I quit my job at Dutton in 1985 and headed off to graduate school to study fiction writing. Back then I wasn’t sure what was going to happen to me, once I went out in the world to seek my fortune. It seemed entirely possible to me, at the time, that I was about to fall off the edge of the earth.

On my last day of work, there’d been a knock on my office door, and a crusty, bearlike voice said, “There’s someone here who wants to say goodbye to you.” And I turned to see Elliot Graham standing there, holding the original Winnie the Pooh. He held the bear toward me, and nodded. “Go ahead,” he said dryly. “You can hug him.”

So I did. He was soft.

When I was done, I gave Winnie the Pooh back to Elliot. He looked at me, and nodded, and said, “Good luck at school,” and walked away. That was the last I saw of him.

I’ve thought about Elliot every once in a while, in the years since then. I suppose I should have called him up some time and let him know I did not fall off the edge of the earth. But of course he died years ago, while I was busy typing.

On that December day last year, my friend and I headed out into Midtown. New York was all dressed up for Christmas. There on the corner was the restaurant where my father used to take me. There was the Daily News building, where I had a job in 1984. There was the lollipop street clock at 43rd Street and Fifth Avenue where my sister and I used to meet. I haven’t seen her in a long time.

And I thought of the ending of “The House at Pooh Corner,” in which our hero takes his leave of the companions of his youth: “But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest, a little boy and his bear will always be playing.”