He is still an attractive man, I thought, and then, good God, wondered if I was regarding my father homosexually.

"I see you and Randy have introduced yourselves. Allow us a couple of hours for lunch," he said to Randy.

"Take care, Henry," Randy said to my father. "I'll hold down the fort. Good to meet you Steven." We shook hands once again.

In the elevator, my father said, "Randy's 11 years younger than you, Steven. You realise that if he were a girl of the same age you would have had no choice but to think me an old fool. It occurs to me, though, that an old fool might be preferable to what you might actually think of me." So he knew that I knew about his homosexuality, and there would be no need for a nervous announcement. Good.

"Let's wait for lunch to talk about all that, Dad," I said.

My father chose a Chinese restaurant on Broadway called Mei Shung. Rather a drab place, with ten or eleven tables, only one other of which was currently occupied, by a bald, heavyset man reading the sports section from the Trib while tucking into a large plate of fried rice.

After we ordered — kung-pao for my father, Mongolian beef for me — we talked about beside-the-point things. I asked what he had done with the furniture from the old Hyde Park house. He asked how I found my sister. I asked if he was making any progress with his book. He told me it was going slowly but going. He asked how the shaky economy was affecting my business. I asked about his health. He asked about his grandchildren, in whom he had never taken all that keen an interest.