"Yet you drive it on the public roads."

"I'm sure you can see the difference, Mr. Courtright." Leander gave him a proud smile. Within his pouchy face could be seen the ghostly lineaments of the handsome young man he had once been, and while he did not exactly look familiar as an individual, he did suggest a type.

"Excuse me, Mr. Leander, but were, are you, uh, someone in the performing arts?"

"'Were' is more appropriate than 'are,'" said Leander. "There was a time when I could call myself a tenor."

Roy remembered that only in opera were singers cla.s.sified by range. "Aha," he lied, "I thought so. You're that Leander."

"Your parents owned some old records. You're far too young to have heard me in person." Leander made a stagey shrug, using his whole upper body, but he was obviously gratified. He gestured at the majestic car, which Roy had not forgotten for an instant. "I first sang Rodolfo at La Scala in forty-eight. That's when, believe it or not, in the countryside outside Milano, I found it in a peasant's barnyard, being used as a chicken house. It took me twenty years and more than a hundred thousand dollars for the restoration."

The estimate of Leander's age had to be adjusted to at least the mid-seventies, for which he was well preserved, with a proud bearing and vigorous stride.

The two men circled the automobile, from the huge round headlamps to the boxlike trunk and the rear-mounted spare tire, its tread incongruously narrow, thinner than that on a family car of today.

"Here's something you will enjoy, Mr. Courtright. Get around back and give it a push. Just wait till I hop in and let out the brake."

Roy did as asked and was amazed that one good though not excessively forceful shove easily caused the behemoth to roll forward until its owner brought it to a halt.

Leander's use of the word "hop" was justified; he deboarded in that style, saying, "It is put together with such fine tolerances."

"In my opinion," said Roy, "car design has never quite recovered from the loss of the running board. Not only is it a graceful means of entrance, particularly for ladies, but it provides the continuity of a straight line between the different curves of the back and front fenders."

"Sir," Leander cried, rearing back, hands on hips, "you are a poet." He looked briefly as if he might break into song but emitted a jolly laugh instead.

"Hey, what show is that on?" The questioner was a teenage boy in fashionably baggy pants that covered all but the tips of his red sneakers. He was one of the few onlookers who tarried along the near sidewalk.

Leander chuckled at Roy and said, "Q.E.D."

"I can't get over you driving it here," said Roy, "with what it's worth. A J-model Duesenberg recently sold for a million and a half. A Bugatti Royale would fetch what, six or seven times that? I hope you haven't come here to sell it to me, Mr. Leander, because I can't put my hands on that kind of money, and it would break my heart."

"No danger of that, my friend. I never sell. I only buy. I saw your Website and decided a visit would provide good exercise for the two of us." Meaning the Bugatti and himself.

Roy took him inside, where they spent a happy hour examining the current inventory; drinking espresso from the Stecchino, which Roy had finally loaded and fired up-Leander, old Italian hand that he was, p.r.o.nouncing it a.s.solutamente autentico; and exchanging accounts of fabulous automobiles acquired or narrowly missed.

Too shy to ask the old tenor whether he might simply sit behind the wheel of the Royale, Roy did prevail upon him to drive the car down to the parking area outside the garage. Roy went downstairs and distracted Paul and Diego until the ma.s.sive vehicle was in place, then led them outside to revel in their wonder. Their equivalent to Roy's wistful desire to sit in the driver's seat would have been to be allowed to change the oil, but Leander did not produce such an invitation either.

He did, however, urge them all to come to his private car museum near Baltimore, where a collection of more than a hundred cla.s.sics, including a 1912 Mercer Raceabout, a vintage Marmon, a '33 Pierce Silver Arrow, and other comparable gems, was open by special invitation only.

"My l.u.s.t for cars ruined three of my marriages," Leander said in his ringing voice. "For years I wouldn't let anyone else see my treasures, except of course my mechanics." He grinned lavishly at Diego and Paul, who could not tear their eyes from the Royale. "And I would regularly kill them!" His laughter was loud enough to have reached the family circle without amplification. "Seriously, it took me years before I could bear to share my pleasure with fellow enthusiasts. Ha! But I was a happy monster."

Leander had thereby explained why Roy had never heard of his collection. There were many car museums around the country-including the most remarkable, that of Harold LeMay in Tacoma, Washington, with twenty-five hundred vehicles-most of them privately owned but open at least occasionally to the public.

"I'll repeat the invitation to the guys when they come out of their fantasies," Roy said. "I of course will take you up on it as soon as I can. What a treat!"

