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courtesy he had shown in inviting MacIver into the house.
    MacIver was a well-preserved man in his late fifties. His white hair emphasized the blue eyes with which he fixed Billy as he talked. He smiled lazily and used his large hands to emphasize his words as he strode restlessly about the lounge. Sometimes he stroked his white moustache, or ran a finger along an eyebrow. They were the gestures of a man to whom appearance was important: an actor, a womanizer or a salesman. MacIver possessed attributes of all three.
    It was a large room, comfortably furnished with good quality furniture and expensive carpets. MacIver’s restless prowling was proprietorial. He went to the Bechstein grand piano, its top crowded with framed photographs. From the photos of friends and relatives, MacIver selected a picture of Charles Stein, the man he had come to visit, taken at the training battalion at Camp Edwards, Massachusetts, sometime in the early 1940s. Stein was dressed in the uncomfortable, ill-fitting coveralls which, like the improvised vehicle behind him, were a part of America’s hurried preparations for war. Stein leaned close to one side of the frame, his arm seemingly raised as if to embrace it.
    ‘Your dad cut your Uncle Aram out of this picture, did he?’
    ‘I guess so,’ said Billy Stein.
    MacIver put the photo back on the piano and went to look out of the window. Billy had not looked up from where he was reading Air Progress on the sofa. MacIver studied the view from the window with the same dispassionate interest with which he had examined the photo. It was a glimpse of his own reflection that made him smooth the floral-patterned silk tie and rebutton his tartan jacket.
    ‘Too bad about you and Natalie,’ he said without turning from the window. His voice was low and carefully modulated – the voice of a man self-conscious about the impression he made.
    The warm air from the Pacific Ocean was heavy, saturated with water vapour. It built up towering storm clouds, dragging them up to the mountains, where they condensed, dumping solid sheets of tropical rain across the Los Angeles basin. Close to the house, a tall palm tree bent under a cruel gust of wind that tried to snap it in two. Suddenly released, the palm straightened with a force that made the fronds dance and whip the air loudly enough to make MacIver flinch and move from the window.
    ‘It lasted three months,’ said Billy. He guessed his father had discussed the failure of his marriage and was annoyed.
    ‘Three months is par for the course these days, Billy,’ said MacIver. He turned round, fixed him with his wide-open eyes and smiled. In spite of himself, Billy smiled too. He was twenty-four years old, slim, with lots of dark wavy hair and a deep tan that continued all the way to where a gold medallion dangled inside his unbuttoned shirt. Billy wore thin, wire-rimmed, yellow spectacles that he had bought during his skiing holiday in Aspen and had been wearing ever since. Now he took them off.
    ‘Dad told you, did he?’ He threw the anti-glare spectacles on to the coffee table.
    ‘Come on, Billy. I was here two years ago when you were building the new staircase to make a separate apartment for the two of you.’
    ‘I remember,’ said Billy, mollified by this explanation. ‘Natalie was not ready for marriage. She was into the feminist movement in a big way.’
    ‘Well, your dad’s a man’s man, Billy. We both know that.’ MacIver took out his cigarettes and lit one.
    ‘It was nothing to do with dad,’ Billy said. ‘She met this damned poet on a TV talk show she was on. They took off to live in British Columbia … She liked dad.’
    MacIver smiled the same lazy smile and nodded. He did not believe that. ‘We both know your dad, Billy. He’s a wonderful guy. They broke the mould when they made Charlie Stein. When we were in the army he ran that damned battalion. Don’t let anyone tell you different. Corporal Stein ran that battalion. And