Chapter 18

“I guess I’m a pack rat, or something.”

“No, no!” I said. “I’d call yourroom normal. Quentin’s isn’t.”

“But wasn’t Ted’s room like Quentin’s?”

“Yeah. But you told me he didn’t really live here; he just used it for fun and games from time to time.”

“That’s true.” Horst shook his head slowly. “Maybe Quentin just didn’t like cluttering up his room. I mean the whole place was his.”

“Yes, but think. He doesn’t really have a lot of personal stuff in anyroom.” I shook my head. “He wasn’t like that in college.”

Horst looked thoughtful. “I think,” he said slowly, “that Quentin—he sometimes said something about the second stage of life being about simplifying. The first stage was about accumulating, that sort of thing. Maybe he was doing that.”

I wanted to point out that Quentin had only been in his thirties. On the other hand, when did Quentin do anything in an ordinary way?

“Maybe,” I said. But it still didn’t feel quite right.