He was about to ask Leander if the dumbstruck mechanics could just take a peek at the mighty engine of the Type 41 when the former opera singer, prancing briskly, said, "Mr. Courtright, I am obliged to you for a delightful morning. I had better leave at once if I expect to get home in any kind of time. I am pleased to have met you, and do let me know if you get hold of something that might interest me. At the moment you have nothing I need. The Elite is a lovely design, but the car has proved notoriously unreliable, and as you know I drive anything I own. As to Lamborghinis, they are all far too vulgar for my taste, far too gaudy."

He shook Roy's hand and leaped into the car. Diego and Paul, on the opposite side, were taken by surprise by the awe-inspiring voice of the straight-eight as Leander started it up.

"Oh, noooo!" cried Paul. And Diego ran a few steps in pursuit of the huge, graceful vehicle as it glided out of the lot and, sounding a deeper note, effortlessly mounted the hill.

"He's invited us to come see his collection in Baltimore," Roy said by way of consolation, for the guys looked woebegone. He himself had enjoyed the first stress-free experience in a week and was actually relieved that Leander had not found anything of his to buy and thus disrupt a delightful and relaxing morning, free of corrosive emotion; just an innocent good time talking of and looking at cars, not even driving them at speed, supposedly a dangerous practice for oneself and others and therefore at odds with the common weal. A car at rest is one of the most harmless objects on earth, but an ent.i.ty of great potential. Leander owned a racing Mercedes from the 1930s; parked at the curb, a Type W125 could be started up and within a mile catch the car that had pa.s.sed it at 100 mph. This power was at the command of human beings, and to use it did not require a runway or a body of water or tracks of steel, nor if it fractured an appendage did you have to shoot it.

Sam had somehow managed to remain a boy even after he was married. Roy envied his friend while at the same time despising him for an incapacity he recognized as his own. Kristin was their common opponent. He had neither lied nor exaggerated when he admitted that he was in love with her, but he should never have done so. Hypocrisy requires more moral courage than candor, for truth is a destructive element, more dangerous to retain than release, whereas confession is a rude display of bad taste. He might not have distinguished himself by achievement, but he had always before been at pains to avoid gracelessness.

Mrs. Forsythe arrived a moment after Roy sat down behind his desk. After all this time she was still not entirely easy about working on Sat.u.r.day, but was even more uncomfortable with replacing it with Monday as a day off.

"When you get settled," said he, "please look up my schedule for next month and see when I'm due to go to the Evansville car show."

She rested her bag. "I just saw a crazy-looking old automobile rolling down Main, big as a freight train. A real gas-guzzler, I bet. Some old coot, even older than the car by the looks of him, he was behind the wheel. Thought he ought to be coming here, but he was heading out of town."

The phone rang while Mrs. F. was in the lavatory heating water for her tea, and she shouted out, "Better get it, Roy. I got my hands full."

It was Kristin. He was shaken by an emotion he could not identify, but of the available choices it was most like fear.

"Oh, good," she said. "You're there. I hope you don't have a scheduled lunch. I know it's late..."

"That's okay," said Roy. He still had difficulty in breathing.

"Could we meet someplace?"

"Right now?"

"Could you, can you?"

"Of course. Where?"

"There's a place on Milburn Road, called The Corral."

"I know where it is." He was less apprehensive now that he was being given an a.s.signment. He heard the sound of a horn at her end and realized she was already in a car. "I'll be there quick as I can. Better wait for me in the parking lot. Always a lot of jerks inside, if it's still the way it used to be."

"Dear Roy," said she, taking him completely by surprise. Was this affection, derision, irony, or, after all, mere indifference? He hesitated for a moment before realizing that she had hung up.

Mrs. F. mincingly returned to her desk with a steaming, tag-trailing mug that she had as usual overfilled. "Don't tell me you're leaving? I just got here."

"I don't know how long I'll be," Roy told her, with as much authority as he could ever a.s.sert. "I'll phone you if it's too long."

He drove the Grand Cherokee. A distinctive car would be out of place parked at The Corral, which could hardly be a regular hangout of Kristin's. It had been around since he and Sam were teenagers. In those days it was the kind of joint they found interesting to visit. Among its semitough clientele, Sam's size usually kept them out of trouble. If challenges did come about Roy could handle them, though maybe not without consequences, as when a drunken lout pulled a knife, obliging him to knock out the a.s.shole's front teeth with a reverse punch that had been practiced against a makiwara board until his knuckles developed calluses hard as stone. Fortunately there were witnesses willing to testify against the knife-wielder, whose attorney of course intended to base a lawsuit on Roy's instruction in karate.

