“Well, hell! You’ve got to do something. Did you come into some money?”

“No. I believe I’ll do some traveling. I’ve been in one place too long.”

He raised his coffee cup and drained it. Then he leaned back, clasped his hands across his stomach, and lowered his eyelids slightly. He was silent for a time.

Finally: “You said you were finished. Did you just mean the job and your life here, or something else as well?”

“I don’t follow you.”

“You had a way of disappearing — back in college, too. You’d be gone for a while and then just as suddenly turn up again. You always were vague about it, too. Seemed like you were leading some sort of double life. That have anything to do with it?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” He smiled.

“Sure you do,” he said. When I did not reply; he added: “Well, good luck with it — whatever.”

Always moving, seldom at rest, he fidgeted with a key ring while we had a second cup of coffee, bouncing and jangling keys and a big shone pendant. Our breakfasts finally arrived and we ate in silence for a while.

Then he asked, “You still have the Starburst?”

“No. Sold her last fall,” I told him. “I’d been so busy I just didn’t have time to sail. Hated to see her idle.”

He nodded.

“That’s too bad,” he said. “We had a lot of fun with her, back in school. Later, too. I’d have liked to take her out once more, for old times’ sake.”

“Yes.”

“Say, you haven’t seen Julia recently.”

“No, not since we broke up. I think she’s still going with some guy named Rick. Have you?”

“Yeah. I stopped by last night.”

“Why?”

He shrugged.

“She was one of the gang — and we’ve all been drifting apart.

“How was she?”

“Still looking good. She asked about you. Gave me this… to give to you, too.”

He withdrew a sealed envelope from inside his jacket and passed it to me. It bore my name, in her handwriting. I tore it open and read: