In keeping with his admirable reserve Earl never asked when I returned from Washington what I’d seen and done while I was there, whereas when I got back to Florida I was soon saying, “Were you not feeling well yesterday? Your light was out last night when I walked by, and the car was gone,” and he’d confuse me by saying he’d driven over to the St. Johns River the previous evening to watch the full moon rise, or he’d gone to Blue Water Bay, a restaurant in Madison, to eat fried onion rings—answers that hardly satisfied my notion of decline and death. Old age, of course, has a sort of posthumous quality in which one is still alive but barely part of human society, like the unmarried women of a certain age who retired to the beguinhof in the old part of Amsterdam. Who cares, I thought, if you drive over to the St. Johns to see the moon? Nobody’s watching. You can do what you want on a whim. But such forays were the exception. Now that Earl no longer did his own grocery shopping he had become more house-bound; when the car was gone it was usually because the handyman had borrowed the Buick to take his wife or son to the doctor, or driven Earl to some appointment. Eventually, for both reasons, the car was gone almost all the time.

  The surrender of the pockmarked LeSabre was understandable, but I was a bit startled when Earl told me that he had given John his wallet as well so he could shop for him. The only transaction for which Earl had to be present now, he said in a tone that conveyed relief, was the cashing of his pension check at the bank.

  In Tennessee Williams’s The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore a handsome young vagabond nicknamed the Angel of Death keeps rich women company as they are dying in their villas off the coast of Italy. The play became a movie that starred Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, which was the problem, Earl and I agreed: Taylor was far too beautiful to be playing an old woman at death’s door, and Richard Burton was too old to play a young man. Gloria Swanson, on the other hand, was completely believable in Sunset Boulevard as an aged movie star whose sole connection to the outer world is her faithful butler, played by Erich von Stroheim. And so was Bergman in Gaslight, when Charles Boyer tricks her into thinking she is going mad so that he can commit her to an institution and gain control of her fortune. Even I, having reached my sixties, knew from personal experience that every day in Florida old people’s phones ring with some version of Charles Boyer on the other end of the line, introducing one scam or another—a back brace you’d better buy or Medicare will think you’re not trying to remain healthy was the most recent one I’d had to listen to until I found myself screaming at the woman on the other end of the line.

  Sunset Boulevard seemed to apply because Earl had a sort of butler now; Gaslight because Earl was trusting the handyman with his bank account; The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore because the handyman was not unlike a vagabond who’d appeared out of nowhere to usher Earl to Death’s door. Of course, the handyman, with his big butt, Levi’s cutoffs, ponytail, and bandana, was no Richard Burton. But the situation seemed to me even more suspicious when Ray told me that John had driven Earl over to see his stockbroker in Palatka because John thought Earl needed to have more cash in his checking account.

  Even so I found myself chatting with the handyman in the carport more and more when I visited Earl, because he was right there when I entered the house via the kitchen door. He was still living in the world, the world from which Earl had more or less withdrawn, and there were things we could talk about. In fact, he was the only person with whom I could remember things that had disappeared from town long ago, like the drive-in movie theater, the old post office, the water tank at the intersection. He could remember things that had occurred when my parents were still alive, since he had been living here since the age of seven, when his parents moved down. He had even gone to school with the woman who’d grown up in the house next to mine—the house she visited only on occasional weekends, now that her father was installed in the same nursing home in which my mother was. The handyman remembered people I did. He knew what businesses had occupied certain buildings before they failed—inevitable, in this town, which seemed hostile to any inducement to spend money—and far more about town politics. He had the gossip that a loafer, a gadabout, would have collected by hanging out at the courthouse in a southern novel, if we’d had a courthouse. There were even times when I felt, while discussing a family we’d both known that had moved away, that the handyman and I were soul mates. He seemed to regard the town the way I did—as a place from which change was banished. Everyone else I’d known when I was an adolescent had moved away the first chance he or she got. We had stayed.

  Looking at him I wondered what on earth could have kept both of us in the same town, but I never broached the subject—because I had a queasy feeling that the answer would not have been flattering. Instead, we chatted in the carport about the mayoral race, the skateboarders who hung around the public beach, the fate of a building that had been vacated by the techie who fixed computers, the rumor that a new supermarket was coming to town.

  The more we talked the chattier the handyman became, as if he, like me, had nobody else to share his thoughts with. He was so full of opinions once we began to talk that often I was unable to get away. The vehemence of his comments on local and national politics formed a strange contrast to his otherwise benign demeanor. He said he’d already argued with Earl about abortion (something I assumed Earl was against), which made me wonder how many other areas of disagreement there might be between them. He harbored, among other things, a resentment of people who had pets but didn’t care for them, people who let their dogs out without leashes, and people who had kids they didn’t want, so the kids turned out to be “trash.” But then he would surprise me by a comment. For instance, the skateboarders who liked to congregate in the parking lot of the public beach looked to me so depressed and sullen that when I remarked to the handyman that they all seemed to be unhappy loners, he said, “But they comfort each other.”

