The telephone shrilled as I stepped inside the house. I was hot and thirsty, intent upon reaching the kitchen and a frosty glass of Gatorade, but, of course, I picked up the ringing portable phone from the move-scarred walnut table in my front hallway. Old reporters never ignore that imperious summons even when the days of deadlines are long past. I glanced at the small screen. Suddenly I was breathless.
Caller ID: James A. Lennox.
This was a call I had never expected to receive, certainly not on a casual summer morning, sweaty and relaxed after a jog on the university track. It was a slow jog at my age, but nonetheless I could still pick one foot up, put it down, take pleasure in exercise.
The ring sounded again. I struggled for breath, punched TALK. "Hello."
"Henrie O." The clear, resonant tenor was still youthful, without the dour droop of age. A dear voice. Once I had welcomed his calls, come to depend upon them, my spirits lifting when he spoke my name. Jimmy Lennox had long been a cherished friend and, once, my lover, but he took one road and I another. This unexpected call loosed emotions I had thought neatly packaged and filed in the past. I was swept by tenderness, unease, sadness, and a sense of foreboding.
I should have answered right away, but how do you respond to an old friend and former lover whose proposal of marriage you declined? The last time I saw Jimmy . . .
"Henrie O, please don't hang up." The appeal was utterly unlike confident, unflappable Jimmy. Lanky, laconic, and clever, Jimmy had become a part of my life with his quick curiosity, wry sense of humor, and lack of pretension.
When I spoke, I spoke with my heart. "I'll never hang up on you."
His appeal and my response held a world of meaning for both of us. I knew Jimmy was upset. He knew I cared for him still, would never be quite certain how much was friendship and how much was love.
Ultimately I'd felt there was not enough love for me to marry him. That decision haunted me still. I missed Jimmy, missed him intensely, but now he was married. I would always care for Jimmy. He'd achieved a measure of fame as a newsman and later as a biographer. In my memory he moved with his usual grace, lithe and lean, with an air of placidity that often fooled his interview subjects into thinking him a trifle slow. That was a mistake.
"What's wrong?" We never minced words with each other. I swept off a calico headband, swiped at my perspiring face. In the mirror above the table, my cheeks still flamed from exertion and my silvered dark hair curled in damp ringlets.
"I don't have any right to call on you. But you're the only person who can possibly help me." He was uncertain, reluctant.
I've never been able to stay on the sidelines when someone I love is in trouble. "What can I do?"
He drew a deep breath. "I haven't talked to you since I married Sophia."
Deep in sleepless nights, I still willed away the emptiness I'd felt upon receiving the wedding invitation. Sophia Montgomery. I remembered her well. I doubt she recalled me. Sophia lived in a blaze of excitement, attention, and achievement. She'd succeeded hugely in documentary films, recording everything from genocide in Rwanda to the shrinking of the polar ice cap. I'd met her when she was in Mexico cataloging the struggle of insurrectionists in Chiapas. Along her way to fame, she'd married an actor and later a financier. Twice a widow, she was now Jimmy's wife. She was now in her fifties, almost fifteen years younger than Jimmy. And me, of course.
I looked again in the mirror at deep-set dark eyes in a narrow face with lines that mapped a lifetime of happiness and sorrow. Not a young face.
I'd sent an elegant cut-glass bowl as...
