What I Loved

looked at Bill that evening, I felt relieved that he had nearly finished the project before Freund's revelation. The attention he was given at the opening appeared to hurt him, as if every warm congratulation were another dagger in his gut. He had always been shy of publicity and crowds, but on other occasions I had seen him deflect pointed questions with a joke or avoid small talk by conducting a long conversation with someone he liked. That evening, he looked poised for another abrupt exit to Fanelli's. But Bill stayed. Violet, Lazlo, and I all checked on him regularly. Once, I heard Violet whispering to him that he should slow down on the wine. "Sweetheart," she said, "you'll be completely sloshed before dinner."
    Mark, on the other hand, looked well. His confinement had probably increased his eagerness for any form of social life, and I watched him as he chatted with one person after another. While he was talking to someone, he was all attention. He leaned forward or bent his head as if to hear better, and sometimes he narrowed his eyes as he listened. When he smiled, his eyes never strayed from the other person's face. The technique was simple, its effect powerful. A woman in an expensive black suit patted his arm. An older man I recognized as one of Bill's French collectors laughed at something Mark said, and then a few seconds later, he gave Mark a hug.
    At around seven o'clock, I saw Teddy Giles enter the gallery with Henry Hasseborg. Giles was thoroughly transformed from the last time I had seen him. He wore a pair of jeans and a leather jacket and had no makeup on his face. I watched him smile at a woman and then turn to Hasseborg and begin to talk, his face sober and intent I started to worry that Bill would see them, and just as I was entertaining the ridiculous idea of standing in front of them to block Bill's view, I heard a child yell, "No! No! I want to stay in here with the moon! No, Mommy, no!" I turned toward the sound of the voice and saw a woman on all fours outside one of the doors, conducting a conversation with the small person inside. The child was happily ensconced behind a door with a space just large enough to hold him or her. "People are waiting, darling. They want to see the moon, too."
    Behind that door were many moons—a map of the moon, a photograph of the moon, Neil Armstrong lifting a foot on the moon, van Gogh's moon in Starry Night , discs and slivers in white and red and orange and yellow, and fifty other renditions of the moon, including one made of cheese and another as a crescent with eyes, a nose, and a mouth. As I watched the mother reach inside for what turned out to be a kicking, wailing little girl, I turned to look for Giles and Hasseborg and couldn't find them. I walked quickly around the gallery. When I passed the child, who was now tearfully muttering the word "moon" in her mother's arms, I guessed that she was no more than two and a half. "We'll come back," the mother said as she stroked her daughter's dark head. "We'll come back and visit the moon."
    I turned toward Bernie's office door and saw Giles and Mark leaning against it. Mark was much taller than Giles and had to bend over to listen to him. A big woman wearing a shawl was standing in front of me and blocked part of my view, but I leaned to one side and caught what appeared to be an exchange of a small object between them. Mark slipped his hand into his pocket and grinned happily. Drugs, I thought. I marched toward them, and Mark raised his chin to look at me. He smiled, pulled his hand out of his pocket, and said brightly, "Look what Teddy gave me? It belonged to his mom."
    Mark opened his palm and showed me a small round locket. He opened it, and inside were two tiny photos.
    "That's me when I was six months old, and that's me when I was five," Giles said as he pointed from one picture to the other. He held out his hand. "You may not remember me. Theodore Giles."
    I shook his hand. He had a firm grip.
    "I actually have another party tonight," he said briskly. "It was very nice to see you again, Professor Hertzberg. I'm sure we'll meet again."
    As he strode off toward the door with long confident steps, I turned back to Mark. The change in Giles's demeanor, the saccharine gift of a locket with baby pictures of himself, the return of the mysterious mother, prostitute, waitress, or God-knows-what mingled to create such confusion in my mind that I gaped at Mark.
    He smiled at me. "What's the matter, Uncle