  The handyman went on to say that people who thought they were escaping Jacksonville had brought the problems of that city with them. He said the United States was now in decline because everyone was a hyphenated American. That the handyman thought in terms of history surprised me. But then I never knew what he’d say about a given issue. Earl, for instance, thought Edward Snowden should be put in jail, but the handyman complained to me that people who were criticizing Edward Snowden for breaking the law had forgotten that “segregation used to be legal!” At the same time he disapproved of the owner of the LA Clippers having to sell the team for making observations about Black people. “Political correctness has gone way too far!” The handyman had an opinion about everything. But I got so tired of listening that before long I hesitated when going into the house to even ask, “How’s Earl doing?”

  I had to inquire, however, because he knew more about Earl’s condition than I did, since he was the one who took Earl to the doctors and learned all sorts of things that way. For instance, he told me one day that people with post-shingles nerve damage are more prone to commit suicide, though Earl told me that as well a few days later. I’d never heard this before, but when I said that was probably because there was so little discussion of anything having to do with death in the media, the handyman said, “For a simple reason—the dead can’t buy anything.” About people he was even more cynical; one day when I paused in the carport to tell him that while walking in the woods that had grown up on the dry lake bed, I’d turned back because I’d heard gunshots, he said, “I’m waiting for the state of Florida to give hunters permission to shoot people. Someone has to cull the herd!”

  Eventually it seemed safer to just ask about Earl—even if it bothered me when we began talking about Earl as if he were a patient of ours. Earl at least was something to talk about, whereas when I finally reached the subject of our conversation in the music room, I was often reduced to the weather. There was little life in Earl’s life; he was simply watching films and reading books, though when I remarked to the handyman one day that Earl was one of those people who truly do not mind living alone, he said, “You should see his long-distance bill!”

  I didn’t even get calls anymore unless it was a request for a donation to a fund for veterans, firefighters, people with cancer, or a political party, or an invitation to buy a burial plot. I’d stopped answering the calls that came at dinnertime and forgot to check the answering machine. Young men in faraway countries tried to frighten me by breaking into the porn film I was watching to say my computer was in danger unless I called a certain number immediately. But mostly days went by without seeing or talking to another human being. Earl’s house was Grand Central compared to mine—people dropping in with cakes and pies, not to mention the handyman’s almost constant presence. Mine was deserted. I was so used to there being no one around that it was a shock when the little dogs of one of the daughters who checked on the house next door started yapping at me when I walked past on my way to the woods. Their screened veranda had once overlooked the lake but now looked out on a wall of turkey oaks. The veranda itself held nothing but piles of wicker furniture in which no one had sat for years. It reminded me of a production of The Cherry Orchard I’d seen years ago in New York, only Irene Worth was not coming onstage to deliver her opening line (“The nursery!”)—there was just the silence of spiders spinning webs. And on the other side of that house was one in which nobody had lived for several years because, we’d been told, it was part of a disputed divorce settlement. The screen on its front porch was ripped and sagging to the ground; there were dead branches on the lawn; the driveway looked like the set for Hush … Hush, Sweet Charlotte.

  On the west side of my house was a man who’d been battling cancer for a long time, so that each time I saw a cluster of cars in his driveway I assumed it was because the moment for which the family was gathering had come. But no, it was just the grandkids visiting. The two little boys would play ball outside, sometimes with their father, sometimes with their mother, laughing and racing around with the dog. Occasionally I saw the man’s wife outside raking leaves. One day we were talking in the street when her husband came out the front door. I had not seen him in five years and did not know what to say, till, seeing the astonished expression on my face, she finally blurted, “Talk to him!” But what does one say to the dying—“How’s it going?” Visiting Earl was easy in comparison; we could always watch a movie.

  The technology of movies was changing so rapidly that the store uptown that rented DVDs went out of business, though not before I went up on its last day and bought the only three that appealed to me: Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Best in Show, and De-Lovely. But watching them by myself seemed sad, like drinking alone. So I continued to wait for Earl to call. Weeks went by when he did not. Nor did I drop in. I’d be walking home across the lake bed from the post office with every intention of visiting, and then, because the day was beautiful, or I had some magazine in hand with a story that I couldn’t wait to read, I’d keep on going rather than make a detour to his house. Other days I’d wake up conscious that a visit was overdue, but one thing led to another and as I went to bed that evening I’d say to myself: Tomorrow you must visit Earl.

  You’d think that the dying stink, the way people stay away; at least that’s what a friend of mine told me when his lover was dying of AIDS in Green Cove Springs. I wanted to visit Earl, but his silence left me with only one option: dropping in spontaneously. This meant entering his house like a burglar, which was how I felt when the kitchen doorknob would not turn. I took the locked door as an indication that Earl didn’t want my visit, so I turned away and went home. Later I learned he’d forgotten to unlock it when he got up that morning.

