For all that the world could see, his comings and goings were meticulously planned and executed; he could be counted on to leave and arrive unfailingly, and precisely at the appointed hour—whatever his destination. But he knew better. Having studied to death his own version of the universal timetable, he discovered that somehow everything had been timed wrong, had been botched. Ben elaborated on his theory over countless lunches with me. Provided he was in New York, and the peripeties of some financial combination of the decade he just happened to be bringing to the desired ending did not interfere—the pages of my desk calendar were most often blank—we met for lunch at least once a month. Sometimes, if the conversation seemed unfinished—because what we had meant to say could not be contained in the conventional space of two hours, or because we were interrupted by an intruder determined to catch up with one or the other of us, insensitive to the bored or disparaging banter with which, in our mood of conniving solidarity, we deflected his questions—we would agree to lunch again the very first day he was free, to make sure the thing was finally talked out.
