“That’s a respectable sum,” I said. “Or at least it would have been back in 1972. But if the cost of living has increased proportionally, then I suppose it’s still a pittance.”

“It’s useful,” she said. “It’s gone up more than the rent has. It pays the rent now, as a matter of fact.”

“That’s great.”

“I had to cash your checks,” she said, “or they would know you were dead, and then I would lose the apartment. Besides, I couldn’t believe you were dead. If you were dead I would know, I would feel something here inside me. But if you were alive, surely you would not stay away for so many years. Evan, where were you? What happened to you?”

I went over to the bookcase. “There used to be a bottle of scotch here,” I said, “but I suppose it’s long gone.”

“There’s liquor in the kitchen. Scotch? Or would you like some brandy?”

“Not brandy,” I said with a shudder. “Scotch will be fine.”

“You stay here,” she said. “I’ll get it.”

She came back with two glasses. I was about to ask her just when she started drinking whisky when two things occurred to me. One – it was none of my business what she did, and two – she was seventeen years past the legal drinking age. (I later found out they raised the drinking age to twenty-one while I was chilling out in Union City. She was really only fourteen years past it.)

“Little Minna,” I said, taking a glass. “Did you live here alone all the time?”

“Except when I was married.”

I almost dropped my drink. “You were married?”

“For two years, and we lived together for a year before that. At his apartment, in the East Village. But I kept this place, Evan, and when the marriage broke up I moved back.”

“You were divorced? What happened?”

“Things just didn’t work out.”

I took a long drink of scotch. I wondered how it would sit after all those years, but it went down just fine. I felt the glow spreading in my body, rich and warm. But the warmth didn’t seem to be reaching the bone-deep chill.