“Well, they usually do. Eventually.”

“Yeah, when it’s too late.”

I say nothing.

After a moment, he says, “I know.”

“What?”

“In this case, it wouldn’t have made any difference, right?”

“Probably not.”

“Yeah … What time is it?”

I look at the bedside clock. “Three forty-three.”

He takes in a deep breath, closes his eyes. Then opens them. “I’m sorry, Myra. I’m keeping you up.”

“It’s all right. The thunder would be, anyway.”

“Are you tired?”

“No.”

“Me neither.”

He reaches over, takes my hand. I stop breathing. “I just want to do this,” he says.

“Okay.”

“The rain. It makes you kind of …”

“Yes.”

After a while, he says, “It’s awful to know how you’ll die.”

“I know.”

“Do you ever wonder about that, about how you’ll die?”

“Sure.”

“And what do you think?”

“Oh, on a good day, I think, ‘Massive MI. Cerebral hemorrage. Airplane crash.’ You know, instant death.”

“And on a bad day?”

“It depends,” I say. “There’s so much to choose from.”

“Do you ever think you’ll die from a brain tumor?”

“Honestly? I never have thought that.”

“I never thought I would, either. Myra?”

“Yes?”

He is silent so long I think maybe he’s fallen asleep. But then he says, “Do you think if you got a diagnosis like mine, you’d consider suicide?”

Now it is my time to be silent. The truth is, I’ve considered suicide plenty of times, but for very different reasons. Sitting alone at my kitchen table, I’ve looked out the window and thought, in the most dispassionate of ways, “Well, soon I’ll have had enough.” It’s because I know what I’m headed for. More beauty, yes, the world is rich with beauty. But more of everything else, too. Unrelenting loneliness, of course. But also this: Sometimes, reading the paper, I have to put it down. Sometimes when the news comes on the radio, I have to turn it off. This ongoing parade of tragedy. And even if the world were right, there is the wisdom of biology. The old must make way for the new. Why should I insist on hanging around after a certain age? To begin fearing the small descent down my stairs? To fret over the cost of a can of beets?