Empire Falls

she had.” Then she’d burst into tears right there in the hospital room, bawling her eyes out until Miles caved in and promised to try.
    In fact, Janine had sobbed so pitifully that Miles thought she was suffering some kind of breakdown. “You know I don’t have a single woman friend in the whole world, Miles.” She snuffed her nose, having by now worn herself out with crying. “If she won’t be my bridesmaid, I’ll have to ask my mother. Don’t make me do that, Miles. I know what you must think of me after all that’s happened, but if you ever cared for me, don’t make me stand there between Beatrice and Walt on my wedding day. The judge’ll probably get confused and marry the two of them.”
    The deal Miles had brokered with his daughter was complex, but its principal features were that she would be her mother’s bridesmaid and pretend to enjoy herself, provided that afterward, at the reception, she wouldn’t be required to dance with the Silver Fox. Also, Miles promised to take her to Boston to see the van Gogh exhibit at the MFA, something he’d have done anyway. He found out later she’d struck a separate deal with her mother to get their computer hooked up to an e-mail server.
    “So, are you going to be okay?” Janine wanted to know, confusing him for a moment. Did she mean while she was away on her honeymoon? “Did they ever figure out what was wrong with you?”
    They had not. He’d made it back to his apartment that Sunday evening, but later, when his brother came over (after Bea had phoned, asking him to check), Miles was delirious. At the emergency room, his raging temperature and delirium, subsequent to eating fast-food burgers, suggested an E. coli infection or, possibly, viral meningitis. He’d been admitted to the hospital and kept there for several days under close observation, even though his fever broke the next morning and by Monday afternoon he was clearly on the mend. By the end of his stay, the half dozen doctors who’d examined him and done his blood work were no closer to a diagnosis. As medical men they’d not sought a spiritual explanation, and Miles was disinclined to ask whether the symptoms they’d been treating might result from his having been visited by ghosts.
    A S WAS HIS CUSTOM as a single man, Walt Comeau now burst into song in the doorway of the Empire Grill. “Too many nights,” he crooned, his arms outstretched to embrace the world. “Too many days / Too many nights to be alone.”
    “Can it,” suggested David, who had neither gone to the wedding nor sent regrets.
    Walt paused briefly, as if this request were the title of a song not in his repertoire. Then he began anew, though at a lower volume, dancing down the counter. “Please keep your heart / While we’re apart / Don’t linger in the moonlight when I’m gone.”
    From down the counter came a couple of halfhearted “Pa-pa-pa-payas.”
    “My God , Big Boy!” Walt said, sliding onto his usual stool next to Horace, who’d arrived early enough to eat his bloody burger in peace. “How could you let a woman like that escape?”
    Walt and Janine had checked into a bed-and-breakfast on the coast that was running a special off-season rate. Janine, Miles happened to know, had been hoping for Aruba.
    “Don’t let the stars get in your eyes, Foxy,” Horace advised, wiping the counter between them with his dirty napkin in preparation for their gin game.
    “Don’t let the moon break your heart, either,” Buster added without turning around. His first shift since returning to town was nearly over, and he was pouring vinegar onto the hot grill, where it sputtered and foamed and hissed. The air was full of it for a few seconds, enough to get everyone at the counter teared up, but just as quickly it was gone, with an implicit promise that anything so intensely horrible would by design pass swiftly.
    “Where were you last Saturday?” Walt called down the counter to David. “You missed one hell of a party.”
    What Miles had heard was that after he left, his ex-wife had danced several strong men into a state of exhaustion, got very drunk, and then berated the band when they finally quit and began packing up their instruments.
    David folded his newspaper and rose to his feet, reaching for a clean apron. “Something about the occasion just didn’t stir me,” he explained.
    “Gin,” said Horace, laying down his hand and taking up the tablet they used to keep score. “Honest, ain’t he?” he