“You can’t know how difficult it’s been for me since the divorce.”

“Florida. The Sunshine State.”

His head dropped slightly. “My daughter insisted I go with her.”

“Where is your Duesenberg, Mr. Osbourne?”

“It’s not worth anything anymore. It’s too old, I haven’t been able to keep it in repair. For your own good, Victor, take my offer.”

“Turn your car over to the sheriff, Mr. Osbourne, and we’ll talk.”

I walked away from him, toward the door of the building, when I heard him shout, “By God, man. I just want to be able to open a damn bank account like a human being.”

I couldn’t erase the image of Winston Osbourne and his fingernails from my mind for the whole of that season. There was a time in his life when the wealthy, handsome, socially prominent, socially registered, socially social Winston Osbourne was everything I ever wanted to be. Now, as I struggled with the frustrations in my life, he was everything I feared I would become. The case we had been waiting for, the slam-bam-in-your-face case, had never come, and we too now had bills we couldn’t meet, dunning letters came by the bushelful, we couldn’t pay our secretary week to week, not to mention the office rent. One of my partners had already bailed and I couldn’t really blame him, though I did. Six years out of law school and I was flat-out broke, one step up from the grimed broken figure I saw outside my office. I had once bitterly resented Winston Osbourne for all he was born to, but now I feared falling to his depths and so I resented him all the more. If he wanted to open a bank account that meant there was money and if there was money, by God, I would get my hands on it. Every last dollar, you bastard, every last dollar until you die.

I see now that I was suffering a profound weariness that autumn.