They love you very much.”

“That’s great, though I don’t know how they could. What do you think about the Maize and Blue, Franky?”

“A powerhouse, is my guess, Henry. All the seniors are back, and the big Swede from Pellston’s in there again. I hear pretty awesome stories. It’s an impressive show out there.” This is the only ritual part of our conversations. I always check with the college football boys, particularly our new managing editor, a little neurasthenic, chain-smoking Bostonian named Eddie Frieder, so I can pass along some insider’s information to Henry, who never went to college, but is a fierce Wolverine fan nonetheless. It is the only use he can think to make of my profession, and I’m not at all sure he doesn’t concoct an interest just to please me, though I don’t much like football per se. (People have some big misunderstandings about sportswriters.) “You’re going to see some fancy alignments in the defensive backfield this fall, that’s all I’ll say, Henry.”

“All they need now is to fire that meathead who runs the whole show. He’s a loser, if you ask me. I don’t care how many games he wins.”

“The players all seem to like him, from what I hear.”

“What the hell do they know? Look. The means don’t always justify the end to me, Frank. That’s what’s wrong with this country. You ought to write about that. The abasement of life’s intrinsic qualities. That’s a story.”

“You’re probably right, Henry.”

“I feel hot about this whole issue, Frank. Sports is just a paradigm of life, right? Otherwise who’d care a goddamn thing about it?”

“I know people can see it that way.” (I try to avoid that idea, myself.) “But it’s pretty reductive. Life doesn’t need a metaphor in my opinion.”

“Whatever that means. Just get rid of that guy, Frank. He’s a Nazi.” Henry says this word to rhyme with snazzy in the old-fashioned way. “His popularity’s his biggest threat.” In fact, the coach in question is quite a good coach and will probably end up in the Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. He and Henry are almost exactly alike as human beings.

“I’ll pass a word along, Henry. Why don’t you write a letter to The Readers Speak.”

“I don’t have time. You do it. I trust you that far.”

Light is falling outside the Pontchartrain now. Vicki sits in the shadows, her back to me, hugging her knees and staring out toward the Seagram’s sign upriver half a mile, red and gold in the twilight, while little Canuck houses light up like fireflies on a dark and faraway lake beach where I have been. I could want nothing more than to hug her now, feel her strong Texas back, and fall into a nestle we’d break off only when the room service waiter tapped at our door. But I can’t be sure she hasn’t lulled to sleep in the sheer relief of expectations met—one of life’s true blessings. In a hundred ways we could not be more alike, Vicki and I, and I miss her badly, though she is only twelve feet away and I could touch her shoulder in the dark with hardly a move (this is one of the prime evils of being an anticipator).

“Frank, we don’t amount to much. I don’t know why we go to the trouble of having opinions,” Henry says.

“It puts off the empty moment.