This was the first time that Roy's interests were represented by Seymour Alt, who had done work for his father. Ignoring Roy's protests, Alt arranged an out-of-court settlement for twenty-five thousand dollars. "We'd get slaughtered going to trial. This b.u.m is an out-of-work laborer. Twenty-five large is like a sneeze to your dad."

Roy had never since been back to The Corral. In the succeeding years drug busts became routine there, until the place was finally closed. Since the reopening in the late nineties, it had not been mentioned in the local crime news, though why the latest owner had not changed that notorious name gave reason for doubt. Why Kristin had chosen such a venue for their meeting now was clear enough: encountering anyone they knew was most unlikely. But was stealth necessary at lunch, the most innocuous of public meals, when they had conspicuously dined together at a luxury restaurant the evening before?

Not only had Roy not revisited The Corral in two decades, he had not glanced at its new signboard on the relatively rare occasions he had driven out that way in recent years.

The former bar-and-grill had sometime since become Corral Family Steakhouse, and its building seemed to have been expanded, unless that was merely an illusion given by the bright white paint on the walls, with the front door and window frames in cherry red. The parking lot displayed no muscle cars and no battered pickups, though there was a very clean one or two of the latter, the kind some white-collar people own. The rest of the vans, SUVs, and sedans suggested no reason for Kristin to wait outside, and indeed she had not so done. He saw a parked Corolla that bore the plate number he had committed to memory.

The interior of the new Corral was so radiant in bright colors that having, despite the outside evidence, expected to step into the gloom of old, Roy was temporarily blinded. Fending off a beaming hostess, he saw Kristin in a pink booth against the far wall. To reach her he had to slip past or defer to other people among the crowded tables, many of whom were clamorous, self-oriented children.

"Roy. Thanks for coming." Kristin gave him her firm hand, as might a business acquaintance. Though it was Sat.u.r.day she was dressed as if for work: pantsuit in banker's gray, white blouse, pearls. Her expression seemed routinely polite.

Roy sat down and shrugged. "Turns out my worries about this place were needless. Sam and I used to come here years ago when it was a dump."

She nodded. "Jim Smithson really does a super job in attracting the public. There would have been a long line an hour ago, and on Sundays he turns people away. He's already thinking of another addition. Plenty of room to expand in the parking lot."

"Let me guess. He does business with First United." She had made what at the time had seemed an emergency summons-and then he rushed here for talk about the restaurant trade, downscale at that: Most of the tables he had pa.s.sed displayed pizza wedges and burgers 'n' fries.

"He could buy and sell Jonathan," said Kristin.

"It's the volume. It's why General Motors makes more money than Ferrari." Roy had played along with the ba.n.a.lity and by so doing had inadvertently created the basis for a new intimacy between them. Kristin studied him with a kind of genial leer, her lips slightly parted.

She asked, "Are you making fun of me?"

"Probably." But she suddenly looked so melancholy that he hastened to say, "I'm just kidding." He wanted to grasp her hand but could not forget they were in a public place, and if it had been her bank that granted the loan to the owner, she was likely not to be unknown at the new Corral.

A vivacious waitress pranced up to take their order. "I think we could use a drink."

Roy had addressed Kristin, but the waitress told him, "I'm sorry, we don't have a liquor license."

He asked Kristin, "Should we get out of here?"

"I'll have a Diet c.o.ke. And a plain burger."

"Sir?"

"Cup of coffee, black, and, okay, another hamburger." The waitress whirled away. Roy solemnly asked Kristin, "You want to tell me about it?"

"I've never before been accused, not seriously anyway, of something I haven't done, and I can't cope with it."

He was discreetly thrilled that she had turned to him for help. "Sam's started up again about our supposed affair."

"When you told me that, I thought he was joking. He said he was. I had no reason to believe otherwise, it was so preposterous."

Roy brought his unfisted hands together. "Christ. This is really tiresome."

"I think it's a lot worse than that."

He differed with her. "It's not worse, because there's no truth in it."

"You have more faith in the truth than I do."

It seemed they were arguing, as old couples were said to do. He was not unhappy to submit. "Have it your way."

She softened her tone. "What I mean is, daydreams always have more force with Sam than reality. You must know that better than I."

