What I Loved

had managed to graduate from high school, but he hadn't applied to college, and his future lay in front of him like a great unmapped wilderness. When I asked Violet whether she was in any shape to take care of Mark, she bristled at me, saying that Bill would have wanted her to do it. She narrowed her eyes and pressed her lips together to indicate that she had made her decision and no further discussion was wanted.
    The night before Mark moved in with her, Violet didn't return from the studio. She had called me in the morning to say that she wanted to take me out to dinner in the neighborhood. "Don't buy food," she said. "I'll be home by seven." At eight o'clock, I called her. The line was busy.
    Half an hour later, it was still busy. I walked to the Bowery.
    The door to the street was wide open, and when I looked through it, I saw Mr. Bob's entire person for the first time. A man of uncertain age, he had a rounded spine and thin legs, which contrasted sharply with his muscular arms. He was sweeping the hallway and nudged a thick pile of dust past my feet onto the sidewalk. "Mr. Bob?" I said.
    Without raising his head to look at me, he glowered at the floor.
    "I got worried about Violet," I said. "We were supposed to have dinner."
    The man didn't answer me and he didn't move. I stepped around him and began to climb the stairs.
    "Watch your step," he boomed.
    Just as I reached the top, he added, "Watch your step with Beauty!"
    The door to the studio was also open, and I drew a breath before I walked through it. The only light in the room came from a lamp on Bill's desk that illuminated a stack of papers lying beneath it. Although I had seen the naked loft in daylight, the evening murk seemed to enlarge the barren space, because my eyes didn't take in its perimeter. At first, I saw- nobody, and then, as I looked toward the windows, I thought I saw Bill step into the blurry light that came from outside. As I looked at the apparition, I stopped breathing. Bill's withered ghost was standing in front of the pane smoking a cigarette. He had his back to me—baseball cap, blue work shirt, black jeans. I walked toward him, and at the sound of my steps, the deformed shrunken Bill turned around and he was Violet. I had never seen Violet smoke. She was holding the cigarette between her thumb and index finger the way Bill used to hold his butts when there was little left but the filter. She walked toward me.
    "What time is it?" she said.
    "It's after nine."
    "Nine?" she said, as if she were trying to fix the number in her thoughts. "You shouldn't have come." She let the cigarette fall and stepped on it.
    "We were going to have dinner."
    Violet squinted at me. "Oh yes." She looked confused. "I forgot." After a few seconds, she said. "Well, you're here." She looked down at herself and stroked the sleeve of Bill's shirt with one hand. "You look worried. Don't worry. I'm all right. The day after Bill died, I came back here. I wanted to look around alone. His clothes were lying in the corner, and I found the carton of cigarettes on the desk. I put them away in the cupboard above the sink. I told Bernie that everything in there was personal, that he couldn't touch it. After Bernie was finished organizing the art, I started coming again. It's my work now—to come here and stay. One afternoon, I went to the cupboard and took out his pants and shirt and the cigarettes. At first, I just looked at them and touched them. His other clothes are still at home, but most of them are clean, and because they're clean, they're dead. These have paint on them. He worked in these clothes, and then after a while, I didn't want to just touch them anymore. It wasn't enough. I wanted his clothes on me, touching my body, and I wanted to smoke the Camels. I've been smoking one a day. It helps."
    "Violet," I said.
    She acted as if I hadn't spoken, and looked around the room. I noticed a single open box on the floor and tubes of paint lined up in rows. "I feel comforted here," she said.
    Matt's drawing of Jackie Robinson was still hanging on the wall not far from Bill's desk. I thought of asking about it, but I didn't. Violet leaned toward me and put her hand on my arm. "I was afraid he would die," she said. "I never told you or anybody else, because we're all afraid that people we love are going to die. It doesn't mean much really. But I began to think he wasn't well. He breathed too hard. He couldn't sleep. Once, he told me that he didn't like to close his