"What I can't get over is his having lived almost his entire life with so deep a secret at the centre of his existence? That can't have been easy. Who knows, it may also have made him the refrigerator of a father that he was."

"I find it hard to imagine him any other way, a father with a built-in ice-cube maker."

"And yet you find it easy to imagine him gay?"

"I guess I don't find it a problem," Ellie said.

"If I ever figure out why I do, I'll let you know," I replied.

I was to pick my father up for lunch at his new–to me at least, who hadn't seen him for nearly a year–apartment at 6101 N. Sheridan Road. When I rang from the desk in the lobby, a voice other than my father's answered and said that I was expected and to come on up, apartment 38A.

I was met at the door by a slender man in, I estimated, his early thirties, tanned, with coppery-coloured hair and almost periwinkle blue eyes. He was wearing chino trousers, a blue button-down shirt under a red V-neck sweater, white tennis shoes. He looked to me like nothing so much as a recently and happily retired surfer.

"Hi. Your dad'll be out in a minute," he said. "I'm Randy Thernstrum," and he put out his hand for me to shake.

As I was shaking his hand, I thought, perversely, my father couldn't at least find a Jewish gay man, of which I gathered there was no shortage.

"This apartment has spectacular views," I said.

"Doesn't it, though," Randy said. "It practically sits out over the lake. Your dad told me that he always wanted to live looking out at Lake Michigan, the only point of topographical interest in our fair but extremely flat city."