“Jack,” he said, “are you keeping your head down?”

“Look up and all you’ll see is a bad shot,” Griffin replied. “It’s good to see you, Harve.”

The man nodded. “You know my wife died?”

“Yes,” said Griffin. He’d attended Jill’s funeral, of course, and thought about reminding Harve of this but decided not to. “Yes.”

“He knows,” said Dot, unhelpfully.

“Hell of a thing,” Harve said, unwilling to let go of the subject. “I hope you never have to go through it.”

“Me too,” Griffin said, realizing that despite Joy’s warning he’d given him far too much cognitive credit. If he knew about their separation, he’d clearly forgotten. Either that or someone had informed him that Griffin was bringing a guest to the wedding, and it was this woman he was hoping wouldn’t die on him.

“Hope you never have to walk into a room and find your wife in a heap on the floor.”

“ Harvey,” Dot said, “you’re going to upset yourself.”

“Because that’s no fun, let me tell you,” he went on, ignoring her completely. “No replacing a woman like that.”

Dot sighed and looked off into the middle distance. She’d clearly heard this sentiment expressed many times before.

“You probably didn’t know, but she was writing a pistolary when she died.”

Griffin glanced at Dot, who rolled her eyes. “A Western?” Griffin asked.

“No, a pistolary. You don’t know what that is?”

He confessed he didn’t.

“Well, she was writing one of those,” he said. “Your Joy’s a lot like her mother.”

Ah, Griffin thought, Joy was still his. At least as far as her demented father was concerned.

“All three girls take after their mother, of course, but Joy’s the most like Jilly Always was.”

“And Laura’s like her mother,” Griffin added, hoping he might take comfort in further feminine continuity.

But Harve just blinked at this, clearly unsure who this Laura might be.

“Laura’s the bride,” Dot informed him under her breath. “We’re here for her wedding.”

“Well of course we are,” Harve said. “You think I don’t know my own granddaughter?” Then, to Griffin, “She thinks I forget things, but I don’t. Like you. I remember perfectly well you could never keep your damn head down. You still don’t, I bet.”

“You’re right, Harve, I still look up.”

Harve nodded sadly, as if to admit that human beings were frail creatures indeed. Impossible to teach most of them the rudiments of anything, much less a complex activity like golf. “You look up,” he said, looking up, his watery blue eyes fixing on Griffin, “all you’ll ever see is a bad shot.”

Then he looked away again, and Griffin could tell he was following the errant shot’s trajectory in his mind as it sliced off into the dark woods, out of sight, where he could hear it thocking among the trees.

“I know this really isn’t the time or place,” said Brian Fynch, dean of admissions and Joy’s boss. The rehearsal dinner was over, and people had been encouraged to reconfigure over dessert. Griffin had been seated with Andy’s family, a smaller group, all of whom seemed a bit cowed by the size and sheer decibel level of Joy’s family (Jane and June were both shriekers). For his part, Griffin had been grateful to be seated with them.

Fynch was a tall man, and his suit was well tailored and expensive looking. He seemed comfortable in it, as men who wear suits every day often are. His haircut was early Beatles, sweeping bangs at the eyebrow line, ridiculous, Griffin couldn’t help thinking, for someone his age, a few years younger than Joy, and Griffin immediately dubbed him “Ringo.” Joy had introduced him as her “friend” (the very word Laura had used on the phone when she told him her mother would also be bringing someone to the wedding). “Jack” was how he himself had been introduced to Fynch, as in Jack, of whom you’ve often heard me speak and weep and curse. He chided himself: But come on, Griffin, get a grip. Joy had probably said nothing of the sort. In fact, be grateful. She’d have been well within her rights to introduce him as her soon-to-be ex, which would have been worse. He didn’t realize he’d been half hoping she’d introduce him as her husband (which he still was, after all) until she didn’t.

At any rate, he and this “friend” had been chatting amiably for the last ten minutes. Ringo claimed they’d actually been introduced last spring (“No reason for you to remember”) when he came on board. Came on board? his mother snorted. What is he, a pirate? (Silent when he and Laura were in the maze and also during dinner, she was feeling gabby again and seemed to have even less use for Brian Fynch than her son did. Normally her opinion wouldn’t have mattered, but she did know her academics.) Ringo loved the college, he went on, as if someone had been spreading vicious rumors to the contrary, and he hoped it would be the last stop on what he termed his “long academic journey.” Long and pointless, perhaps, but hardly academic. It was a wonderful opportunity, really, the kind that came along once in a lifetime. His “team” in admissions was first-rate, though its star, “just between us,” was Joy. (Oh, you smarmy bastard, both son and mother concluded in the same instant.) In fact, Ringo wished he had a half dozen more just like her. This fairly ambiguous remark he delivered with such convincing innocence that Griffin wondered if maybe he and Joy were just friends. He’d been attentive and solicitous to her all evening, but there was certainly nothing to suggest any intimacy between them, though of course she wouldn’t have permitted such a display at her daughter’s wedding.

“I wouldn’t bring it up, believe me, but Dean Zabian heard I was going to be seeing you this weekend, and I promised I’d ask if your situation for the coming academic year had clarified itself.”

It was possible, Griffin supposed, that things had come about just as Fynch claimed. The dean of faculty might well have asked him to inquire. But the far more likely scenario was that Fynch was a sly meddler, an insinuator who’d sought out the dean, not vice versa. Zabian could be forgiven for growing impatient for Griffin to make up his mind, but he more likely would have asked this favor of Joy rather than Ringo. And of course if he really wanted to know, the person to ask was Griffin himself.

“Of course everyone’s hoping you’ll be returning in the fall,” Fynch was saying, “but if you can’t-”

“I understand,” Griffin said. “Tell Carroll I won’t hang him up much longer.”

“It’s not like your replacement’s a washout or anything,” Fynch continued, oblivious that he’d been given full permission to discontinue this particular conversation. “The department could probably limp along for another semester or two, but as Dean Zabian put it, ‘She’s no Jack Griffin in the classroom.’”

Griffin smiled, now certain that he (and his mother) were right about Ringo’s character. The implied omniscience, the overfamiliarity, the flattery… what a putz. He thought of the elderly woman he’d spoken to in Truro this time last year who’d been looking for the right occasion to use fart-hammer. Well, here it was.

With relief, he noticed that a young man wearing a blazer with the hotel’s insignia on the pocket was conferring with Joy, who turned to point him out. “If you’ll excuse me,” he said, making a show of taking out his checkbook. At this Ringo turned on his heel and fled, apparently convinced he could provide no further service.

“Mr. Griffin?” said the young man, who appeared to be holding an invoice. “Maybe we should go someplace more private?”

He nodded agreeably and let the checkbook slide back into his jacket pocket. “What are we going to do?”

Turning bright purple, the fellow looked even younger and, Griffin realized too late, clearly gay.