Dan took up cigars that summer, always carrying a cluster of them in his shirt pocket, chewing and smoking them all day as he bent over his work. It seemed to me that he didn’t really enjoy them much—they sometimes drove him into coughing fits—but it was as if they were a necessary part of his preparation for the thick, premature middle age he had assigned himself at twenty-five.

“You know this guy in the office I’ve told you about?” I said to Eileen one night. “The artist? Dan Rosenthal? I think he’s getting into practice for being an old man.”

“Oh? How do you mean?”

“Well, he’s getting so—ah, I can’t explain it. I’m not even sure if I’ve got it right.”

She could seldom explain anything to me about people in her office, either. Our conversations often dissolved into admissions that we weren’t even sure if we had it right, and then there would be silence until a quarrel broke out over something else.