One Last Thing Before I Go

their left are Eddie Banks and Jon Kessler, both still licking the wounds of fresh divorces. Eddie receives alimony from his wife, who is a stockbroker, and Jon still works for his father-in-law, which is its own unique bite of this shit sandwich the men of the Versailles share. Both men spend an inordinate amount of time on their smart phones, checking their various online dating sites and getting excited about women who have made contact based on the enhanced versions of themselves they’ve created online.
    “Shit,” Jack says. “Pregnant? You’d think by now these kids would be smarter than that.”
    “Says the proud father of Emilio Jesus Baker.”
    “Fuck you, Oliver. She had an IUD.”
    “I guess your sperm was too much for it. Ate through it like acid. Good thing she wasn’t giving you head.”
    “If only,” Jack grumbles.
    Oliver turns back to Silver. “Will she get an abortion?”
    “I think so,” he says. There’s no reason to think her plans have changed at all, and yet, when he says it, he feels a stab of uncertainty, and a vague sadness that has yet to take shape.
    When Casey was three, she’d fall asleep holding on to Silver’s arm like a doll. He’d lie next to her in her bed, both of her little arms wrapped around his forearm, her fingers playing with the small hairs on his wrists, and he would listen to her breathing slow down as her eyes closed. He’d stay there long after she’d fallen asleep, unwilling to untangle his arm from hers, knowing, even then, that the time was fast approaching when she’d be too big to wrap herself around him like that, when she wouldn’t even remember that she had. And then, eventually, he would detach himself and head down the hall to his and Denise’s bedroom, where Denise would already be in bed, reading a book, wearing the plastic, black-rimmed glasses that made her look like the sexy secretary in a porno. And she’d pull back the blankets for him to join her, and sometimes she was naked, and sometimes she wasn’t, and either way, he never appreciated the luxury, the sheer bliss of moving from one warm bed to another like that.
    * * *
    Jack and Oliver are staring at him.
    “Did I just say all that out loud?” Silver.
    “Your inner monologue seems to have broken free.” Oliver.
    “You were having a moment. A soliloquy.” Jack.
    “Shit.”
    “You were very eloquent.” Oliver.
    “And by eloquent, he means depressing as shit.” Jack.
    Dan Harcourt has just shown up, limping in his space-age knee brace. He played ball in college and refuses to give up the ghost, still going to the park to play in pickup games with younger guys who tolerate his forty-six-year-old ass because he buys all the drinks. One day soon he’s going to pull up for a shot (he stopped driving to the hoop more than a decade ago) and his tattered knee will finally pull free from that last worn ligament holding it in place, and he will hit the pavement hard and wish he’d made the switch to golf years ago.
    And the first batch of college girls have just arrived, flitting about their chairs with weightless grace, young enough to be their daughters and old enough to make them feel even more pathetic than they already do.
    “I feel like crying,” Silver says.
    “Please don’t,” Jack says. “I’m begging you.”

CHAPTER 19
    D enise and Casey live in North Point, a pleasant if somewhat cookie-cutter neighborhood on the north side, with curving streets and no sidewalks to speak of, in a small, redbrick Georgian with a beard of ivy crawling up the front walls that, like beards often do, makes the house look like it takes itself too seriously.
    Rich opens the front door, looking none too pleased with him. He still owns a smaller house just outside Elmsbrook, closer to the hospital, but he moved in with Denise and Casey about two years ago, taking over the payments, a move that demonstrated a level of commitment and optimism that Silver will never understand.
    “Silver,” Rich says. People, once they’ve known Silver for a while, tend to pronounce his name with a certain weary inflection. It’s not so much a function of the specific syllables of the name but more a tone, really. Until now, he doesn’t recall Rich ever having attained this level of familiarity, but it’s clear now that he has. Silver feels a sense of loss. Rich was the last person in this house who liked him.
    “Hey, Rich.”
    “You don’t just walk out of a hospital.”
    “Mitigating