Billy

I regret, of course—if regret is quite the word—whatever pain may have reached you through me. Yet one must handle that term with care; pain is a word that swells under scrutiny, like a bruise blooming beneath the skin. What, precisely, did I inflict that had not already been inflicted upon you in quieter, more respectable guises? Yes, I deceived you. I will not insult us both by denying it. But deception is hardly an exotic vice. It circulates freely. It compounds. In truth, it is often the only currency granted universal acceptance.

And in return—well, you had your pleasures, did you not? At least a few. Songs that arrived whole, luminous, as though they had always been yours by right. I will not list them; that would be vulgar, almost mercenary. But they existed. I saw to it.

Call me a trickster if the label comforts you. I have been called far worse, and on far thinner evidence. Mine was a modest sleight of hand, a provincial conjuring performed on a stage already glutted with grander illusions. You speak as though my deception were singular, when it was merely the one that happened to catch the light at an unfortunate angle. Others have executed far more ambitious substitutions without eliciting so much as a murmur. Look, if you can stomach it, at the rest of the band. Look closely. Do you truly see no fractures? No seams where reality has been delicately altered and then, with exquisite politeness, overlooked?

You must concede, then, that I was never the architect of your bewilderment. I arrived late to a house already built, already tenanted, already echoing with footsteps that long predated mine. Whatever this edifice is, it possessed momentum long before I was handed my lines. I am an actor. That is not evasion; it is profession. Roles are assigned, studied, inhabited. Paul was one such role. Not the only one.

And consider the labor it demanded. The unrelenting discipline. Do you imagine such a substitution maintains itself by inertia? The voice, the gestures, the microscopic tics of personality—none of these sustain without daily vigilance. A life must be groomed into coherence hour by hour, or it unravels into incoherence. I did not simply step in. I held the performance together. That, surely, must be entered into the ledger, even by your exacting standards.

As for the arrangement itself—well. I exceeded every expectation. That much is evident. Those who proposed the terms are not sentimental, but they are scrupulously reliable. Their sense of obligation is . . . robust. Once you have entered into covenant with such people, withdrawal is not a question of volition. It is a question of climate. On occasion they have extended certain courtesies: difficulties smoothed, inconveniences quietly removed. Not kindness, precisely. Something colder and more dependable—consistency, learned to be respected.

So you see, I did not invent the conditions. I merely adapted to them with what grace the role allowed. If fault exists—and I grant that it may—it lies far deeper than my entrance, further back than any moment you can point to without discomfort. I did what was required of me. And, I believe, I did it rather well.

*18*