Right outside the door was a flower stand, and for an instant I wondered whether I should buy some for India. The vendor saw me looking and enthusiastically said the roses were especially nice today. The image of those red flowers brought me around fast and sent me dashing down the street in search of a cab.

The driver had on a monstrous black-and-yellow-plaid golf cap with a fuzzy black pompon on it. It was so bad-looking that I had a desperate urge to knock it off his head and say, "How can you wear that when my friend just died?" There was a miniature soccer ball hanging by a string from the rearview mirror. I kept my eyes shut for the rest of the trip so I wouldn't have to see these things.

"Wiedersehen!" he chirped over his shoulder, and the cab pulled away from the curb. I turned to face their building. It looked new and had the familiar plaque on the wall saying the original building that had been there was destroyed in the war. This one had been put up in the 1950s.

I pressed the button in the call box and was disconcerted by how quickly her answer came. I wondered if she had been sitting by the buzzer since our phone conversation.

"Joe, is that you?"

"Yes, India. Before I come up, would you like me to go to the store or anything for you? You want some wine?"

"No, come up."

Their apartment was freezing cold, but she stood in the doorway wearing my favorite yellow T-shirt and a white linen skirt that looked as if it should have been worn in the dog days of August. Her feet were bare, too. Both the Tates seemed completely oblivious to the cold. I gave up being bewildered once I realized it made total sense in a way: both of them had so much bubbling, steaming life-energy that some of it inevitably ended up being turned into thermal units. This thought made so much sense to me that I had to test it out. Once, when we were waiting for a tram on a mean, godawful, cold, foggy night in October, I "accidentally" touched Paul's hand. It was as warm as a coffeepot. But that was all over now.

Their apartment was ominously clean. I guess I half expected it to be turned upside down for some reason, but it wasn't. Magazines were carefully fanned out across the bamboo coffee table, silk pillows upright and undented on the couch . . . The worst thing of all was that their table was still set for two. Everything – place mats, wineglasses, silverware. It gave the illusion that dinner was due to arrive at any moment.

"Do you want a cup of coffee, Joe? I just made a pot."

I didn't, but it was easy to see she wanted to be up and moving, doing something with her hands and body.

"Yes, that'd be great."

She brought out a tray jammed with big coffee mugs, a heavy porcelain sugar and cream set, a plate of sliced pound cake, and two linen napkins. She fooled around with the coffee and cake as long as she could, but finally her spring ran down and she was still.

Her empty hands began to fiddle and crawl up and over each other, while at the same time she tried to give me a comfortable, uncomplicated smile. I put the warm mug down and rubbed my mouth with my fingers.

"I'm a widow, Joe. A widow. What a fucking strange word."

"Will you tell me what happened? Can you?"

"Yes." She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. "He always does his exercises – those exercises before dinner. He said they relaxed him and made him hungry. I was in the kitchen making –" She threw her head back and groaned. Covering her face with her hands, she slid off the couch and onto the floor. Curled into a fetal position, she wept and wept until there was nothing left. When I thought she was done, I slipped down beside her and put my hand on her back. The touch started her off again, and she crawled, still crying, into my lap. It was a long time before silence returned.

He had been doing sit-ups. They had a little joke where he always counted them off loudly so she could hear how good he was at them. She didn't pay attention when his voice stopped. She thought he was either tired or out of breath. When she came into the room he was lying on his back, hands clenched tightly over his upper chest. She thought he was kidding. She went to the table and arranged the silverware. From time to time she looked over at him, and when he didn't stop, she got mad. She told him to stop kidding around. When nothing changed she swept angrily around the table, preparing to tickle him into submission. She bent over him, fingers out and ready to attack. Then for the first time she saw that the very tip of his tongue stuck out from between his lips and there was blood around it.

The coffee tasted like cold acid in my mouth. She finished the story sitting at the other end of the couch, looking straight ahead at the wall.

"He had high blood pressure. A couple of years ago a doctor told him he should start exercising if he wanted to be safe." She turned to me, a hard metal line of smile on her lips. "You know what? The last time he went to a doctor they said his blood pressure was way down."

"India, did he tell you what happened at the Hilton that day?"

She nodded. "Little Boy?"

"Yes."

"You think his finding out about us did this to him?"

"I don't know, India."

"Me neither, Joe."

Paul was buried three days later in a small cemetery that fronted one of the vineyards in Heiligenstadt. He had discovered the place while on a Sunday walk and had made India promise that if he died in Vienna, she would try to have him buried there. He said he liked the view – ornate stone and cast-iron markers with a backdrop of hills and grapevines. Way at the top, Schloss Leopoldsberg and the green beginnings of the Wienerwald.

I knew some of the people at the service. A big bear of a man from Yugoslavia named Amir who loved to cook and who had the Tates over to dinner at least once a month. A few people from Paul's office, and a handsome black teacher from one of the international schools who pulled up in a bright-orange Porsche convertible. But I was surprised there weren't more. I kept looking at India to see if she was fully aware of the meager turnout. She wore no hat, and her hair blew light and free in the wind. Her face showed nothing but a kind of closed harmony. She later told me she was aware only of her grief and the last moments with her husband.

The weather was fine and sunny; for a few moments the sun cheerfully reflected off a polished gravestone nearby. Except for an occasional car and the crunch of gravel underfoot, it was quiet. A stillness you were hesitant to upset because, when you did, the glass around the moment might shatter and Paul Tate would truly and forever be gone, and we would soon be leaving him.

That's what I'd thought the two previous times I'd been to funerals – how you leave and "they" stay. Like someone seeing you off at the train. As it's pulling out of the station and you're waving goodbye to them from the window, inevitably they seem to diminish in size. Not only because you're moving and the physical distance is shrinking them, but because they're still there. You're bigger because you're off and away to something new, while they're shrinking because now they'll go home to the same lunches, television shows, dog, ink, and view from the living room window.

I turned from thoughts of Paul to how India was taking it. She was holding her purse to her chest and looking up at the sky. What did she see there? I wondered if she was looking for heaven. Then she closed her eyes and lowered her head slowly. She hadn't cried at all that day, but how long could she hold out? I took a step toward her; she must have heard my feet on the gravel, because she turned and looked at me. Simultaneously, two very strange things happened. First, instead of seeming on the verge of tears or some kind of violent emotion, she looked, well, bored. That in itself was disconcerting, but then, an instant later, her face broke into a glorious smile, the kind that comes only when something wonderful happens to you for no reason at all. It was good I didn't have to say anything, because I would have been speechless.