I never knew him well; we had exchanged only the curtest of greetings. We were in the same place through circumstance. Not the cosmos-grand-design kind of circumstance, but rather that, which is dictated by the frustrated impotence of old men. Men who went home to wizened wives practicing repulsed celibacy. Refilling the wells of their silent resentment each evening, they irrigated their flowers of death, sending young men to kill and die.