It was really a wonderful marriage. What I remember of it.”

“My wife’s in Bimini,” Walter said. “My ex-wife, I need to say now. She went down there with a man named Eddie Pitcock, a man I’ve never seen and know nothing about except his name, which I know from a private detective I hired. I could find out a lot more. But who cares? Eddie Pitcock’s his name. Isn’t that a name for the guy who runs away with your wife?”

“It’s just a name, Walter.”

Walter pinched his nose again and sniffed.

“Right. You’re right about that. That isn’t what I want to talk about anyway, Frank.”

“Let talk about sports, then.”

Walter stared intently at the fish pictures behind the bar and breathed forcefully through his nose. “I feel pretty self-important hauling you over here like this, Frank. I’m sorry. I’m not usually self-important. I don’t want this to be the story of my life.” Walter had completely ignored my offer of a good sports conversation, which seemed to mean something more serious was on the way, something I was going to be sorry about. “It isn’t a very amusing life. I’m sure of that.”

“I understand,” I said. “Maybe you just wanted to have a drink and sit in a bar with someone you knew but didn’t have to confide in. That makes plenty of sense. I’ve done that.”

“Frank, I went in a bar in New York two nights ago, and I let a man pick me up. Then I went to a hotel with him—the Americana, as a matter of fact—and slept with him.” Walter stared furiously out into the fishing pictures. He stared so hard that I knew he would like nothing in the world better than to be one of those happy, proud khaki-clad fishermen displaying his fat stripers to the sun on a happy July day, say, in 1956, when we would have been, Walter and me, eleven years old—assuming we are the same age. I would’ve been doubly happy at the moment to be there myself.

“Is that what you wanted to tell me, Walter?”

“Yes.” Walter Luckett said this as if stunned, looking deadly serious.

“Well,” I said. “It doesn’t matter to me.”

“I know that,” Walter said, his chin vaguely moving up and down in a kind of secret nod to himself. “I knew that ahead of time. Or I thought I did.”

“Well, that’s fine, then,” I said. “Isn’t it?”

“I feel pretty bad, Frank,” Walter said. “I don’t feel dirty or ashamed. It’s not a scandal. I probably ought to feel stupid, but I don’t even feel that way. I just feel bad. It’s like it’s loosed a bad feeling in me.”

“Do you think you want to do it again, Walter?”

“I doubt it.