The Stones come on the radio, singing about how you can’t always get what you want. First, we are silent. Then we sing along.

When we pull into the driveway I cut the engine and open my door, start to get out. Chip grabs my arm. “Listen. Before we go in, I want to tell you something. When you said all those things last night, I was … I didn’t say anything right afterward because I thought it was just so beautiful, Myra. Really. I was sitting there, trying to take it all in. All those amazing facts about bodies. And then you were gone.”

I look away, embarrassed.

“Next time you tell me something like that, something about yourself, I hope you’ll stay. I wouldn’t mind getting to know you a lot better.”

“I can smell the garlic from here,” I say. As though it followed.

• • •

Diann and I are in our pajamas, loading the dishwasher. “He gets a few words wrong now and then,” Diann says. “Did you notice when he said, ‘How much time is it?’”

I smile. “Yes.”

“But other than that, he seems so normal. Just a guy with a bad haircut wearing a kerchief. And popping pills every now and then.”

“I know.”

“When will it … get worse?”

“I don’t know.”

She takes the sponge, starts wiping down the counter. “I’m not sure I can do that part, you know. I’ve never … Well, I’m just not sure I’ll be able to stay for that. I don’t know if he wants me to, anyway.”

I busy myself wiping wine glasses that are too delicate for the dishwasher. I bought them years ago. This is the first time I’ve used three at once.

“Do you think he wants me to stay for … everything?”

“I think you’ll know when the time comes, Diann.”

She rinses out the sponge, leans back against the sink, her arms crossed. “You know something? This is the first time I’ve ever been with him that I didn’t feel competition all around me, all the time. It was never easy with him, not in high school and not when we got back together all those years later. You’d go out to a restaurant with him, and the waitress would be all over him. Or the waiter. Everywhere you went, people just … And even if he didn’t pay any attention to them, it was still so irritating.