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burst eighty-year-old Al Bell. Al saw me and whooped, “Say there, Ben, how about that Fisk party?”
    â€œSounded like fun.”
    â€œI heard they had a stripper jump out of a cake. And she ran off into the swamp. Ben, single guy like you, should have wangled an invite.” Al winked.
    He’d been Newbury’s most prominent Lothario in his day, so I leered back to honor past glories. “The way I heard it, you had to bring a spouse.”
    â€œNo, I hear there was a crasher, stayed late and joined in the festivities. Figured maybe that was you.”
    â€œNo such luck, Al.”
    He bought some pipe tobacco and now he gave Eddie a wink as he asked me—as he always asked me, with a significant glance in the direction of Town Hall—“How you making out with the government?”
    I answered this reference to First Selectman Vicky McLachlan as I always did: “Just friends.”
    Al roared off in his Jeep and finally Eddie and I were alone. I said, “Sometimes I think Al assigns me his fantasies.”
    â€œWhatever keeps him going, right?”
    â€œEddie, I wonder if I could ask you a sort of personal favor.”
    â€œLike what?”
    â€œCould you possibly ask Reg’s AA sponsor to give me a ring?”
    Eddie stopped smiling, though his open face remained friendly, if a little puzzled. “Why?” he asked.
    â€œBetween us?”
    I usually bought my newspapers at the General Store, and I don’t smoke, but I did stop in for magazines. And, of course, we saw each other monthly at the P&Z meetings.
    â€œSure.”
    â€œApparently the Plainfield medical examiner is going to report that Reg died of a heroin overdose.”
    â€œ What ?”
    â€œI know. Same feeling I had. Some kind of super-potent load. Probably never knew what hit him.”
    â€œJesus.”
    â€œAnyway, Janey can’t buy that Reg fell off the wagon. Any wagon. Booze, dope, she says he was totally clean. She doesn’t know who Reg’s sponsor was. She asked me to check it out with him.”
    â€œWhat for? She dumped him six months ago.”
    Eddie’s expression made it clear whose side he was on, so I saw no profit in explaining about the life insurance. “I think it has to do with their kids. She wants to be able to tell ’em Dad wasn’t a drunk.”
    â€œHe was a recovering drunk,” Eddie said bluntly. Like most of the AA people I knew, he had a gentle manner and it was hard to tell whether I was annoying him or whether he was just trying to get the facts straight.
    I said, “That’s what I thought. And that’s what Janey thinks. But she doesn’t know his sponsor…Since I heard you at the meeting last month, I thought I could ask you.”
    â€œJesus, that was weird,” said Eddie. “I’ve been thinking about it ever since, and you know, I think some part of me just wanted to come out of the closet…Listen, I’ll give him a ring. You going to be in your office?”
    I walked home, went through my bills, culled a few I could put off, and renewed a couple of house ads in the New York Times . Then I wrote a new one for the Richardson place, a lovely old estate that was going to earn me a wonderful commission one of these days.
    I was out in the kitchen heating the rest of the coffee in the microwave, which I use exclusively for warming coffee and taking the chill off refrigerated red wine—information I make a point of sharing with aggressive oenophiles—when I heard Joe Pitkin’s house-painting van clatter into the driveway, aluminum ladders banging like a train wreck. Joe swung down, carrying his lunchpail, and I opened the kitchen door as he knocked.
    â€œI was just thinking about you. Wondering if I could get away with painting just the front of the house.”
    â€œOr bulldoze it,” said Joe.
    This was a once-a-month or so spontaneous visit. While he emptied his lunchpail