Harrison, in his penthouse, with his chef and his nurses and his Egyptian cotton, was as profoundly, achingly alone as I was in my drafty shared room with my grey soup.

His wealth had bought him everything except the one thing that matters at the end of a life, which is someone who wants to sit with you.

His children came, when they came at all, to ask about tax shelters.

His nurses were kind, but they were paid to be there.

And in all that luxury, he sat alone, watching the sunset by himself, night after night, a rich man starving for the one thing money cannot buy.

I recognized it in him the moment we met, because I had it too, and there is a way that two lonely people recognize each other instantly, across any divide of class or circumstance, the way two people who speak the same rare language will find each other in a crowd.