Roy turned his head. "Lately I've realized that maybe I don't know much about Sam at all. We have had a lot of fun together. I'm familiar with some of his tastes and habits and opinions. But I probably don't understand much about his feelings-and that may be because I'm not interested in that side of him." He had not found the confession amusing, but grinned nevertheless. "Isn't that an awful thing to say when speaking of a friend?"

"Not when you are speaking with another friend."

"I'll go so far as to say I never understood why my father's death hurt him more than it did me. Sam always claimed to hate his own father. I didn't hate mine, just never had anything in common with him. And he never seemed to think much of me. I should probably have been jealous of Sam, but I never was.... So I guess when I say I don't know why he was more broken up than I was when my father died, I'm lying. I do know: It's because I didn't care. And that may be lousy, but it's the truth." He grimaced. "Maybe he and I are friends just out of habit, though maybe the same can be said of everything else. Living may be just a habit."

"I don't believe that," Kristin said with force. "And I don't want you to believe it, either."

For pride's sake he made a burlesqued response. "Yes, ma'am." But he was pleased by her proprietary a.s.sertion.

"I'm not joking, Roy. I won't put up with it. I care too much for you."

"You do?"

"That's why this accusation is so rotten." She seemed to be glaring angrily at him. "Else it wouldn't matter."

Overwhelmed as he was, he perversely contested the point. "Sure it would! How could he-" He caught himself. It would not be proper for him to comment on Sam's performance as her husband, let alone when she was at such a disadvantage. "I only want to do what's helpful to you. I don't want to cause any more trouble. But since we haven't ever done anything wrong, how can we do even less?"

The question sounded so absurd when asked aloud that Roy laughed in spite of himself. But Kristin said soberly, "I care too much for Sam to let him believe in a lie."

Roy now resented Sam's getting any consideration at all. "He's not a child."

"But he is," cried Kristin. "That's exactly what he is. That's what attracted me to him. His delight in gadgets without ever really learning how they work. That d.a.m.n coffee machine-he would never have made a decent cup with it. He's never taken as good a photograph with his digital camera as anyone could get with one of those disposables sold at the drugstore." Tears blurred her blue eyes.

Roy was not sure what, or whom, he felt sorriest for, but Kristin just now had forbidden him to be hopeless in a general way, and he understood why: It was not manly. It was not honorable to pile on his absent best friend, but as a man in love he did so anyway.

"He was the one who most wanted to learn to drive when we were kids. He became the rare bad driver whose smashups occurred at three miles per hour."

"Everything okay?" It was the spritely waitress, presumably asking about their orders, which had meanwhile been served unnoticed and had lain there untouched.

Waving her off, Kristin picked up the hamburger, broke it in two, and returned both pieces to the plate. She wiped her fingers on the flimsy paper napkin.

"It's getting late." Only after making this statement did she lift and twist her slender forearm to consult the small gold watch. "I ought to get back with his prescriptions."

"Wait a minute." Roy was desperate. "Where does this leave us?"

"Sam a.s.sures me you agreed to lend him fifty thousand dollars."

"I didn't want to mention this," Roy said. "Doing so now is a defeat for my principles. But then what hasn't been, lately?" By accident he noticed his own hamburger. He had a violent urge to gulp it down in all its greasy-sweet-saltiness, simply to remove it from offending his sight. As an adolescent Sam could eat three Double Whammyburgers in succession, with attendant fries, shakes, whatever, at any hour of the day or night. Roy stared at Kristin. "You and he, in your different ways, have pushed me into a corner. I wouldn't give him another cent for himself. I'm sick of him and his troubles. I don't even like him." If he had hoped to shock her, she showed no reaction. "He claims he's going to file for bankruptcy unless I lend him this money. What would that mean for your career?"

"He's lying," she said levelly.

Roy would not affront her by asking the conventional, "Are you sure?" In all the world his faith was only in her. It had come to that.

"I'm sorry, Roy. She put her fine hand on his fingers. "I didn't have any idea, though I guess I should have figured it out if you didn't turn him down when I kept asking you to."

"I hope you know I would do anything for you."

She lowered her golden head. "I suppose I could if I let myself think about it, but I don't want to." Looking up, she said in a voice angry in pitch but paradoxically soft of tone, "You're too d.a.m.ned gullible about him. He doesn't wish you well."

Roy was embarra.s.sed, not being used to this sort of candor, if such it was. Maybe he had misheard. "I don't understand."

"Because you don't want to."