Joseph O'Neill - Netherland

We watched him approach a police officer and point in our direction. The officer shook her head. Chuck persisted, and we gave a thumbs-up to confirm his story. Still the police officer refused to let him cross. “Get going,” a cop on our side of the street said. “You got to keep moving. You too, ma’am.”

“We’re just trying to hook up with that guy over there,” I explained.

“What guy?” the cop said.

“That guy, there. See? With the briefcase.” I was pointing.

“I don’t see nobody with a briefcase,” the cop said, not even looking. “You want to go north, you go up Ninth Avenue. East is all blocked.”

I phoned Chuck. “The cop says we have to go up Ninth. But there’s no way you’ll be able to cross Broadway.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Chuck said, giving me a salute. “I’ll figure it out. I’ll see you at Ninth and Thirty-fourth. Give me twenty minutes.”

So we headed west. At Seventh Avenue, in front of Penn Station, we ran into another crush of people. Evidently this was the parade’s final stop. Bandsmen with huge drums wandered around, as did a pack of elves. I said sorry to a mermaid for stepping on her tail. Ronald McDonald was back, his giant rump tilted upward as he was lowered for deflation. Eliza and I instinctively drew closer to the spectacle. It was sharply breezy now, and the midget Ronald McDonalds holding the vertical ropes worked hard to steady the balloon. We were on the point of walking on when there was a loud collective gasp. I turned around just in time to see Ronald McDonald veering away and crashing into the barriers. There were screams. A man in a doughnut costume was knocked over and at least two women fell as they tried to get out of the way. Ronald McDonald drew back. Then he again came forward enormously, head first, turning in the draft so that his rigid beckoning arm swung round in a slow haymaker that scattered a mesmerized shoal of bystanders and ultimately connected with a fellow trying to film the debacle with a cell phone. That man fell to the ground, as did the police officer next to him who was trying to apprehend the fantastic yolk-yellow mitt with his bare hands, this last fall provoking a ducking young officer to draw his gun and point it at the amok Ronald McDonald, which led to a fresh burst of screams and panicky running and mass diving onto the asphalt and Eliza grabbing my arm.

The gust of air subsided; Ronald McDonald’s handlers reined him in.

Eliza said, “Did that really happen?”

We laughed most of the way to Ninth Avenue.

Chuck was not to be found at the agreed place. Eliza asked me, “So, did you like my albums?” I did, I told her. She’d done a good job. The story of my son, as she put it, was now gathered in a single leather-bound volume inscribed with his initials.

Eliza flexed a bicep triumphantly. “What did I tell you?”

“You’ve got the knack,” I agreed. I didn’t tell her that while her work gave me joy — who can resist images of one’s laughing child? — it also documented my son’s never-ending, never truly acceptable self-cancellations. In the space of a few pages his winter self was crossed out by his summer self which in turn was crossed out by his next self. Told thus, the story of my son is one that begins continuously, until it stops. Is this really the only possible pagination of a life?

Chuck was late, then very late. We called him repeatedly, with no answer.

“OK, now I’m worried,” Eliza said. We’d been waiting almost an hour.

“He just got screwed up by the crowds,” I said, kissing Eliza good-bye. “His phone battery probably died.”

That was Thursday. On Saturday, I called Chuck again; I still hadn’t heard from him. “Hey, it’s me,” I asserted to the voice mail. “I’m on the plane, just getting ready for takeoff. Where are you? What the hell happened to you? Anyhow, take care. Bye.”

The aircraft went into reverse; taxied; rumbled innocently out of New York’s clear sky.

It’s not quite true to say that Chuck out of sight was Chuck out of mind. I did think about him. I concluded that his Thanksgiving no-show was merely the newest manifestation of his whimsicality and didn’t hold it against him, just as I didn’t hold it against him, or me, that in the end all I got out of him was an e-mail:

Good luck with everything! Sorry aboutThanksgiving. I got held up. Speak soon.Chuck

We never spoke. Every once in a while, in the grip of affectionate curiosity, I’d search the Web for a mention of Chuck Ramkissoon. I found none — which told me that his cricket project was going nowhere. A pity, but there it was. There were other things to think about.

Then I’m told that his body has been found in the Gowanus Canal and that it was put there very soon after I left New York.

Immediately after talking to Abelsky, I ring Anne Ramkissoon’s number. Another woman answers and it’s a while before Anne comes to the phone. I am looking at St. Paul’s Cathedral. The afternoon is another dull one, with white clouds mottled by smaller gray clouds.

Anne accepts my condolences. “Do you need any help with anything?” I say. “Anything you need.”

“It all taken care of,” she says. “I ready for this. The bishop taking care of everything.”

“And the funeral? I’d like to be there.”

She says squarely, “My husband body going back to Trinidad. He going to rest with his people.”

I feel under an obligation to speak up. “But, Anne,” I say, “you heard him. He wanted to be cremated, in Brooklyn. I was there when he said it, remember? I was his witness.”

“You his witness?” Anne says. “Everybody his witness. Everybody witness Chuck. I his wife. I waited for him for two years. Nobody else waiting; not you, not the police. I waiting.”

It has not occurred to me until this moment to think carefully about what it might mean to be the widow Ramkissoon.

“They bring my husband out of the Gowanus Canal,” she goes on. “Who put him there? Not me. His witness put him there. Now I lost him,” she says. “I have to live with this. You go back and live your life. What I do? Where I go?”

“I’m so sorry, Anne,” I say.

Do I need to declare to her, to all whom it may concern, that I am distraught? That, although I may not have missed him for two years, I now miss Chuck terribly? Do I declare that I loved Chuck? Is this what is required?

Or perhaps I should more concretely declare that, having spoken to Anne, I leave the office early, at three-thirty, and walk all the way home, uphill and in light rain, and that in Highbury Fields I stand for twenty minutes in my raincoat, thinking about whether I should fly to Trinidad for the burial. That when I arrive home I touch Jake on the head and tell Paola, our nanny, that I’m going to my bedroom and should be left in peace. Perhaps I should declare that I call the New York Police Department and am put through to a Detective Marinello, who promises to call me back but doesn’t. That when Rachel comes home from work she senses immediately that something is up, and that at nine o’clock we sit down together with a glass of wine. Perhaps I should declare that we proceed to talk about Chuck Ramkissoon and that thoughts of Chuck come to me at all hours in the months thereafter. What is the declaration that is in order here?

It doesn’t take long to tell Rachel about the good times: how Chuck and I met in remarkable circumstances, how we stayed in touch, how we came to collaborate in heat and grass and fantasy. To all of this she listens quietly. It’s when I tell her about the day of the parrots, as I mentally label the worst day, that she interrupts me.

“Go over that one more time,” she says, examining the shadow in the wine bottle and dispensing one half of the shadow into each of our glasses. “Tell me exactly what you saw.”