I stopped by his house one weekend unannounced, thinking he’d be happy to see me, thinking I’d score a bill. It was the middle of the afternoon, and the old man was drunk, reeking of brandy, slurring his words. His wife was away visiting her family in Iowa, so for the first and last time we sat in her domain, the living room. He said it was nice to have the place to himself. He could stay late at the bar if he wanted to, or drive up the road and visit one of his drinking buddies, a man his wife didn’t like him to see. Drinking had become not only his primary diversion but the ordering principle of his days. He spent less and less time at the bank, having ceded control to others. His back and hip were failing him. He moved awkwardly, gingerly, like a man breaking in a new prosthetic leg. For years he’d laid off cigarettes, but he lit one now. I grabbed the pack and took one too without asking.

You must be excited to graduate, he said. This is it. Your time has come.

Excited to get the hell out of here, I said.

He ignored me and played the pity card, as he had so many other times. He often said he was an old man with nothing left to look forward to, nothing but his friendship with me. Now he said he wished he were me. He wished he were in my shoes. Everything good was still ahead of me. He was just an old man creeping up on death, drinking the days away.

I confess I didn’t see the allure of my life. It felt like everything good was behind me, and I told him so. My basketball career was over. My girlfriend had dumped me, but not before we’d lost our virginity together. I was as heartbroken as only a recent novitiate in the joy of sex can be.