"This place is quite a throwback," he said, not bothering to explain his tardiness. He was wearing jeans, leisure cut, and a black turtleneck with a Nike swoosh at the collar. He hadn't shaved. How he had come down in the world, my once elegant father!

"Do you eat here often?" I asked.

"Once or twice a week," he said. "It reminds me of better days."

I ordered an omelette, my father had a small bowl of chicken noodle soup and half of a brisket sandwich.

"So what did you have in mind?" I asked him.

"In mind?" he said.

"In inviting me to lunch," I said.

"I was hoping to dispell some of the bad feeling you obviously have for me. Is there any way I can do that?"

"I rather doubt there is," I said, "but I'm ready to listen."

"Don't for a minute think I don't know what I did to your mother and to you and your brother. And don't think I'm not thoroughly ashamed of myself for having done it."

"Why did you?" I asked. "Did you love the Lippman woman so much you were ready to kill for her?"

"You'll laugh, well maybe you won't exactly laugh, when I tell you."

"Tell me and see if I laugh."

"I tried to have Herb Lippman killed because he called me a bullshitter. Actually, ‘four-flusher' was the term he used. He also said that he would never forgive his wife for falling for just another crummy Jewish lawyer, and he considered our love affair a real lapse of taste on her part. He was a big guy, Herb Lippman, six foot two or three, weighed maybe two and a quarter. At the end of this little tirade, he grabbed me by my necktie and looked as if he were going to punch me, but then laughed and told me that if he ever saw me within a city block of his wife again he would kill me. I guess I thought I would beat him to it."

"Wouldn't it have been simpler to stay away from his wife? Or did you love her so much you couldn't?"

"Please don't hate me even more, but love didn't have all that much to do with it."

"So your only motive was vanity, or narcissism?"