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why he saw fit to befriend me, but thank God he did.”
    The response mystified me—that wasn’t how things hadbeen—but I let it pass. After lunch, I helped wash the dishes, then D’Angelo and I drank some more beer and played a game of chess in the garden. It was hot, but cooling gusts of wind were coming in off the bay, shaking the already browning leaves onto the lawn. After the game, we sat out in deckchairs for a while, mostly in silence. But when I started talking about Esterhazy, I could sense D’Angelo stiffen, his face darken.
    “Listen, David. We’ve worked together for a while, haven’t we? It’s been a couple of years now. You trust me, don’t you?”
    “ ’Course I do.”
    “Well, let me tell you. Esterhazy was damn crazy. He was swinging a broken bottle around and talking all kinds of crap. I’ve seen enough of those guys to know. Yeah, he’d calmed down by the time you turned up. Don’t worry that you did anything wrong signing his papers. You didn’t.”
    “I appreciate you saying that. You know I’m not supposed to rely on hearsay …”
    D’Angelo cut me off: “Look, we may have some things to talk about, but this is not the right time.”
    “One last thing. Tell me about the Stevens Institute.”
    “I’ll call you in the week, okay?”
    “Sure.”
    We lapsed back into silence, but not the comfortable one of before. I could feel the photo D’Angelo had given me in my pocket. I remembered the picnic, but I didn’t remember that picture being taken. Why would D’Angelo have had a camera with him anyway? I was pretty sure I hadn’t invited him; we’d simply bumped into each other on the street or in the Park. Either he’d remembered it wrong, or I had. But what did it matter?
    D’Angelo looked at his watch, not in a showy way, but I could tell it was a performance. “Gotta go soon, help a neighbor with some plastering and stuff. You could come …”
    “No, it’s been great, but I should be getting back.”
    “Okay. Well I’m glad you could make it out. Gotta come down again. Let me call you a cab.”
    No offer to drive me to the station. And the idea of the afternoon swim seemed to have gone out the window as well. D’Angelo went to phone, and I got up to say goodbye to the kid, who was playing on an old tire strung up to a tree to make a swing.
    D’Angelo’s wife came outside. “George tells me you have to go. What a shame. I’m really pleased you could come. It’s so nice that George has a friend like you.” She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek again. “Please come again. We’re always around on weekends.” As she spoke, she put her hand on my shoulder and rubbed it slightly, unmistakably.

5
    On the train back I took out some work I’d brought, a rough draft of an article I’d wanted to read over. But I couldn’t concentrate. Instead, I stared at the formless vista of suburbs and industry that slipped by as we trundled toward Manhattan. I’d lost confidence in my writing, I realized. It wasn’t because of the difficulty in getting it published. No, the problem was that every time I came to a conclusion, explicitly stated an opinion, the opposite view would always start to look more attractive. And the paper would inevitably end up feeling like an elaborate fiction. Only my very first piece, on Miss Fregoli, had escaped this rule.
    We pulled into Penn Station. The mill of people, even on a Sunday, was momentarily disorientating after the graveyard quiet of D’Angelo’s suburb. I climbed the stairs to the main concourse with its gigantic clock, the second hand stuttering forward. One of my earliest memories was of this clock, on a trip from Long Island with my aunt and uncle, at the age of four or five. I gazed at the greenhouse roof high above as thelate afternoon sunshine filtered in, spliced by the arched steel frame into a complicated game of light and shadow. I’d always found it comforting to arrive at this station. Its vastness, its Roman