"I thought I would find you here," he said, wheezing with the effort and the heat. "I saw your name on the registration list."

He stopped a few feet away, suddenly tentative.

"Hello, C-Bird," he said.

I stood and held out my hand. "Bonjour Napoleon," I replied. "No one has called me by that name in many, many years."

He grasped my hand. His was a little sweaty with exertion and had a palsied weakness to the grip. That would be the result of his medications. But the smile remained. "Me, neither," he said.

"I saw your real name on the program," I told him. "You're going to give a speech?"

He nodded. "I don't know about getting up in front of all those people," he said. "But my treating physician is one of the movers and shakers in the hospital redevelopment plan and it was all his idea. He said it would be good therapy. A solid demonstration of the golden road to total recovery."

I hesitated, then asked, "What do you think?"

Napoleon sat down on the bench. "I think he's the crazy one," he said, breaking into a slightly manic giggle, a high-pitched sound that joined nervousness and joy at once and that I remembered from our time together. "Of course, it helps that everyone still believes you're completely crazy, because then you can't really embarrass yourself too badly," he added, and I grinned along with him. That was the sort of observation only someone who had spent time in a mental hospital would make. I sat back down next to him and we both stared over at the Amherst Building. After a moment or two, he sighed. "Did you go inside?"

"Yes. It's a mess. Ready for the wrecker's ball."