He thinks with distracted affection of himself, the young Louis Waters, who...

He thinks with distracted affection of himself, the young Louis Waters, who spent his youth trying to live with Richard, who was variously flattered and enraged by Richard's indefatigable worship of his arms and his ass, and who left Richard finally, forever, after a fight in the train station in Rome {had it been specifically about the letter Richard received from Clarissa, or about Louis's more general sense of exhausted interest in being the more blessed, less brilliant member?}. That Louis, only twenty-eight but convinced of his advanced age and
missed opportunities, had walked away from Richard and gotten on a train that turned out to be going to Madrid. It had seemed, at the time, a dramatic but temporary gesture, and as the train steamed along
{the conductor had informed him, indignantly, where he was headed} he'd been strangely, almost
preternaturally content. He'd been free. Now he scarcely remembers his aimless days in Madrid; he does not even remember with great clarity the Italian boy {could his name actually have been Franco?} who convinced him to finally abandon the long, doomed project of loving Richard, in favor of simpler passions. What he remembers with perfect clarity is sitting on a train headed for Madrid, feeling the sort of happiness he imagined spirits might feel, freed of their earthly bodies but still
possessed of their essential selves.