“Please?” I asked. The clock on the wall indicated that it was not even five past ten, and the woman didn’t say anything more, but she was unpleasant in her manner as she poured my wine.
* * *
—
With my glass of wine in hand, I wheeled my violet suitcase behind William—we were in rooms next to each other—and when I went into my room, it was very cold: The thermostat was set at 60 degrees. All my life I have hated being cold. I turned the air conditioner off, but I knew that the room would stay too cold for me. In the bathroom was a small （tiny） bottle of mouthwash and also, wrapped in cellophane, a man’s plastic comb. I kept staring at it: This was exactly the kind of comb my father had had. I had not seen such a comb for years, so small and plastic you could bend it in half and make it snap if you chose to. I knocked on William’s door and he let me in and he said, “Jesus.” His room was cold as well. He had the television on; he muted it as I came in. I sat on the edge of the bed and saw an advertisement for The History of Button Collecting—there were three different ceramic bowls shown, filled to the top with a variety of buttons, placed on a woven piece of material on a wooden table—and then it was followed by an advertisement for Alzheimer’s Aid.
“Tell me the plans for tomorrow,” I said.
We would have breakfast on the way and then we would go to Houlton and drive past the house of Lois Bubar. Just to see. She lived at 14 Pleasant Street. Then we might drive to Fort Fairfield, because Lois had been crowned Miss Potato Blossom Queen there in 1961, and William had a photo of her he had found online as she was driven through the streets of Fort Fairfield. I stared at the photo on his iPad, but it was an old photo and I could not see if the woman （she was so young） looked like Catherine or not. But she had been pretty, I could see that. She was on a float, and the float had a great deal of crêpe paper on it, and the streets were packed with people and cars and some buses.
“Then, if we have time, I’d like to go to Presque Isle, because that’s where Lois Bubar’s husband came from, so we could just take a quick look around.”
“Okay,” I said. “But why?”
“Just to see it all,” William said.
“Okay,” I said.
“So we’ll take the turnpike to Houlton in the morning and we’ll just see what we see,” William said. He looked old to me. He was slumped as he stood by the bed, and his eyes were not bright.
“？’Night, Lucy,” he said when I got up to leave.
I turned and I said, “How are your night terrors these days, William?”
William opened his hand and said, “They’re gone.” Then he added, “My life got worse, so they stopped.”
“I get it,” I said. “Good night.”
* * *
—
I called the front desk and asked them for an extra blanket and they brought it to me forty-five minutes later.
* * *
That night I dreamed of Park Avenue Robbie. In the dream he was agitated, and I woke up and went into the bathroom and then got back into bed and I thought about him.
* * *
—
After I left William, now so many years ago, I had a sort-of affair （I am not speaking of the writer I mentioned earlier; this sort-of affair was later） with a man I referred to—with my friends—as Park Avenue Robbie. I had met him at a class at the New School where I was studying World War II to try to understand my father better, to see what I could find out about the Battle of the Bulge and also the Hürtgen Forest, because my father had been at both places during the war, and he had remained a terribly distressed man, as I have said. My father had died the year before I took this class.
I first said hello to Park Avenue Robbie in the elevator, and only later did I realize that in some way—some expression on his face—he reminded me of my father. He was old enough to be my father, although my father had been older. But Park Avenue Robbie was dressed nicely; he was tall and wore a long navy blue coat.
When I first went to his apartment on Park Avenue, I was surprised at how unlived-in it seemed, and in a way it was unlived-in. Park Avenue Robbie had been married twice, and his latest woman friend had left him recently for a fireman—it was the fireman part that Robbie could not seem to get over. “A fireman,” he would say, and sometimes laugh, and sometimes just shake his head. “A goddamn fireman. She was just tired of me, I guess,” he said of the ex–woman friend.
We went to bed and he was very kind but then he said “I’m shooting into Mommy! I’m shooting into Mommy!” and this frightened me almost beyond reason. After that I had to take two tranquilizers I had in my pocketbook and then I fell asleep next to him and slept through the night with my head near his chest.