  Most of the time, however, the door was open. After tiptoeing down the length of the house I’d find him lying on his bed with a towel across his forehead, or sitting upright in his winged chair with his back to the blinds that hid the view of what remained of the lake. My father had played solitaire on our porch with his back to that view too, drumming the fingers of his right hand against the table in an abyss of boredom as he contemplated his next move; Earl had as little interest in the vista. But he always seemed glad to see me. I was surprising him, as my mother had begged me to surprise her, something I never did for fear it would expand my visiting schedule, since it’s hard to take a concession away once you’ve given it. With Earl it was much easier; he had no claim on me. I could go whenever I wanted; he would, like my mother, always be there. And leaving Earl was easier than leaving her. My mother’s pillow I’d spend considerable time adjusting, because however I left her was how she would remain; Earl could at least move.

  One day while I was walking across the lake bed a dog that appeared out of nowhere began following me. So I turned back in the direction from which it had come and walked over to the other side of what had been the lake and went up and down the street, hoping someone would recognize the animal. But no one was about. A breeze was blowing, there were butterflies and a peaceful feeling, but the street was so deserted it was as if everyone was dead, so I walked back across the lake bed, certain that Earl would know what to do, because no one knew more about dogs than he, and when I entered the bedroom I found him lying on his bed in black tennis shoes, black gloves, and a black cap, looking like the cat burglars in To Catch a Thief—a sight so odd all I could ask was, “Why are you wearing gloves?”

  “Because my hands are cold,” he replied. He said the doctor had put him on a new pain medicine two nights ago, and that the side effects were so awful he’d been vomiting. But when I told him about the dog he sat up immediately, like a mummy in a horror film, picked up his cane, and walked out to look at her. She was lying on the brick patio, patiently waiting for us, and remained in that position while we admired her narrow waist, curious yellow eyes, and intelligent face, so intelligent I could not see how Earl could resist. But after telling him what had happened—that I’d searched for her house—he said, in a voice that seemed to contain a certain impatience: “She’s lost.”

  “So what should I do,” I said, “call the animal shelter?”

  “No,” he said. “Keep her!”

  “But I can’t,” I said. “I can’t have a dog—I want to be free to come and go.”

  “But she likes you,” he said. “And a dog will give you responsibility and keep you company.”

  He thinks you’re lonely, I reflected with astonishment as I walked home that afternoon—a bit insulted, if truth be known. So much for my plan to relieve his loneliness.

  But shortly after this another dog came into Earl’s life. One of the physical therapists he’d worked with uptown told him that the father of a friend had been diagnosed with inoperable cancer and had killed himself with a shotgun in his backyard. So the friend’s daughter brought the dead man’s dog to Earl, and she was sitting by his chair when I walked in one afternoon: a big black Labrador, so old that her muzzle and the tip of her tail were already white, a dog with bad breath and arthritis, but a dog that already would not leave his side.

  So now Earl had the responsibility and companionship he’d urged on me: a dog to feed and take for walks, though he couldn’t take her very far, which was just as well, since all the dog wanted to do was eat the grass that grew by the carport. The physical therapist had been there the previous Saturday to see how the dog was doing, and Earl could not have been more pleased.

  The man I was seeing every few months for sex was the physical therapist’s boyfriend; he and Earl had met a year before I met him. Their sexual encounters had evolved into friendship. My visits to the Regular were still carnal. He lived in a little house in the forest with the physical therapist. At first I was not invited there; instead, we had sex in the woods, beside a canal connected to a lake, in clouds of mosquitoes, in abandoned canoes, on deserted docks, in gazebos at public beaches when no one was there. Then it moved to the BarcaLounger in his cottage. It was Love in the Afternoon—though always tense because I was waiting for his girlfriend to walk in. But that never happened. I became the person he could call to dispel his loneliness. All I had to do when I picked up the phone was hear his deep voice say, “Whatcha doin’?” for saliva to begin flooding my mouth. I never told Earl that I’d just been to see the Regular, because I did not want to incite envy or jealousy on his part, even though he’d stopped having sex with him quite a while ago. But whenever Earl told me that Bob and his girlfriend had stopped by to visit I would feel a secret thrill at the mention of his name.

  The Regular did not watch movies—whenever I’d open the door to his little cottage I’d find him sitting in the recliner with an open beer on the table watching something on television that involved cars and trucks colliding with one another. There were two recliners in the living room, separated by an end table, in which I assumed the Regular and his girlfriend spent their evenings sitting there like copilots in the cockpit of a jet flying into the gigantic TV screen on the opposite wall. Because I didn’t have cable I never recognized any of the shows the Regular was watching, but that didn’t matter. As soon as I arrived he would offer me a joint and within five or ten minutes I’d find myself kneeling in front of his recliner while he watched cars smash into each other above my bobbing head. Then when it was over he’d ask me to drive him to the store—to buy cigarettes and beer—because, since getting a DUI, he had been grounded. And after that I’d return him with his six-pack to the little cottage in the woods and then drive back home, listening to NPR.

  The Regular was twenty years younger than I, which meant that, accustomed to the premium gay men put on youth, I could scarcely believe that he wanted to see me at all, but then I realized my being older was a positive quality in his eyes, just as Earl’s having twenty years on me was; we were all providing something for one another that only an older person can.