The Color of Light by Wendy Hornsby

years ago and he’ll tell you every detail as if it happened yesterday.”
    â€œHow old is he?”
    â€œHe’ll be eighty-four in August.” He glanced around, checked on his father, who hadn’t moved from his seat. “For his age, he’s doing all right. You know, I’d understand it if he wanted to go live in a happier time. But he seems to be stuck in a bad place. A very bad place.”
    â€œHe misses your mom.”
    Beto gave my arm a squeeze, seemed to shrug off his mood as he went behind the counter where he had spent so much of his life, selling good food to hungry people. In one continuous flow, he grabbed a take-out container, asked one of his staff to serve his dad some coffee, and unpinned a card from the bulletin board next to a wall phone. He reached over the high counter and handed me the card.
    â€œThis is the number for the gal my wife told you about,” he said. “She did a real good job on the estate sale for her cousin.”
    â€œThank Zaida for me,” I said, slipping the card into my pocket.
    â€œHow’s it going over there?” he asked, referring to Mom’s house.
    â€œMaking some progress,” I said. “After my cousin and University Housing take a look around and tell me what they do or don’t want, I’ll be ready to call in someone to cart the rest off.”
    â€œIt’s a big job. Let me know if I can help.” He had already piled enough ziti into the container for several meals before he added a last scoop and snapped on a lid. “But don’t be in too big a hurry to finish over there; I’ll miss you.”
    â€œI’ll be around,” I said.
    â€œHey, I heard Kevin knocked on your door.” He looked up, gave me his version of a leer. “Thinking of rekindling the old flame?”
    â€œBeto!” I feigned shock. “He’s a married man.”
    â€œTell him that.” A sardonic laugh. As he filled a second container, unbidden, with grilled peppers and sausage, he said, “So, are you bringing your new guy to the party Saturday?”
    â€œI should know better, but I’ll ask him. What else can I bring?”
    â€œBring? To my house?” He pointed a big spoon toward his chest. “You gotta be kidding. Between my dad, my mother-in-law, Auntie Quynh and me we’re having an Italian-Mexican-Vietnamese feast.”
    â€œTums, then?”
    He laughed. “Yeah. Bring some of those.”
    There was a local branch of the bank I use down the street from the deli. After I said good-bye to Beto and Bart, I shouldered my shopping bag, its contents much heavier and more expensive than I had anticipated when I dropped in to say hello, and walked over to use the ATM to get cash for the weekend. The bank had stationed a uniformed guard out front, probably to shoo away the street people who sometimes aggressively panhandled bank customers coming out with their pockets full of fresh money.
    When I got closer, I recognized the guard, Chuck Riley, a retired Berkeley detective who lived down on the corner of my parents’ street, across from the Bartolinis’. I knew him to be a blowhard, with a quiet, put-upon wife and two notoriously wild daughters, one of whom, Lacy, was married to my friend, Detective Kevin Halloran. Dad always said that Chuck must have been a pretty good money manager to afford a house in that neighborhood on a cop’s salary, unless he or his wife, Marva, had inherited a fair amount, though that didn’t seem likely. Marva canvassed the neighborhood regularly, selling everything from Amway to Tupperware; Mom avoided her. The Rileys still lived in the same house; maybe Chuck needed this post-retirement job to maintain it.
    Like many old acquaintances I had run into that week, I noticed how much he had aged since I last saw him; they all probably said the same about me. Probably in his late sixties or early seventies, he was still thin enough