“Now tell me what you’ve been doing with all these years,” she said. “For some reason I find myself dismayingly uninteresting,” I said. “Oh, come, come, come,” she said. “You lost an eye, you married, you reproduced twice, and you say you’ve taken up painting again. How could a life be more eventful?” I thought to myself that there had been events, but very few, certainly, since our Saint Patrick’s Day love-making so long ago, which had made me proud and happy. I had old soldier’s anecdotes I had told my drinking buddies in the Cedar Tavern, so I told her those. She had had a life. I had
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