A bit odd it was, Dave Fiorino attaching a bell to the collar of his large orange cat, a cat confined to a small Manhattan apartment. Deep down, Dave knew that announcing its every move was antithetical to a cat's instinct for stealth; that the tinkling was annoying to the cat and everyone else. No birds flitted about among the polished pots and pans, the intricate desk-top tchotchkes, or the stacked – in chronological order, thank you – issues of The Economist, The New York Review of Books, Harper's and Playboy among the many periodicals whose sheer piled-up heft met some need to encompass knowledge from as many fronts as possible, to capture it in his hands. But no birds to warn of a cat.

Not petty-authoritarian or hide-bound, Dave embraced life however he could muster. Goodness knows, he believed in cognitive autonomy, this disciplined intellectual, accomplished devotee of history and student of philosophy. Plus he liked his creature comforts: good food in the fridge, treats in the cabinet and fancy cologne atop his bureau. In short, not hard-boiled. So why bell the cat? Family tradition, no more, no less.

Turns out that Dave's totally blind yet wildly accomplished parents, Marjorie and Thomas, attached bells with different tones to the laces of their four kids' shoes. Did so from their first steps to know where they were and who was who. That one's diapers just been changed, this one still needs. And so the cat was affixed for many a year.

The coddled creature wore his bell and followed in Dave's ring-a-ding childhood footsteps. He started life as Dave, Jr., till the kidding over that grew too much, and his name morphed to DJ, short for nothing, or so Dave maintained. Like father, like feline. DJ thrived, they enriched each other's lives for years, and he never clawed the few (ha!) books scattered about.

Dave's mother, Marjorie, was a respected, highly credentialed school teacher active in advocacy groups for the blind; his father, Thomas, was an accomplished pianist and lounge singer who played all over Poughkeepsie while holding down a day job in the IBM factory. Both parents blind, it's something of a mystery (to us, not them) how they raised four kids from birth.

Forget getting them off to school in the morning, how were diapers changed? Pin the accomplishment on Marjorie the Magician, who Dave revered. Parents fought to have their children in the special-ed class she taught. For fun, she'd knit her kids complicated cable sweaters, keeping track somehow in her head. Lob a weak conversational gambit over the net, Marjorie would smash it back right quick. Mess with the treble control on the stereo, Thomas the musician would upbraid you before the first song ended. Huge, salutary influences on their children, neither parent missed much.

The kids grew up fast. Age seven, sometimes alone, sometimes together, Tommy (one year older) and Dave would find themselves unaccompanied and peering over a shopping cart's handles, money in a pocket, grocery list in hand, red wagon parked out front, six bags per wagon. They knew what was where, the store knew to leave them be, the only tangle when some darn do-gooder would come rushing up to ask if the little boys were OK. Scram, lady, we'll call you when needed. Your parents blind, you don't truck with busybodies, the four Fiorino kids (Timmy following after a few years, then Cynthia) held themselves somewhat apart, early responsibility punting an excess of frivolity. Not that any of that stopped young Dave from throwing his veggies behind the fridge – only to be found by smell much later. (He also was the brother who had to hold a punishment broom over his head at YMCA day camp, his infraction lost to time.)

Life complicated for kids and parents alike, Dave ended up meticulous, smart and big-hearted. As to the former two, he declared that misplaced comma, yes that one right there, the hill he would die on. He didn't care how high the muckety-muck Shearson banker responsible for the offending punctuation, didn't care he was just a freelance proofreader. There's right and there's wrong, and Hamilton College hadn't thrown all that money at him for nothing. Such exactitude, stern but not overbearing, led to a job at the bank when he needed one, his publishing career sadly kaput. Such rectitude – and the fact that he was right; don't mess with Dave about facts – left the muckety-mucks impressed.

Getting it right started at least as far back as high school, his girlfriend recalling the sheer artistic majesty of a major project Dave did for one of their mechanical drawing classes. With good grades, boffo SATs and one heck of a life story, Hamilton said, yeah, we want this guy, and money was found. He had visions of pursuing engineering until higher-level college math, and the need for superior grades to keep his scholarship, propelled him to English and philosophy where he found a life-long home.

