On the table, by my bed, lay a book I had just started rereading, a potboiler to take my mind off the trials of my day. I had bought it for a buck from a street vendor. The story started with a murder, it ended with a confession, there was a cunning investigator, a lecherous old cardsharp, a prostitute with a heart of gold. I stared at the volume, the blue binding and lurid gold letters of the title. Crime and Punishment. The words seemed just then like a moral compulsion. I considered for a moment putting it away so as not to trouble my guest and then thought better of it, placing a bookmark in the final page before the epilogue and setting the book beside the reading lamp next to the bed. Before I left the room I switched on the lamp.

With the bedroom taken care of, I stood in the shadows and watched Guy as he finished his beer. I went to the fridge and got him another. I pulled a chair close to the couch, but not close enough to be within the cone of light, and sat down. Once more he tried to speak, and once more I wouldn’t let him. The silence acted as a comforter, blanketing us both in calm. My raincoat, still wet, pocket bulging, was draped over the back of a chair. I glanced at it every so often and then looked back at my friend, my friend, as he slumped on the couch.

I cared for him as best I could and I waited until he couldn’t help himself and when he started again to say something, this time I let him.

“What am I going to do?”

I didn’t answer. He had a sharp voice, the words seemed to gallop out of his mouth with a certainty that turned every question rhetorical. Guy had never been one for self-doubt and it was hard for him to play the role of the confused and humbled man, even if that was exactly what he had become.

“I loved her so much,” he said. “She was everything to me. What am I going to do?” The words, which could have been full of pathos coming out of another man, were now like the words of a business executive analyzing a deal that had gone south and asking his lawyer for advice.