Julie wanted to walk, so they strolled up two blocks to pay their respects to the Waverly Hotel. The Waverly was eighty-seven years old, and had looked just as strange in its own time as it did now. It was supposed to have been modeled after a Burgundian castle, and it did at least look more like a castle than like anything else in the world. There were round towers and square towers, dunce-cap turrets and Moorish arches and galleries, a functioning portcullis and a sally-port, a driveway approach in the form of a drawbridge, and a stone-flagged courtyard with parking stripes. It changed owners every few years, but was still quite popular with certain conventions.

On a clear night, the Waverly could be seen from Parnell Street—a great drowsy bubble, pink and purple and green, floating softly up out of the hills. Farrell and Julie walked with their arms around each other’s waists, leaning together, playing a favorite game of singing improbable combinations of songs in counterpoint. Farrell was chanting “Il était une bergere,” while Julie gleefully ravaged “Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl.”

In front of the Waverly, they fell silent, standing under the portcullis and looking straight up into the marzipan radiance. Farrell saw only a scattering of cars in the parking lot and a few people clustered at a side door; but even so, the hotel seemed to resound and tremble with light, like an acacia in bee time. Julie said against his shoulder, “It would be lovely if you could give a concert here someday. You’d never have a better setting for the music.”

When he did not answer, she raised her head and looked at him curiously, saying, “Now that made you sad. I could feel it happen in you. What is it, Joe?”