Meticulous indeed. Don't dare mis-shelve one of his thousand-odd books (who knows how many, for who could count that high?) in his custom, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. He'd come out of the bathroom, spot the offense, and there'd be heck to pay. Safer to pick up one of the many stacked magazines, for at least the date would have you return it in place. Mess up too bad, you might find a bell round your neck.
Books his great love, man was he proud, and justly so, when he scratched and clawed his way to a job as an acquisition editor at Simon & freaking Schuster – the big-time, no doubt about it. (A friend would go see him in his cubby at New American Library, the paperback house over on dé·clas·sé 8th Avenue, but doesn't recall an invite to Simon & Schuster's swanky Rockefeller Center digs.)
Traveling round the Midwest hawking books to Big 10 universities, he started on publishing's lowest rung. A couple of years flogging books at the likes of Purdue led to the NAL job in New York. He took it upon himself to start doing reports on the side on a manuscript's commercial potential. Worked so hard and so well, he eventually elbowed his way into Simon & Schuster, and became an editor in a suit a long way from the scholarship kid from Poughkeepsie. Yup, happy, proud and under pressure toiling for a meritocracy with a steep pyramid.

Till his department was downsized, Dave out with the rest. Bitter, that was it for him and publishing, too back on his heels to seek another job such a competitive realm, many called, few chosen. A great disappointment, but he soldiered on. (He'd show them by writing the Great American Short Story. The perfectionist wrote several, but offered few to read.) Rent to pay, he started proofreading at the bank, which quickly realized they should bring this smart stickler on board, mere proofreading soon left behind. Then that department downsized.

Recommended by his ex-boss from the bank (and life-long good friend), Dave freelance-proofed a heavy-duty 150-page technical paper for a Ph.D. at Pfizer where boss had landed. And Dave did such a sterling job – nary a comma misplaced, but more, much more to it than that, all that phenomenology and epistemology, all that arcane stuff he'd mastered, including his mastery of the written word – that Dave scored a job there. (A twisty path, but top-tier firms all in publishing, banking and pharmaceuticals.) He eventually became a digital production manager overseeing a small staff. For he gussied up the scientists' whiz-bang and glossed up the marketers' gee whiz in fine fashion, correct, on-time and on-budget. Yeah, Fiorino's handling that – don't worry.

Meanwhile, or rather, all along, in addition to music, and theater and always the latest books of all stripes, scholarly to best-sellers, to get and read and then cram onto his shelves, New York's other delights beckoned. For verily, as Dave came to know, half the population is female. It should be mentioned that Dave was way too good looking. One ex described him as a classic New York Italian, including that thatch of glorious hair, hair that might migrate variously to his face. Six-foot, solidly built, a clever, urbane sophisticate – this last worn lightly till dispute arose about some principle of physics or fact from the 16th Century.

When mustachioed, he favored Burt Reynolds. Friends less blessed mockingly called him 'Burt' a time or three. But Dave preferred the Omar Sharif comparison, he of Doctor Zhivago rather than Burt's Smokey and the Bandit. (Google Omar – there's Dave.) Regardless, back in the day, Dave didn't hide from his good looks, bona fide intellectual and reader of The Paris Review though he was. Such only added to his appeal.

A host replete with generosity and flair, Dave regularly threw parties, even when living in the Space Capsule (so named because not an inch of space was wasted in his small studio apartment). A friend arriving at one soiree invited a woman encountered in the elevator to join the festivities. Stopping at her apartment to ditch her coat, she soon showed and made a beeline to sit next to Dave, the friend managing all of hello and goodbye. She a well matched fellow intellectual, they dated awhile.

Lucky in love for however many months or more it might last, luck often proved precursor to its flip side, Dave's heart broken more than once.

At Hamilton, he was stone-cold bereft when an enchanting fellow student allowed herself to be spirited away by a professor (back when that was done). Dave living in a dorm, with nothing to offer but his charming self unadulterated, he couldn't compete with a full-on adult living in an apartment with a sports car and a classy job. He recovered after a while, aided by his acoustic guitar and quite decent singing of various romantic ballads of the day. (Cat Stevens worked well with the dark curls Dave sported as a youth.)

In Manhattan, a well composed young woman – smart, fiery, from the Bronx, met at work – drove him crazy for a time, plus and minus both. The latter when she ultimately favored another, Dave's impudent rival scheduled to pick her up at the office after work one day – the wretch rubbing his nose in it. The Green-Eyed Monster drove him mad. No metaphor that, for this smart dude who never threw a punch in his life, expressed real intent to fight for her right there on the plaza in the heart of midtown when they exited the building, his jacket and tie notwithstanding. He didn't care about getting arrested, but was ultimately restrained by thought of losing his pre-Simon & Schuster first real editorial job, which he'd worked hard to get.

And so it went for thirty years and more, someone lovely and smart – and enough fire in her belly to stand up to him – often on Dave's arm. But inevitably she'd be zigging when he was zagging, and at some point, Cupid would slink away, arrows spent. Perhaps they became less enamored of the barrage of debate regarding the number of angels the head of a pin. Perhaps he didn't encounter the perfection he sought, whether in a meal, a book, or maybe a wife. Even as his forties dwindled, the waves still crashed one upon another, Dave with faith in a fickle tide. For he had time – until suddenly he didn't, betrayed by his innards going wrong.

