient’s shoulder. “You’re sixty-seven, Brun. A lot of men—”
    “I ain’t a lot of men, Doc, I’m just one. Ain’t there anything I could take…” His voice faltered as he saw Gervais shake his head sadly.
    “Brun, I’m sorry. There’s nothing that works, and some of the stuff people try can do real harm. Is Mrs. Campbell…well, is she unhappy?”
    The doctor winced at the bitterness in the old man’s laugh. “Not as she says, anyway. It ain’t something she’ll talk about, but you ask me, she wouldn’t have minded if I got this way twenty years ago.”
    Gervais looked at his shoes. How many times had he listened to this same story, practically word for word? The doctor wondered how he’d react when his time came. He raised his eyes. “Look at it this way, Brun. When a man is having relations, his blood pressure goes sky high. Yours would be off the charts. Impotence might be God’s kindness to old men, a sort of protection, so they don’t—”
    The barber stamped a foot. “Hey, Doc, cut the crap, okay? If I wanted to hear that kinda stuff, I’d go to church with May on Sundays. If God’s being so all-fired kind to me, he could at least stop me from
wantin’
to do it.” The barber grabbed his shirt off the hook behind the door, threw it on, began buttoning. “Well, at least He ain’t got around to makin’ my fingers go limp, so I’m gonna keep playin’ piano. And I’ll have me a smoke or a shot of whiskey when I feel like it.” He aimed a finger at the doctor. “If sittin’ in a rocker and chewing gum is all I can do, then to hell with it.”
    “Fine, Brun. It’s your…” On the point of saying ‘funeral,’ Gervais cut himself off, and said ‘life’ instead. He chuckled. “Maybe you’ve got a point.” He put two prescription notes into the old man’s hand. “At least take your medicine.”
    I been taking my medicine for a long time, Brun thought.
    As he folded the prescriptions and slipped them into his shirt pocket, he glanced at the calendar on the wall, a Christmas scene, ice skaters on a frozen lake. ‘Wishing You Merry Christmas and a Happy 1951, from the Edgmar Dairy Company, Venice, California.’ Brun inclined his head toward the skaters. “It’s weird to think I might not ever see some of those days up there.”
    Dr. Gervais smiled. “Everyone on this planet can say that, Brun.”
    ***
    At twelve o’clock, Brun locked up the shop, then started walking slowly up Venice Boulevard to Pisani Place. Sun had broken through morning fog, and the warmth seemed to loosen the old man’s shoulders. At Amoroso Court, he turned right, went on half a block past Oakwood, up to a small white clapboard house, and knocked at the door.
    It took a few minutes for Cal to answer. Brun leaned