During her fifty-two years, Erma Rapoport imagined having an active social life, particularly when it came to her neighbor of at least twenty of those fifty-two years, the wonderful Mr. Whoever. Once she secretly observed him tending his garden through her mail-order 20 x 30 mm Explorer binoculars—this being in the fall of ‘81 or ‘82—and his eyes caught her attention. He had the kindest, dearest eyes she had ever seen, a grayish-blue, unusual eyes that could probably look deep inside a person and touch the heart. Oh, my, she thought, and cooled her flushed cheeks with quick little waves of her hand.

Then yesterday Mr. Whoever died, a massive coronary. The shock of his abrupt departure took Erma’s breath away. She saw the James City County EMS truck in front of his house, its blue-and-red lights flashing. Ten or fifteen minutes later, a fat balding man and a rough-looking blonde woman, both wearing navy blue jackets, wheeled out a gurney with a plastic body bag strapped to it, presumably Mr. Whoever. The following day, she read his obituary and, after more than two decades, learned his name—Alvin Lipka. What’s Lipka . . . Polish? She thought she knew a couple of Lipkas, maybe.

He was, or had been, a fifty-eight-year-old bachelor who was survived by no one, the poor thing.

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