“Yes, sir, I’ll be sure to,” I say, wondering if he must be lonely.

From his point of view, it won’t be for my intellectual stimulation.

Maybe he wants to tell me who murdered Willie Ting.

“I’ll do that.”

After Mckenzie serves us and departs, Angela remarks, “He’s always been thought of as a curmudgeon, but I think it has been a cover to hide the fact that he’s gay.”

I am pleased by her lack of prejudice (she must still be a liberal on some things), but I wonder if the obverse is true: Did Carpenter become a caustic old man because he was forced to suppress his sexuality? When I knew him, he displayed none of the characteristics I usually associate with homosexuality. I never thought of him as creative or artistic, and

certainly he hasn’t become so, judging by the decor of the Cotton Boll. As we are eating, a total of ten customers, including a family of five, enter the restaurant. Angela nods, but no one stops to talk. They are all younger by a decade. When I comment that she does not seem to know everyone, she acknowledges, “The older I get, the less curious about younger people I become. Unless they are my children or their friends, I’m not all that interested in them.”

I feel the same way. As we age, we begin to let go. Generation X. So what? They seem boring and self-absorbed to me. But now that Sarah’s gone, all I know about them is what is on the tube. It is hard not to feel a bond with this woman. She gets me to talk about Sarah again, which isn’t hard to do. I tell her how hard it was on Sarah after Rosa died.

“She was already insecure, and then I kind of went nuts and left her alone too much while I went prowling around for a while. I don’t know how she survived it. Maybe I should have sent her away to a girls’ boarding school, too.”

Angela frowns from behind her coffee cup.

“That’s ridiculous, Gideon, and you know it. She sounds fine. You just want somebody to brag on her besides you. I’d love to meet her sometime.