I had made a point of running into Susan on the steps of the courthouse. She was surrounded by her parents, three of her parents' lawyers, and two family-retained psychiatrists. William didn't seem awfully thrilled to see me for some reason, and Charlotte stuck her nose in the air, I mean literally, like you see in old movies. You've got to be careful when you do that walking down steps.

Anyway, Susan broke away from the Stanhope guard and came over to me on the steps. She smiled. "Hello, John."

"Hello, Susan." I had congratulated her on a successful court appearance, and she had been cheery and buoyant, which was to be expected after walking free on a murder that was witnessed by about six federal agents, who fortunately couldn't seem to recall the incident clearly.

We'd spoken briefly, mostly about our children and not about our divorce. I asked her at one point, "Are you really crazy?"

She smiled. "Just enough to get me out of that courthouse. Don't tell." I smiled in return. We agreed that we both felt bad for Anna, but that maybe she was better off, though that wasn't true, and Susan asked me if I had gone to Frank's funeral, which I had. Susan said, "I should have gone, too, of course, but it might have been awkward."

"It possibly could have been." Since you killed him. I mean, really, Susan. But maybe she had already disassociated herself from that unpleasant incident. She was looking very good, by the way, dressed in a tailored grey silk shirt and jacket, appropriate for courtroom appearances, and wearing high heels, which she probably couldn't wait to kick off.

I didn't know when or if I'd see her again, so I said to her, "I still love you, you know."

"You'd better. Forever."

"Yes, forever."

"Me, too."

Well, we parted there on the steps, she to go back to Hilton Head, and me to Long Island. I was sharing the Stanhope gatehouse with Ethel Allard, who had insisted on taking me in when Susan sold the guesthouse. Ethel and I are getting along a little better than we had in the past. I drive her to the stores and to church on Sunday, though I don't go to stores or churches much myself anymore. The arrangement seems to be working out, and I'm glad for the opportunity to help someone who needs help, and Ethel is glad she finally got a chance to take in a homeless person. Father Hunnings approves, too. The guesthouse, incidentally, where Susan and I had spent our twenty-two years of married life, and where we had raised our two children, has been bought by an intense young couple who are here on a corporate transfer from Dubuque or Duluth or someplace out there, working their way up the corporate game of chutes and ladders. They both leave for Manhattan before dawn and return after dark. They're not quite sure where they are geographically or socially, but they seem anxious that the Stanhope subdivision be completed so they can have friends and start a bowling team or something.

Jenny Alvarez and I still see each other from time to time, but she's involved with a baseball star now, a Mets infielder of all things, but I don't rub that in when I see her.

I had actually gone to Bellarosa's funeral as I told Susan. The Mass was at Santa Lucia, of course, and Monsignor Chiaro gave a beautiful service and spoke well of the deceased, so I guess the cheque cleared.

The burial itself was at an old cemetery in Brooklyn, and it was a real mafioso affair with a hundred black limousines and so many flowers at graveside that they covered a dozen other graves in all directions. Sally Da-da was there, of course, and we nodded to each other, and Jack Weinstein was there, and we made indefinite plans to have lunch. Anthony was there, too, out on bail for some charge or other, and Fat Paulie was there, and a guy whose face was half eaten away who I guess was my godfather, Aniello, and there were whole faces, too, that I recognized from the Plaza soiree, and from Giulio's. Anna did not look particularly good in black, or particularly good at all for that matter. She had been surrounded by so many wailing women that she never saw me, which was just as well.

Also with Anna, of course, were her three sons, Frankie, Tommy, and Tony. I recognized Frankie as the oldest, a sort of big lummox who looked more benign than dangerous. Tommy, the Cornell student, looked like an all-American kid, the sort who might wind up working for a Fortune 500 company. Tony, whom I had met, was in his La Salle uniform, looking very ramrod straight and clean-cut, but if you looked past the uniform and the short hair, you saw Frank Bellarosa. You saw eyes that appraised everyone and everything. In fact, he looked at me for a while as though he were sizing me up, and the resemblance to his father was so uncanny that I actually had to blink to make certain I wasn't seeing a ghost. At one point in the graveside service, I saw Tony staring at his uncle Sal, aka Sally Da-da, and if I were Uncle Sal, I'd keep an eye on that kid. Anyway, Mr Mancuso was present, but tactfully stood some distance away with four photographers recording the event for posterity or other reasons. I recalled what old Monsignor Chiaro had said at graveside, quoting from Timothy: We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. Which was the best news I'd heard since "We pass this way but once."

And so, I thought, as I walked between Alhambra's stately poplars that had so impressed Frank Bellarosa, there is an ebb and flow in all human events, there is a building up and a tearing down, there are brief enchanted moments in history and in the short lives of men and women, there is wonder and there is cynicism, there are dreams that can come true, and dreams that can't. And there was a time, you know, not so long ago, as recently as my own childhood in fact, when everyone believed in the future and eagerly awaited it or rushed to meet it. But now nearly everyone I know or used to know is trying to slow the speed of the world as the future starts to look more and more like someplace you don't want to be. But maybe that is not a cultural or national phenomenon, only my own middle age, my present state of mind combined with this dark winter season.

But spring follows as surely as winter ends. Right? And I have my eye on a used Allied fifty-five footer that I can pick up for a song in the winter months if I can get my prestigious law firm to settle up with me. And Carolyn and Edward will crew for me over Easter week on a shakedown cruise, and by summer I'll be ready to set out again with my children if they want to come, or with anyone else who wants to crew aboard the Paumanok II. I'll stop in Galveston to see Emily, then if I can shanghai her and Gary or any two or three people who are game enough, we'll do circumnavigation of the globe. Hey why not? You only live once.

I slipped out through the gates of Alhambra and began the walk up Grace Lane toward the gatehouse and Ethel's Sunday roast.

And maybe, I thought, when I come back to America, I'll put in at Hilton Head and see if forever is forever.