If I haven’t mentioned it, Karen and I lived in Austin, Nevada, a small, remote town in the Toiyabe mountain range. It’s six hours and a hundred years away from Las Vegas.

“I’m supposed to find him in Vegas?”

“You don’t even have to find him,” Graham answered. “He’s in a nice room at the Mirage and security’s keeping an eye on him. It’s a no-brainer, which is why I thought of you.”

There has to be a catch, I thought.

“Where does he live? Tibet?”

“Palm Desert.”

“Where’s that?”

“Next to Palm Springs.”

“California?”

“No. Palm Springs, Antarctica.”

Graham has a gift for sarcasm.

A pause, then Graham repeated, “Alone and confused. An old man.”

He also has a gift for bathos. Bathos is one of those graduate-school words you don’t often get a chance to trot out. Bathos, bathos, bathos.

“All right, all right,” I said.

“You’ll do it?”

“I’m a sucker.”

Especially for bathos.

“Nathan Silverstein,” Graham said. “Room 5812. He’s expecting you, but clear it through security first, right?”

“Right.”

“Now, what am I supposed to wear?” Graham asked. “I hope this isn’t going to be one of those blue-jeans weddings.”

“See you, Dad.”

“Bye-bye, son.”

I hung up and grabbed the sodas. This wasn’t so bad after all. I’d be gone a couple of days and pick up a few extra bucks. And not get dragged back into Friends.

Yep, master’s degree soon, deliriously happy marriage, back to New York for a while. I had life pretty much wired. And maybe Karen had evolved into some precoital bliss in my extended absence.

When I got back outside she was sobbing.