He meant the Brasserie. It was the little joke he always had with us. 'Yes,' I said.

'No,' said Charles quite suddenly. He was slouched down childishly low against the door, staring straight ahead and drumming on the armrest with his fingers. 'We want to go to 1910 Catamount Street.'

'Where's that?' I said to him.

'Oh, I hope you don't mind,' he said, almost looking at me but not quite. 'Just feel like a change. It's not far and besides, I'm sick of the food at the Brasserie, aren't you?'

The place where we wound up – a bar called the Farmer's Inn was not remarkable for its food, or its decor – folding chairs and Formica tables – or for its sparse clientele, which was mostly rural, drunken, and over sixty-five. It was, in fact, inferior to the Brasserie in every respect but one, which was that really very sizable shots of off-brand whiskey could be got at the bar for fifty cents each.

We sat at the end of the bar by the television set. A basketball game was on. The barmaid – in her fifties, with turquoise eye shadow and lots of turquoise rings to match – looked us over, our suits and ties. She seemed startled by Charles's order of two double whiskeys and a club sandwich. 'What the hey,' she said, in a voice like a macaw. 'They're letting you boys have a snort now and then, huh?'

I didn't know what she meant – was this some dig at our clothes, at Hampden College, did she want to see our IDs?

Charles, who only the moment before had been sunk in gloom, glanced up and fixed her with a smile of great warmth and sweetness. He had a way with waitresses. They always hovered over him in restaurants and went to all kinds of special trouble on his behalf.

This one looked at him – pleased, incredulous – and barked with laughter. 'Well, ain't that a kick,' she said hoarsely, reaching with a heavily ringed hand for the Silva-Thin burning in the ashtray beside her. 'And here I thought you Mormon kids that went around wasn't even suppose to drink Coca-Cola.'

As soon as she sauntered back to the kitchen to turn in our order ('Bill!' we heard her saying, behind the swinging doors.

'Hey, Bill! Listen to this!'), the smile faded from Charles's face.

He reached for his drink and offered a humorless shrug when I tried to catch his eye.

'Sorry,' he said. 'I hope you don't mind coming here. It's cheaper than the Brasserie and we won't see anybody.'

He was not in a mood to talk – ebullient sometimes, he could also be as mute and sulky as a child – and he drank steadily, with both his elbows on the bar and his hair falling down in his face.

When his sandwich came he picked it apart, ate the bacon and left the rest, while I drank my drink and watched the Lakers. It was weird to be there, in that clammy dark bar in Vermont, and watching them play. Back in California, at my old college, they'd had a pub called Falstaff's with a wide-screen television; I'd had a dopey friend named Carl who used to drag me there to drink dollar beer and watch basketball. He was probably there now. on a redwood bar stool, watching this exact game.

I was thinking these depressing thoughts and others like them, and Charles was on his fourth or fifth whiskey when somebody started switching the television with a remote control: 'Jeopardy,'

'Wheel of Fortune,'

'Mac Neil,'Lehrer,' at last a local talk show.

It was called 'Tonight in Vermont.' The set was styled after a New England farmhouse, with mock Shaker furniture and antique farm equipment, pitchforks and so forth, hanging from the clapboard backdrop. Liz Ocavello was the host. In imitation of Oprah and Phil, she had a question-and-answer period at the end of each show, generally not too lively since her guests tended to be pretty tame – the State Commissioner for Veterans' Affairs, Shriners announcing a blood drive ('What's that address again, Joe?').

Her guest that evening, though it was several moments before I realized it, was William Hundy. He had on a suit – not the blue leisure suit but an old one the likes of which a rural preacher might wear – and he was talking authoritatively, for some reason I did not immediately understand, about Arabs and OPEC. That OPEC,' he said, 'is the reason we don't have Texaco filling stations anymore. I remember when I was a boy it was Texaco stations all over the place but these Arabs, it was some kind of, what you call, leverage buyout '

'Look,' I said to Charles, but by the time I'd got him to glance up from his stupor they'd switched back to Jeopardy.'

'What?' he said.

'Nothing.'

'Jeopardy,'

'Wheel of Fortune,' back to 'Mac Neil,'Lehrer' for kind of a long time until someone yelled, 'Turn that shit off, Dotty.'

'Well, what you want to watch, then?'

' "Wheel of Fortune,"' shouted a hoarse chorus.

But 'Wheel of Fortune' was going off the air (Vanna blowing a glittery kiss) and the next thing I knew we were back in the simulated farmhouse with William Hundy. He was talking now about his appearance the previous morning on the 'Today' show.

'Look,' said someone, 'there's that guy runs Redeemed Repair.'

'He don't run it.'

'Who does, then?'

'Him and Bud Alcorn both do.'

'Aw, shut up, Bobby.'

'Naw,' said Mr Hundy, 'didn't see Willard Scott. Reckon I wouldn't have known what to say if I had. It's a big operation they got there, course it don't look so big on the TV.'

I kicked Charles's foot.

'Yeah,' he said, without interest, and brought his glass up with an unsteady hand.

1 was surprised to see how outspoken Mr Hundy had become in just four days. I was even more surprised to see how warmly the studio audience responded to him – asking concerned questions on topics ranging from the criminal justice system to the role of the small businessman in the community, roaring with laughter at his feeble jokes. It seemed to me that such popularity could only be incidental to what he had seen, or claimed to see.

His stunned and stuttering air was gone. Now, with his hands folded over his stomach, answering questions with the pacific smile of a pontiff granting dispensations, he was so perfectly at his ease that there was something palpably dishonest about it. I wondered why no one else, apparently, could see it.

A small, dark man in shirtsleeves, who had been waving his hand in the air for some time, was finally called upon by Liz and stood up. 'My name is Adnan Nassar and I am Palestinian American,' he said in a rush. 'I came to this country from Syria nine years ago and have since then earned American citizenship and am assistant manager of the Pizza Pad on Highway 6.'

Mr Hundy put his head to the side. 'Well, Adnan,' he said cordially, 'I expect that story would be pretty unusual in your own country. But here, that's the way the system works. For everybody. And that's regardless of your race or the color of your skin.' Applause.

Liz, microphone in hand, made her way down the aisle and pointed at a lady with a bouffant hairdo, but the Palestinian angrily waved his arms and the camera shifted back to him.

That is not the point,' he said. 'I am an Arab and I resent the racial slurs you make against my people.'

Liz walked back to the Palestinian and put her hand on his arm, Oprah-style, to comfort him. William Hundy, sitting in his mock-Shaker chair on the podium, shifted slightly as he leaned forward. 'You like it here?' he said shortly.

'Yes.'

'You want to go back?'

'Now,' Liz said loudly. 'Nobody is trying to say that '

'Because the boats,' said Mr Hundy, even louder, 'run both ways.'

Dotty, the barmaid, laughed admiringly and took a drag off her cigarette. 'That's telling him,' she said.

'Where your family comes from?' said the Arab sarcastically.

'You American Indian or what?'

Mr Hundy did not appear to have heard this. 'I'll pay for you to go back,' he said. 'How much is a one-way ticket to Baghdad going for these days? If you want me to, I'll '