the last book I ever read (Edmund White's The Beautiful Room is Empty, excerpt seven)

from The Beautiful Room is Empty by Edmund White:

Maria called me from Chicago to tell me that Paul had killed himself—Paul, the painter I had so much admired when I was at Eton and who’d told me, “Someday you’ll have more freedom than you’ll want.” Maria had heard the story from Paul’s girlfriend, who’d found Maria’s phone number in Paul’s address book. Apparently Paul had moved to the Brooklyn suburb of Sheepshead Bay, where he’d rented the attic in someone’s old wooden house. He’d painted a bit but grown so despondent that he’d thrown himself off the Staten Island ferry. There was talk of organizing a memorial show of his work at the Eton museum.