We met in the hallway as I was leaving last time, Aunt Lulu said.

Mr. Kindt nodded. I thought I would take your aunt on a tour of the ward today, Henry, show her some of the sites, get her acquainted with our little stomping ground.

But then I’ll come back, Aunt Lulu said. After all, I did come to talk to you, Henry.

What on earth, Aunt Lulu, could we possibly have to talk about? I wanted to ask. The majority of me, including my vocal apparatus, however, seemed to want only to sit there, unmoving, unresponsive, legs slightly spread, hands in my lap.

Likely sensing that I wasn’t up for an active discussion anymore, Aunt Lulu said, you are tired, nephew. Your friend Aris here can entertain me. We’ll walk around and then I’ll come back and see you.

Her nails shone even more brightly as she said this, and her brown eyes seemed to have caught some of the fire in Mr. Kindt’s.

I want to discuss a thing or two with you, Henry, she said. I want to talk to you about some things, including the way I understand that you have been portraying me to the good people here, discussing my appearance and comportment as if we didn’t all have good and bad days. I want to talk about that in some depth, Henry.

She took Mr. Kindt’s arm, and they stepped forward so that they were only a foot or so away from my kneecaps.

I thought I’d show her the garden, Mr. Kindt said. I haven’t been out there today. Perhaps we’ll see some birds. Do you smoke, my dear?

Oh yes, I love a good smoke, Aris, she said. Let’s go and do just what you propose — let’s see the ward and smoke in the garden and you can show me the birds if they are around. You can introduce me to the various people here, including Dr. Tulp, who I understand is Henry’s primary care physician. Especially Dr. Tulp, who I trust can give me a fair and accurate accounting of my nephew’s condition. And then I want to come back and speak directly to him. I want to speak to him about his portrayal of others and about his character. I want to see what he has to say about that. I want to talk to my nephew and pick his brain a little on some of these subjects and give him the opportunity to pick mine.

Then I want to sit with him, very close to him if he still isn’t feeling well, and talk to him about the circumstances of my death. I’d like to ask him to describe it, to tell me what it looked like from where he was standing. He was right there, Aris. Right there in the doorway.

Ah, said Mr. Kindt.

And he didn’t move a muscle, so I imagine he had a very clear view of what happened. He was a very interesting boy, Aris, always full of opinions and never hesitant to share them. I’d like to hear what he has to say. There is a great deal — isn’t there, Henry? — to discuss. We can put our heads together and talk about the past and our relationship and about the way — let’s call it abrupt, my god yes it was abrupt — that Henry here helped cut it off. Sound good?

Sounds brilliant, Lulu, Mr. Kindt said.

Both of them beamed at me.

Toodles, Aunt Lulu said, grazing my scalp with her nails as they went past.

Oh fuck, I said.

All the wonderful light seemed like it might start scorching the room.

TWENTY-FIVE

The rising sun was dribbling rivulets of light into the troughs of the crosstown streets when I left the little room behind the tattoo parlor on Orchard and made my way back to The Fidelity. Mr. Mancini was asleep with his head in his arms on the front desk when I came in, which was a shame because I was in the mood to crow a little about my night. In fact, I was so eager to let Mr. Mancini know what I had gotten myself up to after leaving Grand Central — without providing details of course — in Tulip’s arms as we lay on the AeroBed on the floor in the corner next to the low shelf with the burning ylang-ylang candle, and, spurred on by contextually vast expanses of exposed skin and numerous murderous propositions, created friction, that I stood a minute in front of him, doing a little bit of a shue and spin dance on the cracked tiles of the entryway and staring at the swirly roots of the thick dark hair covering the top of his cinder-block-sized head. However, when thoughts of crowing a little — who’s the shitface now that I scored with Tulip? — gave way to — wouldn’t it be nice to maybe knock this guy on his ugly egg with a phone book and see if he wakes up smiling? — I decided I should probably skip the Mr. Mancini interlude, which would just end badly anyway, and go up to my room.

I woke coughing a few hours later. The air had been all but replaced by a noxious mix of tar, motor oil, and old chewing gum, which meant that one of the hot dog vendors who kept his cart in the storefront attached to The Fidelity had forgotten to extinguish his coals, and the fumes had come up the air shaft. Since the guy who leased to the hot dog vendors was Mr. Mancini’s brother-in-law, the only thing to do about it was get dressed, listen to a wide-awake Mr. Mancini snarl preemptive disclaimers through the nasty smile that was already, even at 8:30 in the morning, plastered onto his face, and get out.

So I hit the streets a little more blearily than I might have liked, and this bleariness contributed, I have very little doubt, to the gradual nosedive my spirits took over the course of the morning. It wasn’t, at least not at first, that I no longer felt pretty fabulous about my late evening exertions with Tulip: I did. It’s just that part of my pleasure in contemplating the proceedings on Tulip’s AeroBed, proceedings that had lasted beyond any reasonable expectation, was mitigated by a sense of disbelief that gained ground as I sipped coffee on the bench outside Porto Rico on St. Mark’s Place, chewed a bagel I got on B, and read part of a Wolverine comic book I retrieved from a trash can on Seventh, and that was confirmed when I stood in front of a mirror in the men’s room in a café on Third and A.

Wait a minute, uck, there is no way Tulip did that voluntarily, is what I thought.

Now, it wasn’t as if I hadn’t made an effort since I had gotten into murders, despite the challenges presented by living at a dump like The Fidelity, to keep myself more or less presentable and to acquire some new clothing. In fact, at that very moment, I had on my favorite green rooster T-shirt, a pair of fairly clean, nicely rumpled linen pants, and some acceptable leather on my feet. But the truth was, even if it was possible that I was heading toward brighter days and a better look, I hadn’t gotten there yet. Not even close. I tried to imagine lasciviously sidling up to myself, failed, and had to splash water on my face. Fortunately, splashing water on my face made me think of Mr. Kindt and thinking of him, especially in this context, helped. Tulip did, after all, spend a tremendous amount of time around our benefactor, who, despite the odd feature or two, was, let’s face it, despite those special aspects, no gorgeous picture himself. I might, I thought, actually be just exactly what the doctor ordered for Tulip, just the perfect soup, the loveliest piece of pickled fish, the most extraordinary, because so unusually textured, chunk of baguette. I had, after all, enjoyed the company of a girlfriend who had loved me, or put up with me, for a very long time, and she had been far from some kind of kook or tasteless slouch. True, I had been in much better shape in those days, at least until that period at the end when it all collapsed, when it all came crashing down on me. Until that time I had without a doubt been what she once referred to, while we ate steak frites — my treat — at Belmondo, a “most satisfactory companion,” but still.

There were other things from the previous night to think about as I walked around that morning, little things — to do with Cornelius, and Mr. Kindt, and the nature of Tulip’s relationship to them — that, as you will see when I discuss the night of the murder later on, further problematized this question of the authenticity of Tulip’s regard for my physical person, and I did kick them around some, but mostly I considered, and mostly, in the end, fought off, doubts of a principally aesthetic nature.