William felt （almost） invulnerable, is what I am saying here.
* * *
—
Some days on these morning walks he would think, Oh God I could be that man—！ over there in the wheelchair sitting in the morning sun in Central Park, an aide on a bench typing on her cellphone as the man’s head dropped forward to his chest, or he could be that one—！ with an arm twisted from a stroke, a gait uneven— But then William would think: No, I am not those people.
And he was not those people. He was, as I have said, a tall man, to whom age had not added extra weight （except for a small potbelly you could barely see with his clothes on）， a man who still had his hair, white now but full, and he was—William. And he had a wife, his third, twenty-two years younger than he was. And that was no small thing.
* * *
—
But at night, he often had terrors.
* * *
—
William told me this one morning—not quite two years ago—when we met for coffee on the Upper East Side. We met at a diner on the corner of Ninety-first Street and Lexington Avenue; William has a lot of money and he gives a lot of it away and one place he gives it to is a hospital for adolescent children near where I live, and in the past when he had an early-morning meeting there he would call me and we would meet briefly for coffee on this corner. On this day—it was March, a few months before William was to turn seventy—we sat at a table in the corner of this diner; on the windows were painted shamrocks for St. Patrick’s Day, and I thought—I did think this—that William looked more tired than usual. I have often thought that William gets better-looking with age. The full white hair gives him an air of distinction; he wears it a little bit longer than he used to and it rises slightly from his head, with his big drooping mustache to counter it, and his cheekbones have emerged more, his eyes are still dark; and it is a tiny bit odd, because he will watch you fully—pleasantly—but then every so often his eyes become briefly penetrating. So what is he penetrating with that look? I have never known.
That day in the diner, when I asked him “So how are you, William?,” I expected him to answer as he always does, which is to say in an ironical tone “Why, I am perfectly fine, thank you, Lucy,” but this morning he just said “I’m okay.” He was wearing a long black overcoat, which he removed and folded over the chair next to him before sitting down. His suit was tailor-made, since meeting Estelle he had been having his suits tailor-made, and so it fit his shoulders perfectly; it was dark gray and his shirt was pale blue and his tie was red; he looked solemn. He folded his arms across his chest, which is what he often does. “You’re looking nice,” I said, and he said, “Thanks.” （I think William has never told me that I am looking good, or pretty, or even well, in all the times we have seen each other over the years, and the truth is that I have always hoped he will.） He ordered our coffee and his eyes flitted about the place while he tugged lightly on his mustache. He spoke about our girls for a while—he was afraid that Becka, the younger, was mad at him; she had been sort of—vaguely—unpleasant to him on the phone when he had simply called to chat with her one day, and I told him that he just had to give her space, she was settling herself into her marriage—we spoke like that for a bit—and then William looked at me and said, “Button, I want to tell you something.” He leaned forward briefly. “I’ve been having these awful terrors in the middle of the night.”
When he uses my pet name from our past it means that he is present in some way he is so often not, and I am always touched when he calls me that.
I said, “You mean nightmares?”
He cocked his head as though considering this and said, “No. I wake up. It’s in the dark when things come to me.” He added, “I’ve never had this sort of thing before. But they’re terrifying, Lucy. They terrify me.”
William leaned forward again and set his coffee cup down.
I watched him, and then I asked, “Is there some kind of different medication that you’re taking?”
He scowled slightly and said, “No.”
So I said, “Well, try taking a sleeping pill.”
And he said, “I have never taken a sleeping pill,” which did not surprise me. But he said that his wife did; Estelle took a variety of pills, he had stopped trying to understand the handful she took at night. “I’m taking my pills now,” she would say gaily, and in half an hour she was asleep. He didn’t mind that, he said. But pills were not for him. Still, in four hours he would often be awake and the terrors often began.