No matter the romantic travails, Dave remained a mensch; he was a good friend and a good ex. His high school girlfriend and he were pals for fifty-five years, Dave supporting her through marriage and divorce. An example to the rest of us from a guy sometimes gruff: Hey, I shared a lot with her, of course she's my friend.

But enough of this lovey-dovey stuff, gruff indeed, his blood up. Challenging Dave on a fact of history, say, or some plot point in a book or movie, might lead to his quick query on the precise number of greenbacks backing your foolish notions. The bet sealed, no welshing permitted.

He never stopped learning, reading abstruse philosophy and spending money he didn't have after he got sick and had to stop working on audio college-level courses: the War of the Roses or Venice as a naval power or some such. An abstract discussion grounded in good theory with someone with the chops for it, he'd settle in a chair for hours of instruction and debate. A bystander paging through magazines might hear: Baloney, man, you're wrong about Heidegger's concept of death and authenticity. Large thoughts or sheer silliness, Dave was game – and what do you mean you're leaving, it's not even midnight, he'd say, you with a long subway ride home, Dave merely having to brush his teeth. He was a damn fine host who liked gathering people around him.

Having grown up somewhat hard-scrabble, their outings few, responsibilities many, Blind Camp (just what it sounds like) a relief every summer, Dave enjoyed life's small luxuries. Whether long showers, going to brunch, or treating himself to a night at the theater – whatever might engage his spirit, his wit, his appetites, his drive, Dave jumped in the puddle with both feet.

Playing poker, he and younger brother Timmy were happy to take the money of any dunderhead at the table. Empty Pockets dispatched (thank God for the magazines), the night's serious knife-fight would commence, and so on into the night, hilarity abounding, Mamet mixed with the Marx Brothers.

The four kids all came up that way, rubbing raw edges in a loving, remarkable family: Tommy, a year older than Dave, with Timmy and Cynthia both considerably younger, Cynthia sadly no longer with us. Dave extended himself in his usual big-hearted way providing a loving home for years to Cynthia's child, Teddy. Dave was also close during regular visits to Tommy's family: his wife, Amy, their three daughters, Allison, Nicole and Kayley and their grandson, Greyson.

Then there's the wide circle of friends, who, yes, truly loved him and stood in awe of his decades-long – not fight with cancer – but living with cancer, his getting on with life, for there were many books to read. Every few years, the surgeon he esteemed would scour out more and more of Dave, his insides eventually replaced by a pouch managed with dignity. Uncomplaining, he shrank from woe-is-me. A medical marvel surviving Stage IV colon cancer for twenty years, he just kept living his life, travel and a love affair or two among the mix. He'd send you out to buy pudding the day he got home from surgery and have two-hour phone calls counseling a friend similarly afflicted.

But illness's financial exigencies such, this quintessential Manhattanite, suave in his low-keyed, son of Poughkeepsie way; enamored of coffee-shop breakfasts; of going out at midnight to get the Sunday Times; organizing twenty-person excursions to Yankees games (where you'd have to tell him to talk to the person sitting his other side cause you actually wanted to watch the game) followed by group picnics in Riverside Park; this patron of monthly dinner parties with ex-colleagues who remained close friends – yeah, that guy, shocked everyone, including himself, by abandoning the City.

Bought himself a Subaru, this adopted son of Manhattan owning a car! Sold the Upper West Side duplex he'd managed to create by bailing on the Space Capsule and somehow, back when he was flush, buying two apartments one above the other with the resident's inside price when the building went condo. A Manhattanite with a staircase!

Selling his apartment fueled his purchase of a sweet house up in the woods in Vermont of all places, near a hospital, a house with columns, a long driveway to pay to plow, even a pond. A guy came to split and stack firewood, a wood stove augmenting wildly expensive oil heat. And so Dave got needed exercise hauling wood in and ashes out, soldiering on, facing down illness and age on his lonesome, phoning friends all over the country, visiting when able. Full of beans, you get him on the right day, eager to disabuse you of mistaken views, bemoaning the ills of the world but never his own. (Not incidentally, it's been learned that, from Beyond, Dave thanks Luann Toth for her heroic efforts settling his tangled affairs, missing safe deposit box key and all.)

A friend's last conversation with him a few days before he died was akin to sitting on the couch an early Saturday evening fifty years prior before venturing out, two fine fellows, to see what the night might bring on a Hamilton campus enriched (as New York later was) by Dave being there – right there, you couldn't miss him – consuming a bit more oxygen than strictly speaking was necessary. And bless him for that.